![Norman Mailer [Chicago Sun-Times, 1984]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Norman-Mailer-copy-200x200.jpg)
I’m no policy wonk on Russia and neither was Norman Mailer. But the crisis in the Ukraine and an article in today’s New York Times about the impact of thinning ranks of Russia experts on U.S. policy reminded me of remarks Mailer once made about the former Soviet Union, as though he were an expert. […]
‘Clapping Music,’ Talking Music, and a ‘Mallet Quartet’
Steve Reich has been called “our greatest living composer” by a New York Times critic. Was that hyperbole or just ink-stained enthusiasm? Listening to a performance of Reich’s “Mallet Quartet” a few nights ago at the CUNY Graduate Center (followed by his conversation with New York magazine’s music critic Justin Davidson), I understood why Reich […]
Music for Organ, With Encore for Bosendorfer Pianos
A friend of mine, Ben Schot, sent a photo he recently took of the Brooklyn-born minimalist composer and performance artist Charlemagne Palestine (born Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine, or Charles Martin) and his daughter Puck, a student at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. “He used to live in Rotterdam for a couple of years […]
Charley Plymell Tells and Shows in Strings of Emails
Charley Plymell’s long, seemingly endless strings of emails are fascinating to read. He has known so many Beat writers and artists and has popped up in so many places with them that I can’t help thinking of him — half in wonder and half in disbelief — as the Zelig of the Beat Generation. Unlike […]
SOS: An American Poet Is Waiting to Be Rescued
Cody Maher, expat American poet and world traveler living in Heidelberg, writes in an email message that he was sitting around “watching countries go to the dogs feeding the people nothing but lies” when it occurred to him that “the only safe place one day might be international waters.” This must have been before the […]
‘Burroughs in London’ by Heathcote Williams
Now that the Burroughs centenary has moved into high gear, it suddenly dawned on Heathcote Williams that he’d known the man on and off for more than half a century.
Barbie Duz Her Thang in the New York Times, Oh Yeah
![This Barbie Doll ad showed up in the New York Times this morning. Prominently positioned in the A-section on page 7. [Feb. 18, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/BARBIE-ad-NYT-2-18-2014-640-200x200.jpg)
‘The strenuous exertions of this copywriter sweating blood to extract meaning from airy plastic nothings made me quite breathless.’ — Heathcote Williams
Two New Poster Cards from Cold Turkey Press
!['An Iron Fish Rusts' by Malcolm Ritchie [Cold Turkey Press, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IRON-FISH-RUSTS-Ritchie-1x-200x200.jpg)
Just in: ‘An Iron Fish Rusts’ and ‘The Condition’
The Poet Sinclair Beiles Spoke of Being ‘Dispossessed’
![Sinclair Beiles 'Dispossessed' [Cold Turkey Press]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1-Sinclairs-Dispossessed-640-200x200.jpg)
Last week I took an astral trip. I left my body and cavorted about the universe. I needed a rest. It’s tiresome living in the same body all the time I needed a change of scene. I was very careful. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
It’s a Day for Taking Your Valentine’s Pick or Prick . . .
There’s the Valentine Victorian … … and then there’s the Valentine Mustillian. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
When Excessive Rudeness Pays Off
Something worth remembering … The Buddha and the Pork Chop Apparently the Buddha met his end Thanks to an excessive degree of politeness. Though he was vegetarian, someone prepared him a meal And the Buddha felt obliged to eat what he’d been offered. Due to its being a bad pork chop, the Buddha died. Clearly […]
William ‘Cody’ Maher: ‘Nightmare Entering the Country’
Border security and immigration are so much in the news these days that my staff of thousands was desperate for comic relief. Then this scenario came over the transom from Cody Maher. Bingo!
‘The Intercept’ Launch: Whistleblowers Welcomed
This is not a Wanted! poster, but it might as well be. You can be sure these journalists are or will be targeted by intelligence officials. The Intercept is a whistleblowing enterprise created by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras. The site was launched today by First Look Media. Our short-term mission is limited […]
Personal History: My Father Was a New York Cabbie
!['An Angel Rides Disguised as Cabbie' by Gabriel Pressman [New York World Telegram & Sun, ca. 1952 -'53]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Angel-Rides-Disguised-as-Cabbie-NY-World-Telegram-Sun-52-or-53-copy-200x200.jpg)
My father drove a cab at night. This was the early 1950s. A Brooklyn-born New Yorker, he knew the city’s streets the way a junky knows his veins. I thought of him because of a headline in today’s New York Times: American-Born Cabbies Are a Vanishing Breed in New York. Dad also knew doormen, theater […]
You Are There: Where Burroughs Once Lived in Mexico City
In more than 50 years not much had changed. Although the narrow street had been gentrified and renamed, the “run-down white apartment building” was still there looking like time had stood still for it.
A Poem by Heathcote Williams: ‘It’s a Barbie World, or …’
Walter Benjamin said, ‘There is no cultural document / That’s not at the same time a record of barbarism…’
Centennial Conference on Life & Myth of William Burroughs
William S. Burroughs was born 100 years ago today. A centennial conference will be held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as part of a month-long WSB@100 Festival in April. The conference, sponsored by The Center for Humanities, “will explore the life and myth of one of the most innovative […]