Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Some Got Plenty and Some Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’

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Five years after the Wall Street crash of 1929, George Gershwin wrote what he called a “banjo song” for “Porgy and Bess.” It turned into “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’” with lyrics by Edwin DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. The second verse goes like this: De folks wid plenty o’ plenty Got a lock on […]

Burroughs Central This Is Not

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Anyone who thinks this blog is Burroughs Central has no idea. The fact is, I’m just skimming. The real Burroughs Central is RealityStudio, where the true aficionados congregate for deep postings by Jed Birmingham’s Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker. For example, he recently made the case that le maître’s cut-ups in the mimeo mags of […]

Kick That Habit? Bellaart Does Burroughs

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This pencil drawing of William S. Burroughs by Gerard Bellaart is one of two portraits. It’s the introspective Burroughs. The other drawing, a charcoal sketch to be posted soon, catches Burroughs in a wholly different state of mind, as if possessed by the Ugly Spirit that Burroughs believed had dogged him throughout his life. The […]

About That Remarkable Surge for Charlie

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I’ve noticed that the “Je suis Charlie” phenomenon has come in for rightwing contempt. The argument goes that it’s self-righteous to claim you stand with the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo when all you do is gather in the street and carry signs. There’s some truth to that, especially when it comes to politicians. But I’ve […]

Posting a Cold Turkey Card While Paris Burns

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By way of explanation, I was occupied searching for word pattern. Found a rangy young man whose authority was roughly 50 words retyped in columns from the beginning more habit-forming than his life. He hunkered across the columns and typed them again. Undsoweiter … And now for R. Crumb’s pièce de résistance:

‘Death in Paris’ Struck Prescient Note

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Apropos today’s headline about the hacked U.S. CENTCOM Twitter Account . . . a friend was looking over our late amigo Carl Weissner’s “Doomsday Lit” novel Death in Paris. Boy, is that title apt. Not to mention the chapter headings. How about this one? >im in ur base killin ur d00dz

We Are All Charlie Now

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As many as 100,000 people gathered across France, according to Agence France-Presse. The crowds expressed their solidarity against the Charlie Hebdo attack. At least 35,000 Parisians, by one estimate, gathered at La Place de la République. They were silent at first, then began to sing: “Charlie! Charlie!” “We are Charlie!” “Free expression!” Cartoonists are having […]

Incidental Intelligence: A Portrait of William Burroughs

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I once asked Nelson Algren what he thought of Naked Lunch. He grinned at me, as though he were being entertained by a wiseguy. I knew he had no love for the Beats. He had derided Jack Kerouac as a momma’s boy and dismissed Allen Ginsberg as a publicist. So his answer surprised me: “Burroughs […]

Music Theater: ‘Street Scene for the Last Mad Soprano’

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This performance was recorded in Taos, New Mexico, in September 2014. The piece had its world premiere in Germany at Theater K-9, in Konstanz, in 1996. Abbie Conant, Soprano & Trombone / William Osborne, Music Text and Video From William Osborne’s brief description: Imagine a singer living among the dumpsters behind the Met. Tomorrow is […]

Last Call for the Burroughs Cut/Up Show

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The materials in this centenary exhibition are drawn from Emory University’s Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a collection of rare books, chapbooks, little magazines, journals, broadsides, audio recordings, manuscripts, and visual art from all over the world. Assembled by collector Raymond Danowski over 25 years, the collection is thought to have been the largest poetry library […]

Everyone Is Thinking About the Cops

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Aw gee! David Brooks says “not enough attention is being paid to the emotional and psychological challenges of being a cop.” Such fragile flowers they are. I recall that William Burroughs gave it some thought back in 1968 when Flower Power was in bloom: “The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to […]

Dear Cannibals, Have a Sweet Thanksgiving

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Our delicious 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 wanted to add a sweetener, something like cranberry sauce, to this year’s celebration of gratitude. Here ‘tiz: Words by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox.

‘Anatomy of Violence,’ a Prophetic Blast from the Past

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An article in the Washington Post declares that the riots in Ferguson have been “the most significant explosions of racial frustration since the election of the nation’s first black president, and so Ferguson forced the country out of the fantasy that America had entered a ‘post-racial’ era.” I’m not sure who really entertained that fantasy […]

The Reviews Are In: How Many Tomatoes for ‘Algren’?

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I took a survey of viewers who saw “Algren,” the new documentary that recently had its world premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival. Here’s what they said: Reviewer #1: Really interesting and fast-paced. It gives me a great sense of the guy without being pious. I’m unsure about the kitschy style. The fast edits […]

Desktopfun: Boo-hooray’s Burroughs Cut/Up Show

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Boo-Hooray, in collaboration with Emory University, is presenting a William S. Burroughs centenary exhibition dedicated to the Cut-Up technique. On view will be hand-edited typescript drafts from the Nova Trilogy, rarely seen publications like the mimeographed newsletter The Burrough and the Sigma Portfolio, alongside correspondence with Brion Gysin, vinyl releases, as well as the original […]

Long-Awaited ‘Algren’ Bows at Chicago Film Festival

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Is this Nelson Algren’s moment? If it is, I don’t think he’d give a damn — not personally — considering he’s gone and how long ago that was. I also don’t think he’d appreciate what has become a cliché of the Algren myth — the forgotten writer. Sure, he’s forgotten. Most writers are. And of […]

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