Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Cartoon Artist Kate Evans Does Rosa Luxemburg

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I notice that the NYT Sunday Book Review’s not-so-special “Special Issue” on graphic books (Oct. 18) makes no mention of ‘Red Rosa’ by Kate Evans, forthcoming from Verso (Nov. 3). My tireless staff of thousands decided to right that wrong. Kate Evans, aka Cartoon Kate, is no ordinary biographer. Her in-depth account of the socialist […]

‘Picasso Sculpture’ at MoMA: The Magnificent Tinkerer

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The swoon of the professional crickets had me wondering about their impressions. One was so taken with the show, he seemed to be suffering from emphysema (“I found myself constantly having to catch my breath …”) Poor cricket. But at least his cataracts were cleared up (“… you can feel the scales fall from your […]

A Blistering Attack on Wall Street — and Not Only That

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It’s also “a celebration of words that changed the world” directed by Paul Hodson, with live music by Dr. Blue. Poetry Can F*ck Off will feature “verse, lyrics, and music by Maya Angelou, Jim Morrison, Billie Holiday, Sophie Scholl, Emily Dickinson, Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi, Martin Luther King, William Blake, Arundhati Roy, Victor Jara, Gil Scott-Heron, […]

More From Mustill’s Arizona Desert Lair

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Nearly a decade ago in the desert lair, there I am leafing through Bruce Bernard’s “Century,” a massive volume of photos chronicling the 20th century. On the wall is a partial view of Norman O. Mustill’s huge collage, shown in full below. It’s a big one. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

A Sentence for the Ages

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Seriously … He might spend a blessèd day with a bottle of absinthe, oblivious to the sun that fell like a stone, dozing peacefully under the muddled stars in a pool of his own vomit. That sentence — from page 164 of Graham Robb’s Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris — is hard to beat. […]

Going Whole Hog: The Prime Minister & the Pig’s Head

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The British press has been having a field day with tales of Prime Minister David Cameron’s crush on a pig during his student days at Oxford. Maybe “crush” is the wrong term. How about “necrophiliac oral sex.” My tireless staff of thousands doesn’t presume to know the gory details. But it has taken notice of […]

AC Institute Is Having a Launch Party

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Listen to “Speed Bump 4 Eva.” My staff of thousands says it’s perfect music for the image. AC Institute christens its new space in midtown Manhattan. The event will feature a short reading by The Z Collection author Jan Herman followed by music from accomplished cellist Hamilton Berry. Publisher’s note: The Z Collection, a “time […]

LARB Video Interview: Miles on William S. Burroughs

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Dunno how my tireless staff of thousands missed this. It’s as striking a summary of Burroughs’s life and writing as I’ve seen. His best biographer gives a sense of the man and his work that is very different from the public impression of him. Here’s a transcript of the first three minutes of the video: […]

Tripping With Andy

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‘It is Deborah Davis’s style to pan to a faraway object, complete its history, then cinematically bring it into the focus of the story. John Huston becomes cinema verité. Her style permits one to learn everything related to the trip. Even things Andy Warhol’s diarist didn’t know.’ By Charles Plymell “The Trip” it was … […]

From Fleet Street to Biafra . . . and to MI6

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When I interviewed Frederick Forsyth in 1982, he spoke about his time as a BBC correspondent in Biafra during the late 1960s. He had predicted a genocidal race war there, but his editors didn’t want to hear about it. This led to his departure from Fleet Street and a two-year odyssey as a freelance reporter […]

John Lennon Sang It: ‘Imagine there’s no countries …’

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Posted at “Stop the War coalition”: For the first time in the post-World War II era, more than 50 million people are on the move — as refugees, asylum-seekers or internally displaced. They are mostly fleeing wars and upheaval of the West’s making. Instead of building walls and fences to keep them out, imagine there […]

Whose Side Are They On? Not Nelson Algren’s

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It doesn’t take much for headline writers, editorialists, reporters, columnists, sports writers, what have you, to grab the reader’s attention with a catchy phrase. Some phrases have become such favorites that you see them used over and over. But I would bet that in plenty of cases the journalists who make use of them don’t […]

‘Plato’s Frogs’: A Long Way from ‘Saturday Night Live’

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In 1984 Malcolm Mc Neill won an Emmy for “outstanding graphics and title design” for the opening title sequence of “Saturday Night Live,” which he conceived, designed, and art directed. Here’s his storyboard: Thirty years later, contemplating a famous passage in the “Phaedo,” Mc Neill made “Plato’s Frogs.” I have not asked him about it. […]

Islam’s Pashtun Warrior for Peace: Badshah Khan

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Heathcote Williams is not a Muslim and finds the Koran “about as enjoyable as eating gravel.” But his belief in, and devotion to, the “Muslim Ghandi” led him to write a book-length investigative poem Badshah Khan: Islamic Peace Warrior, published in June by the London-based Thin Man Press. It is one of Williams’s best polemics […]

Tibet Comes to Taos at ‘Enchanted Mountain’ Salon

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The composer Andrea Clearfield will present her Tibetan Recording Project at the Enchanted Mountain Performance Space in downtown Taos, New Mexico, next Sunday, Aug. 30. It’s free and open to the public. (See details of time and place.) “Clearfield’s orchestral and choral works have been performed around the world,” according to an advance program note. […]

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