Carl Weissner: Master Writer, Cherished Friend

January 24, 2017 by Jan Herman

A great one died five years ago today.

Nova Broadcast
San Francisco, 1970

Doll No Mori
2012

Milena Verlag
Vienna, 2011

'Eine Andere Liga' ('A Different League') by Carl Weissner [Milena Verlag, 2013]

Milena Verlag
Vienna, 2013

Carl was also a “little magazine” editor, a radio playwright, German translator of more than 100 books (but principally of Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs, Nelson Algren and J.G. Ballard, also of Frank Zappa and Allen Ginsberg), and a literary agent who spread the work of dissident writers even further.

Manuscript page of Carl’s “The Marseille Stories”:

Click to enlarge.

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Comments

william osborne says

January 24, 2017 at 1:32 pm

A couple thoughts about integrity in honor of your friend…

“You don’t write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.” — Nelson Algren

“Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost’s hired man, the fate of having ‘nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.’” — John F. Kennedy
- Jan Herman says
  
  January 24, 2017 at 2:31 pm
  
  Amen to that. Thanks for your thoughts.