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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Archives for March 2017

A Man With Moxie Plus

March 31, 2017 by Jan Herman

When Asger Jorn heard that he’d been awarded a Guggie, he told them to fuck off. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

My Midweek Music Relief

March 30, 2017 by Jan Herman

Miramar plays a concert on Friday evening in the heart of Manhattan at Elebash Recital Hall (365 Fifth Ave., corner of 34th Street), which is located in the CUNY Graduate Center, where thousands of doctoral students — yes, nearly five thousand, god help them — mill around in the hope of enlightenment. For concert tickets, […]

What Algren’s Legacy Doesn’t Need …

March 27, 2017 by Jan Herman

Nelson Algren [Sag Harbor, 1980]

… is a museum for tourists that perpetuates clichés about him. The Northwest Indiana Times reports that a new museum, which opened Sunday in Gary, Indiana, where Nelson Algren once had a cottage, is being advertised by a “huge 8-foot-by-10-foot photo” of him “leaving a Gary liquor store with a six-pack.” A founder of the […]

Squatting at The Bunker in London

March 26, 2017 by Jan Herman

'Home Truths: An Incomplete History of Housing Told in Nine Plays' runs from April 17 through May 13.

Cycle One (previews begin April 17) ‘Slummers’ by Sonal Bhattacharyya ‘The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency’ by Heathcote Williams with Sarah Woods ‘Back to Back to Back’ by Stef Smith Cycle Two (previews begin April 18) ‘The Table’ by Lin Coghlin ‘Put The Schwarzes Into De-Stat’ by Nessah Muthy ‘The House With the Yellow […]

Poetry of the Absurd

March 19, 2017 by Jan Herman

This is a tape cut-up I made with Carl Weissner way back in 1971. We used a recording of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley speaking to members of the city council. We “cut” the tape electronically, not manually, on a big old reel-to-reel that I had at the time. You can hear the cuts. Technically […]

What Went Wrong

March 17, 2017 by Jan Herman

Behind the Lines: Thomas Frank [podcast]

Spineless Democrats and Republican thugs: A 30-minute rap on why we are where we are. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Wonders Never Cease

March 16, 2017 by Jan Herman

EPITAPH FOR MY TYPEWRITER I’ve learned to keep cheerful by committing all my suicides on the typewriter. A shot into the keyboard’s brain equals one p o + e m THE UNIVERSAL BUBBLE* The Universe — more like a great thought than a great machine — a soap bubble with corrugations — not the interior […]

They Had Their Own Fun

March 14, 2017 by Jan Herman

Carl Weissner - Letter to Jeff Nuttall [Cold Turkey Press, 2017]

Back in the mid-1960s, when Carl Weissner discovered the British mimeo zine My Own Mag, he struck up a correspondence with its presiding genius, Jeff Nuttall, and soon took My Own Mag as a model for his own mimeo, Klactoveedsedsteen. The two of them became pen pals and freewheeling collaborators — Nuttall in Norwich, Weissner […]

Beckett’s Letters: ‘Dull, Dull, Dull,’ But —

March 13, 2017 by Jan Herman

Samuel Beckett to William Osborne, from 'The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 4, 1966-1989'

Serious readers of Samuel Beckett have been treated to four massive volumes of his letters. I haven’t read any of the collections. So I have to take the word of two readers who have, and both tell me the experience has been a form of slow torture. The letters are mundane and largely disappointing: “Dull, […]

Female Power (from Medusa to Merkel)

March 9, 2017 by Jan Herman

Mary Beard

I love reading Mary Beard. She may be a professor, the highest of high-brow professors, but she writes — and speaks (albeit with a British accent) — like an actual human. Enjoy. Her talk begins: In 1915 Charlotte Perkins Gilman published a funny but unsettling story called Herland. As the title hints, it’s a fantasy […]

Lynne Stewart, R.I.P.

March 8, 2017 by Jan Herman

Lynne Stewart

The radical leftist civil rights attorney has died. She was among the bravest. Some background. The feds were aiming to fry her. She served four years of a 10-year sentence when she was granted “compassionate release” on New Year’s Day, 2014, due to a terminal case of late-stage breast cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. Thousands […]

Filth Is Good for Something

March 1, 2017 by Jan Herman

This blog has been called a breeding ground for filth. If it were true, I would have no objection. A bit of filth is good for the health of any writer and for any of his readers. Where’s the proof? Frank Harris, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Iceberg Slim, and the Marquis de Sade. […]

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... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

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We're cutting down on spam. Please fill in this form. … [Read More...]

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