Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

The Revenge of the Mediocre . . .

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. . . upon the great is a risk that every biographer takes. Mary Wisniewski has taken it, and it defeats her. Old friends of Nelson Algren whom he later spurned, to say nothing of his enemies, get their chance to lay into him now, 35 years after his death, in her mistitled and pedestrian […]

Where Black Lives Did Not Matter

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Headline: ‘A Tender Bond Confronts Racism. Racism Wins.’ One can only hope that headline does not apply to the outcome of today’s U.S. elections. In the many years I spent on Grub Street writing about the theater, Athol Fugard and the plays I saw of his stand out in memory for their eloquence and humanity. […]

He Spread Peace, Love, and Booze

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The “first scholarly comic art biography of the legendary John Chapman,” otherwise known as Johnny Appleseed, has arrived. A quick inspection reveals 112 ravishing pages that tell the true story of the man who became famous two centuries ago for “spreading the seeds of apple trees from Pennsylvania to Indiana.” To quote the publisher, Johnny […]

Jeff Nuttall Has Words for You

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So brightly blisters the great regurgitating ribbon of the Thames. Sculls skim through like springtime swallows. Keels kiss tidal scum, lancing the stolen sun — boils or bops to a stop, as in The bee on wheels has laments on a stick Wags weepy banners with gypsy ribbons … The tiny wheeled bee has the […]

‘Street Gangs of the Lower East Side’

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It’s rare that the tireless staff of thousands agrees to post a guest review. But there are exceptions. Review by Jerome Sala The Street Gangs of the Lower East Side offers a provocative eyewitness history of gang culture in the context of the whole diverse, eccentric and sometimes revolutionary LES scene of the ’70s through […]

The Evil Wind

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It was a year ago today. But they soldier on. Alles wandelt sich. Neu beginnen Kannst du mit dem letzten Atemzug. Aber was geschehen, ist geschehen. Und das Wasser Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du Nicht mehr herausschütten. Was geschehen, ist geschehen. Das Wasser Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du Nicht […]

Leonard Weinglass, Our ‘Modern Clarence Darrow’

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Other defense attorneys may have been more famous — William Kunstler, for example — but radical leftists of a certain age remember the late Leonard Weinglass with special feeling. On the back cover of Seth Tobocman’s graphic biography Len, A Lawyer in History, the publisher’s description says (and I believe every word of it): “In […]

The Dark Side of Boris Johnson

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Back in April, before the Brexit vote, Heathcote Williams wrote a merciless pamphlet, subtitled “A Study in Depravity,” about the most notorious cheerleader for the British exit from the European Union. Completely factual, replete with scores of footnotes, it was circulated to friends and then taken up by the London Review of Books, which republished […]

Nuttall Show Comes With a Warning

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The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester is close to launching “Off Beat: Jeff Nuttall and the International Underground,” a comprehensive exhibition of artworks, writings, correspondence, books, and little magazines produced by or associated with an “all-round genius” whose stunning countercultural career half a century ago is little remembered today. Jeff Nuttall was […]

Not Franzen’s Kind of Birding

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As told to me by Kurt Wold: One day Kurt came to dinner at the artist Norman O. Mustill’s house and noticed a birdcage. “Norm,” he said, “you have a bird!” He walked over to it and said, “Hi budgie, budgie.” To which a somewhat pathetic-looking, pale blue budgerigar grasped the bars of the cage, […]

Total Obscenity of the American Dream

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Heathcote Williams’s verse polemic delivered by Alan Cox. “Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton — A Foaming Sleazeball from Hell versus An Iron Lady, Hands Dripping with Blood” And now for the video: EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

East-West Mash-Up, Hokusai Meets Wright

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Not many people know that Richard Wright, renowned for his 1940 novel Native Son, and his 1946 autobiography Black Boy, wrote thousands of haikus — about four thousand actually — all of them in France, in self-imposed exile from the United States, during the last 18 months of his life. Wright prepared 817 of them […]

‘Dadaglobe’: Art for Dada’s Sake

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Although “Dadaglobe Reconstructed” at MoMA is a magnificent project of deep-dive reclamation, the catalogue that recreates Tristan Tzara’s never-realized Dadaglobe anthology also recreates the limitations of Tzara’s original concept. The catalogue is printed as he would have done it — in black and white. I prefer seeing the works submitted to him in their original […]

Guilty As Charged? I Hope So

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A review of my book, The Z Collection: Portraits & Sketches, in the June 17 issue of The Times Literary Supplement, accuses me of “restrained élan.” 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, […]

Remembered Depths

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Ian Kershaw writes in a review of KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, a newly published book by Nikolaus Wachsmann: Is it possible to say anything new about Nazi Germany? This is, after all, probably the most thoroughly researched period in modern history. … [C]an a major work that alters our perceptions and […]

A Lesson About ‘Fake Opposition’

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“The cult of Hitler’s personality set up a fake opposition between leader and party.” So says Neal Acherson in his review of Hitler: A Biography (Volume 1, Ascent 1889-1939) by Volker Ullrich. That idea as applied to Trump and the GOP leadership is worth taking seriously — it’s not nearly as alarmist as it sounds […]

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