Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Herbert Huncke, Beat Hipster Sans Pareil

by

I see that Hilary Holladay will be reading from American Hipster, her biography of Herbert Huncke, in a multimedia presentation at The Beat Museum in San Francisco. Tipped by my staff of thousands, I also see that she’s due the next night at Alley Cat Books. This brings back memories … One morning there was […]

The Fine Art of Book Promotion

by

“If this is the literary equivalent of groupies throwing their bras on stage, I’ll take it,” he says. The author, who goes by the name Supervert, was talking about a nude photo shoot with an “alt” model, which, he was pleased to learn, uses two of his books as a prop. It’s not the first […]

Wrapping Up the ‘Dutch Mordant’ Series

by

Cold Turkey Press publisher Gerard Bellaart writes that he “got rather carried away.” There are now about 40 cards in the series. Consequently the 36 portfolios of 12 cards each “will differ slightly in composition.” The “sacred nose” comes from the Bellaart family album, dated 1755.+++ A photo by Frederick Sommer illustrates the “kleine Welten” […]

‘The Prince of Amsterdam’

by

Heathcote Williams’s tribute to the late poet Simon Vinkenoog had me choking with laughter. And when the tribute to this ‘electric, ecstatic” poet of “ultra optimism” turns serious — when it recounts what Vinkenoog says in a dream to a friend: “It’s a party in heaven. I’m here with kindred spirits only. It’s like earth […]

Yannick Bouillis Spreads the Word on Twinpak

by

In ELSE #5, the current issue of the photo magazine ELSE published in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the Musée de l’Elysée, Yannick Bouillis has dedicated a handsome double spread to Norman O. Mustill’s Twinpak (Nova Broadcast Press, 1969). Bouillis, a former journalist and bookseller, is a member of the ELSE editorial committee and the founder of […]

Planned Obsolescence Press to Big Data: Fuck Off

by

In an unsigned Publisher’s Note to Whale Drek: The Lost Footnotes of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch, Jed Birmingham writes: “Planned Obsolescence Press specializes in distributing small shiploads of K.Y. made of genuine whale drek. What better to grease the lines of communication? The Press recycles that which no one has found any use for. […]

Antonin Artaud’s ‘Rotten Meat’

by

I’d bet the quotes on this card from Cold Turkey Press won’t be found in the search engines. +++ Here are some other recent Cold Turkey cards that quote Artaud: No Words, No Thought; Artaud’s Hammer; Plague of My Tongue, 1; Plague of My Tongue, 2. Additionally, Cold Turkey publisher Gerard Bellaart, writer and artist […]

From the Cut-Up Department

by

Long ago and far away (in other words, back in the 1960s), when greed & human smallness became history, I kept a cut-up diary — now lost — as something to tilt the museum, something small to fold up against, to tell what was meant. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

A New Poster from Cold Turkey Press

by

The first flash mob in Europe Met in Rome on 24 June 2003. 300 people entered ‘Messaggerie Musicali’, A large book and music store, To ask its staff either for non-existent books, Or for the most obscure books By untraceable authors. One flash mobber asked for a copy of the New Testament Translated from Coptic […]

‘Artaud’s Hammer’: A Dissident Series Carries On

by

Antonin Artaud by René Char I haven’t the voice to sing your praise, great brother If I bent over your body which light is going to scatter Your laugh would repel me The affection between us, during what We improperly call a fine storm Falls several times, kills, digs & burns, Then is reborn afterwards […]

‘Artaud’s Hammer’: A Dissident Portfolio Begins

by

It’s weird that the cloaca of Central Europe is also the mouth of English literature. May Rotterdam be blessed by every English tongue in all the cloisters of the English-speaking world. — Sinclair Beiles EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

‘Artaud’s Hammer’: A Dissident Portfolio Continues

by

This is one of two new cards in the continuing series. Cold Turkey Press publications have a flavor all of their own; there’s a kind of wild, mad goodness about them — you know you’re going to be taken on a trip. Somewhere edgy and dangerous. You may not get back. You don’t care. You’re […]

‘Orwell’s Recipe for Tea’

by

Narration and montage by Alan Cox. “Orwell exposed the state’s Ministry of Truth, / As controlling man’s desire to be free / With its lies and doublespeak and doublethink, / But he’d always break off for tea.” — Heathcote Williams EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Only Man to Enter Parliament With Honest Intentions

by

Guy Fawkes’ Lantern Guy Fawkes’ lantern Is a surreptitious Point of pilgrimage For anonymous Armies of anarchists who Visit the glass case Where it is preserved In the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. ‘What if?’ they wonder, ‘What if Guy Fawkes had done it? ‘Had done the business – ‘For what’s changed?’ they ask, ‘Kings and Parliaments […]

For Nonconforming Artists, the Envelope Please

by

Update: Click for the 2015 Acker Awards. And read this captivating feature story by Nicole Disser: ‘Helen Keller Was an Asshole,’ and Other Things You’ll Learn at the Acker Awards Are awards the staff of life? Of course not. But they certainly seem like food for the hungry. The list of awards is nearly endless. […]

Gerard Bellaart Sends Greetings From France

by

The resident genius of Cold Turkey Press has a thing for Artaud. Can you blame him?Not I. Neither can Hemingway. “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our […]

Ernest Hemingway, Heathcote Williams, and So Forth

by

And then I sent a photo of the Ernest Hemingway plaque in the series … Which drew this reply … Serving as further testament to what has been lost, or as the poet noted with his reply, “Pace Hemingway.” EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog