Almost 70 years ago in Prospect Park where the future waited like a whim my childhood slipped through. You held me with my arms around your neck. The carousel goes round with our delicate ghosts like shadows on a scrim. The terrible wind that carries us off has not blown them away. I smell the popcorn. I hear the barrel organ. --JH … [Read more...]
Your Obituary Is Waiting
(for Philip Larkin) My ego prefers an obit published by the NY Times. But anywhere else will do, even etched into a headstone that nobody reads in a cemetery where nobody ever goes. I don't know why I care, but I do. I don't know why anyone should care, but it’s the custom to. —JH … [Read more...]
Celebrating Carl Weissner, Buk, and Burroughs
They say Berlin is the place to be. Since I can't be there myself, here's the next best thing . . . This is the Maher-Mähler film about Carl that will be screened as part of the celebration: Always These Nightmares! Toward the end of his life Carl was a writer on a rampage. He wrote three books — one in English, Death in Paris, which he described as “Doomsday Lit,” and two in German, Manhattan Muffdiver and Die Abenteuer von Trashman, whose biting satirical humor he called “vulgo-cynicism.” All three … [Read more...]
When Language Is Incorrect
Mokusatsu Asked what he’d do first if called upon to rule a nation Confucius replied, “I’d correct language. If language isn’t correct Then what is said is not what’s meant And what ought to be done remains undone. Morals and art deteriorate And justice goes astray – And if justice should disappear Then people will stand about in helpless confusion. So there must be no arbitrariness in what’s said. It matters above everything.” Asked to surrender in World War II The Japanese used the word ‘mokusatsu’ In their response to an … [Read more...]
The Nature of the Beast
Furthermore . . . “As Matisse noted, black is a colour too & in certain hands the superior one.” -- Gerard Bellaart … [Read more...]
Speaking of Hans Magnus Enzenberger . . .
His poem "last will and testament" begins: "get your flag out of my face, it tickles!" Jerome Rothenberg's appealing translation from the German continues: and get that tinny wreath off my chest, it's rattling too much; toss it over with the statues on the garbage heap, and give the ribbon to some biddies to doll themselves up with. The poem goes on in that fed-up vein for another 15 lines and ends like this: as for the resurrection of the flesh however and life everlasting i will, if it's all the same to you, take care of that … [Read more...]
‘Majestically lonely and white . . .’
Now that you've had a look at the moody green splendor of the moors near Manchester, England, take a look at the brilliant skyscape near Bordeaux, France (courtesy of our staff), and a favorite poem of theirs. 'A History of Clouds' Hans Magnus Enzensberger Appearing as they do, overnight, or out of the blue, they can hardly be considered as being born. Passing away imperceptibly they have no notion of dying. And anyway, nobody can match their transience. Majestically lonely and white they rise against a silky blue or … [Read more...]
From the Pond Across the Street
We would travel light years to find alien beings inhabiting fabulous worlds. -- Malcolm Mc Neill Some things just won't stay down. 'The permutations are infinite: Whatever it is, the joke is on us.' … [Read more...]
The Moody Splendor of Manchester
I was corresponding by email recently with Jay Jeff Jones, an American expat playwright, journalist, and poet, who is working on a new edition of Jeff Nuttall's Bomb Culture, a long-out-of-print classic about the British counterculture of the 1960s. Jones, who has lived in Manchester, England, for many decades, wrote that he was "in fine fettle ... good weather ... long walks over the moors on most days." I replied, "Walking on the moors? So 19th century. I didn't know they still exist." By coincidence, I had begun reading Virginia Woolf's … [Read more...]
The Sorrows
War is always a poison to the soul, even the most just wars. No more important victory was ever achieved than World War II, but America was poisoned, perhaps fatally, by the aftermath of its own success, because we never faced what war really is. It’s very difficult. There are no words for it. -- William Osborne … [Read more...]
Streaming What We Breathe
Quantum Words for Bill Osborne Stealthy quantum words phantoms of expectation and suicides of time riddle us with springs and traps. Self-delusion streaming what we breathe we who breathe in silence holding worlds together & apart like ancient beacons bearing witness in halos of fading light. -- JH … [Read more...]
Edward Snowden on The Intercept
Since I don't tweet, this is the next best thing. Click to listen. Edward Snowden discusses surveillance, tools to help protect your privacy, and the likelihood of a Trump-Putin deal to extradite him. … [Read more...]
‘Meeting Jim’ (Who’s Having the Time of His Life)
I've never met Jim. We've only corresponded by email about the strange case of Orwell's typewriter. But I know that Jim Haynes is a man for all reasons -- pleasure, food, sex, mind, books, theater, life -- and that to meet him in person all you have to do is show up at his door in Paris for dinner on a Sunday night. He puts on feasts open to anyone who cares to make a reservation. If you can't get to Paris, however, you can meet him on screen at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where "Meeting Jim" will have its world premiere in … [Read more...]
Tribute to John Bryan from Cold Turkey Press
John Bryan published so many underground papers and magazines over three decades -- beginning in 1962 with renaissance, a San Francisco literary journal inspired by Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception (which John said he read “half a dozen times,” and which turned him onto LSD) -- that Warren Hinckle called him “the Peter Zenger of the underground press ... unconquered and ungovernable by the puny laws of journalism.” Paul Krassner said he was “a one-man band, and the printing press was his musical instrument.” He put John “in the tradition of … [Read more...]
Huge Wyler Retrospective in Paris
One of the beauties of a William Wyler retrospective as big as the one that the Cinemathèque Française has currently mounted in Paris is the chance to see the immense variety of his work. I don't think as thorough a retrospective (41 films, including some of the silents) has been screened since the 1996 Berlin Film Festival. The Cinemathèque has also posted a deeply researched web page with so many layers you can get lost in them. One pleasure of the site is the rarely seen stills of Wyler with his actors behind the scenes. Another is an oral … [Read more...]
Big Moment for a B-17
UPDATED May 21: When the 10-man crew of "The Memphis Belle" completed their 25th mission over Europe in 1943, they and their B-17 heavy bomber were brought home to the U.S. for a cross-country publicity tour and were made famous by William Wyler's World War II live-action combat documentary (also called "The Memphis Belle"). I wrote about all of that in my Wyler biography, A Talent for Trouble. On May 17 -- 75 years to the day of that final mission -- the restored aircraft was put on permanent display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air … [Read more...]
Connecting With Burroughs
I was walking down Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan the other day when I saw someone reading Naked Lunch. I know the shot looks posed, but it wasn't. This is exactly how he was sitting (below left). The guy was in front of an office building at 777 Third Ave., between E. 48 and E. 49th Streets, where you couldn't find more ordinary pedestrian traffic. It's the last place I would have expected to see anyone connecting with William Burroughs and his subversive satire. Which is why I snapped the shot (with permission). When I showed the shot … [Read more...]