Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Artist Bronzes Writer’s Life and Work in a Store Window

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The German artist Vera Bonsen has a window assemblage currently on display in a Heidelberg storefront that bronzes the life and writings of the American expatriate poet Cody Maher. The paper hangings consist of poems, diaries, photos and so on from 30 years’ worth of manuscripts. The artifacts include hats, a pair of boxing gloves, […]

A Spanking New German Edition of ‘Royal Babylon’

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And now if you just care to look this way … it’s bi-lingual, too. The dark side of the English royal family From the publisher: Did you know that Queen Elizabeth II is the largest landowner in the world? She owns 10 times more land than the recently deceased King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The […]

Carl Weissner Gets Stellar Notice in Book Podcast

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In his latest podcast at realitystudio.org Jed Birmingham zeroes in on the immensely talented Carl Weissner and his cut-up novel The Braille Film. Birmingham, who met Weissner in New York and Paris, talks about what made him so memorable and how he bought the book at auction some years ago for $75, believing it and […]

Of Poetry and Fakery, Cultural Theft, and Stolen Identity

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The title of Heathcote Williams’s memoir, Of Dylan Thomas and his Deaths, reflects the author’s belief that the great Welsh poet died not once but twice. He writes, “It can be said that he was to suffer no less than two deaths at American hands.” The first death, contrary to the accepted claim that he […]

A New Literary Memoir Recalls Dylan Thomas

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See update. A few weeks ago I remarked that Of Dylan and his Deaths, by Heathcote Williams, was so rich in the author’s personal history and “so evocative of his first inspiration, Dylan Thomas,” that it merited attention as a masterpiece of literary investigation. (The investigative aspect of the essay involves Williams’s indignation over “the […]

Burroughs Makes Inroads, But What About Algren?

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The British have always shown a serious interest in William Burroughs, evidenced by the fact that the most authoritative Burroughs scholars are or have been Brits such as Eric Mottram, Oliver Harris, and Ian MacFayden, for three examples, and that the most authoritative Burroughs biography, Call Me Burroughs, was written by another Brit, Barry Miles. […]

Algren to Get the Literary Biography He Deserves

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The Leon Levy Center for Biography has awarded fellowships worth $60,000 each to four writers who are currently working on new biographies. One of them is Colin Asher, whose tentatively titled biography of Nelson Algren, But Never a Lovely So Real, is under contract to W. W. Norton & Company. The other recipients are Blake […]

realitystudio.org Launches Jed Birmingham’s Podcast

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I am STAGGERED! Of course I would be, for obvious reasons. Did I say I want this embedded in my headstone? Click to listen. It is utterly, inescapably humbling. The really wonderful thing about JB’s devotion to books as artifacts is the way he appreciates them as mysteries and teases out their hidden meanings. This […]

Sinclair Beiles: Poet of Many Parts and Places

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Dyehard Press has re-issued Who Was Sinclair Beiles? in a revised and expanded edition. I posted an item about the first edition when it was published five years ago. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed. As I wrote then, Beiles was best known for his association with the Beats. He collaborated on […]

Row, Row, Row Your Boat … Across the Ocean Blue

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They call themselves the “Coxless Crew,” and they’re planning to row across the Pacific from San Francisco to Cairns, Australia. Their goal, besides surviving the voyage, is to raise £250,000 for two favorite charities “Walking With the Wounded” and “Breast Cancer Care,” and to show women across the globe that they can do anything they […]

‘Fugitive Literature’: Granary Books Has Done the Deed

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Here’s what happened: I was invited to speak about “little magazines and William S. Burroughs” on a panel with Jed Birmingham and Charles Plymell at the 2014 Burroughs Centennial Conference hosted in New York City by the Center for the Humanities. After my talk, Steve Clay came up to me and asked to publish what […]

I Remember Oriana Fallaci . . .

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You hear a lot about Michel Houellebecq these days. You don’t hear much about Oriana Fallaci. She once was more controversial than Houellebecq for her blistering scorn of Islam and Muslims. Mark Lilla has a big piece, Slouching Toward Mecca, in the current New York Review of Books about Houellebecq’s latest novel, Soumission, which as […]

A Savoyard’s First Brush With Censorship

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Have a look at this Kickstarter campaign: Savoy Books is an independent publishing house based above a locksmith shop in the South Manchester district of Didsbury, founded and run by Michael Butterworth and David Britton. In 1989 they published Lord Horror, the last book to be banned in the UK under the 1959 Obscene Publications […]

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