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 […]
Mad Magazine + Tom Hayden = SDS
“Students for a Democratic Society, A Graphic History,” a new book due out in January from Hill and Wang. “My own radical journey began with Harvey Pekar and comics and politics at The Graduate Center, CUNY, on Monday — Dec. 10 — which also marks International Amnesty International Global Write-a-Thon. Pekar is best known for […]
Playwright Sends a Letter: Tenenbom vs. The Times
First he took on the Polish government, which claims he’s he denies. Now he’s taking on a bigger fish — The New York Times, which has declined to review his play. open letter to news media, Tuvia Tenenbom accuses The Times of doing “the Polish government’s bidding … by refusing to allow Times critics to […]
John Bryan, RIP
They left 12 roses on his doorstep along with half of their kidnap victim’s California driver’s license. He was grateful for the roses. “They could have been 12 bullets,” he said. The kidnappers were the Symbionese Liberation Army. The license belonged to Patty Hearst. The year was 1974. The roses were both a warning and […]
HERE’S A STRETCH
Almost forgot about Holland Cotter reports in this morning’s New York Times, there will be a boatload of special events, like Holly Crawford, who organized the event. I don’t know her, never met her. But she invited me, gawd help her. I’ll letcha know what happens. Postscript: From Los Angeles …
MASTER OF THE COSMODEMONIC
Somehow in all the reports I’ve seen about Western Union’s last telegram (sent on Jan. 27) and the end of an era, there was the usual chronicle of Samuel Morse and the invention of the telegraph, and Henry Miller. “The Tropic of Capricorn.” Describing his experience as employment manager for New York’s messenger department, he […]
ANTHEM FOR AMERICA
Wrapping up the week’s nervous breakdown, we bring you TwinPak. With Tom Delay coming to a head as Libby face possible indictment, a Harriet Miers debacle and her Congressional protection for the gun industry now achieved by the NRA, FEMA’s negligence and incompetence “some background noise here,” we think of Mustill’s score as a fitting […]
NOSTALGIA BUG: ‘UNCLE BILL’ BURROUGHS
When I was looking at my old Bob Woodward interview, some of which I posted because it seemed, uh, timely, I saw another old interview I did — this one with Bill Burroughs. I thought you’d find it interesting. Here’s part of it: Your books are filled with gun lore. What spurred your interest in […]
BUSTER KEATON REVISITED
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. “This book is merely a fan’s notes,” Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you’re […]
HANGING IN WITH GEORGE
By Jan Herman When 1984 came around smack in the middle of the rose-tinted Reagan era, many in the commentariat had a field day noting that George Orwell, for all his genius, had overstated his case. The future he’d warned of in “1984” simply hadn’t come to pass. Yeah, right. Thinking of Bill Moyers this morning, it occurred […]
KITTY KELLEY, SINATRA & ME
Reprinted from the German edition of LUI, Nr. 11, November 1986, where it appeared in German translation as “Des Sängers Fluch.” It was never published in English — until now. By Jan Herman For a professional snoop, Kitty Kelley harbors a remarkably decorous feeling about her work. The least suggestion that she enjoys exposing the […]