Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Charlotte Moorman Gets a Full-Dress Close-Up

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On a visit I made years ago to Northwestern University’s Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections its curator at the time, Russell Maylone, showed me a room piled with ramshackle cartons that had recently arrived. He pointed to them with pride and said they were Charlotte Moorman’s archival materials, a lifetime’s worth of hoarding. […]

Brion Gysin: ‘Poets Don’t Own No Words’

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Ian Sommerville programmed software to generate [Gysin’s] computer poems, which was reenacted by Joseph Moore as the “Permutation” software for the exhibition Brion Gysin: Dream Machine (2010) at the New Museum in New York. Postscript: Dec. 14 — Per William Osborne’s comment, here is Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ song “Can’t Hold Us” as performed by […]

Gonzo Style

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Gonzo Today brings us a gonzo poem by Heathcote Williams that begins: The Parisian atrocities were born in Libya / Where Cameron, Sarkozy, and Obama / Murdered twelve thousand Libyans between sips / Of Downing Street and Oval Office coffee. Read the complete poem here.

Jenny Diski Speaks of Death and Dying

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Jenny Diski learned some months ago that she had inoperable lung cancer and, at best, another three years to live. She now writes about the experience and her treatment. Something she said about writers and writing reminds me of what William Burroughs pointed out (summarized in The Z Collection as “no mummy needed.”) April 28, […]

Redux: Dear Cannibals, Have a Happy Thanksgiving

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Our Thanksgiving team of William S. Burroughs and Norman O. Mustill has been a happy pairing. It still is. But the Straight Up staff of thousands added a sweetener, something like cranberry sauce, to last year’s celebration. Here ‘tiz again: Words by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox. And from Straight Up’s Thanksgiving […]

Carl Weissner: ‘Always These Nightmares . . .’

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Updated below. Carl Weissner’s novel Death in Paris — first published online in 2009, then as a paperback in 2012, and finally as an ebook in 2014 — was about a different kind of death from the terrorist assault on Saturday night. Writing in English, his second language, Weissner drew on the trappings of detective […]

‘Not a One-Trick Pony . . .’

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So says Jed Birmingham in #23: The Dead Star, the first of his picks for “The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles.” The Burroughs Nova Broadcast pamphlet, which I published in 1969 and designed as a foldout in covers, is ancient history. It makes me an old pony. But I can live with that. The […]

Cyclomania: The Aesthetic Philosophy of Kurt Wold

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“I dreamt I could play the bicycle. …” Artist’s Statement The Ancient Greeks (Plato more specifically) established a hierarchy in the arts by elevating the purely contemplative art forms from the lower functional crafts. This idea struck me as I was taking down yet another of my gallery installations and jamming the mere functional remains […]

More by Mustill: Smokin’ Victorian and an ‘EVENT’

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Finding lost and uncollected artworks by the late Norman O. Mustill has been a continuing project here. An old friend of his, Kurt Wold, recently turned up two more pieces. One is an undated, untitled collage (probably from the early 1980s), which he’s calling “Victorian Smoker.” Mustill gave it to Kurt’s father, who knew Mustill […]

A Blistering Attack on Wall Street — and Not Only That

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It’s also “a celebration of words that changed the world” directed by Paul Hodson, with live music by Dr. Blue. Poetry Can F*ck Off will feature “verse, lyrics, and music by Maya Angelou, Jim Morrison, Billie Holiday, Sophie Scholl, Emily Dickinson, Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi, Martin Luther King, William Blake, Arundhati Roy, Victor Jara, Gil Scott-Heron, […]

Going Whole Hog: The Prime Minister & the Pig’s Head

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The British press has been having a field day with tales of Prime Minister David Cameron’s crush on a pig during his student days at Oxford. Maybe “crush” is the wrong term. How about “necrophiliac oral sex.” My tireless staff of thousands doesn’t presume to know the gory details. But it has taken notice of […]

AC Institute Is Having a Launch Party

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Listen to “Speed Bump 4 Eva.” My staff of thousands says it’s perfect music for the image. AC Institute christens its new space in midtown Manhattan. The event will feature a short reading by The Z Collection author Jan Herman followed by music from accomplished cellist Hamilton Berry. Publisher’s note: The Z Collection, a “time […]

LARB Video Interview: Miles on William S. Burroughs

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Dunno how my tireless staff of thousands missed this. It’s as striking a summary of Burroughs’s life and writing as I’ve seen. His best biographer gives a sense of the man and his work that is very different from the public impression of him. Here’s a transcript of the first three minutes of the video: […]

Tripping With Andy

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‘It is Deborah Davis’s style to pan to a faraway object, complete its history, then cinematically bring it into the focus of the story. John Huston becomes cinema verité. Her style permits one to learn everything related to the trip. Even things Andy Warhol’s diarist didn’t know.’ By Charles Plymell “The Trip” it was … […]

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