Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Brecht Never Taught at Podunk College

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Two staff messages the other day led me to compare them. One went like this: I have a colleague who reads manuscripts for a literary magazine. Recently, I spent two hours looking at the contributions she has to vet. God, the bulk of them are awful. Actually, what makes them awful is their mediocrity. None […]

‘It’s a Boy!’

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Someone asked what I thought about the royal birth in Britain. Nima Shirazi said it for me. And let’s not forget this: +++ Or the latest addition to the Royal Babylon video archive on YouTube: Inheritance.

Herbert Huncke, Beat Hipster Sans Pareil

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I see that Hilary Holladay will be reading from American Hipster, her biography of Herbert Huncke, in a multimedia presentation at The Beat Museum in San Francisco. Tipped by my staff of thousands, I also see that she’s due the next night at Alley Cat Books. This brings back memories … One morning there was […]

Connecting Kim Dotcom and Edward Snowden

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To have a staff of thousands that keeps me informed is one of the privileges of this blog. Had I not been tipped about the projection of Kim Dotcom’s face with the words “United Stasi of America” on a wall of the U.S. embassy in Berlin, I would not have made a connection between N.S.A. […]

The Fine Art of Book Promotion

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“If this is the literary equivalent of groupies throwing their bras on stage, I’ll take it,” he says. The author, who goes by the name Supervert, was talking about a nude photo shoot with an “alt” model, which, he was pleased to learn, uses two of his books as a prop. It’s not the first […]

This ‘Auteur’ Made Some of Hollywood’s Best Films

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I just caught a screening of “Dodsworth” at the New York Historical Society, where Catherine Wyler mentioned in a pre-screening interview with AMERICAN MASTERS creator Susan Lacy that there are two new Wyler books due out soon: one by Gabriel Miller, the other by Neil Sinyard. She hoped it signals renewed interest in her father’s […]

Wrapping Up the ‘Dutch Mordant’ Series

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Cold Turkey Press publisher Gerard Bellaart writes that he “got rather carried away.” There are now about 40 cards in the series. Consequently the 36 portfolios of 12 cards each “will differ slightly in composition.” The “sacred nose” comes from the Bellaart family album, dated 1755.+++ A photo by Frederick Sommer illustrates the “kleine Welten” […]

Do You Miss New York? Frishberg Does

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WatchtheliveTimes Square camerastreaminrealtime… if it works.…Hey,this isNewYork,whereBig Mikereigns.The 108thmayor,like the107beforehim,hastroublefixin’ever’thang.

‘The Prince of Amsterdam’

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Heathcote Williams’s tribute to the late poet Simon Vinkenoog had me choking with laughter. And when the tribute to this ‘electric, ecstatic” poet of “ultra optimism” turns serious — when it recounts what Vinkenoog says in a dream to a friend: “It’s a party in heaven. I’m here with kindred spirits only. It’s like earth […]

Hurray for Independence Day. Hmmph …

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William Osborne writes in an email: It is astonishing to see how deeply militarized American culture has become. The military colors every aspect of our lives. You could pick a thousand examples. Americans don’t see it, but Washington is essentially a military base posing as a seat of government. Even if America doesn’t have a […]

Yannick Bouillis Spreads the Word on Twinpak

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In ELSE #5, the current issue of the photo magazine ELSE published in Lausanne, Switzerland, by the Musée de l’Elysée, Yannick Bouillis has dedicated a handsome double spread to Norman O. Mustill’s Twinpak (Nova Broadcast Press, 1969). Bouillis, a former journalist and bookseller, is a member of the ELSE editorial committee and the founder of […]

Planned Obsolescence Press to Big Data: Fuck Off

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In an unsigned Publisher’s Note to Whale Drek: The Lost Footnotes of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch, Jed Birmingham writes: “Planned Obsolescence Press specializes in distributing small shiploads of K.Y. made of genuine whale drek. What better to grease the lines of communication? The Press recycles that which no one has found any use for. […]

Antonin Artaud’s ‘Rotten Meat’

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I’d bet the quotes on this card from Cold Turkey Press won’t be found in the search engines. +++ Here are some other recent Cold Turkey cards that quote Artaud: No Words, No Thought; Artaud’s Hammer; Plague of My Tongue, 1; Plague of My Tongue, 2. Additionally, Cold Turkey publisher Gerard Bellaart, writer and artist […]

From the Cut-Up Department

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Long ago and far away (in other words, back in the 1960s), when greed & human smallness became history, I kept a cut-up diary — now lost — as something to tilt the museum, something small to fold up against, to tell what was meant.

MLK Warned of ‘Guided Missiles and Misguided Men’

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Forget the adoring crowds. When Barack Obama spoke the other day at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, there was “a remarkable difference from the rock-star welcome” that greeted him in 2008 before his election as U.S. president and his acceptance of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. This time he was greeted by a justifiable meme […]

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