Straight Up | Jan Herman

Here’s a story that might as well be satire because, if true, it’s so nefarious even Gore Vidal might not believe all the dots it connects among Arnold Schwarzenegger, Enron’s former CEO, Kenneth Lay, and the California energy rip-off. It’s also based on facts, unlike the tabloid tale in The Weekly World News headlined: “Alien […]

I see that Lloyd Grove, the new gossip columnist at the Daily News in New York, leads this morning with an item about Sammy Davis Jr. that “rips the zipper off the pint-size entertainer’s gigantic sexual appetites.” Oooh. And he got it all from Wil Haygood’s first-class biography “In Black and White,” just out from […]

By Jan Herman Have the chickens begun to roost? There probably wasn’t a pre-adolescent boy growing up in America in the immediate aftermath of World War II who didn’t mimick Adolf Hitler’s salute as a form of mockery during a game of King of the Hill or its equivalent. But “Little Adolf” Schwarzenegger was a […]

Language is alive and wriggling. Herr Doktor Professor Alan M. Edelson sends along this tale: A linguistics professor was explaining to his class how the use of the double negative varies in different languages. In English, the double negative results in a positive statement. This is not necessarily the case in other languages. But, he […]

Probably no one has more admiration for the poetry of W.B. Yeats, “the industrious adept of a batso mystical philosophy,” as Clive James puts it in the current issue of The Spectator, than Clive James. Reviewing a new book of Yeats scholarship, which he harpoons under the title

Am I the only one who finds the films in the seven-part series Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues getting progressively worse? I think the best film was Scorsese’s on the first night of the series. The rest — beginning with Wim Wenders’ — have been missed opportunities. Very dull, though I love the music. Here’s […]

South African writer J. M. Coetzee, who has long been on the short list for the Nobel Prize in Literature, won the award this time out. Soon after yesterday’s item was posted, betting on Philip Roth because of his Hollywood credentials, a reader sent this e-mail:“Roth? You think? With Naipaul in 2001, Roth tomorrow could […]

Is anybody taking bets on the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, to be announced tomorrow? Not being privy to the machinations of the 18-member Swedish Academy, I’d be willing to bet on Philip Roth largely because a star-studded movie of his 2001 novel, “The Human Stain,” is coming out later this month, and […]

So everybody’s suddenly catching up with our remarks a week ago about Harold Bloom’s fit of horror over Stephen King’s elevation into the ranks of the “distinguished” by the National Book Foundation. Here’s Steve Almond on the subject, yesterday in Mobylives. And here’s Our Girl in Chicago, filling in for fellow Arts Journal blogger Terry […]

The death of Elia Kazan at 94 calls up memories of political controversy, along with some of Hollywood’s greatest movies and Broadway’s greatest plays: “On the Waterfront,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Death of a Salesman,” to cite just three. Kazan’s detractors despised him as a man for “naming names” of alleged Communists in testimony before […]

The only existing scale model of the original World Trade Center twin towers has been “painstakingly restored” and is “on view in a darkened chamber at the American Architectural Foundation’s Octagon Museum” in Washington, Benjamin Forgey reports. “The visitor turns a corner at the second-floor landing of the Octagon’s elegant 18th-century stairwell, enters the room […]

Unlike 85,000 of my fellow New Yorkers, I stayed home last night to watch television instead of going to Central Park for the free concert by the Dave Mathews Band (scroll down for a video clip). I also missed the live Webcast of the concert (here’s the setlist), because I was busy clicking between the season premiere of […]

Now I get it. George W. Bush had a secret speech writer to help him with yesterday’s address to the U.N. — none other than the infallible, ineffable Dr. Pangloss. The New York Times suggested as much this morning in its lead editorial, describing the address on the surface at least as “a Panglossian report on how well […]

Shush. A minute of silence, please. President Bush is speaking at this moment to the U.N. General Assembly about the so-called liberation of Iraq, known as Shrub’s Folly by many U.S. government officials who prefer to remain anonymous so as to not lose their jobs. Postscript: His speech has just ended. “Across Iraq,” he said, “life is being improved by liberty. … […]

Harold Bloom is still fuming over the National Book Foundation’s decision to bestow an award on horrormeister Stephen King for his “distinguished contribution” to letters. By that measure, Bloom harrumphs, J.K. Rowling ought to get the Nobel Prize. As far as he’s concerned, “there are four living American novelists” — and only four — “who […]

What can you say about awards shows that hasn’t already been said? After watching part of the Emmys last night, I decided the best way to enjoy my TV was to turn it off and open a book called “The Crystal Bucket,” a collection of British TV reviews of the 1970s by Clive James. You’d think […]

Here in Gotham City, this is the weekend of The New Yorker Festival. It’s been a lot of fun before, though you’d never know it from this not-very-engaging slide show of previous fests. Will somebody please clue The New Yorker folks into the technological wonders of the Web? They make the party look dull, like snapshots from a rumpus […]