The email arrived with this message: “At Verizon Wireless your privacy is our priority.” How nice. So I read on: “We’re enhancing our Relevant Mobile Advertising program in a way that can help marketers reach you with messages …” And here I thought privacy was defined as “the state or condition of being free from […]
Too Bad Burroughs Isn’t Around to See the Video
No words of mine needed. WILLIAM BURROUGHS – MALCOLM MC NEILL: AH POOK IS HERE AND THE CONTROL OF TIME TWO BOOKS from Malcolm Mc Neill on Vimeo. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Touring ‘Poetry Army’ Charts History of Radical Verse
A posting by the Stop the War Coalition: From The Peasants’ Revolt to recent events at Tahrir Square, this incendiary performance celebrates radical verse in all its glory down through the centuries. The longstanding collaboration between poet Heathcote Williams and performer Roy Hutchins, encompassing such hits as Whale Nation and Autogeddon, continues as Hutchins combines […]
50 Years Apart: ‘American Porn’ & ‘Call Me Burroughs’
The similarity was unintended, which makes it even better. The 1965 vinyl “Call Me Burroughs” is a classic.The 2014 vinyl “American Porn” will be.The 1965 vinyl “Call Me Burroughs” is a classic.The 2014 vinyl “American Porn” will be a classic.Here it is with a different sleeve. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
When War Criminals Fall in Love . . .
Bush and Blair: ‘Let’s go to war.’ ‘Let’s go to bed.’ Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox.Click to watch the video. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
‘Unstoppable’: On Dismantling the Corporate State
I’m a huge fan of Brian Lamb’s ‘Q & A’ on C-Span. Listening to Ralph Nader speak to Lamb last night about Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State, Nader’s new book, was typical of the broadcast’s educational brilliance. The discussion, or rather the story as Nader told it, of Nader’s “upbringing […]
‘People Power vs. Money Power’
Written by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox, with photos by Adrian Arbib. Professor Nanjunda’s Direct Actions “What India needs today is the Gandhian formula for progress, not the presence of the West which is interested in stealing our wealth.” This was Professor Nanjundaswamy’s war cry As he fended off corporate kleptocrats And […]
Echoes of Micheline and Norse at 16th and Valencia
The San Francisco poet Alejandro Murguía reads his poem ’16th and Valencia’ in this short video edited with footage from street protests against the recent killing of Alejandro Neito who was shot in his Bernal Heights neighborhood by the SFPD.” — Todd Swindell Alex Nieto from Juan Ruiz on Vimeo. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
‘American Porn’ on Vinyl LP, with CD
Heathcote Williams has recorded his poems “Mr. President,” “The United States of Porn,” “Forbidden Fruit, or The Cybernetic Apple Core,” and “Snuff Films at the White House.” “In their uncompromising nakedness they are CT scans of history.” [from JH liner notes] “All his work is deeply political. I think it’s informed not only by violent […]
William S. Burroughs: The Life, the Myth, the Influence
April 25, 2014 + Free and open to the public at The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 Fifth Ave. (at 34th Street) in Manhattan.+ 10:00 a.m. “Editing Burroughs” — John Bennett and Geoffrey Smith+ 11:00 a.m. “Burroughs and Literary Magazines” — Jed Birmingham, Charles Plymell, and Jan Herman +2:00 p.m. “Biography and Photography” — Barry Miles […]
Fatty Easter: Christopher Hitchens Would Be Chortling
Words by Heathcote Williams. Montage and narration by Alan Cox. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
They Made Rabelais Look Like a Church Picnic
Otto Petersen and George Dudley have died. The NYT has an obit for the ventriloquist, calling him “the Voice of Vulgarity.” But there is no separate obit for George, the foul-mouthed dummy who delivered all the tasteless lines that made audiences laugh or walk out. Margalit Fox, whose great lede I stole for my headline, […]
Hear That Clicking Sound? Listen to the ‘Cobalt Blues’
Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox.Click to listen.+In German folklore a kobold was a deadly sprite That inhabited mines and could live inside rock; Hunched and ugly it warned off human busybodies: It clicked, and it made an eerie, echoing knock. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Poet in ‘Orbit’: Sound & Sense Go ‘Round and ‘Round
Click to listen. by Hanne Lippard + Moonrise on Mars + Marsset on Sun + Sunset on Moon + Earthrise on Sun + Sunday at Noon + Sun sets at Dawn + Dawn dawns on Man + One man drowns + Man sits down + Gets nothing done + Dawn sits on Earth + Moonrise […]
Say It Ain’t So . . .
Last Bohemian Turns Out the Lights Clayton Patterson, Rebel and Photographer, Plans to Leave the Lower East Side for Europe EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
A Woman’s Point of View from a Tough-Guy Novelist
![Nelson Algren, 1962 [Photo: Steve Deutch]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Nelson-Algren-1962-Stephen-Deutch-copy-200x200.jpg)
There was no chance to note Nelson Algren’s birthday two days ago because ArtsJournal was taken down by hacker bots. But now that we’re back, herewith a belated blogpost to celebration of a novelist who had a reputation as a tough guy but who wrote with deep sensitivity about women.
‘Eating the Rich and Famous, or Celebrity Roadkill’
!['Eating the Rich' by Heathcote Williams [Cold Turkey Press, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/eating-the-rich-200x200.jpeg)
“Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.” — Thomas Jefferson, from his letters Words by Heathcote Williams. Montage and narration by Alan Cox. “I have been […]