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Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

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GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
Peter Baker & Susan Glasser on James A. Baker III, with Kai Bird

January 5, 2021 by Jan Herman

“For a quarter-century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency without the help of James A. Baker III or ran the White House without his advice. Now two major political journalists, Peter Baker (of The New York Times) and Susan Glasser (of The New Yorker) have written ‘The Man Who Ran Washington,’ a definitive, page-turning biography of the power broker whose impact was unmatched when Washington ran the world and who influenced America’s destiny for generations. The authors join in a discussion with Kai Bird, executive director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography.”

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The Holy Grail of the Beat Generation
Neal Cassady: ‘The Joan Anderson Letter’

November 24, 2020 by Jan Herman

When Jack Kerouac read Neal Cassady’s spontaneous rush of words, he claimed it was more alive than any piece of writing he had ever seen. In its effusive style, its freewheeling candor, its Proustian (yes, Proustian!) introspection, the letter touched off a response in Kerouac that reshaped entirely his own approach to writing. The result was an explosion of “road” novels, beginning with “On the Road,” in which Cassady is renamed Dean Moriarity and seen as nothing less than “the root, the soul” of Beat legend.

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GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
The Science of Superheroes

November 10, 2020 by Jan Herman

FREE ONLINE EVENT: “The pop-culture universe of superheroes is filled with extraordinary humans and abilities. Captain America, the Hulk, and Black Panther seem to lie firmly in the realm of fantasy, but the technology behind them might not be as farfetched as we think. In his book ‘The Science of Marvel,’ Sebastian Alvarado shows that, using quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and mechanical engineering, we can find real-world parallels to superpowers such as ‘spidey sense’ and Thor’s lightning. He speaks with Shane Campbell-Staton, host of the podcast ‘The Biology of Superheroes,’ about where the science meets the fiction.” — GC Presents

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Free Online Event / Friday / Oct. 30 / 12 p.m.
Bend Your Mind: Artificial Intelligence and Art

October 29, 2020 by Jan Herman

“Today’s computers compose music that sounds “more Bach than Bach” and turn photographs into paintings in the style of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” They also write screenplays. But are algorithms truly creative—or are they merely tools to be used by musicians, artists, and writers?” — Creative GC: Art and Science Connect

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This Side of Grub Street

July 13, 2020 by Jan Herman

Readers wanted to know all about their celebrities, or at least about my encounters with them. From A-listers and B-listers right down to Z-listers. The whole stupid alphabet top to bottom. Names to be forgotten one day. They needed the publicity and I needed the job. I wasn’t a star fucker—I’ll say that, having come from the newsroom with no more interest in celebrities than any routine reporter. I was a stand-in for star fuckers.​

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Genes of Irish Genius in ‘Blooming Molly Malone’

June 4, 2020 by Jan Herman

A friend writes: A little re-Joyceing in this wee lonesome blooming Molly Malone. You can hear the genes of Irish genius in the DNABC of this little clamourer. You feel she’s on the verge of channelling Beckett, Behan, O’Casey, O’Brien, Yeats et al, at any moment. A true antidote to popery and nunnery, and the cold, cold kiss of Covid. A little four-leaf clover complaining from beneath the cloven hoof of parental devilry. She must have been fed Guinness in the womb, there’s so much blarney in her tongue. Man, you feel she possesses such alchemical witchery, she could eat Covid, and shit it out the other end as an emerald. A rare little island of hope.

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For Carl Weissner’s Would-Be 80th

June 3, 2020 by Jan Herman

Coming on June 16th: “Death in Marseille,” the last words of Arthur Rimbaud as imagined by Carl Weissner. To be published in a limited handmade edition designed by Gerard Bellaart, and translated and edited from the German by Keith Seward & Jan Herman.

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Memento Mori

April 19, 2020 by Jan Herman

snow again today / and the wind / came like a freight train / then blue sky

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On Zen Arse-Wiping in the Shitstorm

March 21, 2020 by Jan Herman

A friend writes from Scotland: “As to Zen arse-wipes.  While I was up in a Zen temple in the mountains around Takayama, it fell to me to be the one who had to clean the shit off the wooden slipway that carried the fecal prayers of monks into a dark and forbidding hole (not unlike […]

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TLS Review: Brion Gysin Let the Mice In (and More)

February 13, 2020 by Jan Herman

‘Brion Gysin Let the Mice In’ is a key collaborative work. it represents those late 1950s to early 1960s years when Beat writing met European experimentalism. The most sophisticated intelligence of the Beat Generation was permanently affect.

Gysin is a lucid and witty writer. He gives glimpses of Burroughs at the moment when ‘Naked Lunch’ was being edited for Olympia Press — as he “ranted through the gargantuan roles of Doc Benway, A.J., Clem & Jody,” or as a drug addict, “through the shadows from one pharmacia to another, hugging a bottle of paregoric … his raincoat glinting like the underbelly of a shark.”

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It’s That Time of Year . . .

December 23, 2019 by Jan Herman

. . . when it seems that everybody is looking back over their shoulder more with nostalgia than disgust. I am not immune. Scrolling through some old emails, I came across this one called “from NELSON ALGREN’S LETTERS TO RAJAH.” Rajah was Roger Groening, a friend of Nelson’s and later of mine. Roger died in 2015. I think of him often. He and Nelson became friends, initially by mail, when Roger wrote him a fan letter. They remained friends for some 20 years until Nelson’s death, in 1981.

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Do Brits Love Obituaries or Poetry—or What?

November 23, 2019 by Jan Herman

Hard to believe, but there it is, Your Obituary Is Waiting, listed at #10 this morning in Amazon UK’s top-seller ranking of obituary books. Which goes to show that Amazon’s rankings are, among other things, ridiculous. My “deformed sonnets” are poems not obituaries. But if British readers don’t complain, why should I? The book is also listed at #272 in its “American poetry” ranking. Which might indicate that Amazon UK hasn’t gone totally nuts—except that when I consider the lack of sales of even one copy of the book in either category both lists make as much sense as Donald Trump.

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Drugs. Guns. Sex. Religion. Politics. Wealth. Fame.

October 8, 2019 by Jan Herman

It’s hard to believe that whoever pasted up these posters did not also rip them up. Hats off to the artist. Found dé-collage in midtown Manhattan. Photographed on the northwest corner of East 47th Street and Third Avenue.

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Poetry Beyond Words

October 2, 2019 by Jan Herman

Words are at the heart and soul of poetry . . . They give a poem shape & substance. . . . So what is poetry beyond words?

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‘If I Die Ahead of Time . . .

May 9, 2019 by Jan Herman

'Ticket to New Jersey: A Portrait of Nelson Algren' by Jan Herman

Nelson Algren died 38 years ago today. The staff here hasn’t forgot. Hi, Nelson.

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A Silent Elegy in Motion

March 14, 2019 by Jan Herman

Click to watch the names coalesce.

Have a look at this collective headstone for “the 1,337 journalists killed in the line of duty since 1992.” Watch their names coalesce on screen into the image you see here. It is a silent elegy in motion that makes it pure poetry.

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Far Out Wasn’t Far Enough

February 12, 2019 by Jan Herman

The artist Tomi Ungerer has died at the age of 87. He was “a lifelong activist who protested against racial segregation, the Vietnam war and the election of US President Donald Trump . . .” Speaking about himself as an artist, Ungerer said, “I have the full respect of a piece of white paper, which I then shall rape with my drawing or my writing. When I draw, it’s the real me.”

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Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

Books ‘n’ Stuff

Moloko Print has published a bilingual edition of Your Obituary Is Waiting, a cycle of "deformed sonnets." The German translations are by Gregor Pott. … [Read More...]

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