Straight Up |: March 2006 Archives

Looking through my files, I see more than a dozen videotapes hidden away in the dark recess of a book shelf. Off the top of my head, I didn't recall making as many. But there they are, most of them dating from 1971 and 1972. They document the works and views of a handful of writers and artists, among them William S. Burroughs and filmmaker Antony Balch in London; Allen Ginsberg in San Francisco; action-sound poet Bernard Heidsieck and critic/journalist Rafael Sorin in Paris; Fluxus artist Alison Knowles in Vermont; even one of my own video pieces.

To be looking back like this must be a sign of age or dementia, or both. Anyway, here's what I found:

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Four videos.

Burroughs/Balch Experiment
Recorded live at WSB's London flat (8 Duke St., St. James, London) on Dec. 21, 1971. Approx. 10 minutes.

Burroughs's face is transformed via Balch's film projection of other faces on his. The result is seen and heard with a live soundtrack in the video recording by Herman as an illustration of propaganda techniques. Antony Balch was an experimental filmmaker ("Towers Open Fire," etc.) who often collaborated with Burroughs.

WSB talked about this video with Robert Palmer in "Rolling Stone Interviews William Burroughs." It was published in Rolling Stone (108: 34-39) on May 11, 1972. This is what he said:

"Jan Herman was here with his little video camera outfit and we did quite a precise experiment, which was: Antony brought up the Bill and Tony film, I sat there, and he projected it onto my face, which was re-photographed on the video camera, but that faded in and out so that it would be that face, then fade back to the now face, so that you got a real time section. We wanted to project it onto the television screen from the camera, but we couldn't because the cycles were different; Antony and Jan Herman were fooling around and they managed to suck up the television. But even seeing it on a little view screen, it was something quite extraordinary."

I don't recall screwing up Uncle Bill's TV, but maybe we did. Palmer's interview is reprinted in Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs 1960-1997.

Today is Nelson Algren's birthday. A writer of genius, he died on May 9, 1981, at the age of 72. The Algren I knew late in his life was brave, big-hearted, and staunch in his beliefs. We had become friends after I interviewed him for a piece that ran in the Sunday magazine of the Chicago Sun-Times. By the time he died I had joined the Sun-Times staff as an arts reporter and critic. This story ran in the paper eight days after his death.

'In' at last: Nelson Algren's final happy days

Multitudes have mounted this midnight stair ... all come in search of love with money in their pockets.
--from The Devil’s Stocking

SAG HARBOR, N.Y. -- Nelson Algren had given up on the literary establishment so long ago -- and it so clearly had given up on him -- that he was dumbfounded to learn of his election to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

"I thought it was something like the Mark Twain Society where you had to pay to get in," he kidded me recently.

His first impulse was to scan the Academy membership list for the name of a well-known critic he loved to hate.

"I figured if he was in, it had to be a fraud," said Algren. "But there were some names I respected. So I asked Gloria Jones (widow of novelist James Jones) what it was and she said, 'Hell, it's like the French Legion of Honor. You're in.'"

For Algren there were few things worse than being "in." Buying your way in was one. Not getting what you deserved for your writing was another. Better to be "out" and to let your work go unpublished. Still, Algren was pleased by the surprise. He had done nothing wrong he could think of that had got him in. More important, it might help him launch his first novel in 25 years, The Devil's Stocking, which had just made the rounds of American publishers and had brought insultingly small offers.

He was to appear in the Academy induction ceremony next Wednesday. "Will you have to wear a tuxedo?" I teased.

"No," he said. "I will be required to wear a leotard and play a flute. They do this every year in a sort of garden."

"You're going to have a hard time getting the leotard over that belly of yours," I said.

He chortled.

When I asked if he would sit for an interview, and put me in touch with the friends he'd made since moving to Sag Harbor a year ago, he went one better.

"I'll make a party," he said.

The American viceroy in Iraq has changed his tune about the death squads. Zalmay Khalilzad "is now saying that militias are Iraq's No. 1 security threat," Jeffrey Gettleman reported in his striking front-page story on Sunday in the print edition of The New York Times, "Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Revenge in Baghdad."

And again in another front-pager this morning, "Shiite Fighters Clash With G.I.'s and Iraqi Forces," Gettleman reports: "American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents who for nearly the past three years have been branded the gravest security threat."

Golly gee willikers, as Rummy Boy might say. Wasn't it Khalilzad, widely hailed in press reports as the U.S. diplomatic genius of last resort, who not so long ago showed less than urgent concern for the problem of the death squads? According to Jon Lee Anderson's lengthy New Yorker profile of him in December, as reported here:

When a Sunni politician came to his office in the Green Zone and told him the Shiite militias "were a greater problem than the insurgency ... Khalilzad raised his eyebrows with interest ... acknowledged that militias were a problem." But, hélas, he had another, more "immediate concern" (terrorists from Syria, who are actually a small fraction of the insurgents according to the U.S. military's own estimate).

Need we be reminded yet again of "the Salvador option" hidden in plain sight? Or the bold-faced contradictions of the American 'ganda machine? Or the Bullshitter-in-Chief's latest phony claims of progress?

If Gettleman needed a reminder, he got one on his return to Iraq two weeks ago after being away for more than a year.

Ever hear of Grock, the Swiss circus clown? I never did, until composer friend Bill Osborne filled me in. As another friend of mine says, "Swiss clown? Normally a contradiction in terms, like Swiss Navy. But this guy's brilliant." Have a look. Here are some short, terrifically entertaining video clips of Grock, beautifully reproduced and posted by Osborne on his and musician-actor-artist Abbie Conant's Web site. You won't be sorry -- and you don't even have to know about "Sequenza V," Luciano Berio's trombone tribute to Grock, which is their reason for posting the videos.

By the way, Conant and Osborne are in the midst of a tour of U.S. universities in the Northeast and Midwest. They're performing two of their multimedia works, "Cybeline" and "Music for the End of Time." This week they'll be in Ohio at Kenyon College (Tuesday) and Miami University (Wednesday). In case you didn't know, Malcolm Gladwell summarized the story of Conant's Munich Philharmonic audition to wrap up his latest best seller, "Blink." Conant herself didn't know he'd written it up until a friend told her. Here's the complete version of the story, which Gladwell cites -- how she won a blind audition for principle trombonist (besting 32 male trombonists) and how she then had to confront the orchestra's entrenched sexism.

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

I shoulda known not to recommend "The Stuff That Happened" as a righteously wicked NYT editorial on the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Even with its MSM waffling ("For the present, our goal must be to minimize the damage ..."), I thought he'd go for it. Boy, was I wrong.

Long ago in San Francisco -- the year was 1969 -- John Bryan and I put together an issue of Notes From Underground³. As you can see, it had a self-mocking cartoon cover (by Gary Grimshaw, our "art director"), which showed a newsie shouting, "REVO LOO-SHUN!!" while hawking the Daily Grind. I don't know if you can make it out, but the front page of the Daily Grind is illustrated by a pig-faced plainclothes cop in a pork pie hat offering the peace sign. The news stories above the fold are headlined "OINK" and "BLAH BLAH."

The issue led off with an article by Jerry Rubin (in his anarcho-leftist phase), "The Thoughts of Chairman Jerry," which began:

We of the white middle class are not children of violence. But increasingly, day by day, we are becoming enemies of a system whose basic means of control is violence, or the threat of violence. One never knows if he is going to return from a demonstration anymore with his precious head in one piece.

Rubin's article was illustrated by another Grimshaw cartoon, which showed what the demonstrations were about and again mocked the contradictory nature of the times.

Is there a difference between appropriation and exploitation? Interpretation and imitation? Real live originality and gold-plated copycatting? Even in a postmodern world where the difference is sometimes hard to figure, I'd say there is.

Do you see any similarities in the images below? Three are by Norman O. Mustill, from "Flypaper" (1967) and "Twinpak" (1969). Three are by Vik Muniz, from a fashion spread that appeared in The New York Times Style Magazine (Dec. 5, 2005).

The similarities, though not exact, are so striking when taken together that if Muniz's images and techniques are not plagiarized from Mustill's, they bear what Martin Filler calls in the context of architecture "the onus of plagiarism." That is, they are imitations, whether acknowledged or not. And they can't be claimed as postmodern appropriations because by definition appropriation art is intended to deconstruct, parody or otherwise comment on well-known cultural icons -- Mickey Mouse, for instance, or the Mona Lisa.

Shortly after The Times fashion spread appeared, I raised this issue with the editors of the magazine. After three months of stonewalling, they finally got back to me. The magazine's photography director, Kathy Ryan, who worked on the spread with Muniz, a currently "hot" self-described copycatter, said: "The similarities are a coincidence." She said Muniz told her he doesn't know Mustill's work.

OK, they're a coincidence. But to be fair to Mustill, a currently "not hot" original cat, how about allowing a letter to be published in the magazine noting the similarities with matching illustrations? Can't be done, she said. So much time has passed, it wouldn't make sense. (Blame the victim, anyone?) I guess I'll have to blog about this, I said. Fine, she said, no problem.

So have a look at the evidence.

Almost forgot about The Armory Show 2006, which steams into New York with a flotilla of international art galleries and thousands of artworks (purported and otherwise).

As Holland Cotter reports in this morning's New York Times, there will be a boatload of special events, like Critical Conversations in a Limo, a series of "intimate chats between V.I.P.'s and critics and curators for hire held in cars zipping between the Armory Show and DIVA, the Digital and Video Art Fair, one of several concurrent fairs in the city."

One of those critical conversationalists in the white stretch limo will be yours truly, thanks to an invitation from Holly Crawford, who organized the event. I don't know her, never met her. But she invited me, gawd help her. I'll letcha know what happens.

Three days away from the blog means so little in the scheme of things that I'm betting you didn't notice. Anyway, Paul Krugman's column caught my attention this morning. Headlined "The Conservative Epiphany," it talks about "conservative commentators who have finally realized that [the Bullshitter-in-Chief's] administration isn't trustworthy." But, it adds,

we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says that there's something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by [the Bullshitter-in-Chief's] deceptions, even though the administration's mendacity was obvious from the beginning.

My ears perks up at the word "mendacity."

Nelson Algren's "A Walk on the Wild Side" is one of the great American novels of the 20th century. The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Ave (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

When "Walk" first appeared, in 1956, the literary critics pretty much told Algren to take a hike, and for the many years since, they've pretty much ignored him and it. Now the British have brought out a 50th anniversary edition. Richard Flanagan, writing in The Telegraph, notes that the novel "made a mockery of the American dream. Set among the pimps, whores and con men of New Orleans, it was a brave -- and prescient -- exposé of the nation's contempt for its own people." Small wonder the lit crits of the '50s dismissed it.

Last year the Brits also brought out a new edition of an earlier novel, "The Man With the Golden Arm," the one that made Algren famous for a while. Apparently Brits who like to read the real thing, not to mention Aussies (Flanagan is one), have a history of appreciating him.

But so do savvy Americans. Although "Walk" and "Arm" have both been out of print from time to time on this side of the pond, they're available again in trade paperback editions ("Walk" with a remarkable appreciation by Russell Banks, "Arm" with memoirs by Studs Terkel and Kurt Vonnegut, as well as essays and appreciations by Mike Royko, John Clellon Holmes and Maxwell Geismar). Seven Stories Press has also re-issued a handful of other titles.

Flanagan's take on Algren's life and work is exactly right. Go read it. Before you do, though, have a look at a personal reminiscence of the man himself by Roger Groening, an old friend of Algren's, who writes that "if he'd never written a word, he would have been a spectacular human being." Which is not to suggest anything remotely saccharine.

The Muslim cartoon furor just won't go away. "About 50,000 people, many chanting 'Hang those who insulted the prophet,' rallied Sunday in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi," AP reports. Another 20,000 in the eastern Turkish city of Erzurum chanted anti-Danish slogans and shouted "Allah is Great."

We've all heard about the Al Qaeda video that denounced the Mohammed cartoons. The Pakistani press has stories like this one, "Cartoons rile U.S. college." And today's Wall Street Journal front-pages the latest absurdity headlined, "Blame It on Voltaire: Muslims Ask French To Cancel 1741 Play." (No link for the unwashed unsubscribed.)

To all the rioters: Enough already! Does that sound too Jewish? Too New York? Too reasonable? How 'bout a coupla Jewish cartoons that won't cause any riots 'cept, to quote a friend, mebbe a laff riot:

The fine art of the meaningless gesture and the empty symbol was honed to perfection with a combined "symbolic gesture" when the Bullshitter-in-Chief arrived in Pakistan the other day.

A front-page story in The New York Times on Saturday reported that he "flew directly to Islamabad aboard Air Force One," as "a symbolic gesture that he considered the country safe enough for a presidential welcome on an open tarmac, and an overnight stay."

How safe was it and how meaningful the symbolic gesture? You decide. Here was the very next paragraph:

The capital was virtually sealed for his arrival. Concrete barriers and police squads blocked off the main avenues running to Parliament, the presidential palace and the diplomatic enclave where the president stayed, leaving the streets from the airport dark and deserted.

Further down in the story (12th graf), the meaning of that symbolic gesture is more fully developed: "Air Force One approached Islamabad with its running lights off and interior shades drawn, a precaution that would make it harder for anyone trying to aim a missile at the plane." Then:

After his airport arrival was covered by local television crews, [the Bullshitter] slipped away from public view, and reporters traveling with him could not tell whether he even rode with the presidential motorcade, or in an unmarked Black Hawk helicopter, to the heavily fortified residence of the American ambassador. ...

Since everything is relative in the bizarro world of White House PR, you could call the arrival a "public landing," because unlike Clinton's flight into Islamabad six years ago, as also reported in the story, the Bullshitter was not delivered in an "unmarked military jet accompanied by a decoy plane with the familiar blue and white of Air Force One and 'United States of America' on its side."

Meanwhile, over in Iraq ...

Refighting the Vietnam War is not an option. Rethinking it is. That's what they'll be doing in a star-studded, two-day conference to rival Sunday's Oscars. (Well, almost.) It's called "Vietnam and the Presidency" and will be held March 10-11 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

Who are "they"? Oh, just a few policymakers of the Vietnam era (like Kissinger and Haig), along with journalists (like Halberstam and Frances Fitzgerald), and historians (like David Kaiser and Jeffrey Kimball). Others expected to be there include Jack Valenti, Wesley Clark, Dan Rather, Bob Herbert. Even Jimmy Carter will put in an appearance (via video). And, yes, Theodore Sorensen.

You may recall Sorensen's comment the other day about the mendacity of the current U.S. regime. (How could you not?) Well, that was only part of my brief conversation with him. What I didn't mention was this exchange:

Me: Do you know Gareth Porter's book, "Perils of Dominance"?
Sorensen: No. What's it about?
Me: I think you might be interested. It's a revisionist history of the Vietnam era. It talks about President Kennedy and Vietnam. Perhaps you could read it.
Sorensen: I'm sorry. I'm unable to read.
Me: Then I'll just tell you. The major theme is that a huge imbalance of power during the Cold War, not fear of communism, led us into Vietnam.
Sorensen: That's exactly right.
Me: It says that America had "decisive military dominance" over the Soviet Union and China, and that Kennedy didn't believe in the domino theory. Not in private anyway. And he was formulating a strategic policy to keep us out of Vietnam.
Sorensen: That's exactly what I'm going to say at the conference.

So folks, you read it here first.

The conference is being sponsored by the National Archives and the nation’s Presidential Libraries. NBC's Brian Williams will moderate all the sessions on Saturday, March 11. I said it was star-studded, dint I? Don't bother showing up if you don't already have a ticket. The organizers have posted this notice: "Due to the overwhelming public response, the conference is now closed as we have reached capacity."

Postscript: Will someone please ask Brian Williams to ask NBC to stop embarrassing him? This morning the network aired this TV commercial: "Ask not what this appliance can do for you. Ask what your appliance can do for your home." C'mon.

So the New York Public Library bought the William S. Burroughs archive, with "11,000 pages of manuscript and typescript material," most of it from the 1960s and '70s, and never seen by scholars. The purchase likely cost millions. The report doesn't mention the price. It does mention Burroughs's cut-up experiments and his sense of humor. I wonder whether the collection includes the manuscript for this tasty morsel from HARD/1, a little mimeo mag that appeared in the summer of 1972, which I have in my files.

Grim and getting grimmer -- that's my "take away" from this afternoon's roundtable discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations about the situation in Iraq three years after the invasion (per yesterday's item, now with Gareth Porter's "Lessons of Vietnam" appended).

Asked by Jane Arraf (former CNN Baghdad Bureau Chief) whether the latest violence in Iraq is a turning point in the war there, Stephen Biddle (senior fellow for defense policy at the council) replied: "It's an acceleration of what we've seen before rather than a fundamental break. What's changed is the intensity of the fighting."

In other words, the brink of civil war is, in fact, a civil war. And here was the topper from Steven Simon (senior fellow in Middle Eastern studies and co-author of "The Next Attack: the Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right"): "I'm in my usual state of suppressed panic." Which got a laugh.

Since the council will be posting a transcript and audio of the roundtable, probably by tomorrow, I'll link when it goes up rather than report a summary of what was said by a lot of well-informed people, including the fourth roundtabler, Noah Feldman (a professor at New York University School of Law and a former senior constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq).

I'd rather describe my short conversation with Theodore Sorensen, right -- JFK's great speechwriter, close friend, special counsel, and biographer -- whom I buttonholed after the roundtable to get his take on the Bullshitter-in-Chief and the cronies of his regime. Out of politeness -- we were within earshot of diplomats and other high-minded types -- I didn't characterize the Bullshitter et al that way. But if I had, I don't think Sorensen would have minded.

"I have lived a long time," he said, "and I have seen a lot of administrations. But I have never seen an administration as incompetent -- and as mendacious -- as this one."

The emphasis was his. I asked Sorensen, who will be 78 in May, if I could quote him. He asked, "Who are you with?" I told him I'm a freelance journalist and blogger, and that I'd be posting his comment on my blog. He smiled. "Yes," he said, "of course." He could have backed off, but he didn't. Now that's menschy.