MY WAH

A film by Petar Talijancic about Yuko Nii and the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center:



Please click HERE for an additional note on Yuko Nii.

Kostelanetz Memorandum (part III)

In the third and final installment, Richard reflects on the Nobel Prize for Literature:

   As some of you have asked about why the Nobel Literature prize went to another male writer born in the USA, consider that was told more than a decade ago, on the trusted authority of someone in Sweden, that the next American-born male recipient would NOT be a writer benefitting from the literary-industrial complex, as I called it years ago, which a sometime chairman of the Nobel selection committee repeatedly deprecated, and thus that the Nobel folk wanted to reward an American writer earning prominence/elite recognitions apart from it. Acknowledging as well their general respect for people disadvantaged, I understood that the possible recipients included me.

   Perhaps because my most memorable electro-acoustic compositions were produced in Stockholm, some people there were aware of my attempts, unique among name writers, to produce work wholly my own on audiotape, videotape, film, book-art, and holography, as well as exploring more recent opportunities as a CD-rom and on-demand printing.

   My own calculation shared with others, given my understanding of how the Nobel Lit process worked (see my Person of Letters), was that Noam Chomsky might precede me if the inner committee of five nominated him to be among the finalists, even though he has never published any poetry or fiction. (Remember that the previous recent recipient was a Russian woman likewise working on the fringes of "literature.")

   I did not predict Bob Dylan, though he, of course, fits the mandate, even though he could be considered a bountiful beneficiary of the musical-industrial complex.

    What changed in Stockholm? The new secretary/chief of the inner circle, according to the Nobel website, was no longer a literature professor working in Denmark, who reportedly knew and maybe admired my work, but a newspaper publisher no doubt attuned to a choice that would be recognized in newspapers, as it was, even if Bob Dylan refused to acknowledge it.

   Am I still in the mix? Perhaps, if the committee wants to reaffirm the principle(s) noted before. Stay tuned.

   And please have a rich year next.  RK

Kostelanetz Memorandum (part II)

 
In the second installment, Richard announces the publication of two books of visual poetry:

Wholly on their own initiative, Raymond Hammond published my collection of visual poetry, Roundelays, with his NY Quarterly, and Jeffrey Haste designed and printed my FictionFields for his Deerbrook Editions. Consider this contemporary rule: If Amazon’s selling it, it must exist.

   (Speaking of that legendary retailer, I’ve noticed that it established a mammoth unmarked “distribution center” a few blocks from my house, so that what I order one evening arrives at my door the following day. Peeking inside the warehouse around 5 pm. on a weekday, I saw a humongous empty space with workers moving pallets around the floor, I guess to accept shipments that would arrive that night.)

   I also transformed the cosy corner office of Wordship II into a bookstore that will be open the last Sunday afternoon of every month to sell books of mine along with choice used books I’ve acquired over the years. Please come visit sometime (but 24 Dec., not the 25^th; then 29 Jan.), using not the usual entrance behind my fence but the door directly on Wyckoff Avenue near the corner of Norman Street. See ya?

Kostelanetz Memorandum (part I)

Richard Kostelanetz

Today I received a communication from author and critic Richard Kostelanetz (Wikipedia, Website).  Over the next three days on Highbrow, I will post the communication.  Here is the first part, a summary of recent Kostelanetz titles, each linked to its respective Amazon sales page:

I’ve necessarily come to the realization that the most remarkable achievement of my professional career has been producing work that, in spite of disaffiliation and commercial disadvantages, is recognized in the critical histories of poetry, fiction, music, book-art, and perhaps much else; so that the best utilization of my energies now would be producing work adding to those histories. 

   Because I’ve noticed that few writers produced major books after they’ve past eighty, I’m concentrating on cleaning up my legacies with new works that I hope will survive me. Even if some of them scarcely sell now, may I expect that someday, somewhere, someone will recognize one or another of them. Indeed, history suggests you can wager on it.

    And now for an exhaustive summary:

As alternative autobiography remains a continuing interest, I produced in 2016 AnnotatingMy Bibliography, a monument that runs several hundred pages filled not only with factual information but lively commentary. 

With Amazon CreateSpace, I’ve also published this past year PurePoetry, which realizes a traditional ideal for modern English literature in a contemporary way;

Read This Thin Novel, an extended narrative composed from only four English words, set one apiece on a recto pages; Splits, which contains the English words divided over opposite pages, both turned outward, making deciphering problematic; Epitaphs, which displays on gravestones of various shapes and sizes fictional, often comic inscriptions that suggest a life lost; Next to You, which is a book-length appreciation of erotic affection ingeniously realized without sexual words or descriptions, becoming the epitome perhaps of my continuing exploration of pristine erotica.

Decyphering is a sequence of typographically ornate numerals that become progressively clearer over the course of classic book-art.

FlipBook and FlipBook infuse into a traditional book structure words and only words whose letters and thus words change over successive pages. Apparently the first time that the flipping format is exploited with words alone, this project appears in two formats, one with pages larger than the other, their titles slightly different, furthering the my continuing exploration of the same text in different formats. 

Letter S / More PO-EMS is two collections of one-word poems, each enhanced in a different way, one collection exploiting repetition and the other division, presented simultaneously and continuously through an entire book.

Contradictions/Two-Letter Passages contains two shorter books entwined, perhaps less complimentary than usual for my double-fronted books, the first with pairs of words that refute each other, the second with pairs that change tense with the substitution or addition of at least two letters.

A-Z Book: Four Novellas runs the English alphabet through four cycles, each successive novella with individual letters more obscure than its predecessor, in a book-length narrative incidentally about the possibilities of contemporary typography and the great tradition of Alphabet Book Art.

Disappointed Literary Authors is a private admonitory memoir that appears in an expensive edition because I want the text to exist outside of my archive, even if it is minimally circulated in my lifetime.

Writinga Novel realizes a book-length continuous narrative with only one word on each book page to its conclusion. 

WritingAnother Novel is what the title says it is.

Prosaic Poems takes two sets of English words—one singlets, the other doublets—continuously counterpointed on opposite pages in a landscape format.

ShortPoems Long Poems explores on continuously opposite pages two sets of two-word poems—one set with the pair adjacent to each other, the other with the two words far apart on a single page. The former set becomes Short Poems and the other Long Poems in this double-fronted book.

?/! collects two sets of English words appropriately proceeding (and thus enhancing) those evocative punctuation marks.

English English explores choice sentences within which the same English word has decidedly different meanings (e.g., “At college his major major was English.”). 

<——————>, whose title refers to a legendary film by Michael Snow, contains pairs of English words that, when visibly separately to the far edges of a two-page spread, can be read continuously (e.g., live & learn).

APolygraphic Novel contains sixteen complimentary erotic stories, each with its own typeface, interwoven one sentence at a time over the course of 120 pages.

Sublime English explores with single-page enhancements certain special English words with uncommon religious and esthetic resonance.

Wordswap contains pairs of English words that, when exchanged, express radically different meanings (e.g., nothing lost, lost nothing). Consider this to be another contribution to my continuing project I call English-Centered Writing.

No other writer in America surely, perhaps elsewhere, is working so elaborately and variously as the apex of book-art and literature.

Otherwise, yet more, yes: 3 Canadian Geniuses reprints a short book, previously available only in Canada from Colombo & Co, that reprints extended appreciative profiles and criticism that Richard Kostelanetz has written about Glenn Gould, Marshall McLuhan, and Northrop Frye, all now gone, alas. Some of these longer essays initially appeared in the Esquire and New York Times Magazine; others, in cultural quarterlies. The defining mark of an RK profile in identifying in the man the sources of excellence in his work. 3 Canadian Geniuses also contains RK’s shorter appreciations of such other Canadian geniuses as Michael Snow, Erving Goffman, Hugh Kenner, R. Murray Schafer, and RK’s closest poetic colleague/muse, John Robert Colombo.

Autobiographies@ 70 is the fourth volume, brilliantly designed by Joshua Boardman, in Richard Kostelanetz’s continuing exploration of alternative autohistoriography not with a chronological narrative but complimentary texts from the seventh decade of his rich life.

With the help of my publishing assistant Andrew Morinelli, whom I first met in that NYU sauna now gone, I also put in book print two classics written by colleagues—Landlessness (in English) by the Italian Alberto Vitacchio and D. E. Steward’s monumental Chroma, which are both now available from Amazon, where they should survive me and them, which is what a classic is supposed to do.

Live Radio Streams from Around the Globe

Find radio broadcasts around the globe.  Use the mouse to locate stations, select.  Please click HERE.

Give International Authors for the Holidays: Annual Appeal

In order to keep International Authors moving, we need to sell books.  Although we are not averse to making a profit, at this stage in the evolution of the consortium a "healthy" revenue stream will suffice. This holiday season, please consider purchasing International Authors publications for family, friends and colleagues.  Also, consider purchasing books to donate to your local public and academic libraries. All royalties from the sales of our titles go to authors or back into the enterprise. 

Please click HERE for our list. Each description is linked to the respective Amazon sales pages.

 

"Open Country Joy"

There's no place like home for the holidays...

John Glenn (1921-2016)

“If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self-interest."

            --John Glenn

Highbrow Advice from Mr. Rogers

Like what you see? For additional highbrow advice, please click HERE.

Emanations available through Jayde Design

Emanations, International Authors' annual anthology of fiction, poetry and essays, is now available through Jayde Design.

Please click HERE to view the Emanations page.

Please click HERE to view the homepage.  Jayde Design features a range of hard-to-find and collectable titles. Highly recommended.

More Brain Bugs in the News

Fine art is one thing, but what Highbrow is really about is brain bugs and their activities.  Recently, as reported here, famed brain bug Jack Ma had some useful things to say about globalization.

Now adding to the Highbrow roster of brain bugs is his excellency Agustin Carstens, who has just resigned his post as Central Bank Chief in Mexico.  I think I speak for brain bugs and highbrows world-wide when I say that Agustin will be missed, and let's hope he soon finds another job so we might continue to follow his work and learn more about brain bugs, their natural history, and the wonderful things they do.

Agustin Carstens, former Chief, Mexico Central Bank

Brain Bug from the planet Klendathu, seen here in conference with Earth scientists

John Dugdale Bradley of Milton's Cottage to visit the WAH Center

Noted:

John Dugdale Bradley, Trustee of Milton’s Cottage Trust, Buckinghamshire, England, has been  invited to speak at the Milton Society of America's annual dinner in Philadelphia on 7th January 2017 to launch the Paradise Maintain’d Endowment Fund. This effort seeks to raise endowment funds of $5,000,000 over the next two years to sustain Milton's Cottage.

The Yuko Nii Foundation will also be seeking funds in 2017 to build an elevator to the Mansard roof area where the permanent collection is kept. Among the holdings is the Milton Collection of historical art and artifacts. The forward room of the Mansard roof has beautiful views from windows that oversee the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines.

John will be at the WAH Center January 9th at 11 A.M. to meet with Yuko Nii and Terrance Lindall to discuss where they can mutually take their common interest in the perpetuation of the Milton Legacy. Terrance believes that efforts in 2017 celebrating the 350th anniversary of the publishing of Paradise Lost can successfully launch this fundraising campaign for both institutions. 

The fundraising campaign could be high profile and promote not only Milton's legacy but the study of humanities in general. In 2008 Yuko Nii and Terrance Lindall hosted a celebration for Milton's 400th birthday.

Some of the Yuko Nii Foundation's Milton collection will be on display on January 9th for John's visit. After a tour of the building, a light luncheon will be served in the grand reception hall around 12 noon.

Those interested in helping with this exciting fundraising campaign should contact Terrance Lindall: milton@wahcenter.net

Milton dictating PL, collection of the Yuko Nii Foundation