Straight Up | Herman

Not long ago Walter Hartmann sent me photos of several Moleskin notebooks that our cherished friend Carl Weissner left behind when he died. They're captivating. Many of the handwritten notes made their way into Death in Paris, Carl's bravura novel about a serial killer. "It is not quite natural for a guy around 50 who's never had sex with a live woman before ..." "'With a live woman.' -- What does that mean? He's been screwing dead girls?" "On some days, in order to escape to the sweltering heat, he goes into St. Sulplice … [Read more...]

When Carl Weissner died, unexpectedly, he was only 71. "Le Regard d'Autrui," now published for the first time, posthumously, by Cold Turkey Press, was written in English. Why in English and why with a French title are unclear. What is clear, however, is that the tale shows him to have been a master storyteller as good as any of the celebrated writers who were beneficiaries of his masterly translations. To quote Heathcote Williams, Cold Turkey's "gem" is "an exquisite piece of book-making," while the story itself is "immaculate and … [Read more...]

Anyone interested in Nelson Algren's opinion of Jack Kerouac would get the impression from an item I posted several years ago that he was less than enamoured of him. Which would be accurate. After all, the item -- about Algren's indelible review of Kerouac's 1965 novel Desolation Angels -- was titled "The Beats Left Algren Cold, Kerouac Especially." As I recently discovered, however, Algren at first had some hope for Kerouac. His review of On the Road for the Chicago Sun-Times, when the novel was published, in 1957, was headlined "Kerouac … [Read more...]

30 VIII 2013Prolific as ever, Heathcote Williams wrote this poem in sublime tribute to Seamus Heaney on the day he learned of his fellow poet's death. … [Read more...]

Sea Urchin Editions maestro Ben Schot writes: The summer of 1975 was hot. A heatwave of eighteen consecutive days singed Western Europe and turned its capitals into seething cauldrons. Ira Cohen landed on the soft tarmac of Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, in August -- his mind still filled with the opiate clouds over Kathmandu, where he had lived since 1972 -- and stepped into a wildfire of events. Fellow filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky was feverishly working on his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, a megalomaniac project involving … [Read more...]