Here’s a first-class illustraton of blasé consumerism. It appeared as I read through a NYT story online about the genocidal campaign against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. The last time I noted this kind of blatant obscenity was an ad for high-end designer clothing placed next to a print story about children victimized by Hurricane Katrina. You can see similar examples any day of the week.Today, for instance.
GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
‘Coalitional Democracy’ One-Day Conference
Goes Online to Explore Activism & Social Justice
THE STONE CENTER ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: ‘In these tumultuous times, new forms of activism and political engagement are needed more than ever.Movements to expand the social safety net in response to the devastation of the coronavirus, along with the Black Lives Matter protests, are working both inside and outside of electoral politics, with on-the-ground activists often taking the lead. These new developments join long-standing efforts to reduce inequalities of all forms. In this urgent context, what kinds of coalitions are needed for broad-based change to occur, given the economic, political and social divides in the country? What are effective models—past and present—for pushing beyond traditional approaches? Spend a day learning from thinkers, scholars, politicians, and activists about ways to build coalitions across issues and lines of race, gender, class, and sexuality in order to create a more equal and democratic society.’
Fascinating Passages from Fascinating Books
‘Really, poems by William Burroughs? Yes indeed, and what we know as The Cut-Up Method he initially called ‘Newspeak Poetry,’ making clear his original frames of reference.’ — MINUTES TO GO Redux
Sign of the Times
This one comes from the French countryside:
CITIZENS
Due to the government and the European Union,
3 FARM WORKERS KILL THEMSELVES EVERY DAY
Fascinating Passages from Fascinating Books
[Alexander’s father] Philip’s training for power was proceeding along useful if unorthodox lines. His experience as a member of the Macedonian royal household had given him an understandably cynical view of human nature: in this world murder, adultery and usurpation were commonplace. … Philip took it as axiomatic that all diplomacy was based on self-interest, and every man had his price: events seldom proved him wrong.
A New Online Event Series
‘CHANGE’ at The Graduate Center, CUNY
A time of extraordinary social upheaval demands—and presents new opportunities for—CHANGE. In this new weekly series, leading thinkers explore ways to create a more democractic society.
GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
Leon Levy Center for Biography to Launch 2020 Events
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. on James Baldwin • Rick Perlstein on Ronald Reagan • Fredrik Logevall on John F. Kennedy • David S. Reynolds on Abraham Lincoln • Judith Thurman to give the Annual Leon Levy Lecture on Biography • David Nasaw on his new book, ‘The Last Million’
William Burroughs’s Prophetic Mutterings
![Burroughs wearing his fedora. [Photo: Harriet Crowder]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Burroughs-fedora360jpg-200x200.jpg)
‘This is Burroughs the self-styled revolutionary at his most historically explicit, the courageous whistle-blower in 1960 denouncing and exposing media magnates, business moguls, bankers, political leaders and scientists as part of a larger, deeper conspiracy at work behind the scenes of the mid-twentieth century.’ By Oliver Harris BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS addresses particular individuals, which marks a […]
Is This a Never-Before-Published Masterpiece
From the Most Dangerous Writer on the Planet?
When a review starts off like this . . . ” ‘BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS’ is the most important new publication by William S. Burroughs not only since the writer’s death in 1997 but quite possibly since ‘The Third Mind’ made it into print in 1978″ . . . attention must be paid.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A Sequel
As I continue to read “All the Sonnets of Shakespeare,” edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, I’m more than ever impressed by the remarkable clarity of the presentation. An added bonus is the intimacy of the scholarship, especially for a non-specialist like me. “The year 1591 saw the beginning of a sudden vogue,” they write, “for the composition and publication of sequences of interrelated sonnets initiated by the posthumous publication in that year of Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Astrophil and Stella’.” Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets are “on the whole, a collection of often highly personally inflected poems written over at least twenty-seven years, rather than a sequence aimed at catching the mood and developing the taste for a literary fashion. His sonnets are not public poems written and published for money; . . . they were published a decade after the vogue for sonnets had passed, printed only once, and were ‘clearly a flop on their first appearance.’ He seems interested primarily in using the sonnet form to work out his intimate thoughts and feelings.”
A New Way to Look at Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Instead of reading the sonnets in the numbered sequence of the 1609 folio, which is the usual way, the editors of ‘All the Sonnets of Shakespeare’ examine them in what they believe was their order of composition. This puts a special focus on the considerable tinkering that went into them. Their method yields lovely insights that bring us closer to the man himself and his development as a writer.
‘The Greatest Piece of Writing’ Kerouac Ever Saw
It’s a 16,000-word letter that Neal Cassady wrote to Jack Kerouac, who said it was his inspiration for On The Road. The letter, written in 1950, went missing and was found in an attic in Oakland, California, in 2011. Now for the first time it is being brought out in full by the London-based publisher Black Spring with an introduction by the noted Beat scholar A. Robert Lee, along with illustrations. I’m betting Lee will tell us if the letter really was the inspiration for On the Road—Kerouac, true to his calling, loved to make things up— and if he really did adopt his prose style from it. The reality is likely more nuanced than the legend.
Moloko’s Burroughs-Gysin Lockdown Reading
A summer package for the avant garde:
‘BRION GYSIN LET THE MICE IN’ edited and with a foreword by Jan Herman and with an introduction by Douglas Field.
“MINUTES TO GO Redux’ edited and with an introduction by Oliver Harris.
‘THE EXTERMINATOR Redux’ edited and with an introduction by Oliver Harris.
‘BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS’ edited and with an introduction by Oliver Harris.
Artist Ed Ruscha Dumps on Fossil-Fueled Trump & Co.
Ed Ruscha‘s latest poster “EE-NUF! VOTE!” offers this commentary: “Get Richer” / “Bye-Bye Roe Vs. Wade” / “Highway to Hell” / “Fast Track to Facism” / “Gobble More Gas” / “Kids in Cages” / “EE-NUF EE-NUF” / “You’ve Got the Most to Lose” / “Green Light Pollution” / “Gateway to White Supremacy”
Van Dyek Parks tweeted the poster today with this comment: “We will weave civility into the torn fabric of our flag—-with illuminations from the arts—by the likes of So-Cal’s adopted son Ed Ruscha.”
This Kind of Journalism Helps Make a Newspaper Great
‘Until recently, many Americans had never heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre.’ From The New York Times: ‘A Search for Hallowed Ground.’ Photographs by Joseph Rushmore and Gary Mason. Text by Campbell Robertson.
This Side of Grub Street
Readers wanted to know all about their celebrities, or at least about my encounters with them. From A-listers and B-listers right down to Z-listers. The whole stupid alphabet top to bottom. Names to be forgotten one day. They needed the publicity and I needed the job. I wasn’t a star fucker—I’ll say that, having come from the newsroom with no more interest in celebrities than any routine reporter. I was a stand-in for star fuckers.
Booted!
This is what the people did back then: Infamous William M. Tweed, the corrupt 19th-century NYC power broker whose ring of cronies controlled the government purse, manipulated the legislature, and embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars, was booted from office in the election of Nov. 7, 1871. Thomas Nast depicted him in defeat as a bloated, gouty Roman consul clutching a broken sword, wearing a royal headband of threadbare dollar signs and a sovereign medallion off his miserable likeness on his fat belly. Fast forward to Nov. 7, 2020.