Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Algren Actually Had Some Hope for Kerouac, at First

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Anyone interested in Nelson Algren’s opinion of Jack Kerouac would get the impression from an item I posted several years ago that he was less than enamoured of him. Which would be accurate. After all, the item — about Algren’s indelible review of Kerouac’s 1965 novel Desolation Angels — was titled “The Beats Left Algren […]

Chris Burden Saved From the ‘Clutches of History’

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Roberta Smith really digs the Chris Burden show at the New Museum. “Extreme Measures” is not only “a superb survey, but also a kind of transfiguration,” she writes in her NY Times review. “It liberates the Los Angeles-based Mr. Burden from the clutches of history.” I’m uncertain of what she means by the “clutches of […]

Two Poe Shows — One at the Morgan, One on Paper

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Not being a Poe man myself, I asked a friend who happens to be an avid Poe man, how he would describe him. His reply — “The best writer, the best bad writer, America ever produced” — was pretty much a capsule preview of Charles McGrath’s excellent feature in this morning’s NY Times about the […]

Heathcote Williams: ‘My Dad and My Uncle’

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Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. Written upon learning that WWI centenary Remembrance plans are to be given £50 million by the UK government.— BBC News, 11 October 2012 My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One. At least they were in it, but not in it: Conscripted but […]

Sight Unseen, a Plug for Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Visitors’

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2002: “Naqoyqatsi,” meaning “life as war,” was the third in Reggio’s qatsi trilogy. 1988: “Powaqqatsi,” meaning “life in transformation,” was the second. 1982: “Koyaanisqatsi,” meaning “life out of balance,” was the first. Reggio’s latest, “Visitors,” with another score by Philip Glass, will be released in 2014. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

19th-Century Balzac Meets 20th-Century Bellaart

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Gerard Bellaart’s masterly washed-pen drawing of Honoré de Balzac testifies to his great admiration for one of France’s most prodigious writers. He is particularly fond of the 19th-century Balzac novel Illusions perdues, about a young poet living in Angoulême, a provincial town in “France profonde,” who is desperate to make a name for himself in […]

Get Your Megadeath ‘Fun Stuff’ Here

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Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. The National Atomic Museum ‘Hiroshima bomb earrings for sale’ Katherine Butler and Fiona Bell, London: The Independent, 6 August, 1999 In the National Atomic Museum At Albuquerque, New Mexico, You can buy souvenirs of ‘Little Boy’, The bomb that demolished Hiroshima, And of ‘Fat Man’, […]

Nanos Valaoritis: On Language and Poetry

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At 92 / Nanos in his element / his element the world / his world the words / his words a philosopher’s. Here’s a poem of his — “Endless Crucifixion” — from the late-20th century. This is from the entry about him in Wikipedia: Nanos Valaoritis (Greek: Νάνος Βαλαωρίτης; born July 5, 1921) is one […]

New Arrival: Ira Cohen’s From Journey West

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Sea Urchin Editions maestro Ben Schot writes: The summer of 1975 was hot. A heatwave of eighteen consecutive days singed Western Europe and turned its capitals into seething cauldrons. Ira Cohen landed on the soft tarmac of Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, in August — his mind still filled with the opiate clouds over Kathmandu, […]

Seamus Heaney, R.I.P.

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Seamus Heaney died today Fred just told me. that leaves very few of his caliber. attached an anatomical study as a sign of respect. the drawing was on the desktop when Fred brought me the sad news. I have mailed you the ‘stone from delphi’ which really sums up the poet and man. small precious […]

He Had a Dream, But His Speech Was Hardly Noticed

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Given all the self-congratulation of the 50th anniversary celebration marking the historic significance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, you’d think its importance had been noted at the time, especially by the news media. Well, Jess Bravin has news for you. The day before King gave the speech on the steps […]

‘No Borders’

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‘The grass is greener when there are no sides.’ — Heathcote Williams Click for video. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Why Some of the Best Journalists Jam the Media

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This comment from William Osborne, in response to Surveillance Without Just Cause, deserves its own post: Most Americans no longer care if they are being spied on by their government. We live in a society so transparent they already feel they have no meaningful secrets left. Through social conditioning, government becomes an almost aestheticized ideal […]

On ‘Planetary-wide Surveillance Without Just Cause’

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Why is it that dissident journalists are articulate and eloquent in their arguments? One good reason is that the truth is on their side. Another is that they’re dedicated to human rights. Watch Jacob Appelbaum, a dissident security researcher and Wikileaks associate, speaking today in an interview on “Democracy Now!” It’s a stunner, and not […]

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