Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Archives for November 2015

Jenny Diski Speaks of Death and Dying

by

Jenny Diski learned some months ago that she had inoperable lung cancer and, at best, another three years to live. She now writes about the experience and her treatment. Something she said about writers and writing reminds me of what William Burroughs pointed out (summarized in The Z Collection as “no mummy needed.”) April 28, […]

Redux: Dear Cannibals, Have a Happy Thanksgiving

by

Our Thanksgiving team of William S. Burroughs and Norman O. Mustill has been a happy pairing. It still is. But the Straight Up staff of thousands added a sweetener, something like cranberry sauce, to last year’s celebration. Here ‘tiz again: Words by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox. And from Straight Up’s Thanksgiving […]

I’m Getting My 15 Minutes . . .

by

If you think my staff of thousands doesn’t appreciate that, you don’t know how hungry they are to promote my new book. In this age of shameless self-promotion, it’s all about me, me, me. So I made a deal with them. One click gets them a penny, five gets them a dime. Make them rich. […]

Carl Weissner: ‘Always These Nightmares . . .’

by

Updated below. Carl Weissner’s novel Death in Paris — first published online in 2009, then as a paperback in 2012, and finally as an ebook in 2014 — was about a different kind of death from the terrorist assault on Saturday night. Writing in English, his second language, Weissner drew on the trappings of detective […]

‘Not a One-Trick Pony . . .’

by

So says Jed Birmingham in #23: The Dead Star, the first of his picks for “The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles.” The Burroughs Nova Broadcast pamphlet, which I published in 1969 and designed as a foldout in covers, is ancient history. It makes me an old pony. But I can live with that. The […]

Cyclomania: The Aesthetic Philosophy of Kurt Wold

by

“I dreamt I could play the bicycle. …” Artist’s Statement The Ancient Greeks (Plato more specifically) established a hierarchy in the arts by elevating the purely contemplative art forms from the lower functional crafts. This idea struck me as I was taking down yet another of my gallery installations and jamming the mere functional remains […]

More by Mustill: Smokin’ Victorian and an ‘EVENT’

by

Finding lost and uncollected artworks by the late Norman O. Mustill has been a continuing project here. An old friend of his, Kurt Wold, recently turned up two more pieces. One is an undated, untitled collage (probably from the early 1980s), which he’s calling “Victorian Smoker.” Mustill gave it to Kurt’s father, who knew Mustill […]

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog