Two young women, both in their mid-20s, both amateur musicians: I came across Amanda Dillard through a friend who pointed out her YouTube video. Leyla McCalla caught my attention not long ago in New Orleans.
R. Crumb: Lines on Paper
A Poem from the Late 20th Century
The poet Nanos Valaoritis and I were good friends many years ago, in San Francisco. Here’s a poem of his, which I published in 1970, in a broadside edition of 500 or 1,000 copies — I can’t recall exactly. “Endless Crucifixion” is a collector’s item now. Jed Birmingham, who writes the RealityStudio column the Bibliographic […]
Lit Crit Brigade Attacks The Soft Machine
Here’s the headline: William S Burroughs on trial for corrupting Turkish morality. And here’s the lede: The Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into a book written by internationally renowned author William S. Burroughs. It was translated and published by Sel Publishing House in January. The court referred to a report written by the […]
L’artiste Lui-même
Norman Ogue Mustill in his desert lair. [Self-Portrait With Collage] In 2007, at my request, he took a photo of himself with several of his collages from the mid-’60s. This is one of them. Blogs are personal (in case you hadn’t noticed).
Does Wikileaks Get Credit? Hardly …
Why, in a 2,160-word article, Classified Files Offer New Insights Into Detainees, which dominates the front page of today’s New York Times print edition, is the key source of the revelations buried so deep that the reader has to guess at it? Wikileaks, without which there would be no story, is not acknowledged until the […]
Old Photos Never Die . . . Old Diners Fade Away
The Riss diner was on 8th Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets in Manhattan. It’s no longer there. In its place is a Murray’s Bagels shop. Much less interesting. This photo illustrated the front cover of Philip Corner’s The Identical Lunch, in 1973. Click to enlarge I published the book, which Graham Macintosh designed and […]
Burroughs Scholars Are on a Roll
Keith Seward, in a remarkable piece of detective work, susses out the mystery behind an enigmatic literary figure. I quote from his intro: In the summer of 1959, with Olympia Press about to publish the first edition of Naked Lunch in Paris, William Burroughs was raving about the work of another writer. Jack Kerouac, Allen […]
Living With Obama and Cognitive Dissonance
Obama’s speech, “laying out his plan to reduce the deficit,” seemed to make a lot of liberals happy, or happier than they thought they’d be. Rachel Maddow, for example, praised the speech “for defining Democratic values, defending social programs, and confronting Republicans.” The plan even had Paul Krugman in sort of a swoon: Substance: Much […]
What Does Obama See in the Mirror?
The Guardian reports that top U.S. legal scholars are outraged by Bradley Manning’s treatment. They call it “torture” and, “in a stinging rebuke” to Barack Obama that is nothing if not personal, they question “whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency.” Glenn Greenwald’s column today tipped me to the report. […]
‘Goldstone’ Editors: Report’s Legacy Still Holds
Lizzie Ratner, one of the editors of THE GOLDSTONE REPORT: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, sends this response to the Goldstone bombshell, as I termed it: I think your read is by and large right: The judge’s retreat from the Goldstone Report’s findings was far more modest than his critics’ […]
The French Connection
Here’s the poster …
Happy Birthday …
“The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.” — Nelson Algren He would have been 102 today. Algren was the author of more than a dozen books. Born on March 28, 1909, in Detroit, he lived […]
The Occupation Began Eight Years Ago Today
And We’re Still Counting The Cost of the War in Iraq (JavaScript Error)
Writers on Fighters
If it’s true that professional boxing now has 68 world title holders in 17 weight classes, as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, then it’s not surprising that AT THE FIGHTS: American Writers on Boxing, a new anthology from The Library of America, reads like an elegy for the fight game. More than five dozen […]
Manning Describes His Treatment for First Time
“Bradley Manning has been stripped naked every night and made to parade in front of his officers and guards in the nude” for the past nine days, according to The Guardian, which has just published Manning’s own description of his treatment. It is the first time Manning has spoken out about the details of his […]
More Friends for Bach?
Mike Lawrence sends word that he’s “off and running on BACH & more friends,” a companion film to his previous Bach & friends. “I have several players lined up, and I’ve contacted a bunch of big guns,” he says in an e-mail. He’s still waiting to hear whether the big guns will participate. That’s what […]