{"id":22580,"date":"2016-06-24T13:16:52","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T17:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=22580"},"modified":"2016-12-09T16:00:45","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T21:00:45","slug":"guilty-as-charged-i-hope-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2016\/06\/guilty-as-charged-i-hope-so.html","title":{"rendered":"Guilty As Charged? I Hope So"},"content":{"rendered":"

A review of my book, The Z Collection: Portraits & Sketches<\/a>,<\/em> in the June 17 issue<\/a> of The Times Literary Supplement,<\/em> accuses me of “restrained \u00e9lan.” My wife may beg to differ, but I plead guilty to the charge — happily. <\/p>\n

<\/a>The TLS reviewer, Douglas Field, whose biographical study of James Baldwin, All Those Strangers<\/a>,<\/em> was recently praised<\/a> by Nathaniel Rich in The New York Review of Books,<\/em> also accuses me of hostage-taking. Field says:<\/p>\n

Throughout the volume Herman successfully captures the voice of the writers he meets, including a middle-aged Norman Mailer … who [is] obsessed with ageing and posterity and [who] declares his admiration for Picasso “because he understood that style was not an identity. It is a tool to use.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Furthermore, Field contends that my “most extensive and engaging essay … underscores the vitality and anarchy of 1960s counterculture, a time when Herman collaborated with a coterie of writers and artists …” And finally, I stand accused of kidnapping. The last point of the indictment notes that The Z Collection<\/em> “brings the reader along as a travelling companion, rather than an eavesdropper on Herman’s literary adventures, and” — perhaps in extenuation of my crimes — ‘offers tantalizing insights” with [you guessed it] “restrained \u00e9lan.”<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of my book, The Z Collection: Portraits & Sketches, in the June 17 issue of The Times Literary Supplement, accuses me of “restrained \u00e9lan.” My wife may beg to differ, but I plead guilty to the charge — happily. The TLS reviewer, Douglas Field, whose biographical study of James Baldwin, All Those Strangers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,4,23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-literature","8":"category-main","9":"category-news","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/TLS-June-17-2016-cover-.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-5Sc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22580"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24406,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22580\/revisions\/24406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}