Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

War Crime Outcomes —
Two Coverups in the Slaughterhouse of War

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From the podcast IN THE DARK: “On November 19, 2005, a small group of U.S. Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them would become one of the most high-profile war-crimes prosecutions in American history, and then it would all fall apart. … No one was held accountable.” Why not?

On March 16, 1968, more than 500 Vietnamese men, women, and children in the village of Mi Lai were slaughtered by a platoon of U.S. soldiers. It became known as the Mi Lai massacre. The soldiers were led by Lieutenant William Calley. He was later court-martialed and convicted of murder after an Army cover-up.

D. H. Lawrence on the ‘Bitch-Goddess of Success’

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The other day I took a drive over to Toby Pond and looked in at the house where I’d spent six months during the Covid lockdown. My favorite room there was a little library. It had two steep book-lined walls and high windows that gave plenty of light for reading. With nothing better to do, I pulled down Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Having read it many years ago, I had failed to appreciate it. This time it bowled me over. Here’s a small excerpt. It offers a taste of one of the novel’s major themes.

Leave It to Flaubert to Tell It as It Is

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Three excerpts from the recently published edition of ‘The Letters of Gustave Flaubert,’ edited and translated by Francis Steegmullers, seem to me an apt commentary on our own time.

BEAT SCENE No. 110
Latest Issue Filled With Rich Tales

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About Brion Gysin, Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassidy and Anne Murphy, Charles Bukowski, Herbert Huncke, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, Milton Klonsky, Alice Notley, Bernard Kops, Neeli Cherkovski, Emmett Grogan and the Diggers, Martin Bax, the influence of Gertrude Stein, the death of Joan Volmer, and more …

Whimsy and Philosophy: Pictures at an Artist’s Studio

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On a visit to Paul Zelevansky’s studio in Manhattan, I took some pictures of the works he had there on display. These are some of the ones I photographed. I post them here without commentary other than their titles for you to decide how they strike you.

Artists of ‘Harlem Renaissance’ at Metropolitan Museum

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Glad I got to the Met for a glimpse before it becomes hotter ‘n hell.  Although the museum was jammed, the show itself was comfortable. It was also much larger than I expected. I hadn’t realized how many accomplished painters there were among the Harlem group. For example, I had never heard of Archibald Motley Jr. who I thought pretty much sets the exquisite tone of the show, though by no means exclusively.

‘The Highest and Most Difficult Achievement of Art’

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“… is not to make us laugh or cry, nor to arouse our lust or rage, but to do what nature does — that is, to set us dreaming. The most beautiful words have this quality. … They are as motionless as cliffs, stormy as the ocean, leafy, green and murmurous as forests, forlorn as the desert, blue as the sky.” — Gustave Flaubert

New York City Opera
Outdoor Puccini Celebration in the Heart of Manhattan

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Huge crowds turned out for two boffo evenings of concert excerpts from Puccini’s operas. It was part of Bryant Park’s free, summer Picnic Performances. Music was provided by New York City Opera, “famously dubbed ‘The People’s Opera’ by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia at its founding in 1943.'” I attended on a beautiful, balmy Saturday evening.

Charles Plymell Takes Stage for New and Selected Poems

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Plymell has as much in depth to say about death as Hemingway did and a lot more to say about it in terms of the present generation stillborn into a world that can offer nothing. — William S. Burroughs Plymell and his friends inventing the Wichita Vortex contribute to a tradition stretching back from Lamantia […]

Recalling the Fierce Beliefs of Oriana Fallaci

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The widespread episodes of pro-Palestinian antisemitism on American college campuses calls to mind an old blogpost about European antisemitism.

“I find it shameful,” Fallaci begins, “that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swastika, incite people to hate the Jews. …”

‘There he was in a dream . . .’

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“He gives me a manuscript
on elegant stationery
with a letterhead of
raised black lettering
in typeface rare & delicate.
He’s terminal. We both
know it. …”

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