‘… and yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?’
The end of the dismal year 2023 brings Hamlet’s soliloquy to mind.
Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
“Four hundred years ago yesterday saw the first printing of one of the great wonders of the literary world: Shakespeare’s First Folio. Published in 1623, seven years after he died, it was the first printed edition of the collected plays. Without this achievement, half of Shakespeare’s dramatic work would have been lost.” — Folio 400
by Jan Herman
It is widely acknowledged that Shakespeare lacked a university education — there is no record of it — unlike his contemporaries or near-contempories, such as Marlowe, Greene, Jonson, Nashe, Beaumont, Fletcher, so forth. Despite that, he was a greater writer than any of them, and pilfering was part of his toolkit. As Anthony Burgess notes in his biography of Shakespeare, he not only took plots and stories for his plays — this too is widely acknowledged — but also “filched” entire passages (plagiarized them, if you will) and in the process improved them immeasurably.
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
“A visionary prophetic book written when the Hippies and Yippies were dissolving the Sixties, which didn’t give us the political and social change needed . . . Pélieu saw Céline’s words become the reality: ‘The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don’t go to war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy’.”— Charles Plymell
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
On Sept. 11, 2023, from a perch above the East River you could see a skywide rainbow over New York City. On Sept. 18, from the same perch, you could see U.S. Coast Guard boats patrolling the East River as part of extensive security put in place for the opening of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
by Jan Herman
. . . the double rainbow over New York City on 9/11/2023 was a good sign. Even if you don’t believe in them, this was wondrous to see. My amateur video was taken from Manhattan overlooking the East River, the 59th Street bridge (since renamed, but never mind), and Roosevelt Island. Too bad the colors are washed out. The real thing was much more impressive. I’ve searched the daily NY newspapers to see whether they ran a photo or a video. Only the NY Post took note here with a video less complete than this one. Another amateur video appeared on TikTok and racked up 6 million views. Television broadcasts also took note. I can’t believe a professional photographer somewhere in the city didn’t capture this in what used to be called “living color.”
by Jan Herman
by Jan Herman
“Cut Up or Shut Up” was an experiment that grew out of Carl Weissner’s “The Braille Film” and a cut-up text by the two of us, “The Louis Project,” both published by the Nova Broadcast Press in 1970. To put the stamp of approval on our effort, so to speak, we asked William Burroughs for a text to use perhaps as a foreword. As far as I know, Burroughs never did say whether he approved. But we took his contribution for an implicit endorsement.
an ArtsJournal blog