August 10, 2003

...Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said: "Man is the only animal clever enough to build the Empire State Building and stupid enough to jump off it." This column drew millions of hits at MSNBC.com, where it was originally called The Juice. I take no credit for that, but my staff of thousands does. After my departure from MSNBC.com, the archived column with two years' of daily items was dropped from the site.

Posted by mclennan at 5:53 PM

...Books 'n Stuff

I'm the author of "A Talent for Trouble," the biography of Hollywood director William Wyler. Putnam published it in hardcover.

It is now in paperback (Da Capo Press).

I've also co-written "Cut Up or Shut Up," experimental fiction, with Carl Weissner and Jurgen Ploog (with a "tickertape" intro by William S. Burroughs).

Of the various books I've edited, I will point out just two: "Brion Gysin Let the Mice In," co-written by Gysin, Burroughs and Ian Sommerville (Something Else Press), and "The Something Else Yearbook," an anthology of the arts.

Posted by mclennan at 5:48 PM

...My Checkered Career

Writing of mine has appeared in "little magazines," among them VDRSVP, Ricochet, Unmuzzled Ox, San Francisco Earthquake and John Bryan's Notes From Underground, as well as in Partisan Review, The New York Times Book Review, Trans-Atlantik and The Journal of Film History.

Years ago in one of his many volumes (I think it was "The End of Intelligent Writing: Literary Politics in America"), the critic Richard Kostelanetz praised me in my youth as a leading avant-garde poet. I might have proved him right by living up to his expectations for my future, but the promise went unfulfilled.

Instead, I became a journalist. I've been the senior editor/producer for Entertainment & Arts at MSNBC.com, a reporter and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Daily News and the Los Angeles Times, and a mid-career fellow of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University.

Posted by mclennan at 5:46 PM

...Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.

Another strange fact: My correspondence with writers and poets of the Beat, post-Beat and Fluxus periods, along with other literary artifacts, was acquired by Northwestern University Library. In case you're interested, the collection is described in the library's cleverly named Jan Herman Archive.

My literary taste runs to Joseph Conrad, William S. Burroughs, Nelson Algren, Graham Greene and Eric Ambler among the dead, Richard Ford, Michel Houellebecq, Richard Russo and John Le Carre among the living.

As a former theater reviewer, I've lost my taste for most theater these days. As the biographer of one of Hollywood's great directors, I've been spoiled by his movies. As a former film reviewer, I don't know why most of today's film critics even bother. But if I had to pick a movie critic to read over the long haul, it would be Roger Ebert -- not because I agree with him or even like his taste, but because he's probably the best writer of the lot.

Favorite literary critic? Clive James. Favorite music critic? Martin Bernheimer. Favorite television critic once upon a time? Clive James.

Posted by mclennan at 4:54 PM