Finally, you can buy it in the States without paying the exorbitant cost of international postage. The Z Collection is now available from Printed Matter.  The Z Collection is an illustrated memoir in the form of personal essays about Nelson Algren, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, E.L. Doctorow, William Styron, Abbie Hoffman, among others, and about the literary underground of the 1960s. “Herman, a former assistant to Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books, and a seasoned editor, publisher and journalist, … [Read more...]

"Colossal as his works were, he saw them still too much as garlands and sought some immoderation wherewith to botch them. He was so successful that he left everything unfinished. Never push things." … [Read more...]

My father drove a cab at night. This was the early 1950s. A Brooklyn-born New Yorker, he knew the city's streets the way a junky knows his veins. I thought of him because of a headline in today's New York Times: American-Born Cabbies Are a Vanishing Breed in New York. Dad also knew doormen, theater managers, stage hands, bar owners, bartenders, and building superintendents. He was a walking-talking switchboard of high and low connections. He didn't want relatives to know he was driving a cab. It embarrassed him that his day job didn't pay the … [Read more...]

At the urging of my staff of thousands, examples from Gerard Bellaart’s word-based series of artworks have been a continuing feature of recent blogposts. Other stenciled texts of his that have appeared so far include “Artaud Fragmentations,” “tric trac du ciel,” “Throws Up Words,” “ROT NOT,” and "No Mind Fits 5." There are more to come. … [Read more...]

At the urging of my staff of thousands, examples from Gerard Bellaart’s word-based series of artworks have been a continuing feature of recent blogposts. The others so far have been “Artaud Fragmentations,” “tric trac du ciel,” “Throws Up Words,” and “ROT NOT.” There are more to come. Bellaart is a Dutch artist and writer now living in France. He creates etchings, drawings, paintings and monotypes of figures, landscapes, and still lifes, as well as works strictly from the imagination. He notes that he employs a variety of techniques & … [Read more...]

Jane Perlez reminds us in this morning's New York Times of George Orwell's first novel, Burmese Days. Orwell is best known for his later novels, of course, the dystopian 1984 and the allegorical Animal Farm, which are remembered less for their impact as fiction than for their prescient warnings about the reality of a totalitarian future. But Burmese Days, published in 1934 and one of the most memorable novels I've ever read, shows that the guy was a genius at literary fiction from the very beginning. I emphasize literary. Although Perlez … [Read more...]

"In his most extended interview in months, Julian Assange speaks from inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been holed up for nearly six months. Assange vowed that WikiLeaks would persevere despite attacks against it. On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the credit card company Visa did not break the European Union’s antitrust rules by blocking donations to WikiLeaks. 'Since the blockade was erected in December 2010, WikiLeaks has lost 95 percent of the donations that were attempted to be transferred to us over … [Read more...]