![The lineup: U.S. intelligence officials testified yesterday in an annual hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Clapper is the center figure. [Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/clapper-testimony-200x190.jpg)
You won’t see Edward Snowden being interviewed on American TV. But you will see the nation’s top intelligence official James R. Clapper Jr., all over the news this morning accusing him of damaging national security.
Archives for January 2014
Setting the Stage for Barry Miles’s ‘Call Me Burroughs’
!['Call Me Burroughs -- A LIfe' by Barry Miles [TWELVE Books, 2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/call-me-burroughs-a-life-240-200x200.jpg)
I asked Barry Miles, author of the newly published biography “Call Me Burroughs: A Life,” how he felt about the review he got in this week’s New Yorker.
Beautiful Hand-Made Paper Gems from Hanuman Books
![Willem de Kooning's Collected Writings [Hanuman Books, 1988]. This is a 1990 second printing.](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/de-kooning-in-hand240-200x200.jpg)
Describing his appreciation of early Cubism, Willem de Kooning points out that it became a movement. It didn’t set out to be one.
Liam O’Gallagher’s Psilocybin ‘Chinatown Trip’
My staff of thousands came across an old movie that Michael McClure once made of Liam O’Gallagher taking psilocybin, in 1962, on a San Francisco rooftop.
What Martin Luther King Jr. Said About Jazz
Spike Wilner writes the electronic newsletter for Smalls Jazz Club, where he’s the congenial manager and one of the owners. The newsletter is always informative. Never sinks to mere PR. Which makes it one of the best around. (Wilner doesn’t just write the newsletter. He’s a first-class jazz pianist. Click the photo or this link […]
Oxford: ‘An Old Hooker Past Her Sell-by Date’
Connie Bruck’s lede in a profile about the billionaire mogul Leonard Blavatnik has plenty to say about the awful state of affairs at Oxford University.
Do Many Women Admire William Burroughs?
My staff of thousands hasn’t taken a survey, but I can count his female fans on one hand. When it comes to the number I actually know, make that one finger. Her name is Hanne Lippard, the Berlin-based poet and performance artist with the killer voice. I’ve blogposted about her before: Prick Up Your Ears […]
A Poet Chases Away the Pallbearers
The American expat poet Cody Maher jotted down a few notes called “The Pallbearers.” I like for the grim story it tells and for its mordant humor.
Ginsberg Does Indian Mantras on Sloow Tapes
!['London Mantra' Sloow Tapes cassette [2014]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/LONDON-MANTRA-artwork560.jpg)
Speaking of Allen Ginsberg, I’m told a new Sloow Tapes cassette entitled “London Mantra” is about to be released. Bart de Paepe, producer of the indie label, writes, “It’s a recording George Dowden made at his home in July 1973.” The tape features “Ginsberg solo on his harmonium, singing Indian mantras and a few of […]
Amiri Baraka Has Died, a Remembrance
Amiri Baraka’s obituary in the NY Times this morning mentioned his first contact with Allen Ginsberg. …to whom, in the puckish spirit of the times, he had written a letter on toilet paper reading, “Are you for real?” (“I’m for real, but I’m tired of being Allen Ginsberg,” came the reply, on what, its recipient […]
Portrait of the Painter Who Loved Braque
“Willem de Kooning always maintained that Braque’s early analytical cubist paintings were the last great bout of true painting.” — Gerard Bellaart (who also loves Braque) Now have a look at what de Kooning was talking about.Here are some of the analytical cubist paintings Braque did from 1908 to 1912. Houses at Estaque [1908] Castle […]
Above the Wintry Fields
The poem “A Murmuration of Starlings” is by Heathcote Williams, the narration by Alan Cox. After a visit to the Wordsworths in the Lake District, Coleridge caught a glimpse from his stagecoach Of a gigantic flock of birds as it swooped, rose then fell Above the frozen, wintry fields of a passing farm. It was […]
How a Brilliant Writer Got in His Own Way
!['Humpty Dumpty' [1924]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/humpty-dumpty-book-cover200-e1388258523554.jpg)
I’m told Ben Hecht was recently inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. That could be why I was asked to write a piece about him for a special “Chicago Issue” of the Chicago Quarterly Review, but something tells me it was pure coincidence. I also have a feeling the Hall of Fame won’t […]
‘In Praise of Folly’: Advice for 2014 or Any Year
Excerpt from Erasmus’ ‘In Praise of Folly’ (translated by John Wilson) Spoken by Folly in her own Person Do but observe our grim philosophers that are perpetually beating their brains on knotty subjects, and for the most part you’ll find them grown old before they are scarcely young. And whence is it, but that their […]