Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Love That Irish Brogue

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Are there any video promos for a play as inviting as this one for “The Pigeon in the Taj Mahal”? An exchange of comments: To my ears, Irish is the most beautiful English, an impression reaffirmed by three long bicycle trips through the West of Ireland. How did a country with half the population of […]

2016: Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving Day

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From William Burroughs, and Norman O. Mustill, and Heathcote Williams, and our staff of thousands … thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison . . . thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through . . . thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the […]

Why I’m Waiting for Asher’s Algren

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Having said in The Revenge of the Mediocre that both Bettina Drew and Mary Wisniewski fail to capture Nelson Algren’s personality in their biographies of him, I realize I didn’t mention something equally and, some would say, more important. Sure, they get his so-called skid-row lyricism, which Blake Bailey recently harped on, but that shortchanges […]

Going Cold Turkey (in Cyberspace)

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The computer screen has become a substitute for reality, dominating us not just by way of social media but — old news — by making artifacts like books on paper seem obsolete. I plead seriously guilty, witness this blogpost with its images and descriptions. A package that came in the mail with several new items […]

Trump Centaur

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An insult to pigs . . . “The Republican Party has become the most dangerous organization in world history.” — Noam Chomasky

The Revenge of the Mediocre . . .

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. . . upon the great is a risk that every biographer takes. Mary Wisniewski has taken it, and it defeats her. Old friends of Nelson Algren whom he later spurned, to say nothing of his enemies, get their chance to lay into him now, 35 years after his death, in her mistitled and pedestrian […]

Racism and the ‘Bigger Force’

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When I asked South African playwright Athol Fugard his opinion of race relations in the United States, he replied: Man! It’s not as easy to identify the enemy here, as it is back home, which makes the struggle vastly more complicated. At home the enemy is immediately identifiable — simply because of the institutionalization of […]

Where Black Lives Did Not Matter

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Headline: ‘A Tender Bond Confronts Racism. Racism Wins.’ One can only hope that headline does not apply to the outcome of today’s U.S. elections. In the many years I spent on Grub Street writing about the theater, Athol Fugard and the plays I saw of his stand out in memory for their eloquence and humanity. […]

He Spread Peace, Love, and Booze

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The “first scholarly comic art biography of the legendary John Chapman,” otherwise known as Johnny Appleseed, has arrived. A quick inspection reveals 112 ravishing pages that tell the true story of the man who became famous two centuries ago for “spreading the seeds of apple trees from Pennsylvania to Indiana.” To quote the publisher, Johnny […]

Tom Hayden: Gone But Not Forgotten

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Looking back: Mad Magazine + Tom Hayden = SDS. And before I forget. Meanwhile, the obits are pouring in for Hayden, who died yesterday. Here are three (with great photos) from The Washington Post; from The Huffington Post; from The New York Times. And here is a video of him speaking about the need to […]

Every Once in a While …

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… the Sunday Review section of The New York Times publishes a striking opinion piece. It’s a rarity because the section is consistently, even insistently dull. The piece is short, and it is clear from the way it ends on a note of biting but truth-telling sarcasm that the author, Paul Theroux, clearly does not […]

Jeff Nuttall Has Words for You

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So brightly blisters the great regurgitating ribbon of the Thames. Sculls skim through like springtime swallows. Keels kiss tidal scum, lancing the stolen sun — boils or bops to a stop, as in The bee on wheels has laments on a stick Wags weepy banners with gypsy ribbons … The tiny wheeled bee has the […]

‘Street Gangs of the Lower East Side’

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It’s rare that the tireless staff of thousands agrees to post a guest review. But there are exceptions. Review by Jerome Sala The Street Gangs of the Lower East Side offers a provocative eyewitness history of gang culture in the context of the whole diverse, eccentric and sometimes revolutionary LES scene of the ’70s through […]

The Evil Wind

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It was a year ago today. But they soldier on. Alles wandelt sich. Neu beginnen Kannst du mit dem letzten Atemzug. Aber was geschehen, ist geschehen. Und das Wasser Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du Nicht mehr herausschütten. Was geschehen, ist geschehen. Das Wasser Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du Nicht […]

In Case Facebook Is Watching

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AP Photographer Nick Ut’s famous Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam War photo illustrating the terror of war was censored for nudity by Mark Zukerberg’s minions. Facebook deigned to restore the image to its site, but did not apologize. It issued instead a boilerplate claim that the image could have been mistaken for kiddie porn in some countries, […]

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