Cannon Magazine Online Version
Content below is from the site's 2011 archived pages.
Editor: Phil Babe
Argonautenstraat 62
1076 KS Amsterdam, NL
This website stands as a counterpart to the printed version of Cannon Magazine, establishing an archive of related material with an emphasis on that which it is not possible to reproduce on paper (audio, film &c.).
As to the print version of the magazine this 2009 Announcement shed some light as to the publisher's approach to the printed version.
Cannon magazine — For literary artillery . . .2009
Due to financial constraints, the production of the first issue of Cannon is being broken down into a series of sporadically produced sixteen-page signatures, some of which will be distributed as they are printed, and the remainder kept aside to be collated and bound in June 2009. This staggered approach to production allows Cannon to exist without the crutch of financial support, spreading costs and delaying my inevitable lesson into the impossibility of truly independent publishing.
The left-to-right, east-to-west structure of the finished magazine will thus correlate to the chronology of its production, the first page having been printed six months before the last. Section by section the magazine will evolve or renew its standpoint, reflecting a slow digestion of its themes, rather than suggesting a neatly packaged thought which has sprung from the mind, onto the page. Cannon will grow up in public.
Update: 2010
Thur. 28 October 2010Cannon
Cannon ♯2 is in active preparation — due early 2011. Subscribe for 17½ eu.
18 February 2010
Two of the last remaining copies of Cannon No.1 are available at the London Review of Books Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, London WC1A.
14 January 2010
An interview with Alain Robbe-Grillet ‘…It is not a question of evoking, but of piercing the world…’
STOP PRESS 6 January 2009
Cannon named ‘Magazine of the Year’ by 3:AM. Thank you!
STOP PRESS 10 December 2009
CANNON NO.1 ALMOST SOLD OUT — THERE WILL BE NO REPRINT. A few copies may still be available through stockists; alternatively, contact the editor directly. Cannon No.2 is in active preperation and due April 2010. Subscribe for 17½ eu.
Cannon No.1 — June 2009
Cannon No.1 ‘I wandered through the courtyards and galleries, on the ramparts and glacis, in the fortified and covered ways and along the watchman’s paths. It seemed to me I was inside someone’s head. This masterly, complicated and well-conceived construction of impregnable breastworks, bastions, salients and redoubts appeared to me like a petrified cast of the brain, and in these halls of stone, among the iron grilles and the chevaux de frise, I stumped along on my crutches, aggressive and vicious as a crippled thought inside the mind of man, thought in its solitude, thought in its liberty. Every opening on to the outside world is an embrasure for a cannon…’
26 September 2009
792.981 ‘I assume you’re familiar with the Dewey Decimal System?’
21 August 2009
Now, ‘…We thus see the absurdity of that favourite expression of our traditional criticism: “X has something to say and says it well.” Might we not advance on the contrary that the genuine writer has nothing to say? He has only a way of speaking. He must create a world, but starting from nothing, from the dust…’
9 August 2009
Film ‘Esse est percipi’ (‘to be is to be perceived’) - a starting point for a deeper conversation on the meaning of reality vs perception, and the related arguments that address the idea of nothingness as the absence of everything. This precedes that premise that there is no such thing as nothing, given the existence of the idea of nothing contradicts itself. Ancient philosophers and their points of view are welcome in this treatise, proven by posts on nothing like this one.
7 August 2009
These Panels are our Only Models for the Composition of Poetry, or, How Marinetti Taught me How to Write ‘Any editor, at any major publishing house, will tell you that they take their bearings from, and shape their editorial policy around, the feedback they get from reading groups, whose members want nice, rounded characters that they can imagine sharing thoughts with over a glass of Chardonnay. Well fuck that. Literature begins where identity and knowledge are ruptured, multiplied, transmitted along chains of language and the vectors of the world, passing through switchpoints that flip them over into something else.’
25 May 2009
A (silent) experiment in sound ‘ Pose before six modern dining table styles by six different Italian designs, made from six different materials, each with six different chairs. Silently point to the table of your choice. Excellent choice- a Double Extension dining table. It is utterly unique and full of character. Designed by Andrea Lucatello for Naos and manufactured in Italy, the Double extension dining table has a sculptural base with dimensional geometry. Silent applause.
15 May 2009
Fat Man on a Beach ‘Life is really all chaos … I cannot prove it is chaos any more than anyone else can prove there is a pattern, or there is some sort of deity, but even if it is all chaos, then let’s celebrate the chaos. Let’s celebrate the accidental. Does that make us any the worse off? Are we any the worse off? There is still love; there is still humour.’
26 March 2009
There are only three exits. . . (part 2)
23 March 2009
Madness and death ‘“Sorry, old man, I’m looking for the exit.” That’s just what he should not have said. Three big blokes appear from the shadows and grab him by the collar: “The what? You’re looking for the what?” “The exit, like I said.” “This place has only three exits, sir,” one of the big blokes snarled…’
22 March 2009
Cannon Magazine, Sig. C The third signature (pp. 33–48) of Cannon Magazine has been printed, and advance copies distributed.
3 March 09 2009
There are only three exits. . .
10 February 2009
Cannon Magazine, Sig. B The second signature (pp. 17–32) of Cannon Magazine has been printed, and advance copies distributed.
17 January 2009:
Cannon Magazine, Sig. A The first signature (pp. 1–16) of Cannon Magazine has been printed, and advance copies distributed.
15 January 2009
Fry: The Subject of Language Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.
10 December 2008
Facsimile of Anthologie Nègre par Blaise Cendrars ‘I had turned my back. I had turned the page. I had left for Brazil. I was making movies. I was hunting. I was traveling. I was wandering. I was wasting my time. I was breathing, I was living, and the hell with libraries! And the books I had abandoned to the good or bad graces of La Sirène? I didn’t give them another thought…
29 October 2008
Dinner with Henry Miller ‘And when they uncork the champagne and pour it he stands up, raises his glass, and he turns to the girls at the bar and says ‘à nos vrais ambassadeurs!’ — to our real ambassadors, the prostitute! How about that? Isn’t that beautiful?’ He's staring at me now... no he's staring at my gold statement ring. Now I know why I chose this one - it's clunky but gorgeous and it's working it's charm on Henry. He takes my hand, kisses my ring, and oh, my god...
26 October 2008
An interview with Blaise Cendrars ‘I’ve never been one of those writer-soldiers. One is a fighter or one is a writer. When one writes, one isn’t shooting, and when one’s shooting one isn’t writing; one writes afterward. One would have done better to write before and prevent all that.’
