"I once met a guy in Great Britain who had the whole book signed by all the [19] authors," he says.
He smiles again and shakes his head at this incredibly pleasing though maniacal thing. Youngsters are often criticised for not reading enough or for reading what is not considered the 'right' stuff by the so-called literary establishment. I'm sorry literary establishment, young people do read and young people do write.
Rewind your memory. Do it now.
1997, Great Britain: the press said that a new hierarchy in literature had been born. Irvine Welsh had unleashed the demons of what they called the "chemical generation". Meanwhile, Matthew Collin in collaboration of John Godfrey wrote Altered States (Serpent's Tail), the first and best report on Ecstasy culture and acid house. If Matthew Collin documented the "hows" of a decade of madness, revealing how Ecstasy culture was born, how it developed and later splintered, a whole series of chemical novels and tales were also published documenting the lives and loves of those who lived in that particular period.
Among these works of "chemical fiction" is the anthology Disco Biscuits (Sceptre, 1997). This and the three that followed were edited by former Manchester music journalist Sarah Champion.
"I was working for a company called Volume compiling CDs of European electronic music, Trance Europe Express, and drum 'n' bass, Breakbeat Science. Each came with a book of interviews and photographs. Simon Prosser of Sceptre, who was commissioning pop culture books for them, approached me and asked if I'd write a history of acid house [at that time none had been published]. I gave it some thought and decided to decline because I felt that to write a 'history' would be to choose specific records, DJs and clubs.
"For me, the acid house phenomena and the rave culture that followed was a very personal experience. It was the antithesis of rock music and pop scenes that went before in that it was not about worshipping celebrities. Everyone was a star on the dancefloor. The whole movement was very democratic and for me the real story was about the personal, insane, crazy extreme experiences and adventures we had on the dancefloor. The idea of Disco Biscuits was to capture the cultural changes and madness of acid house and what followed by using fiction to tell the stories of individuals."
Sarah seems to echo Helen Mead's tale 'Game On' published in the second anthology Disco 2000 where she described an era in which, "There were no more heroes: just us" when "every man and every woman could be a star". And the idea worked: launched in clubs with readings featuring famous DJs [Arthrob at London's The End, Back2Basics in Leeds and Paradise Factory in Manchester with DJs such as Marshall Jefferson, LTJ Bukem and Charlie Hall] it was a huge success.
"The reaction was bigger than I could ever have imagined. The publishers expected it to sell 5,000 to 10,000 copies. It sold 60,000 becoming the UK's bestselling anthology ever. It's timing was perfect. It captured in print the experiences of a generation for the very first time."
Disco Biscuits' success can also be measured by the number of languages into which it was translated - German, Italian, Greek, Japanese and French plus a Braille version produced by Britain's National Library for the Blind [her later anthologies also were also translated into Hungarian and Russian].
When Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy paperback was published, a compilation entitled Anthems for the Chemical Generation was contemporaneously released. In the same way, Disco Biscuits was complemented by a Disco Biscuits double CD compilation [as well as extravagant DJ gatefold triple-vinyl]. If movies have their own soundtrack, so do novels. Rhythim is Rhythim 'Strings of Life', The Future Sound of London 'Papua New Guinea', 808 State 'Pacific State' [which Sarah's teenage PR company SCAM promoted], Orbital 'Halcyon' and The Shamen 'Move Any Mountain' were the chosen hits to [celebrate 10 years of club music] and soundtrack Nicholas Blincoe, Alex Garland, Martin Millar, Alan Warner and Irvine Welsh's tales in Disco Biscuits.
"Music and literature belong together", Sarah says, "Right now we're seeing something similar to the beat era when jazz music and beat literature were naturally interlinked - examples being Irvine Welsh and Scottish club culture. I am very proud of the CDs I released to accompany the books. Disco Biscuits (Warner Bros) featured ten years of dancefloor classics from Leftfield to Underworld and Goldie with accompany text and photos while the Disco 2000 CD had a weird mix of sci-fi electronica specially commissioned from the likes of U-Ziq, Coldcut and Jimi Tenor to accompany the stories.
All the tales in Disco 2000 took place on 31st December 1999. The anthology featured Grant Morrison, Poppy Z. Brite, Jonathan Brook, Paul Di Filippo, Helen Mead and Bill Drummond among others while the CD (released by Boka) included "13 incendiary devices" [and a pop-out hand-grenade sleeve]. These included the evocative drum 'n' bass of Blame's "Sphere"; Plug "High On The Vine" [written specifically to accompany Poppy Z Brite's millennial story], a track that shines like a diamond; the KLF with their liberator's mantra "F*** The Millennium"; and Glamorous Hooligan's"Disco Heist" [aka Disco Biscuits contributor Dean Cavanagh].
The anthologies present a genre which isn't too often accepted by publishing houses, the short story: "I love the short story format", Sarah says, "especially when there's the perfect twist right at the end that turns the whole tale around. Alternatively, I like ones that don't have such a 'literary' format but capture a time and place. Often the subject matter is not substantial enough to make a full novel so may never find it into print otherwise. Short stories are a good way for people on the fringes of society (who may never be able to get a novel finished and published to have their say) - for example prison or drug stories."
Disco Biscuits was also touched by a tragic shadow, the death of Gavin Hills, whose book of collected journalism Bliss To Be Alive came out on Penguin last autumn. Hills contributed his story 'White Burger Danny' to Disco Biscuits. "It obviously somewhat overshadowed the book's huge success. He was one of the top journalists at The Face and his story about football hooligans taking ecstasy at acid house parties in London was one of the most popular. Gavin Hills' work was really significant and captured the '90s perfectly."
Sarah says she initially had problems finding women writers. Women are often supposed to write sugar-coated sweet candied stuff: this seems to be the conditio sine qua non to allow them to be published. "I think the publishing industry encourages women writers to write certain kinds of books - romance, office novels, fantasy, family sagas. Plot lines about relationships seem to dominate. Women writers who tackle darker, weird more controversial subjects are rejected."
Sarah also featured in Steve Redhead's book Repetitive Beat Generation (Rebel Inc), a collection of interviews to contemporary writers.
However, Sarah's suggestions for the 'novel of the century' are vague. Fortunately we don't live in Zamyatin's totalitarian We world and we are free to write whatever we like. "There's no set formula to a great novel. People go on courses to write them, but the works they produce almost always lack something. For me a great book should not just only be a work of fiction, a 'story' but should encapsulate something about society or the times too."
"My favourite book of 2000 is Emer Martin's More Bread Or I'll Appear, the global escapade of Irish sisters who, having left Ireland, become rootless and part of the international travel circuit. It's the kind of challenging writing by a woman that should be encouraged. Naturally, many publishers were too scared to print it. Otherwise, my all-time favourite writers are JG Ballard and William Gibson, between them they document the weirdness of the 20th century."
Sarah also enjoys the works of Jeff Noon, the writer also known to the literary world as 'the Lewis Carroll of the Manchester's housing estates'. His latest novel Needle In The Groove (Anchor) was also accompanied by a CD on Sulphur Records. "Jeff Noon is a real genius. The word 'genius' is used too often, but in his case it's true. The worlds he invents are so vivid he really lives them in his head. I was involved in the publicity for Vurt and Pollen, which helped popularise Jeff Noon in the electronic music scene. There is a crossover between his writing and strange techno music."
As for her own books, Sarah says Shenanigans is her favourite because so many of the writers had never been published before. "It was exciting to discover young, fresh talent. Several have gained agents and book deals as a result."
Edited by Sarah and Dublin DJ Donal Scannell Shenanigans showcases a variety of young Irish authors covering a wide range of themes from alien abduction (Bridget O'Connor) to a parody of Jesus' conception in the womb of a glass-eating woman (Mike McCormack), from a couple of humorous but revealing acid trips (Julian Gough and Olaf Tyaransen) to prostitution and abuse (Jo Baker); from a rave on Halloween night (Emer Martin) to grave robbers (Colin Carberry) and semen couriers (Colin Murphy).
In all these Shenanigans stories Joyce's proverbial epiphanies - those little sparkles hidden in the strangest moments of the life of each one of us - are still there, oozing from a sheet of blotting paper or in a bottle containing pig semen. "Epiphany" is a Greek word meaning "to show": this anthology wants "to show" us that life is nothing but a short story. Life is nothing but an adventure.
And Sarah likes adventures, as her fourth fiction collection proves: Fortune Hotel (Hamish Hamilton), a collection of "twisted travel stories". You know travel guides: they're usually cold, telling you which museum to visit or hotel to stay at. But what makes a holiday is you, your memories, your experiences, your photographs, your scars and, occasionally, the bug you bring back home from some exotic land.
These photons of melancholy and memories will eventually mark a period of your life and will stay with you forever. Here the travel tracks range from a Jamaican ganja-reeking adventure (by who else but Mr Nice's Howard Marks) to a glimpse of Corsica (by Hideous Kinky author Esther Freud) and a trip to Vienna haunted by ghosts of the past and identity (Will Self); from a business man trapped in the arms and legs of a sharp Kazakhstan business woman (Nicholas Blincoe) to a trip to Marseille with a few English hooligans (by master of the hooligans trilogy The Football Factory, Headhunters and England Away John King).
Sarah likes adventures and when asked if it is best to be a music journalist, a writer, an editor or a traveller, she enthusiastically answers "All of them at once! Travelling as a tourist is empty. You need to have a mission, to make it a real adventure. I like to go off the beaten track to the places no tourist go. In Thailand my favourite place is Isaan, which has the poorest people, but also the most spirited."
Sarah started working as a music journalist when she was very very young, only 14, and grew up in a particularly chaotic and energetic environment, Manchester, later nicknamed Madchester when Ecstasy arrived at The Hacienda. Has she got an earliest memory of that period? "This question brings hundreds of vivid moments flashing back. One of the first gig/club nights I went to was seeing New Order at The Hacienda aged 14. I also went to see The Fall, The Smiths and the like too. I was completely intoxicated by the fact that my city had all this great music. I went to all kinds of places a teenage girl shouldn't go, from Chinese casinos to Jamaican drinking dens and punk parties. My Mum used to wait up for me at first but the day I had my first gig review published in NME she stopped. I guess she realised I was serious about making music journalism a career."
On Sarah's curriculum vitae there's also another book And God Created Manchester published ten years ago. "I wrote it to order for a small Manchester publisher called Wordsmith and it sold 10,000 copies, quite a cult success. I'm a little embarrassed by it now, however - I was 18, off my head and wrote the whole thing in 10 days so the literary value is not high - although I'm told it captured the 'spirit' of the moment."
For now she she does not have any more books planned, "I feel the anthology genre has been 'milked' heavily after others tried to copy the success of Disco Biscuits. I like to keep moving; keep creating new ideas; seeing new places; having new experiences."
Sarah is in Thailand and if you're wondering how she got there and what's she's into right now, well that's easy. "In 2000, I felt London was in a creative rut so moved to Bangkok. For about four years I'd been having these vivid reoccurring dreams of this crazy cyber city that combined everywhere I'd ever visited into one 24-hour chaotic frenzy. I would go back to this city night after night, often having nightmares but being thrilled by them too - on the run through a landscape of skyscrapers, dark alleyways, weird bars, crowded streets ... a cross between the movies Metropolis, Blade Runner and my favourite Hong Kong film Chungking Express. Then one day I visited a friend in Bangkok, saw the gleaming towers and glittering temples and realised this was it."
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his notebooks, "As a vast solid phalanx the generations come on". This time it was the turn of the generation of the breakbeats, the ravers, the pills, the downers, the love, the dance, the freedom, the drugs, the smiley faces and the plastic clothes. It was the time for the generation which turned a way of life into literature and literature into a part of the clubbing scene. Ortega y Gasset once wrote that, "in the essence of each generation is a particular type of sensibility" and that "each generation has its special vocation, its historical mission". Sarah's generation was that of letting one's own ideas free and realising every dream, always moving, a book in our hands, music coming out of some PA.
Bangkok, January 2001 - A young woman is hunting for some adventure, some new ideas and some new inspirations relying only on her instinct and talent. Some music is blasting through a radio, it's some weird stuff between techno, a mantra, some twisted tablatronica and a healthy dose of good hard-hitting global beats.
[After two years in Bangkok writing about the city's nightlife and Asian pop culture from Hong Kong hip-hop to Thai supermodels and working as an editor for English language newspaper The Nation, Sarah returned to the West. She is currently splitting her time between San Francisco and Manchester where she is working on various creative projects.]