A modern-day Dante discusses drugs, the American nightmare and literature's last exit
by Stephen Lemons
First published on Salon.com, October 26, 2000

Hubert Selby Jr. is a freak, an anachronism, a throwback to an era when literature mattered and American writers wrote about something other than Marilyn Monroe's hairdo or the last time they had sex with their daddies. Cut from the same cloth as such recently deceased legends as Paul Bowles, Charles Bukowski and William S. Burroughs, the 72-year-old Brooklyn-born author of harrowing novels such as "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and "Requiem for a Dream"(now a film by hotshot director Darren Aronofsky) seems hopelessly out of place in today's fiction market. A Kafka lost in La-la Land.

"It's funny," says Aronofsky, his generation's answer to Martin Scorsese, when asked about the man whose nightmare he's just translated to the big screen with the help of stars Jared Leto, Marlon Wayans, Jennifer Connelly and Ellen Burstyn. "When we went to Cannes to premiere the film, no one wanted to talk to Ellen or to me. They all wanted to talk to Hubert Selby Jr. He was the celebrity over there. Europe, unlike America, recognizes his contribution to literature."

Ex-con and man of letters Edward Bunker discusses his new memoir, "Education of a Felon," and life as an upstanding citizen.
​by Stephen Lemons
First published on Salon.com, April 24, 2000

Edward Bunker has a face like an ax, a voice like a buzz saw and the watery blue eyes of a saint. Standing in the middle of an office garage behind his picture-perfect home in L.A.'s tony Hancock Park, he lights a half-smoked cigar for the umpteenth time -- the matches burning down close to his fingers before they fire up the cherry. And then leans back on his heels as he answers my question: "Is there any similarity between a criminal and an artist?"

"Both tend to have a sociopathic deviancy in their attitudes," he says, sucking on the stogie. "They don't see things like the average citizen. So to that extent, there is. Dustin even made that comment somewhere."

​








The life-embracing, death-defying founder of the Pogues is a king hell drinker, a writer and one of the last of a vanishing breed.
by Stephen Lemons
First published on Salon.com, July 31, 2001.

Shane MacGowan, the Irish Charles Bukowski, known for a craggy set of teeth that has inspired more similes than Stonehenge and a liver that would've made James Joyce weep, is one of the few remaining practitioners of a literary tradition that fuses an angry lust for extremes with the exploration of same in poetry or prose. Once upon a time, aspiring writers dived face first into fleshpots, saloons, drug dens, streets and abattoirs, both foreign and domestic. Those gritty, violent, experience-driven universities of transgression produced the likes of Henry Miller, Jean Genet, Malcolm Lowry, Fyodor Dostoevski, Brendan Behan, Knut Hamsun, Paul Bowles and Alexander Trocchi, among others. Shane MacGowan is one of the last of their dying breed.

MacGowan's gargantuan exploits in the realms of substance abuse have been well documented by admirers and detractors alike. Apparently, he was fired from the Pogues, the legendary, London-based Anglo-Irish rock group he co-founded in the early '80s, after his band mates decided in 1991 that they could no longer abide his missing tour dates because he was incapacitated by drink. In doing so, the Pogues signed their own death warrant. MacGowan, the apotheosis of the inebriated Celtic rebel, was the one the crowds wanted.

The one-time wife of brilliant, tortured novelist Malcolm Lowry discusses her controversial new memoir about their tempestuous relationship
by Stephen Lemons
First published on Salon.com, January 4, 2001

Pixyish and fair, with lively brown eyes that belie her age, Jan Gabrial, 89, pauses for a moment before making a surprising observation about her first husband, British novelist Malcolm Lowry, author of "Under the Volcano," one of the masterpieces of 20th century fiction.
​
"Malcolm was a very educated man, a brilliant conversationalist and an excellent athlete," Gabrial recalls. "He did have one problem though -- a very small penis. It didn't bother me. I felt we could work around it. But it bothered him. That was something he never really overcame. In his adolescence it had been a problem; his brothers teased him about it, apparently."

​A new biography tells the bizarre tale of the Jewish psychic who met with the future Fuhrer
by Stephen Lemons
First published on Salon.com, February 28, 2002

​In the weeks leading up to Adolf Hitler's appointment as Reichschancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, there was nothing inevitable about the Austrian corporal's ascension to power. Results of the 1932 November Reichstag elections were disappointing for his National Socialist Party, with the Nazis suffering losses in the German parliament while retaining about a third of the seats there.
Nazi coffers had been drained dry by the campaign. Hitler had endured significant defections from his movement and threatened suicide. Some Nazis began to wonder if he had the right stuff to be their Führer.

It was at this point that Hitler, falling back on his belief in the occult, called the most renowned clairvoyant in the land to his headquarters at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin for a private session. The man Hitler met with that day is the subject of a recent biography (the first in the English language), "Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant," by Mel Gordon.

​





​




Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey is about to administer the coup de grâce to Western civilization
by Stephen Lemons
First published on Salon.com, September 20, 2000

Plump, suave and swathed in black, Adam Parfrey stands before me flipping through a gruesome stack of color photos depicting headless torsos, severed limbs and various bodies sliced and diced like mincemeat. Could be a Jeffrey Dahmer wet dream or the Hannibal Lecter cookbook -- take your pick. Suddenly, a small frown appears on Parfrey's face.

"I don't like the way this red looks here," he tuts. "Oh, here's an article we translated from Spanish titled 'Hacking Mom.' Seems the man attacked his mom with a machete. Macheteo a su madre."

​Grand seductress Catherine Deneuve talks about taking chances, working with Bjork and starring in the new musical "Dancer in the Dark."
by Stephen Lemons
First published on Salon.com, September 29, 2000

Catherine Deneuve smells delicious. Seated directly across from me at a small table, she is even more attractive in person than on film. You must forgive me if in the presence of an actress who's mesmerized audiences worldwide for over 30 years in more than 90 films including Belle de Jour, The Last Mètro, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and so on, all I can initially think about is that she smells like a ripe piece of exotic fruit.

Hell, I'm only a man.

"You like it?" she asks with a smile, as if her fragrance has had the proper effect -- disarming any male reporter who comes too close to her. "A friend got it for me in Paris at a very small place where they sell only five perfumes. This one is called 'Mediterranean Lily.'"