My staff of thousands reminds me there’s an election coming up in the U.S. of A. For all the voters going to the polls, here’s a poem to cheer them on by the British poet Heathcote Williams. Part two … enter the realm of litrichur, narrated and montaged by Alan Cox. And here’s part three, […]
‘All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t)’
Have you noticed lately that the art on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times is tamer than it used to be? I haven’t made a study of it, but that’s how it seems to me. Proof, if needed, comes with the paperback publication of All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some […]
Publicist’s Alert: ‘Useless Information’
This blog receives many publicist alerts. Here’s the smartest, verbatim (message line included): USELESS INFORMATON Hello. I am David Manning’s underpaid literary agent and publicist. He refuses to send this email, so I am hijacking his books account to do it for him. Thanks to an anonymous donor, there is an ad in the latest […]
Viral Reading
More than two million YouTube viewers have watched this woman read a book. Imagine that.Update: Dec. 30, 2015 — That number is now 18.86 million. Yes, you read that right. Further Update: Oct. 2, 2024 — Viewers now number 30 million. The woman is Stoya, and she’s a porn star. The book is Necrophilia Variations, […]
Edition of Death in Paris Is Now in Print
This is not a sales pitch. I’m only kvelling. The printed edition is stunningly handsome, a magnificent artifact in memory of its author, the late Carl Weissner, dear friend and co-conspirator from the ’60s. If you would like to read Death in Paris on paper, please do. If you prefer reading it in a preview, […]
A Long Shot for Carl the Survivor
“Death, the last cut, always leaves a bitter feeling mixed with pain & loss . . . and because of its finality gives you no choice but to look back.” — Jurgen Ploog Here’s a rough translation of Ploog’s original article posted in German by Gasolin Connection on Feb. 2, 2012. Ploog is the author […]
Portrait of the Writer
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Ave Atque Vale
Carl Weissner (1940-2012) died Jan. 24, in Mannheim. Carl wrote his first book, The Braille Film, in English. I published it in 1970, under the Nova Broadcast imprint. Although his native language was German, he had an incomparable ear for phrases that made his written English sing, certainly his American lingo. And he seemed to […]
‘Transfers From a Different World’
Matthias Penzel’s obituary about Carl Weissner, more an appreciation than an obit, appeared this past Sunday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. He has kindly translated it from the German for me, and I post it here with his permission. Penzel, a Berlin-based author of several books, including TraumHaft (a rock ‘n’ roll novel) and Rebell […]
Cody’s Conversation
When I asked Cody Mahler to write something for me about the friend we both lost, he wrote back: “I have to sit down with Carl and discuss what he would like me to say.” They must’ve had a great conversation, because this is what he wrote: I CALLED HIM MISTER MOOCH Everybody knows that he is […]
Carl Weissner, In Memoriam
There is nothing I cherished more than my friendship with Carl. He was my dearest, oldest friend. We didn’t just go back to the ’60s together, we exchanged torrents of letters and collaborated on literary projects; we remained the warmest of friends through all the years since. I am devastated by his death. It came […]
A Decade of Poetry, Politics, and Rock ‘n’ Roll
Speaking of Lower East Side legends, Ed Sanders has written a new memoir, FUG YOU {An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, The Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side}. Just out from Da Capo Press, with a dust jacket based on an historic Life magazine cover, it’s a […]
Levine’s Factory Stiffs, Society’s Throw-Aways
Sometimes you get lucky. This was a long time ago. When the 1991 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were about to be announced, an editor assigned me to write an appreciation of the book that won the poetry prize: What Work Is, by Philip Levine. It would also win a National Book Award later that […]
A Poem from the Late 20th Century
The poet Nanos Valaoritis and I were good friends many years ago, in San Francisco. Here’s a poem of his, which I published in 1970, in a broadside edition of 500 or 1,000 copies — I can’t recall exactly. “Endless Crucifixion” is a collector’s item now. Jed Birmingham, who writes the RealityStudio column the Bibliographic […]
Manhattan Muffdiver
A new novel hits the bookshelves in Vienna, and the Austrian television network ORF interviews the author on the news. Try getting a novelist interviewed on the evening news in America. Never happen. Besides, we’re talking about a book called Manhattan Muffdiver, not exactly a title that U.S. network censors would approve. It’s not altogether […]
Cue ‘Ah POOK,’ ‘THE UNSPEAKABLE MR HART’
“Watchmen,” the movie, caused a stir at the box office when its opening weekend nabbed $55 million, the highest opening gross of the year and third-highest March opening ever. It’s a shame that none of the money will trickle down to the artist Malcolm Mc Neill, whose image of the Mayan Death God (right) in […]
No Train to Glory — James Crumley, R.I.P.
John Schulian wanted to know if I had heard the news. I hadn’t. His e-mail message filled me in: “James Crumley, the best crime writer of our generation, died, at 68, in a bed surrounded by his friends and family in Missoula. I never pictured him checking out so benignly, and I doubt that he […]