In his new book, “Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now,” Evan Osnos draws on nearly a decade of reporting for The New Yorker. His portrait of Biden and what his election means for the nation. is based on lengthy interviews with Biden, as well as conversations with President Barack Obama, the Biden family, his advisers, rivals, and opponents.
GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
The Clown King’s Latest Confidence Game
An email arrived just in tiime for Thanksgiving, asking for contributions to help overturn the election even after he’s been declared—signed, sealed, and certified—the absolute loser. Meanwhile construction has begun on renovations to his post-presidential living quarters in Florida. Does he believe his supporters are brain-dead suckers? Of course.
REDUX: The Shithole and the Shithouse
Originally posted Jan. 17, 2018. By now many, many millions of people have seen the rebranded Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Or if they haven’t, at least that many have googled it. If you’re the one person who hasn’t seen it, here it is. And here, not incidentally, is Trump’s Shithouse in Washington D.C., also known as The White House.
His Birthday Was 79 Years Ago Today
![Heathcote Williams [Photo: JH, 2013]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/heathcote-williams-photo-copy-200x200.png)
Heathcote Williams was an unstoppable force. Even in death he is unstoppable. His writings, his activism, and his personal example continue to inspire others. At heart, Williams was a revolutionary. The historian Peter Whitfield placed his work in a “great tradition of visionary dissent” stretching from William Blake and John Ruskin to DH Lawrence and David Jones. I had the privilege of recording Williams’s final vinyl LP-cum-CD, “American Porn,” at his home in Oxford several years before he died. The poems he read — “Mr. President,” “The United States of Porn,” “Forbidden Fruit, or The Cybernetic Apple Core,” and “Snuff Films at the White House” — were in their uncompromising nakedness CT scans of history.
Kosti Does His Self-Publishing T-h-a-a-a-n-g . . .
Richard Kostelanetz shows us his M-A-N-Y books from Archae Editions. And he is stacked.
GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
The Science of Superheroes
FREE ONLINE EVENT: “The pop-culture universe of superheroes is filled with extraordinary humans and abilities. Captain America, the Hulk, and Black Panther seem to lie firmly in the realm of fantasy, but the technology behind them might not be as farfetched as we think. In his book ‘The Science of Marvel,’ Sebastian Alvarado shows that, using quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and mechanical engineering, we can find real-world parallels to superpowers such as ‘spidey sense’ and Thor’s lightning. He speaks with Shane Campbell-Staton, host of the podcast ‘The Biology of Superheroes,’ about where the science meets the fiction.” — GC Presents
When Emmett Williams Squared the Alphabet . . .
In 1956, his color scheme was as bright as day. In the plague year of 2020 a color inversion is like the night.
GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
CHANGE: How Artists Lead the Way
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 7:30 p.m. A FREE ONE EVENT Featuring Vijay Gupta, violinist, founder of Street Symphony, a MacArthur Award-winner, and popular TED speaker; Hồng-An Trương, an artist using photography, sound, video, and performance, whose work has been shown at venues including the International Center for Photography, The Kitchen, and the Museum of Modern Art; and Hank Willis Thomas, a conceptual artist whose work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; and Hong Kong Arts Centre; and who collaborates on the artist-run initiatives for civic engagement For Freedoms and the Wide Awakes. This cross-disciplinary panel will be moderated by Sarah Lewis, associate professor at Harvard University; a leading commentator on race, contemporary art, and culture; and a much-viewed TED speaker.
Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ Comes Alive in London Reading
‘The Odyssey’ tells of the adventures of Odysseus as he tries to get home after the Trojan War, and of his wife Penelope’s struggles to keep their island kingdom from civil war, along with his son Telemachus’ search to find his lost father. This reading brings 72 actors together to perform the epic poem in sequence. ‘The Odyssey’ was first performed by bards across the Mediterranean in the eighth century BCE. The entire reading will remain on YouTube for a week.
Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs
In a Wake Island Broadcast James Grauerholz speaks to Paul Kwiatkowski. Wake Island is a conversation series exploring tone, atmosphere, and aesthetics.
‘Algorithms Will Be the Death of Us All’
So said a friend. To which I add two deformed sonnets and a collage.
Chomsky on Trump, Covid-19, Biden, Guns,
the Green New Deal, Putin, the Election . . .
‘Trump will destroy us if he wins…. Whatever you make of the Democratic Party, the White House malignancy is incomparably worse.’ Yes, he’s on RT . . . that RT . . . but what he says is worth every pixel:
Last Night’s Shitshow ‘Debate’ Reminded Me . . .
of a sonnet that appeared in ‘Your Obituary Is Waiting,’s . . . Here it is, with apologies to circus folks. And here he is … nasty, angry, and dopey.
From the Design Department
Cutting Edge: Up, Up and Away Off the Page
The designers of The New York Times Magazine are at it again. Do they think edgy makes sense when their design looks like the cover was badly trimmed? Yes, the headline reads “UP, UP AND AWAY FROM IT ALL.” But if the rationale for the design was to get so far up and away, why take half measures? Why not clip off the name of the magazine entirely? Now have a look at the off-the-page design of the spread complete with layout markups, which introduces the cover story on page 43. My guess is the editors want to persuade us the magazine is spontaneous and improvisatory (as in no longer the Gray Lady of legend, which it actually hasn’t been for many years).The spread works nicely. Much better than the cover. But why are they trying so hard?
Good Question: ‘Who’s Your Death Hero?’
Although Albert Camus does not come up in WHO’S YOUR DEATH HERO? — a conversation between the filmmaker Richard Kern and the writer who goes by the name of Supervert — he would be my candidate in answer to the title. Camus’s declaration, “I want to keep my lucidity to the last and gaze upon my death with all the fullness of my jealousy and horror,” conveys precisely what this book is about as if he’d read it himself.
Nailing It
Kayleigh McEnany (aka Baghdad Bob or Comical Ali) and the Clown King do their thing. White House press secretary: “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here.” Trump predicts number of Covid-19 cases in the U.S.: “Gonna be down to close to zero … We’ve done a very good job.”
The Battle Over the Supreme Court
Getting down to brass tacks . . . and brass knuckles.