Writing
William S. Burroughs: Interview
Allen Ginsberg
Editor’s Note: Circa 1995, one of the editors of the original Sensitive Skin, Mr. E. Oso, handed me the following manuscript, an interview with William S. Burroughs, in turn given to him by an assistant to Allen Ginsberg, ...
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Poem
Mayakovsky – New Translations
Jenny Wade
Маяковский в 1913 году
Я тебя в твоей не знала славе,
Помню только бурный твой рассвет,
Но, быть может, я сегодня впра...
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Essay
The Extremist Manifesto
Nick Zedd
Now that contemporary art, a system that stands for privilege, nepotism and political connections is finally dying, get out of the fucking way.
We who have been locked out of your galleries, museums and art holes... ignor...
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Essay
Memory is Narrative; Narrative is Memory
Ronald B. Richardson
Memory is Narrative
Memory is mostly narrative. I say mostly because there are rare memories that are not, such as olfactory memories: you smell something, and it suddenly takes you back to . . . what? In these memories, ...
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Essay
Catastrophes
Breyten Breytenback
No, the universe remains dark. We are animals overcome by catastrophes . . . but I suddenly discovered that alienation, the exploitation of man by man, and malnourishment, will push into the background the metaphysical evil,...
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Essay
Maria Yudina
Jenny Wade
The Russian concert pianist Maria Veniaminovna Yudina, little known in the West, died this day, November 19, in 1970. She had a fervent cult following in the Soviet Union, partly because of her resistance to the establishme...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #20: Eddie Woods Has Been Around the Block – With & Without Tennessee
bart plantenga
“If Tennessee Williams doesn’t know what to do with his life, why should I worry?”
~ Eddie Woods, Tennessee Williams in Bangkok
Eddie Woods and I go back to October 1978. It was in Amsterdam at the Ins & Out...
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Essay
Saving Johannes
Eddie Woods
Johannes van Dam (1946-2013). Journalist, walking encyclopedia, and culinary writer extraordinaire. And one of my dearest Amsterdam friends since we first met in 1980, which was still early Ins & Outs Press days. Johannes, w...
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Essay
We Are All Alice B. Toklas
James Reich
Toklasization, being the condition of failing to materialize in one’s autobiography, or of being ghostwritten out by a biographer with more vanity than ours, has become the most significant cause of suicide and psychopatho...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #20: Ron Kolm: No Longer Chugging Rank Cologne
bart plantenga
Ron Kolm: No Longer Chugging Rank Cologne
One of the perils of the fast life is that if you’re not synchronized with the prevailing velocity you lose focus, things get blurry, imprecise, or you end up getting dragged a...
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Music
In Memory of Dmitri Shostakovich
Jenny Wade
Today is the anniversary of the death of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (Sept 29, 1906 - April 9, 1975).
Shostakovich struggled under a hostile and perilous political environment for his entire working life. Af...
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Essay
Alexander Blok – The Stranger
Jenny Wade
Alexander Blok, the supreme poet of the Russian Symbolist movement, died this day in the year 1921 in St. Petersburg, at the age of 40.
Blok broke from the tradition of Russian realism with its emphasis on social respo...
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Essay
Zoning, by Spencer Kansa – review by Marc Olmsted
Marc Olmsted
Zoning, by Spencer Kansa, Beatdom Books, 2011 - $12.00 - paper
Spencer Kansa’s debut novella Zoning is terrifying, page-turning fun. If this seems contradictory, consider that he was an acolyte of William Burroughs, so...
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Essay
TAYLOR MEAD IS DEAD. A PISS-POOR OBITUARY IF EVER THERE WAS ONE.
Norman Douglas
In light of the fact that the guys doing my old job at The New York Times dropped the ball on this one, I suppose I must accept that I wouldn't have gotten much more out of any obit they published than this:
Ten years ago...
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Essay
Taylor Mead, RIP
Nick Zedd
I met Taylor Mead in 1989 when we both acted together in a science fiction movie shot in the Hall of Science at the World's Fair Grounds in Queens. I'd seen his acting in the seventies when I moved to NYC and saw Nude Restau...
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