Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

With Bicycle: Nightmares and Dreams

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Flann O’Brien wrote a comic novel. Kurt Wold made a performance piece. Bicycles figure in both. Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down […]

Charlotte Moorman Gets a Full-Dress Close-Up

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On a visit I made years ago to Northwestern University’s Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections its curator at the time, Russell Maylone, showed me a room piled with ramshackle cartons that had recently arrived. He pointed to them with pride and said they were Charlotte Moorman’s archival materials, a lifetime’s worth of hoarding. […]

Abolishing Time: Baudelaire & Cocteau Side by Side

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I have been involved so deeply in so many things that they slip from my memory, and not just one, fifty. A wave from the depths brings them back to the surface for me with, as the Bible says, all that in them is. It is incredible how few traces are left in us of […]

Brion Gysin: ‘Poets Don’t Own No Words’

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Ian Sommerville programmed software to generate [Gysin’s] computer poems, which was reenacted by Joseph Moore as the “Permutation” software for the exhibition Brion Gysin: Dream Machine (2010) at the New Museum in New York. Postscript: Dec. 14 — Per William Osborne’s comment, here is Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ song “Can’t Hold Us” as performed by […]

Gonzo Style

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Gonzo Today brings us a gonzo poem by Heathcote Williams that begins: The Parisian atrocities were born in Libya / Where Cameron, Sarkozy, and Obama / Murdered twelve thousand Libyans between sips / Of Downing Street and Oval Office coffee. Read the complete poem here. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Rent a Rammer for Homeland Security

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Norman O. Mustill died two years ago today. Here are two postcard he sent his friend Kurt Wold back in the 1980s. Although only postcards, they are like all Norm’s work, as Wold says: “the manifestation of the man.” And they haven’t aged a nanosecond. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Redux: Dear Cannibals, Have a Happy Thanksgiving

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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 […]

‘Not a One-Trick Pony . . .’

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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

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“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’

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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 […]

Cartoon Artist Kate Evans Does Rosa Luxemburg

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I notice that the NYT Sunday Book Review’s not-so-special “Special Issue” on graphic books (Oct. 18) makes no mention of ‘Red Rosa’ by Kate Evans, forthcoming from Verso (Nov. 3). My tireless staff of thousands decided to right that wrong. Kate Evans, aka Cartoon Kate, is no ordinary biographer. Her in-depth account of the socialist […]

‘Picasso Sculpture’ at MoMA: The Magnificent Tinkerer

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The swoon of the professional crickets had me wondering about their impressions. One was so taken with the show, he seemed to be suffering from emphysema (“I found myself constantly having to catch my breath …”) Poor cricket. But at least his cataracts were cleared up (“… you can feel the scales fall from your […]

More From Mustill’s Arizona Desert Lair

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Nearly a decade ago in the desert lair, there I am leafing through Bruce Bernard’s “Century,” a massive volume of photos chronicling the 20th century. On the wall is a partial view of Norman O. Mustill’s huge collage, shown in full below. It’s a big one. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

AC Institute Is Having a Launch Party

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Listen to “Speed Bump 4 Eva.” My staff of thousands says it’s perfect music for the image. AC Institute christens its new space in midtown Manhattan. The event will feature a short reading by The Z Collection author Jan Herman followed by music from accomplished cellist Hamilton Berry. Publisher’s note: The Z Collection, a “time […]

LARB Video Interview: Miles on William S. Burroughs

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Dunno how my tireless staff of thousands missed this. It’s as striking a summary of Burroughs’s life and writing as I’ve seen. His best biographer gives a sense of the man and his work that is very different from the public impression of him. Here’s a transcript of the first three minutes of the video: […]

Tripping With Andy

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‘It is Deborah Davis’s style to pan to a faraway object, complete its history, then cinematically bring it into the focus of the story. John Huston becomes cinema verité. Her style permits one to learn everything related to the trip. Even things Andy Warhol’s diarist didn’t know.’ By Charles Plymell “The Trip” it was … […]

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