The running head on these two pages of William S. Burroughs’s cut-up text “Word Authority More Habit Forming Than Heroin” reads: “if you are gay I am right seconds with Karate you are wrong you are he kicks him into 1914 movie.” The spread appeared in an exhibition, “Liberated Images,” at the University of Iowa […]
Teaming Burroughs & Mustill for Thanksgiving
A Straight Up tradition continues. But this year William S. Burroughs’s words of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day are posted with a couple of collages by Norman O. Mustill. That completes the package. Look and listen. It’s delish . . . Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through […]
It Ain’t in Staten Island, the Rockaways, or Red Hook
…but shitstorm Sandy had a ball here, too. The venerable Argosy Book Store took a hit on Manhattan’s East 59th Street within spitting distance of Bloomingdale’s and other posh emporiums. Here’s something to ponder: Different floors, but you get the picture.
The Idiot’s Voice: More Dissidence from Cold Turkey
Leonard Cohen, who is not given to easy praise, has called Sinclair Beiles “one of the great poets of the century.” Meaning the 20th century — they met back in the early 1960s on the Greek island of Hydra. Was Cohen being uncharacteristically hyperbolic? Well, William S. Burroughs, also not given to easy praise, once […]
‘The Lord of the Drones and the White House Fly’
My staff of thousands reminds me there’s an election coming up in the U.S. of A. For all the voters going to the polls, here’s a poem to cheer them on by the British poet Heathcote Williams. Part two … enter the realm of litrichur, narrated and montaged by Alan Cox. And here’s part three, […]
If Hurricane Sandy Were to Hit San Francisco . . .
Would the city look like this?
‘All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t)’
Have you noticed lately that the art on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times is tamer than it used to be? I haven’t made a study of it, but that’s how it seems to me. Proof, if needed, comes with the paperback publication of All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some […]
Astronomy Picture of the Day
It’s a breakfast doodle by Malcolm Mc Neill. He writes in an email, “If only …” Mc Neill has two books coming out at the end of October from Fantagraphics Books: The Lost Art of Ah Pook Is Here: Images from the Graphic Novel and the memoir Observed While Falling: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook, and […]
Publicist’s Alert: ‘Useless Information’
This blog receives many publicist alerts. Here’s the smartest, verbatim (message line included): USELESS INFORMATON Hello. I am David Manning’s underpaid literary agent and publicist. He refuses to send this email, so I am hijacking his books account to do it for him. Thanks to an anonymous donor, there is an ad in the latest […]
Channeling John Cage
Is there anybody not paying tribute to John Cage this year, the centennial of his birth? My own favorite tribute is a performance that began more than a decade ago “in a crumbling medieval church” in Halberstadt, an eastern German city that has been described by The Wall Street Journal as “forlorn.” The piece, called […]
Big Title, Big Music, Young Composer
Dylan Mattingly by name. He’s got a thing for Amelia Earhart, the famous pilot who disappeared 75 years ago near Howland Island in the Pacific. Inspired by the story of her last flight, Mattingly wrote a forty-minute work for chamber orchestra, “Atlas of Somewhere On the Way to Howland Island,” as an homage to her […]
Viral Reading
More than two million YouTube viewers have watched this woman read a book. Imagine that.Update: Dec. 30, 2015 — That number is now 18.86 million. Yes, you read that right. Further Update: Oct. 2, 2024 — Viewers now number 30 million. The woman is Stoya, and she’s a porn star. The book is Necrophilia Variations, […]
Going Viral?
Here’s a change of pace. It’s a parody music video. Guy who made it calls it ‘Casual Pimpin.’ I call it catchy. Guy’s name is Tim Ellis. He’s something of a one-man band. Wrote it. Performs it. Shot it with his “fly girl.” He also happens to be a friend of mine. Now that I’ve […]
The Not-So-Perfect Storm
Ecuador contends that the British Foreign Office has yet to renounce a threat to storm its embassy in London, where Julian Assange has taken refuge from British authorities. So says The Guardian. A British court has ordered the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to Sweden to face questioning about allegations of sexual misconduct, although no formal charges […]
Assange Speaks
WHILE ALL EYES were on the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where Julian Assange has been granted political asylum for good reason, there was a two-man demonstration on Sunday at the British consulate (875 Third Ave.) in midtown Manhattan. Yoni Miller, 18, identified himself as an “occupier” who believes in “direct action.” Articulate and steadfast, he […]
Edition of Death in Paris Is Now in Print
This is not a sales pitch. I’m only kvelling. The printed edition is stunningly handsome, a magnificent artifact in memory of its author, the late Carl Weissner, dear friend and co-conspirator from the ’60s. If you would like to read Death in Paris on paper, please do. If you prefer reading it in a preview, […]
Mustill’s Message on a Postcard (2)
