The last time I saw Burt Britton it must have been more than 20 years ago. He simply disappeared. I’m not sure why. He told me, as I gather he told others, that if I ever wanted to contact him I could dial a special phone number, which he spelled out for me as MEL […]

The book that made William S. Burroughs famous and established his reputation as a writer of the blackest satire since Swift is to be celebrated on its 50th anniversary with readings, films, photographs, panel discussions, scholarly papers, and performances. Four days of events in New York are to begin Oct. 7 at the Poetry Project […]

Protestors: You Lie! You Lie! Click for video. Bill Moyers: They came from all over the country to register their opposition to President Obama and big government. … Max Blumenthal, reporter: Who do you think is more dangerous, Al Quaeda or Obama? Protestor: Obama. Reporter: Obama’s more dangerous than Osama? Protestor: Absolutely. Reporter: Why? Protester: […]

When the Bus Crashes, Does the Driver Get a Bonus? If you see an apter headline, please rush & phone us. — Leon Freilich And so, belatedly, we turn to U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, a former criminal prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer with a reputation as “one of the top jurists on the topic […]

Just as she did last month, she has published the best op-ed read of the day, this time with an assist from Dedrick Muhammad. Their lede asks, “What do you get when you combine the worst economic downturn since the Depression with the first black president?” And answers: A surge of white racial resentment, loosely […]

Bulletin: Copyright Office Assails Google’s Settlement on Digital Books SAN FRANCISCO — The nation’s top copyright official made a blistering attack Thursday on a controversial legal settlement that would let Google create a huge online library and bookstore. Now hear this from Techdirt: Complaints Against Google Book Scanning Project Reach Ridiculous Levels A friend who […]

It goes up again tonight.

This comes from an internist. He has had a primary care practice in the New York metropolitan area for more than 20 years. For obvious reasons, he asks to remain anonymous. I’ve met him and can vouch for his identity. Right now, I have dropped my participation in every insurance plan except Medicare. I can […]

Watch President Obama reiterate his belief in the health care public option just a couple of months ago. “Those ain’t lies. Those are campaign promises.” — William Demarest, in Hail the Conquering Hero. Postscript: Obama’s Trust Problem EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

$80 billion of WHAT? EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Oughta put the cost of U.S. healthcare reform into perspective.Reform would cost $900 billion to $1 trillion over the next 10 years.Which does the American majority prefer — taking lives or saving lives? Consider this trade-off: Taxpayers in New York City, where I live, will pay $30.6 billion for total war spending in Iraq and […]

I know, because I live in one, and I’m doing fine. I haven’t been arrested for jaywalking, littering, loitering, begging, or sleeping under a bridge. I haven’t been arrested for sleeping in a homeless shelter when there’s an outstanding warrant against me for sleeping on a suburban sidewalk. I haven’t been arrested for being someone […]

So I’m reading a Christian Science Monitor article recommended by a friend as “wonderful writing” — A day of reckoning for Bush’s ‘torture’ lawyers, by Ronald Sokol — and I think, Yup, clean, clear, an excellent summary of all that’s been said before many times in many places. But when he writes, “To regain its […]

Our old amigo has written a stunning new book, Death in Paris, which realitystudio.org has just posted online. It’s wild. The epigraph (from Raymond Chandler) sets the tone: “There must be idealism, but there must also be contempt.” Weissner begins with an “Establishing Shot” … He woke at 3 AM. Dim yellow light filled the […]

Jed Birmingham discusses the importance of little magazines to William Burroughs and their role in the publication and reception of Naked Lunch. The video was recorded in Paris on July 3, 2009, at the Naked Lunch@50 conference sponsored by the University of London Institute. The conference marked the original publication of Burroughs’s book by the […]

For the 50th anniversary celebration of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, which begins any minute now — it’s scheduled for July 1-3 at the University of London Institute in Paris — have a look at the cover of the original edition brought out in 1959 by French publisher Maurice Girodias’s Olympia Press. Have a look, […]

He died earlier this week in San Francisco just short of his 93rd birthday. I met him on a bitterly cold winter day in Paris, in 1962. I was keeping warm sitting in a seedy little cafe behind the Carrefour de l’Odeon. It was a neighborhood hangout where you could buy pot and waste your […]