Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

A Gothic Tale Set in Black and White

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Other works by Ligia Lewis include Sensation 1/This Interior (High Line Commission) (2019); so something happened, get over it; no, nothing happened, get with it (Jaou Tunis) (2018); Melancholy: A White Mellow Drama (Flax Fahrenheit, Palais de Tokyo) (2015); minor matter (2016), a poetic piece illuminated by red; Sorrow Swag (2014), presented in a saturated blue; $$$ (Tanz im August) (2012); and Sensation 1 (sommer.bar, Tanz im August -2011, Basel Liste- 2014).

A Contrary View of Gysin’s Calligraphies

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A painter I know had this to say about Brion Gysin’s
work as an artist. “Pleasantly surprised by his watercolour. First thought was an early Yves Tanguy, whom I admire very much. But the calligraphies are outwitted any time by one little Michaux. That doesn’t invalidate the man’s effort, but I see too much repetitive strain there. Gysin’s calligraphies are paintings and, as such, can and should be viewed within a comparative context. There is of course André Masson to begin with—right up to Lee Krasner.

Brion Gysin: ‘Dante in the Tasile’

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Richard Aaron writes in an email: “Here is a work by Brion that I have in front of me. He did very many of these. Around 1958 the calligraphic element began to appear, but this is from 1951. I used to own a large bunch of his surrealist work from the 1930s. Typical of the period. He was fortunate to have been tossed out of the movement by Breton.”

‘YES! I Have Wanted This Book for Years …’

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… but used copies have always been too expensive. Publishing event of the year for me.—zanntone, via Twitter | A new extended facsimile reprint from Moloko has just been published in hardcover, and it only costs about 25 bucks.

Remembering Margaret Mead

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In my antideluvian days, when I was starting out as a reporter, I interviewed Margaret Mead. I didn’t know much about her beyond the usual, so my interview hardly went beyond the usual. What I remember most was the photo I took of her and how smitten I was by her graciousness.

Being Screened Any Minute Now in Edinburgh, Again

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Meet Jim Haynes in a documentary. As I’ve written before: “I’ve never met Jim. We’ve only corresponded by email about the strange case or Orwell’s typewriter. But I know that he is a man for all reasons — pleasure, food, sex, mind, books, theater, life — and that to meet him in person all you have to do is show up at his door in Paris for dinner.”

Twisted!

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The artist Annish Kapoor captures British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a delicious drawing and caption.

The Beast Is Back

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The editors of the London Review of Books say their first edition of The Beast of Brexit, the late Heathcote Williams’s takedown of Boris Johnson, sold out “in a matter of weeks” just before the Brexit referendum in 2016. After it went through several reprints, the book was published in a second edition “with a […]

Encore: A Little ‘Newspaper Music’

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This reading of a Fluxus piece by Alison Knowles from 1962 was recorded probably in 1967. The cassette tape was salvaged from a recent basement flood and digitized by the indefatiguable S|U staff. Ear plugs may be helpful in some passages.

Alison Knowles: ‘Proposition #2 for Emmett Williams’

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A transcript of this piece was published under the title “A house of dust, computer poem” in FANTASTIC ARCHITECTURE edited by Wolf Vostell and Dick Higgins (Something Else Press, 1969). The reading, on a cassette recording made ca. 1967, was salvaged from a recent basement flood at S|U’s Manhattan perch. It features four readers, including Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins. Any help identifying the two other voices would be appreciated.

Remembering Heathcote Williams . . .

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Nimble as you were in your ‘hey’day, / Your ‘wow’zone resplendent, / whenever your / Writing and way claimed a mind. / Those still on the planet salute you in love, / Winking our wish through the cosmos, / Broadcasting life’s message that yours / Is the path still to find. It used to lead / To Oxford, but now, it stretches on . . . —David Erdos

What Happened to Nelson Algren?

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Nearly three months after Colin Asher’s biography of Nelson Algren was published, and just in time for readers to take a break from serious books as they head off on vacation to escape the summer heat, our dearly beloved newspaper of record has deigned to take notice of Never a Lovely So Real. But let’s put that aside because Susan Jacoby’s review, which will appear Sunday in the print edition of The New York Times Book Review, is ​not only honest, clear, and well reported, it sets a judicious standard. Which gives it credibility.

Strictly Unpaid Advertising

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Your humble blogger has published a new collection of poems. Moloko will bring it out in a bilingual English-German edition in Germany. In the meantime, however, an American edition is now available without the translations but with a complement of images. ‘All That Would Ever After Not Be Said’ is composed of forty-two deformed sonnets of mine and forty-two collages by the late Norman O. Mustill.

From Mayor to Nightmare

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‘The Dark Side of Boris Johnson’: Now that he is on his way to becoming the new Prime Minister of the U.K., the staff believes this blogpost of Aug. 24, 2016 is worth reposting: Back in April, before the Brexit vote [on June 23, 2016], Heathcote Williams wrote a merciless pamphlet, subtitled “A Study in Depravity,” about the most notorious cheerleader for the British exit from the European Union.

Alchemical Poetry

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LET US WRITE poems easy to read / simple to understand— / not the kind of thing / that Donne or Milton / wrote, nor the Bard’s / still greater brand, / the kind of thing / we make for children / who don’t know how / to read, for grownups / who forgot or never / learned to understand— / for the dead, perhaps, / to hear the damned.

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