Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Bookstores in Their Anecdotage

by

Garrison Keillor, who owns a bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota, called Common Good Books, writes in a foreword to FOOTNOTES* from the WORLD’S GREAT BOOKSTORES: *True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers that “the little independent bookstore is dying out, they say. Too bad. Someday mine will, too.” The author […]

2016: Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving Day

by

From William Burroughs, and Norman O. Mustill, and Heathcote Williams, and our staff of thousands … thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison . . . thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through . . . thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the […]

Why I’m Waiting for Asher’s Algren

by

Having said in The Revenge of the Mediocre that both Bettina Drew and Mary Wisniewski fail to capture Nelson Algren’s personality in their biographies of him, I realize I didn’t mention something equally and, some would say, more important. Sure, they get his so-called skid-row lyricism, which Blake Bailey recently harped on, but that shortchanges […]

Going Cold Turkey (in Cyberspace)

by

The computer screen has become a substitute for reality, dominating us not just by way of social media but — old news — by making artifacts like books on paper seem obsolete. I plead seriously guilty, witness this blogpost with its images and descriptions. A package that came in the mail with several new items […]

Trump Centaur

by

An insult to pigs . . . “The Republican Party has become the most dangerous organization in world history.” — Noam Chomasky

Where Black Lives Did Not Matter

by

Headline: ‘A Tender Bond Confronts Racism. Racism Wins.’ One can only hope that headline does not apply to the outcome of today’s U.S. elections. In the many years I spent on Grub Street writing about the theater, Athol Fugard and the plays I saw of his stand out in memory for their eloquence and humanity. […]

Tom Hayden: Gone But Not Forgotten

by

Looking back: Mad Magazine + Tom Hayden = SDS. And before I forget. Meanwhile, the obits are pouring in for Hayden, who died yesterday. Here are three (with great photos) from The Washington Post; from The Huffington Post; from The New York Times. And here is a video of him speaking about the need to […]

Leonard Weinglass, Our ‘Modern Clarence Darrow’

by

Other defense attorneys may have been more famous — William Kunstler, for example — but radical leftists of a certain age remember the late Leonard Weinglass with special feeling. On the back cover of Seth Tobocman’s graphic biography Len, A Lawyer in History, the publisher’s description says (and I believe every word of it): “In […]

Still Counting . . .

by

And here’s what your tax dollars could have paid for instead. Meanwhile, anybody who follows the news is familiar with the flight of Edward Snowden, who is arguably the most important whistleblower in American history for his massive leak of secret NSA documents. Even so, the Danish-made film “Chasing Edward Snowden” about the details of […]

Nuttall Show Comes With a Warning

by

The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester is close to launching “Off Beat: Jeff Nuttall and the International Underground,” a comprehensive exhibition of artworks, writings, correspondence, books, and little magazines produced by or associated with an “all-round genius” whose stunning countercultural career half a century ago is little remembered today. Jeff Nuttall was […]

Total Obscenity of the American Dream

by

Heathcote Williams’s verse polemic delivered by Alan Cox. “Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton — A Foaming Sleazeball from Hell versus An Iron Lady, Hands Dripping with Blood” And now for the video: EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

A Piece of Zen Music Called ‘Pond’

by

When I heard it for the first time, I didn’t know what to make of it. I thought of it as a demonstration of the trombonist’s virtuosity. Then I read the composers’ general description of the piece, explaining its origin, in 1976, and how it was composed. “Pond” was first performed in 1977 at the […]

Guilty As Charged? I Hope So

by

A review of my book, The Z Collection: Portraits & Sketches, in the June 17 issue of The Times Literary Supplement, accuses me of “restrained élan.” My wife may beg to differ, but I plead guilty to the charge — happily. The TLS reviewer, Douglas Field, whose biographical study of James Baldwin, All Those Strangers, […]

Who Are the World’s Most Famous People?

by

You’d be surprised. Martin Luther King, Jr. is the world’s best-known American, followed by — are you ready? — Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Walt Disney, and Ben Franklin. Those are the top five. How do I know this? And on what basis? I checked Pantheon 1.0 at the MIT Media Lab, which did the elaborate […]

Looking Back at Cuba (continued) …

by

Previously … Now you can fly to Havana direct from the U.S. without having to be part of a licensed group. You can even use credit cards in places equipped to handle them. Of course prices for tourists are higher than in 2002. But I’d bet that Cuban salaries aren’t. This was the first of […]

Looking Back at Cuba

by

So much is being made of the U.S.-Cuba raprochement and the arrival in Havana of cruise ships filled with tourists that I took a look at an old series of mine, part reportage and part travelogue, from 2002. I haven’t been back to Cuba since then. Fidel has retired from actively running the show. He’s […]

I’m Getting My 15 Minutes . . .

by

If you think my staff of thousands doesn’t appreciate that, you don’t know how hungry they are to promote my new book. In this age of shameless self-promotion, it’s all about me, me, me. So I made a deal with them. One click gets them a penny, five gets them a dime. Make them rich. […]

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog