Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

‘Freedom Is a Career’ — Obituary for Mike Lesser

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By Heathcote Williams His approach to life and politics was fueled by emotion rather than the twisted logic of compliance. Finding himself born into an era when life on earth seemed daily–and increasingly–under threat, Mike Lesser’s logic was visceral. Other Angry Young Men long ago may have mellowed and somehow come to terms with a […]

The Outsider Writer on the Inside of the Outside

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Charles Plymell (Charley to those who know him, Charlie to those who don’t) has been an outsider for decades, self-declared and otherwise, railing against everything that smacks of the inside — especially the arbiters of government arts grants, who have unfailingly overlooked him, even against his old friend Allen Ginsberg, whom he relentlessly excoriates for […]

Mike Lesser, R.I.P.: ‘In Conversation With a Dying Friend’

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Heathcote Williams’s elegy is a meditation on death. Alan Cox reads it. The collage portrait of Mike Lesser as a young man is by Claire Palmer. The text of ‘In Conversation With a Dying Friend’ is posted for reading at IT: International Times. “ . . . my atoms will just disappear. “There’ll be a […]

Artist Bronzes Writer’s Life and Work in a Store Window

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The German artist Vera Bonsen has a window assemblage currently on display in a Heidelberg storefront that bronzes the life and writings of the American expatriate poet Cody Maher. The paper hangings consist of poems, diaries, photos and so on from 30 years’ worth of manuscripts. The artifacts include hats, a pair of boxing gloves, […]

Queers & Comics: Alison Bechdel

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Click in at 14’30”. That gets you right to the funny, smart, invariably entertaining cartoonist telling her story. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

A Spanking New German Edition of ‘Royal Babylon’

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And now if you just care to look this way … it’s bi-lingual, too. The dark side of the English royal family From the publisher: Did you know that Queen Elizabeth II is the largest landowner in the world? She owns 10 times more land than the recently deceased King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The […]

Beat Scene Magazine Eyeballs ‘American Porn’

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My staff of thousands tells me that “American Porn” was reviewed in Beat Scene, a British magazine edited by Kevin Ring. That was news to me. Here’s the review: The staff wanted to know what I thought of the review. I said I liked what the reviewer said about the poet: “Heathcote Williams is a […]

The Prison Memoir That Caught Algren’s Attention

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Not long before the recent prison escape that’s been making news, I mentioned to Colin Asher, who is writing a biography of Nelson Algren, that Algren once gave me a copy of Malcolm Braly’s prison memoir. Braly recounts how he broke out of prison one time early in his career as a convicted teenage burglar. […]

Carl Weissner Gets Stellar Notice in Book Podcast

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In his latest podcast at realitystudio.org Jed Birmingham zeroes in on the immensely talented Carl Weissner and his cut-up novel The Braille Film. Birmingham, who met Weissner in New York and Paris, talks about what made him so memorable and how he bought the book at auction some years ago for $75, believing it and […]

Of Poetry and Fakery, Cultural Theft, and Stolen Identity

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The title of Heathcote Williams’s memoir, Of Dylan Thomas and his Deaths, reflects the author’s belief that the great Welsh poet died not once but twice. He writes, “It can be said that he was to suffer no less than two deaths at American hands.” The first death, contrary to the accepted claim that he […]

A New Literary Memoir Recalls Dylan Thomas

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See update. A few weeks ago I remarked that Of Dylan and his Deaths, by Heathcote Williams, was so rich in the author’s personal history and “so evocative of his first inspiration, Dylan Thomas,” that it merited attention as a masterpiece of literary investigation. (The investigative aspect of the essay involves Williams’s indignation over “the […]

New from Cold Turkey Press: ‘Of Dylan and his Deaths’

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A writer as prolific as Heathcote Williams runs the risk of having his poems and prose taken for granted. But this essay — a memoir so rich in personal history, so evocative of his first inspiration, Dylan Thomas, and so indignant about the cultural theft of Thomas’s identity by a famous imposter — merits attention […]

Burroughs Makes Inroads, But What About Algren?

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The British have always shown a serious interest in William Burroughs, evidenced by the fact that the most authoritative Burroughs scholars are or have been Brits such as Eric Mottram, Oliver Harris, and Ian MacFayden, for three examples, and that the most authoritative Burroughs biography, Call Me Burroughs, was written by another Brit, Barry Miles. […]

Poem for the Cleaning Women: ‘We Are All Holy’

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Courtesy of Bart de Paepe’s Sloow Tapes This is a historical recording by Judith Malina, who died two weeks ago. I’ve transcribed the text the way it struck my ear, but its true power can’t be fully appreciated until you’ve heard her read the poem for yourself. — JH every one of the cleaning women […]

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