“He is one of a few of genius who did not sell out and who peaks in (relative) old age. That’s quite something nowadays.” — Gerard Bellaart +++ “Fame is the first disgrace because God knows who you are.” — Heathcote Williams, “The Local Stigmatic” +++ The videos comprise Parts 1 and 2 of a […]
Heathcote Williams on the Real American President
Narration and montage by Alan Cox. Musical accents by Louis Armstrong.
More Dissident Literature from Cold Turkey Press
The title of Heathcote Williams’s poem puts it country simple. You can’t get more direct than “The United States of Porn.” The poem, which runs to 208 lines, nearly all based on facts, is part of a portfolio called American Porn. It was published in 2011 in a beautifully produced first edition of 36 copies […]
A First-Class Letter From the Lost and Found
When I read Heathcote Williams’s description of a bizzare project that for a time obsessed the South African poet Sinclair Beiles, who wanted to plant “the barren Sahara desert” with “industrial quantities of discarded tea-leaves,” I remembered a letter Carl Weissner once wrote. March 30th, 1971 Dear Sinclair: The Sahara is irrigated. Now what? While […]
In Iowa, ‘The Subversive Culture of Collage and Zines’
The running head on these two pages of William S. Burroughs’s cut-up text “Word Authority More Habit Forming Than Heroin” reads: “if you are gay I am right seconds with Karate you are wrong you are he kicks him into 1914 movie.” The spread appeared in an exhibition, “Liberated Images,” at the University of Iowa […]
Teaming Burroughs & Mustill for Thanksgiving
A Straight Up tradition continues. But this year William S. Burroughs’s words of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day are posted with a couple of collages by Norman O. Mustill. That completes the package. Look and listen. It’s delish . . . Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through […]
The Idiot’s Voice: More Dissidence from Cold Turkey
Leonard Cohen, who is not given to easy praise, has called Sinclair Beiles “one of the great poets of the century.” Meaning the 20th century — they met back in the early 1960s on the Greek island of Hydra. Was Cohen being uncharacteristically hyperbolic? Well, William S. Burroughs, also not given to easy praise, once […]
‘The Lord of the Drones and the White House Fly’
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
Broadcast after his death.
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 […]