Sam Weber Illustrates Lord of the Flies

Reunited

Bill Taylor

Born as a slave, April 12, 1856 near Benton, Alabama - on the George Hartwell Traylor cotton plantation - Bill Traylor received the surname of his owner.

When the American Civil War ended in 1865, Bill Traylor was only nine years old and although slavery had officially ended, he continued to be a part of the plantation, working as a field hand and share cropper for many years. He grew into a tall, massive man and he sported a huge beard. The census records of Lownes County Alabama show that at age 44, Bill was the head of a family of nine children. Even after plantation owner George Traylor and his wife passed away, Bill Traylor did not leave the plantation until George's son Marion and his wife had also passed away.

By then, Bill Traylor was 78 years old.

It is not certain where Bill went after leaving the plantation, but it is believed that he worked for a while in a shoe repair factory, as well as on a road crew. At his advanced age he could not keep this up for long. Rheumatism and an aging body forced him to walk with canes.

At 82 years of age, Bill found himself in Montgomery, Alabama without a job or a place to live. He became friends with the owner of a funeral home who allowed him to sleep between the caskets in a back room. During the day you could find him sitting and drawing in a doorway on Monroe Street.

This remarkable man, now in his eighties, decided to draw - to record his life - using the back of old cardboard boxes as his canvas. He didn't mind the surface, he just allowed the uneven edges and smudges to become part of the picture. Using colored pencils, crayons and charcoal sticks, Bill drew with a vengeance. He had no formal training of any kind (a friend taught him how to sign his name), yet this remarkable man created his memoirs - a visual story of his life - with the simplest of tools. In a span of three years Bill produced no less than 1500 drawings - all of them stories depicting life around him, first from the farm and then from the streets in Montgomery. His unique way of observing others, provided the inspiration for creating a body of work which placed Traylor among the early pioneers of African American folk art.

He made new friends in his very visible doorway location. One friendship with Charles Shannon, a young white artist and photographer, lasted for the rest of his life. It is thanks to Shannon's support that Traylor's work was preserved, for it was he who arranged some exhibitions of this man's folk art.

Bill Traylor died October 23, 1949. He was 93 years old.

It was not until after his death, that Bill Traylor became well known - when his work was included in the Corcoran Gallery of Art's exhibition Black Folk Art in America: 1930 - 1980. Today his work can be found in the permanent collections of many museums, some of which include: the Newark Museum in New Jersey; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Alabama; Menil Collection in Houston; Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Virginia and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. One recent exhibition entitled “Bill Traylor 1854 -1949: Deep Blues” was held at the well respected Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vermont. A 192 Page catalog accompanied the show.

Bill Traylor left us with a immense pictorial memoir and we are all enriched by the preservation of his creations.

-by Jantje Blohuis-Mulder

Zdzislaw Beksinski

Mohannad Orabi

Alan Hawkshaw

Naked Lunch Turns 50

William S. Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first publication. If you've read the book, did you finish it? Did you understand it? Did you love it, or hate it (as there seems to be no middle ground)? The novel is formatted as several short snippets or novellas, all loosely related, but non-linear, and extremely weird.

It's impossible to summarize the book, or even adequately describe it, but it has legions of fans and converts. It made Time Magazine's list of 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Signed copies are fairly scarce, highly collectible, and in some cases surprisingly affordable.

Supposedly written by Burroughs while he was battling a very strong heroin addiction, the plot jumps forward and back with the dizzying rhythm of machine gun fire, but is fascinating throughout. It begins when we are introduced to The Agent, a drug addict who is on the lam from the cops. During his travels away from the law and toward his next trip, the reader is introduced to myriad bizarre characters. From a hospital with monkeys for nurses to lengthy, graphic and disturbing descriptions of sex acts, to creatures half insect and half inanimate object, the book reads as a dystopian, stream-of-consciousness report of somebody's years of nightmares. Nevertheless, it makes undeniably powerful statements for some readers, and provides insight into the society we live in.

It ranges from grotesque and strange to philosophical and even touching. It's a sprawling, punishing, all-encompassing journey to read, often focusing on, criticizing and satirizing government, religion and organizations of almost any kind. It's not for everyone - Naked Lunch is surreal, inconsistent, and often nonsensical, coarse and ugly, sexually explicit and grotesque, full of language many objected to strongly. With its darkness and (some said) obscenity, it became one of the more frequently challenged and banned books in its time.

Ever attracted to the odd, cult director David Cronenberg (The Fly) made a film adaptation of Naked Lunch in 1991, no less bizarre, creative and repugnant than the novel.

Whether you find Naked Lunch compelling or revolting, love it or hate it, the book is powerful and timeless. Audiences have been fascinated by it for 50 years, if nothing else, as a unique look into the mind of the brilliant William S. Burroughs.

Rex Ray

Between the Folds

Another Note

The Sorrows of an American

When Erik Davidsen and his sister, Inga find a disturbing note from an unknown woman among their late father’s papers, they believe he may be implicated in a mysterious death. The Sorrows of an American tells the story of the Davidsen family as brother and sister uncover its secrets and unbandage its wounds in the year following their father’s funeral.

Returning to New York from Minnesota, the grieving siblings continue to pursue the mystery behind the note. While Erik’s fascination with this new tenants and emotional vulnerability to his psychiatric patients threaten to overwhelm him, Inga is confronted by a hostile journalist who seems to know a secret connect to her dead husband, a famous novelist. As each new mystery unfold, Erik begins to inhabit his emotionally hidden father’s history and to glimpse how his impoverished childhood, the Depression, and the war shaped his relationship with his children, while Inga must confront the reality of her husband’s double life..

In this novel about parents and children, memory and illness, Siri Hustvedt’s exquisitely moving prose reveals one family’s hidden sorrows through an extraordinary mosaic of secrets and stories that reflect the fragmented nature of identity itself.

How My Darling Says Hello