Author Archive

Making the Year for a Superstitious Super

Written by John Strausbaugh on January 15, 2002. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

The Saturday before New Year’s I ran into the super of the Times Square tenement where I’ve been staying lately. The building has an address on W. 40th St., right across the street from the massive south wall of the Port Authority terminal, but it’s not really on the street. It’s a relic of a
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Hey, Dr. Grief: Who Asked You to Tell Us How to Mourn?

Written by John Strausbaugh on January 8, 2002. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

The vultures from the Grief Industry have been circling over Manhattan since a certain morning last September. Their work done in Columbine, in Oklahoma City, in all those other places stricken by acts of violence or sudden destruction, they flocked east to New York City, bringing with them their long do-gooder faces and their pious
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Catching Up with Tuli Kupferberg, Copernicus and Others from the Old School

Written by John Strausbaugh on December 25, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

The Old School It’s a cool movie–which, at two hours, still only scratches the surface of Smith’s enigmatic life. Igliori included generous clips from his tragically fragmentary film legacy. Smith painstakingly built his avant-garde fancies a frame at a time, hand-painting, collaging, drawing gorgeous celluloid worlds that ranged from flights of bebop to multimedia synesthetic
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The Night of 100 Elvii

Written by John Strausbaugh on December 18, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

Night of 100 Elvii I haven’t had a better time at a "rock concert" since the last time I was in a hall filled with Elvis tribute artists (they don’t like to be called "impersonators"), in Memphis several years ago. There’s something about the innocent, exuberant joy Elvis people radiate when they get the chance
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Book-Curator-to-the-Upper-Crust Kurt Thometz Is into Vibrant, Sexy African “Market Literature” These Days

Written by John Strausbaugh on December 4, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

High Life & Mad English It’s not that Thometz, who earns his living helping the filthy rich build and organize their collections, doesn’t feel the temptation to do some acquiring for himself. He has a philosophy about it. "Dealing books is like dealing dope," he smiles. "If you’re gonna deal, you can’t use." The things
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Pomo Novelist Curtis White Rants Against “the Middle Mind”

Written by John Strausbaugh on November 20, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

Rants Against the Middle Mind Requiem is an unapologetically postmodern novel, a large novel with a lot of humanity crammed into it behind its pomo surface affect of disaffected high irony. Its structure is reminiscent of a Baroque Mass for the Dead, starting out with multiple strands of storylines that at first appear unrelated to
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How to Speak Good/Cool/Nonstop

Written by John Strausbaugh on November 13, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

How to Speak Good I would seriously like to utilize this space in order to assist you, the reader, to grow your communication skills and essentialize your ability to formulate effective interpersonalized data-sharing capabilities. The ultimate upside of this system is guaranteed to positively impact your life, and at absolutely no cost to you. In
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Translator Linda Asher Handles the Poetic, and Mythopoetic, of Vernant’s The Universe, the Gods, and Men

Written by John Strausbaugh on November 6, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

The Translator’s Art Jean-Pierre Vernant’s The Universe, the Gods, and Men, translated by Linda Asher (HarperCollins, 205 pages, $24), beats the odds. Vernant’s a renowned classicist, but there’s nothing stuffy about the way he tells his tales. He used to tell these stories to his grandson–that must have something to do with the vitality of
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The Exorcist IV: The Skeptical Canadian

Written by John Strausbaugh on October 23, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

A few years ago, Fordham sociology and anthropology professor Michael Cuneo gave himself what sounds like a fun assignment. He has since witnessed dozens of exorcisms across the U.S. as research for his new book American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty (Doubleday, 314 pages, $24.95). When you ask him, however, as I
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Is Mark Manning Rock’s Marquis de Sade, or Just a Jerkoff?

Written by John Strausbaugh on October 16, 2001. Posted in Miscellaneous, Posts

Decadence is boring. Depravity is dull. Debauchery repeated too many times becomes routine. How much Sade have you really read? Not skimmed, but read? I enjoy the Cliffs Notes Sade as much as anyone, but I’ve never been able to get through, say, Justine, and I daresay most of you haven’t either. Mark Manning would
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