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 Imagine if you didn't have to guess if Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade or Brett Halliday's Michael Shayne actually fucked the women they took into their arms at a chapter's close, if their sordid private lives were pulled from the shadows of innuendo into raw, unexpurgated reality. Maxim Jakubowski does more than imagine this scenario, he brings it to life though his noirist and erotic explorations into the world of pulp fiction and beyond. At the age of 11, Jakubowski was a voracious reader of science fiction books. It was only by happenstance that he stumbled into the grittier, less idealized world of crime fiction (his parents were on holiday in Brittany, and those were the only books the local shoppe had). After that, the young fan was hooked. These books' inherent (if implicit) sexuality wasn't lost on the prepubescent writer-to-be, and it was this element of noir that he would expand upon when he came into his own as an author and editor.  After opening the Murder One bookshop in London in 1988, the young Jakubowski finally got the chance to edit a collection of reissued works of neglected writers like David Goodis and Cornell Woolrich, among others, and assembled them into the imprint Black Box Thrillers, which impressively launched his noir career.His '80s noir anthologies would go on to influence a whole generation of English writers who related to their bleak, desperate themes. Writers like Derek Raymond and William McIlvanney would go on to play a part in the BritNoir movement of pulpy, dark literature. But Jakubowki's claim to fame only starts there. He edited the best-selling Mammoth Book of Erotica and its follow-up, The Mammoth Book of International Erotica. As a publisher, he has been responsible for various cult imprints, including Blue Murder and Eros Plus. As a fiction writer, Jakubowski's books include It's You That I Want to Kiss and Because She Thought She Loved Me. He is an official advisor to several international film festivals, writer for a variety of publications, including The Observer, The Big Issue, and The Guardian, and reviews crime in a monthly column in Time Out. He is also contributing editor to Mystery Scene and a winner of the Anthony Award.  In an exclusive interview held just as American bombs (with British support) started pummeling Baghdad, the noir icon spoke with us about politics (he's not interested), the literary scenes in London and San Francisco, and why the hell there's not a maximjakubowski.com.Eros Guide: So, as we're conducting this interview, our countries are in the process of going to war. As someone who often explores the darker impulses of human nature, do you have any thoughts on this you'd like to share? Maxim Jakubowski: I'm afraid I'm a radically unpolitical person. Maybe put that down to the fact that my father was an active communist in his younger days (and fought on the wrong [losing] side in the Spanish Civil War, only to later become a staunch capitalist) and that I was brought up in France and observed my school and lycee friends flirt with student politics to little practical effect.  So call me a cynic, but I find politics distasteful and most of the people who chose it as a career indelibly flawed. Pragmatically, one person never makes a difference, so I keep my opinions to myself. When it comes to darker impulses, I'm so much more fascinated by the private, inner struggle between good and bad and the way the heart dictates the path we take. It's a smaller map to explore but I feel as worthy as any other on a larger scale.EG: Fair enough. Okay, there's no way to properly segue out of that, but here goes—our e-zines cover both London and San Francisco. You're obviously familiar with both scenes, literary and otherwise. How are they different, and how are they the same? MJ: My knowledge of San Francisco is limited to a couple of trips there, so I can't profess to be an expert. There appears to be a sizeable literary community there, but my contacts with it are of necessity superficial, so it's hard for me to comment on that specific scene, beyond the fact there are many people there who I admire and others who I hope are good friends. Even in London I don't mix greatly on the lit scene. I'm an ex-publisher, I own a major bookshop, write a column for a national newspaper and a variety of magazines, and run Crime Scene, London's National Film Theatre's annual film and book festival, so I'm involved at all levels, but I can't say I feel part of the scene. It's just an environment in which I've somehow always been present and in a central position. Call me an eminence grise! When it comes to the erotic/sexual scene, apart from having been a judge for the Tuppy Owens-organised Erotic Awards for two years, I have little in the way of interaction. There are virtually no erotic writers that I respond to on the London scene, let alone the British one, as the nature of erotic publishing is so different. In San Francisco, yours is thriving. I'm published by general publishers, and the events and readings I do are also non-specifically erotic; which I like. So either I'm not in a ghetto or it's a comfortable ghetto of one!  EG: You've mentioned in interviews what an important behind-the-scenes element music, particularly rock music, plays both in how you visualize scenes as well as in the creative process in general. Can you give us a couple of examples from past work, and what bands and music currently inspire you?MJ: All music inspires me, and rereading past novels, it's even easy to reconstruct the soundtrack of what I was listening to at the time. A major influence is The Walkabouts, a Seattle group I just adore (and have opened for them at a London concert once with an awkward reading). Melodic, touching, music that gets you in the guts. I'm a great fan and follower of what might be termed alternate American folk or Americana—Springsteen, REM, Matthew Ryan, the Handsome Family, Sege Gainsbourg's Melody Nelson, Joe Henry. But my tastes are very varied and range from occasional classical to Moby and all forms of rock and roll in between. A disproportionate amount of my income goes into music and my collection of albums and now CDs is fast devouring the remaining available space in my ever-expanding house! We're talking telephone book figures here, that I dare not mention! I always write fiction with music playing in the background (loud!), although non-fiction generally occurs with the sound of reverent silence. It sets the mood of what I write and sometimes also the speed. It's a symbiotic relationship without any doubt. EG: Since you mentioned Moby, I'll go ahead and ask if you've heard the new Massive Attack record, 100th Window—their music and themes tend to be very dark, and for some reason I associate them with BritNoir on some level.  MJ: There is an interesting urban feel to Massive Attack's music, although I perversely feel less so the new one. But I think the association with BritNoir is more of one of mood and setting, as most of the writers currently active in the genre… are, from personal knowledge, more American rock or alt-rock fans. I regularly do readings at Vox N' Roll, the London lit salon (or rather pub!), where writers read and chose the music to go with it, and the choices made are fairly traditional rock... in fact, I'm usually one of the most extreme in terms of the modernity of my choices.EG: What projects are you currently working on? MJ: I've just delivered my annual Mammoth anthology of the previous year's best erotic stories and am deep into my new novel, which I have to deliver by end of June for October publication. Title will be Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer, and I can't really say too much about it right now as I'm at a difficult juncture where I must decide what direction the book should now go into. It gets more difficult somehow with every book. Fool that I once was to think that it would become easy! Prior to beginning the novel, I did a half-dozen short stories, all erotic, which should be appearing in a variety of anthologies (many from Alison Tyler and Mitzi Szereto) over the coming year, and it's likely I will collect all these and others from the past years since Life in the World of Women in book form in Spring 2004 as Fools For Lust. I'm also contracted to do a digest history of erotic literature for the Pocket Essentials imprint, which is already well overdue.  EG: Who are your favourite writers at the moment?MJ: Not just the moment, but always. A rather idiosyncratic list indeed. In no particular order: John Irving, J.G. Ballard, Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Craig Holden, Derek Raymond. Quite a few others for isolated books too, of course. And as I'm on a close terms with so many people in the erotic field, I shall diplomatically refrain from mentioning any but Lucy Taylor who I think is both wonderful and still awfully underrated. EG: Your work spans multiple genres - is there any single one you'd most care to be associated with? MJ: No. My erotic books have crime elements, my crime books are considered erotic, even my rare fantasy and science fiction managed to inject sex into space and time. It's all one and the same. I'd rather actually not think in terms of genre. EG: I live in San Francisco, so you'll have to forgive me this tech-wonky query—why don't you have your own website? MJ: I've always been a bit of technological Luddite (although I'm a rabid Apple and Microsoft software-free zone) and just can't be bothered. I'll promote my books with readings and tours if I have to, but I am essentially a private person whose life is already complicated enough to not want further people prying into it. Or call me shy...
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