Somehow in all the reports I’ve seen about Western Union’s last telegram (sent on Jan. 27) and the end of an era, there was the usual chronicle of Samuel Morse and the invention of the telegraph, and Henry Miller. “The Tropic of Capricorn.” Describing his experience as employment manager for New York’s messenger department, he […]
YEAH, THE HOLOCAUST REALLY HAPPENED
The hidebound circle jerks of the Vienna Philharmonic, whose long-buried historical relationship with the Holocaust still has contemporary echoes. For instance, at Bruckner-Konservatorium) in Linz (Hitler’s hometown), not far from Vienna, the big concert hall is named for Wilhelm Jerger, who was director of the conservatory until 1973. Jerger, right — a contrabassist in the […]
NASTY BUT NECESSARY
We hesitate to use the infamous Goering remark about deceitful leaders and the ease with which they’re able to mislead a nation into war while denouncing their critics as unpatriotic, not only because it’s already been seen many times but because it draws a very nasty comparison between 21st-century America and the Nazi Germany of […]
ANTHEM FOR AMERICA
Wrapping up the week’s nervous breakdown, we bring you TwinPak. With Tom Delay coming to a head as Libby face possible indictment, a Harriet Miers debacle and her Congressional protection for the gun industry now achieved by the NRA, FEMA’s negligence and incompetence “some background noise here,” we think of Mustill’s score as a fitting […]
MILTON GLASER ♥ DISSENT
!['The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics' [2005]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/The-Design-of-Dissent-160.jpg)
To keep Independence Day from becoming a more empty patriotic ritual than usual, let’s celebrate the hearty dissenter Milton Glaser, designer of many famous logos and symbols such as interviewed on PBS’s “NOW” about the “Design of Dissent Exhibit” at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and his and Mirko Ilic’s new book, […]
NOSTALGIA BUG: ‘UNCLE BILL’ BURROUGHS
When I was looking at my old Bob Woodward interview, some of which I posted because it seemed, uh, timely, I saw another old interview I did — this one with Bill Burroughs. I thought you’d find it interesting. Here’s part of it: Your books are filled with gun lore. What spurred your interest in […]
FRYING LYNNE STEWART
![Lynne Stewart [Photo:AP]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/lynnestewart2-e1375896617519.jpg)
By Jan Herman Americans less brave than Lynne Stewart — which, frankly, means the rest of us — are easily cowed. It doesn’t take much to scare the shit out of people. As William Burroughs once wrote, “anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death,” and Dear Leader owns the biggest frying pan […]
HANGING IN WITH GEORGE
By Jan Herman When 1984 came around smack in the middle of the rose-tinted Reagan era, many in the commentariat had a field day noting that George Orwell, for all his genius, had overstated his case. The future he’d warned of in “1984” simply hadn’t come to pass. Yeah, right. Thinking of Bill Moyers this morning, it occurred […]
REPORT FROM THE LAND OF IS
By JAN HERMAN The wizards from the Land of Is spelled out What We Stand For over the weekend in a stellar gathering at New York University’s Skirball Center, convened by the New Democracy Project and The Nation. They didn’t need to take their cues from Paul Krugman, the economist and liberal New York Times […]
Books ‘n’ Stuff
My biography of the Hollywood director William Wyler, A Talent for Trouble, is available as an ebook at Amazon and an ebook on iTunes at the Apple store. Putnam published it in hardcover, and Da Capo Press published it in paperback. Several other books, include a collection of theater criticism, Second Nights (Vol.1) and (Vol. […]
My Checkered Career
I’ve been a staff writer covering arts and culture at the Los Angeles Times, a reporter and movie reviewer at The Daily News in New York, a reporter and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, a senior editor/producer and the theater critic for MSNBC.com, and a fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. […]