Spencer: I began writingZoningin my early 20s, and William Burroughs read it during my first visit to his home in Lawrence, Kansas in 1992. Its kinda funny the comment he made about it thats been used on the front cover – because Id never read Celine before then but, having done so subsequently, I presume that what he meant by it was theres a similar matter-of-ctness in relaying horror.
[...]
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Nine years old and running,Action PoetryKicks Online Literary Kicksis an open forum for sharing original poems.
2. The first of May is alsoInternational Workers Day, and should be a big day for the Occupy movementworld.
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Im taking a break today! Ive been working hard, need to rest and recharge … so, in lieu of a philosophy post, heres the silliest picture I can find.
I know a bit about the Beastie Boys. Ive seen them in concert several times, though the live format didnt play to their strengths. The best way to listen to the Beastie Boys is with earbuds in, the world shut out. Their recordings were dense, complex and sophisticated, their rhymes expertly crafted for maximum effect. Each of the three had a highly distinct voice; you can listen to any line in any Beastie Boys song and immediately know whose voice youre hearing:
Rene Ricard is one of the few surviving members of the cast, and was a close friend and associate of Warhol from 1965 until the artists death in 1987. In a rare public appearance, Rene Ricard will discuss the of the film and offer reflections on Warhols larger career as painter, author, publisher and wit.
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The primary challenge cing Sam Harris in this book is not to define a concrete and universal moral code — not surprisingly, he resorts to a John Stuart Mill-ishUtilitarianapproach — but rather to show that a concrete and universal moral code is possible at all. Harris presents a clear argument for the positive conclusion here, which I will paraphrase as follows:
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Its hard for me to describe how big an influence the Beastie Boys have had on my life. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I found lifesaving inspiration in records likePauls BoutiqueandCheck Your Headthat I could not have found anywhere else. If it were not for the Beastie Boys, Im pretty sure there would have never been a Literary Kicks.
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I didnt come across Comte de Lautramont right away. I found him only after a long search for the most furious literature I could find, and I suspect others dont find him quickly either, if they find him at all.
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As a disgruntled teen, mainstream writers like Stephen King and dusty fuddies like T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stephens could not slake my brooding brain. Poe turned my head and Coleridge was my vorite Romantic in school, both with drug addictions and personality disorders that were sent desperately to the pen in order to relieve their burdens, financial or emotional. But when I found Bukowski and Kerouac and those who influenced them, I eventually bumped into Comte de Lautramont, who quickly became even more interesting to me when I heard that translations abound in many languages, except English.
&8226;When Wall Street Occupied Me
and …
This photo was taken at a high school dance in Florida in 1965. Afriend of a friendwho I dont know posted it on Facebook. The photo itself is a work of art, but theres something else amazing about this picture: that band is the very young Allman Brothers (known, at the time, as Allman Joy). The unassuming guitar player on the left is the genius Duane Sweetness Allman, and Im pretty sure thats Gregg Allman on the right.
Well, there are several components to Ayn Rands philosophy. Epistemologically, she is a rationalist (as was Thomas Aquinas, though his humbler rationalism was more subtle than hers). Psychologically, she is a devoutEgoist. Spiritually, she is an atheist (and this is the part of her philosophy Paul Ryan is most eager to distance himself from, even though his newfound and highly convenient embrace of traditional Catholicism isnt impressingseveral other influential Catholics). But I dont think any of these things should matter very much to voters. Most of us couldnt care less what Paul Ryan thinks about epistemology or psychology or religion.
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Ed McClanahan Just Hitched In From The Coast (On the Aforementioned Night of the Transparent Purple Bunnies)
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Chelsea Girls was shot in various rooms in the Hotel Chelsea (and the Warhol Factory) over three weeks in the summer of 1966. Rene Ricard lived in the hotel at the time, and he remains a current resident.
Filmed in black and white and color and shown on two screens simultaneously, the film runs three hours and fifteen minutes.
From 1958 to 1962 McClanahan taught English at Oregon State University. In 1962 he received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and stayed there until 1972 as a lecturer in creative writing, sharing an office with Stegner. At Stanford he met many other writers, among them Robert Stone, Larry McMurtry and Ken Kesey. Berry, Norman and Hall also made their respective ways to Northern California in the early 60s, and with McClanahan became known as the Kentucky Mafia. Most of these writers became associated with Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. McClanahans Prankster moniker was Captain Kentucky.
(Not too long ago, Dan Barth turned us on toEd McClanahan. McClanahans new collectionI Just Hitched In From The Coastis out, and Dan Barth is back with a review. — Levi)
(This is the first guest post in our interview seriesThe Literary Life, in which we present scinating people who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of creative inspiration. Today, Laki Vazakas interviews Spencer Kansa, author ofZoning, a novel, andWormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron, the biography of an underground film star who worked with L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley. Kansa is pictured above in 1994 with William S. Burroughs at WSBs home in Lawrence, Kansas. — Levi)
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(I was planning to review a book about Buddhism and avant-garde art this weekend, until I heard that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys had died of cancer. So, I guess Ill be running posts about Buddhism and avant-garde art for two weekends in a row.)
Ed McClanahan of Lexington, Kentucky has been plying the writers trade for over 50 years. Born in Brooksville, Kentucky in 1932, he grew up there and in nearby Maysville. After graduating from Miami University he attended grad school at the University of Kentucky where he received an M. A. in English in 1958. It was at UK that he began lifelong friendships with fellow writers Wendell Berry, Gurney Norman, Bobbie Ann Mason and James Baker Hall, a group sometimes called the Fab Five.
I had my mouth full of lambs stew, so Steffen came to my defense. Dont you read the s? Klaus is a prodigy! The youngest director in Neubabelsberg!
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Spencer:Well, to be honest, I was beginning to fear thatZoningwas aroman maudit- a cursed novel – because it was actually slated to come out a few years ago with an American publisher but, shysters that they were, they reneged on the contract. Then a Portuguese publisher agreed to publish it two years ago, only to tell me, right at the last minute, that they wouldnt do it with the original cover design wed already agreed on. I love the cover of the book. It was created by an old mucker of mine, the hugely gifted artist Dan Lish. Its beautiful, and its dreamy, druggy quality perfectly evokes the hallucinatory atmosphere and spirit of the book. So I refused to have the novel published without it.
Im searching for a bright light of truth among the hip young public philosophers selling books today. Last weekend,we admiredAlain De Bottons sensitive style but worried that he might be the Martha Stewart of philosophy. This weekend, Id like to look at a harder-hitting upstart, Sam Harris, whose key ethical work isThe Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.
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The Tenants Association of the Chelsea Hotelpresents a rare screeningof Andy Warhols 1966 masterpiece, Chelsea Girls, introduced by poet and Warhol superstar Rene Ricard.
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I reject her philosophy dragon nest sea gold, Ryan says firmly. Its an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a persons view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas, who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. Dont give me Ayn Rand, he says.
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4. New York Citys Center for Fiction presentsMothers on the Vergeincluding Leora Skolkin-Smith (Hystera) and Jessica Keener, whose sensitive 1970s memory novelNight SwimIve recently enjoyed.
I put down my fork, swallowed, and pointed a finger. Joachim, I said. I dont work furs Kino. I am Kino!
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There was one lie that made me seem more interesting than all the others. Everyone wanted to drink with me, get high with me, and sleep with me when we told them I was a movie director. It was the lie that turned me into the center of attention and opened the tightest twat. One night over dinner, Joachim Ringelnatz — the whimsical poet who wore a sailors uniform wherever he went — eyed me funny and asked if I wasnt a bit young to be working for the cinema, furs kino.
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3. ThePEN World Voices Festivalis about to begin, and has a ntastic lineup.
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So I avoided Sam Harriss early books, but he may be improving. His 2010Moral Landscapeis worth digging into and taking quite seriously. This book lays out an extended argument for the real existence of a concrete and universal moral code that could, if properly expressed and understood, significantly, improve the world. This is the kind of ambition I like to see in an ethical philosopher.
Starlightbysillowet
Paul Ryan was elected by his fellow Republicans for a critically important post in the House of Representatives. Hes the chairman of the House Budget Committee, and in this capacity has defined thedetailed direction for the USA federal budgetfor the Republican party. The Paul Ryan budget proposal drastically cuts services that middle class Americans rely on, while lowering taxes for the very wealthy (most obscenely of all, it ils to cut military spending; we cant pay to send poor Americans to college, but profit-bloated military contractors keep getting a blank check). Mitt Romney has called the Paul Ryan budget planmarvelous. Perhaps the most important question at stake in the upcoming November 2012 elections is whether or not this country will adopt the Paul Ryan budget plan beginning in 2013.
throwaway linesbymichaelamichael
As a joke, Steffen introduced me as whomever occurred to him at the moment. I was an orphaned painter, an undercover Spartakist, a science protege on scholarship. Steffen introduced me, and then I had to keep up the lies — that was the game. I was a saxophone player in Bix Biederbeckes band. I was a Swedish mesmerist. When I was asked about the leg, I talked about dogfights high above the Somme; when they wanted to hear my award-winning poetry, I said the poems were so Futuristic they hadnt been written yet. All it took was a straight ce.
Appearing in the film, amongst others, are Nico, Ondine, Brigid Berlin, International Velvet, Mario Montez, Ingrid Superstar, and Marie Menken, with music by the Velvet Underground. Filmed at a cost of $3,000.00 The film grossed $-,000.00 in its first five months of its release, it perhaps the most successful underground film of all time It has since earned cult status as one of the most stunning and provocative cultural documents of the 1960s, and is considered by many to be Warhols filmic masterpiece.
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Today the residents of the Chelsea Hotel are fighting to retain and preserve one of the great cultural landmarks of New York City. The Chelsea Hotel is not only a historic landmarked building, but also a living national treasure, and a vital part of the intellectual and artistic heritage of New York. Residents have incurred great expense fighting evictions and what they consider to be the illegal demolition of over a hundred rooms in the historic hotel.
Lautreamont was born as Isidore Lucien Ducasse in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1846, and left it during a time of great turbulence. His mother died soon after giving birth to him, in the midst of the Argentinian-Uruguayan War, and he was raised by his ther, a Uruguayan public official of French ancestry. He was sent to school in Paris, France at the age of thirteen. By seventeen he was known at his Lyce as a quick student, yet morbid and sardonic in humor. Memorizing the Romantic writers as well as Dante, Milton, Baudelaire and Racine, he soon decided to become a writer in order to portray the pleasures of cruelty!
Three years later, I was in charge of my own set in Neubabelsberg, the largest studio in Europe, a movie that I had written. The producers, the stars, the cameramen and the newss all called me Kino, the name I had given myself over Horchers lamb stew. I was a prodigy, the youngest director in Us history. The lie had become truth.
Bobbys most well-known for his work over several decades with the Rolling Stones, but hes also recorded with Elvis Presley, toured as part of Delaney and Bonnie and Friends and Joe Cockers Mad Dogs and Englishman, played sax on George HarrisonsAll Things Must Pass, and laid down the slammin intro to John Lennons hit single Whatever Gets You Through The Night. The book doesnt waste much time on introspection or soul-searching; when the author of a memoir mentions my wife at the time in the middle of a story, and this story is not preceded by an earlier story in which he meets or marries this wife, you realize that this isnt going to be one of those intense and deeply personal memoirs. And thats okay. Sometimes you just want to read about a saxophone player and his saxophone. (We never find out his first wifes name, but his saxophones name is Elmer).
Sometimes I lay off the heavy reading and dig into a rock and roll biography likeEvery Nights a Saturday Nightby Bobby Keys.
What glorious chaos!Kinoby Jurgen Fauth is the most enjoyable book Ive read this year. Its a wild, caroming romp that crashes into German history, Nazi mind control, American pop culture decadence and modern cinema snobbery. The crazy plot soars from beginning to end.
I got off to a bad start with Sam Harris in 2004 when he rose to me with an angry book calledThe End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reasonthat identified fundamentalist religion (particularly radical Islam) as a major source of the worlds problems. Harris was part of a wave of new atheists, including Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and eventually Christopher Hitchens, who posited Osama bin Laden as thereductio ad absurdumof all organized religion, a formula I completely disagree with (Im quite sure that religious hatred is only a surrogate for ethnic or national hatred, and I suspect that guerrophiles likeOsama bin Ladenhave little authentic interest in religion to begin with).
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Congressman and Republican party rising star Paul Ryan, who hasnever made a secret ofhis admiration for Ayn Rand before last week, has suddenly caught a bad case of Vice President fever. Rands Objectivist ideology is too extreme for many American voters, and so Paul Ryan has begun a campaign push to erase all traces of her influence on his thought.
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I then left the manuscript on the shelf for over a decade while I worked as a music journalist, then I dusted it down a few years ago and started hawking it to several publishers.
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5. I had a very negative initial reaction to the news that a team of transcendentalist video game designers from the University of Southern California has created anelectronic interactive version of ThoreausWalden(still and alwaysmy vorite book in the world). But the preview visible at the link above really doesnt look so bad. And while its true that playing a video game is nothing like living in a cabin in the woods for two years — well, come to think of it, reading a book is nothing like living in a cabin in the woods for two years either. So I guess I wont judge this project until I get to see it for myself.
(This introduction to a too-little-known French author is the Litkicks debut of Eamon Loingsigh, whose novellaAn Afir of Concoctionscan besampled here).
At the premiere of the film at Jonas Mekas Cinematheque, the film sequences were listed on the program accompanied by ke room numbers at the Chelsea Hotel. These had to be removed, however, when the Chelsea Hotel threatened legal action.
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Laki:Describe the publishing process?
Laki: What was the genesis of your novelZoning?
