Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Carl Weissner: ‘Always These Nightmares . . .’

by

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 . . .’

by

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 […]

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

by

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 […]

Cartoon Artist Kate Evans Does Rosa Luxemburg

by

I notice that the NYT Sunday Book Review’s not-so-special “Special Issue” on graphic books (Oct. 18) makes no mention of ‘Red Rosa’ by Kate Evans, forthcoming from Verso (Nov. 3). My tireless staff of thousands decided to right that wrong. Kate Evans, aka Cartoon Kate, is no ordinary biographer. Her in-depth account of the socialist […]

A Blistering Attack on Wall Street — and Not Only That

by

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

by

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 […]

LARB Video Interview: Miles on William S. Burroughs

by

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: […]

From Fleet Street to Biafra . . . and to MI6

by

When I interviewed Frederick Forsyth in 1982, he spoke about his time as a BBC correspondent in Biafra during the late 1960s. He had predicted a genocidal race war there, but his editors didn’t want to hear about it. This led to his departure from Fleet Street and a two-year odyssey as a freelance reporter […]

John Lennon Sang It: ‘Imagine there’s no countries …’

by

Posted at “Stop the War coalition”: For the first time in the post-World War II era, more than 50 million people are on the move — as refugees, asylum-seekers or internally displaced. They are mostly fleeing wars and upheaval of the West’s making. Instead of building walls and fences to keep them out, imagine there […]

Whose Side Are They On? Not Nelson Algren’s

by

It doesn’t take much for headline writers, editorialists, reporters, columnists, sports writers, what have you, to grab the reader’s attention with a catchy phrase. Some phrases have become such favorites that you see them used over and over. But I would bet that in plenty of cases the journalists who make use of them don’t […]

Islam’s Pashtun Warrior for Peace: Badshah Khan

by

Heathcote Williams is not a Muslim and finds the Koran “about as enjoyable as eating gravel.” But his belief in, and devotion to, the “Muslim Ghandi” led him to write a book-length investigative poem Badshah Khan: Islamic Peace Warrior, published in June by the London-based Thin Man Press. It is one of Williams’s best polemics […]

Tibet Comes to Taos at ‘Enchanted Mountain’ Salon

by

The composer Andrea Clearfield will present her Tibetan Recording Project at the Enchanted Mountain Performance Space in downtown Taos, New Mexico, next Sunday, Aug. 30. It’s free and open to the public. (See details of time and place.) “Clearfield’s orchestral and choral works have been performed around the world,” according to an advance program note. […]

Time Capsule: Algren, Burroughs, Mailer, et al . . .

by

UPDATE The Z Collection is available for ordering on line. My staff of thousands insisted on a plug for me: The Z Collection: Portraits & Sketches — my reflections on many of the writers and artists I have known, worked with, or written about — is being published by AC Books in New York in […]

A Little-Known Master Artist’s ‘Uncollected’ Works

by

The pages of Uncollected illustrate the variety of the artworks that a little-known master artist produced over the years. Most of the pieces have appeared in scattered places but have never been collected in one place — thus the title. Norman O. Mustill, who died in 2013, also produced many other works that haven’t been […]

‘Outside In’: Clayton Patterson at the Howl Gallery

by

Now that ​A​i Weiwei has his passport back, ​will he​ ​​make it to New York in time to catch Clayton Patterson’s art exhibition, “​O​utside In”? Ai says he’s heading to Berlin, and he’s planning shows of his own in London. Since ‘Outside In” at the Howl Gallery runs only through mid-August, chances are he won’t […]

‘Freedom Is a Career’ — Obituary for Mike Lesser

by

By Heathcote Williams His approach to life and politics was fueled by emotion rather than the twisted logic of compliance. Finding himself born into an era when life on earth seemed daily–and increasingly–under threat, Mike Lesser’s logic was visceral. Other Angry Young Men long ago may have mellowed and somehow come to terms with a […]

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog