Author Archive
The Eye of the Storm
January 22, 2013 | by Rex Weiner
Alan Shenker, an artist known among the underground cartoonists of the late sixties as Yossarian, died last week, in New York, at the age of sixty-seven. Born in Levittown, he was a downtown habitué and his work was published in the East Village Other, among many other publications of the era.
A kind of ruthless patricide was implicit in Yossarian’s cover art for the February 1972 issue of the New York ACE. He was close to “the Arab,” as the East Village Other’s editor, Yaakov Kohn, was known, and now Yossarian was one of the defectors from the already tottering EVO to the new paper which I’d cofounded with Robert “Honest Bob” Singer. Read More »
A Stowaway to the Thanatosphere: My Voyage Beyond Apollo with Norman Mailer
December 31, 2012 | by Rex Weiner
We’re out this week, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2012 while we’re away. We hope you enjoy—and have a happy New Year!
On a brisk December day in 1972, the SS Statendam left New York Harbor with an extraordinary passenger list. Theoretical physicists, science fiction writers, a handful of paying passengers, a reporter from the New York Times, media personalities, and a couple of distinguished literary figures, including Norman Mailer. All were aboard for the ship’s destination, Cape Canaveral, to observe Apollo 17, the last manned rocket launch to the moon.
As the skyline receded in the distance, two individuals in black leather jackets and boots tried discreetly to mingle with the other passengers on deck. Eschewing the one thousand dollar passage and without the freebies extended to celebrity guests and credited media, they had simply strolled on board at the last minute. Once the ship cast off they became—in the legal parlance of the sea—stowaways. Stowaways with a mission to rescue Norman Mailer from the clutches of a diabolical cabal of elite space imperialists.
Advance media hype surrounding the Voyage Beyond Apollo, as it was billed, promised stellar seminars, expert panel discussions, and learned presentations by marquee names, including former astronaut Capt. Edgar Mitchell, top NASA rocketeer Wernher von Braun, sci-fi hero Arthur C. Clarke, and Mailer, whose 1970 book, Of a Fire on the Moon, qualified him as an expert on space travel. Read More »
