Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 164

Tonight in London

Tonight in New York City

Meanwhile, in Bloomington, Indiana (a lot of activity going down)

So William Burroughs Centennial week passes (tho’ plenty more Centennial events to come – look out for a flood of New York City events, for example, in April)

In New York, Marshall Weber gave/presented a marathon reading at the Munch Gallery.
In London, Iain Sinclair spoke (“Ghosts of A Ghost, William Burroughs Time Surgery and the Death of the Image”). In Paris, Cabaret Toxique gave a multi-media spirited salute to him; in Zurich, in Berlin, in Toronto… elsewhere, more events.

In St Louis, there was an evening celebration and an afternoon by-the-cold-grave-site gathering.

This Sunday, at City Lights in San Francisco, “An Algebra of Apocalypse”– Jello Biafra, V Vale, Robert Gluck, Kevin Killian, among others, will “explore the fiction and philosophy of one of the most important writers of the twentieth-century.”

Here’s some gleanings from William’s (world-wide) press coverage this week, starting with…  Will Self, last week, in The Guardian,
Sand Avidar-Walzer, in the L.A.Review of Books and Jim Ruland and David Ulin in the L.A.Times

Danny Wicentowski presents the birth-place (local, St Louis, Missouri) angle.
Frank Morris, the (Lawrence), Kansas focus,
Tom Vitale on NPR presents an over-view.

Darran Anderson considers his work in The Quietus
Simon Warner in The Conversation
Levi Asher at Literary Kicks.

Ken Layne at Gawker pens the somewhat ambiguous note “Paranoid Burlesque” 
Davis Schneiderman chimes in on the Huffington Post – “Exploding Five Major Myths”
Stephanie Nikolopoulos delivers “One Hundred Facts” (count ’em!) Here’s Jerry Portwood’s profile “Today in Gay History – William Burroughs Turns One Hundred”, in Out.
The BBC features on its web-site five first-hand reminiscences (One of those remembering him, his biographer Barry Miles also speaks to the experience of first encountering Naked Lunch here)

Flavorwire has “Twelve Cultural Icons on His Influence”

Here’s another friend recollecting, John Giorno  (his spoken-word performance on the death of Burroughs, in 1997 can be found here)

and Thurston Moore (ex-Sonic Youth) remembers him here as a rock n roll and cultural influence.

Non-English recollections and notices. Too many to mention, but we might single out Michael Kellner in Der Spiegel (other German-language postings here, here and here),
Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian.

The two-day gathering in Salerno, Italy, at the University, “Saccheggiate Il Louvre” was a crucial and important gathering.

Other news? There is other news.

Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums had a book launch last night in Tehran, in Farid Qadami’s Persian translation

Philip Whalen’s Invisible Idylls (with an introduction by Joanne Kyger)-that one’s in English

Neal Cassady‘s Birthday is tomorrow (and more of that tomorrow). Tonight Denver celebrates the Fifth Annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash (8 o’clock, upstairs at the Mercury Cafe) with special guests John Sinclair and the Blues Scholars and the David Amram with his Quartet (augmented by jazz masters, Richie Cole and Janine Santana)  Cathy, Jami and John Allen Cassady will be there presenting a special tribute to their mother, the late Carolyn Cassady   

Bruce Weber’s obituary for Rene Ricard appeared yesterday in the New York Times.