![Nelson Algren, 1962 [Photo: Steve Deutch]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Nelson-Algren-1962-Stephen-Deutch-copy-200x200.jpg)
There was no chance to note Nelson Algren’s birthday two days ago because ArtsJournal was taken down by hacker bots. But now that we’re back, herewith a belated blogpost to celebration of a novelist who had a reputation as a tough guy but who wrote with deep sensitivity about women.
In a Light Mood: ‘No Severed Bodies or Bloody Stumps’
!['The Condition,' a new postcard from Cold Turkey Press [2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/the-condition-this-one670-200x200.jpg)
The front of this hallucinatory postcard, published by Cold Turkey Press in a limited edition of 36 copies, shows a collage by the late Norman Ogue Mustill. It is “Mustill in a light sorta mood, or so he thought,” I wrote Ben Schot, Cold Turkey’s distributor. “Light for him, anyway: no severed bodies or bloody […]
‘Eating the Rich and Famous, or Celebrity Roadkill’
!['Eating the Rich' by Heathcote Williams [Cold Turkey Press, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/eating-the-rich-200x200.jpeg)
“Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.” — Thomas Jefferson, from his letters Words by Heathcote Williams. Montage and narration by Alan Cox. “I have been […]
Every Lapdog Should Have His Day . . . in Court
It’s time for a citizen’s arrest … Words by Heathcote Williams. Music by Max Reinsch. Performance by Alan Cox. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
‘America: How It Works’ by Heathcote Williams
The fierce dissidence of Williams’s polemical poetry is as radical as Shelley’s. “America: How It Works” bears witness to the monster within “the most dangerous country in world history.” Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. The business of America is business, And it’s number one business is war. It uses Hollywood […]
Charley Plymell Tells and Shows in Strings of Emails
Charley Plymell’s long, seemingly endless strings of emails are fascinating to read. He has known so many Beat writers and artists and has popped up in so many places with them that I can’t help thinking of him — half in wonder and half in disbelief — as the Zelig of the Beat Generation. Unlike […]
SOS: An American Poet Is Waiting to Be Rescued
Cody Maher, expat American poet and world traveler living in Heidelberg, writes in an email message that he was sitting around “watching countries go to the dogs feeding the people nothing but lies” when it occurred to him that “the only safe place one day might be international waters.” This must have been before the […]
‘Burroughs in London’ by Heathcote Williams
Now that the Burroughs centenary has moved into high gear, it suddenly dawned on Heathcote Williams that he’d known the man on and off for more than half a century.
Two New Poster Cards from Cold Turkey Press
!['An Iron Fish Rusts' by Malcolm Ritchie [Cold Turkey Press, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IRON-FISH-RUSTS-Ritchie-1x-200x200.jpg)
Just in: ‘An Iron Fish Rusts’ and ‘The Condition’
The Poet Sinclair Beiles Spoke of Being ‘Dispossessed’
![Sinclair Beiles 'Dispossessed' [Cold Turkey Press]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1-Sinclairs-Dispossessed-640-200x200.jpg)
Last week I took an astral trip. I left my body and cavorted about the universe. I needed a rest. It’s tiresome living in the same body all the time I needed a change of scene. I was very careful. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
When Excessive Rudeness Pays Off
Something worth remembering … The Buddha and the Pork Chop Apparently the Buddha met his end Thanks to an excessive degree of politeness. Though he was vegetarian, someone prepared him a meal And the Buddha felt obliged to eat what he’d been offered. Due to its being a bad pork chop, the Buddha died. Clearly […]
William ‘Cody’ Maher: ‘Nightmare Entering the Country’
Border security and immigration are so much in the news these days that my staff of thousands was desperate for comic relief. Then this scenario came over the transom from Cody Maher. Bingo!
You Are There: Where Burroughs Once Lived in Mexico City
In more than 50 years not much had changed. Although the narrow street had been gentrified and renamed, the “run-down white apartment building” was still there looking like time had stood still for it.
A Poem by Heathcote Williams: ‘It’s a Barbie World, or …’
Walter Benjamin said, ‘There is no cultural document / That’s not at the same time a record of barbarism…’
Centennial Conference on Life & Myth of William Burroughs
William S. Burroughs was born 100 years ago today. A centennial conference will be held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as part of a month-long WSB@100 Festival in April. The conference, sponsored by The Center for Humanities, “will explore the life and myth of one of the most innovative […]
Clayton Patterson on Jewish History of the Lower East Side
!['Jews: A People's History of the Lower East Side'Edited by Clayton Patterson and Mareleyn Schneider [New York, 2012]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jews-a-peoples-history-of-the-lower-east-side-200x200.jpg)
Nobody I know is better versed in the history of Manhattan’s Lower East Side than Clayton Patterson. And I’d be willing to bet that nobody at all is more devoted to, or more articulate about, the history of the Jews who lived on the Lower East Side. He was interviewed a year ago — Feb. […]
Setting the Stage for Barry Miles’s ‘Call Me Burroughs’
!['Call Me Burroughs -- A LIfe' by Barry Miles [TWELVE Books, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/call-me-burroughs-a-life-240-200x200.jpg)
I asked Barry Miles, author of the newly published biography “Call Me Burroughs: A Life,” how he felt about the review he got in this week’s New Yorker.