This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
[Owsley Stanley, an iconic figure from the Sixties who gained fame as a producer of LSD and as a sound man for the Grateful Dead, died March 13, 2011, in an automobile accident in Queensland, Australia. Stanley supplied what Rolling Stone Magazine once called "the best LSD in the world" to Ken Kesey, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles, and, through his work with the Dead, revolutionized the art of rock and roll sound engineering. See The Guardian's obituary after Paul Krassner's article below.]
In 1967, there was a concert in Pittsburgh, with the Grateful Dead, the Velvet Underground, the Fugs, and me, playing the part of a stand-up satirist.
There were two shows, both completely sold out, and this was the first time anybody had realized how many hippies actually lived in Pittsburgh.
Backstage between shows, a man sidled up to me. “Call me ‘Bear,’” he said.
“Okay, you're ‘Bear.’”
“Don't you recognize me?”
“You look familiar, but--”
“I'm Owsley.”
“Of course – Owsley acid!”
Fun fact: His nickname, “Bear,” was originally inspired by his prematurely hairy chest.
Now he presented me with a tab of Monterey Purple LSD. Not wishing to carry around an illegal drug in my pocket, I swallowed it instead.
Soon I found myself in the front lobby, talking with Jerry Garcia. As people from the audience wandered past us, he whimsically stuck out his hand, palm up.
“Got any spare change?”
Somebody passing by gave him a dime, and Garcia said thanks.
“He didn't recognize you,” I said.
“See, we all look alike.”
In the course of our conversation, I used the word “evil” to describe someone.
“There are no evil people,” Garcia said, just as the LSD was settling into my psyche. “There are only victims.”
“What does that mean? If a rapist is a victim, you should have compassion when you kick 'im in the balls?”
I did the second show while the Dead were setting up behind me. Then they began to play, softly, and as they built up their riff, I faded out and left the stage.
Later, some local folks brought me to a restaurant which, they told me, catered to a Mafia clientele. They pointed out a woman sitting at a table. The legend was that her fingers had once been chopped off, and she’d go to a theater, walk straight up to the ticket-taker, hold up her hand and say, “I have my stubs.”
With my long brown curly hair underneath my Mexican cowboy hat, I didn't quite fit in. The manager came over and asked me to kindly remove my hat. I was still tripping. I hardly ate any of my spaghetti after I noticed how it was wiggling on my plate.
I glanced around at the various Mafia figures sitting at their tables, wondering if they had killed anybody. Then I remembered what Jerry Garcia had said about evil. So these guys might be executioners, but they were also victims.
The spaghetti was still wiggling on my plate, but then I realized it wasn't really spaghetti, it was actually worms in tomato sauce. The other people at my table were all pretending not to notice.
It was, after all, the Summer of Love.
“Thanks for enhancing it, ‘Bear.’”
[For years, Paul Krassner edited The Realist, America's premier satirical rag. He was also a founder of the Yippies. The above was excerpted from the expanded edition of his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture -- not sold in any bookstores; available only at paulkrassner.com and as a Kindle e-book.]
Owsley Stanley at his 1967 arraignment for LSD possession. Photo from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Owsley Stanley, 1935-2011: Prolific LSD producer and icon of the 1960s counterculture
By Michael Carlson / The Guardian / March 15, 2011
The American psychologist Timothy Leary's famous invitation to "tune in, turn on and drop out" changed a generation. The key element was "turn on" and it was Owsley Stanley who provided the means to do just that. Stanley, who has died at age 76, produced millions of doses of "acid", the psychedelic drug LSD, which fueled the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and spread around the world.
Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze was the consequence of Stanley's Monterey Purple acid; his varieties included White Lightning and Blue Cheer and aficionados called the best acid simply "Owsley". He supplied the Beatles at the time of their Magical Mystery Tour television film (1967), and provided the acid to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest novelist Ken Kesey and his "Merry Pranksters", whose 1964 bus trip across America was chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).
Stanley's acid turned hippies on and he also tuned them in. The band on Kesey's bus was the Grateful Dead, with whom Owsley began an instantly synergistic relationship. The Dead took to his acid with such enthusiasm that Jerry Garcia became "Captain Trips", while Stanley funded their career and became their sound engineer, creating their unique live sound and, by recording each concert, providing the most complete archive of any band of the era. Along with Bob Thomas, he designed the band's "Steal Your Face" lightning bolt and skull logo, originally so his masses of sound equipment could be identified easily.
Stanley was also the quintessential drop-out. Born Augustus Owsley Stanley III, his grandfather of the same name had been governor of Kentucky, a US senator and congressman. His father, a state's attorney, was pushed by wartime experiences into alcoholism. After his parents separated, he lived first with his mother in Los Angeles, then returned to his father and was sent to military school.
Nicknamed "Bear" when he began sprouting body hair, he was expelled from school for getting his ninth-grade classmates drunk. He spent more than a year as a patient at St Elizabeth's, the Washington psychiatric hospital that also housed Ezra Pound, and tried college, but eventually joined the air force. His electronics training there led to work on radio stations in Los Angeles, while studying ballet and working as a dancer.
In 1963 he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began smoking marijuana and selling fellow students morning-glory seeds for a legal high. The next year, he encountered LSD. He spent three weeks studying the then-legal drug's chemistry, and began producing it himself. Quitting college and working at a local radio station, he set up the "Bear Research Group" to make acid. By the time he met Kesey in September 1965, he had become the first private producer of LSD on a grand scale.
Along with Tim Scully he set up a massive lab in Port Richmond, at the northern end of San Francisco Bay; when LSD became illegal in California in 1966, Scully moved to a location opposite the Denver zoo. Stanley stayed ahead of the law by keeping his acid in a small trunk which he shipped between bus stations, but after a 1967 raid his defence was that the 350,000 acid tabs police confiscated were for his personal use. He fought the case for two years, but his bail was revoked when he and the Dead were busted in New Orleans in 1970, and he was sentenced to three years in prison.
Once released, he resumed working for the Dead. His mentoring of the band had floundered in 1966, because while sharing his house in Los Angeles's Watts ghetto they also had to share his carnivorous life-style. Stanley believed that carbohydrates poisoned the body and vegetables interfered with nutrition. Arguing with his fierce but erratic intelligence was challenging: "There's nothing wrong with Bear that a few billion less brain cells wouldn't cure," said Garcia.
On a practical level, Stanley's perfectionism meant that sound systems took too long to set up and take down, and he feuded with the business-first approach of Lenny Hart, the band's manager and father of drummer Mickey. But in 1973 he delved into his archive to release Bear's Choice, a tribute to the recently deceased Dead co-founder, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and in 1974, at a concert in San Francisco's Cow Palace, he inaugurated the 604-speaker Wall of Sound.
Owsley later organised sound for Jefferson Starship and Dead bassist Phil Lesh's solo projects, and scraped a living selling marijuana and making jewelery, a trade he learned in prison. In 1985 he met his third wife, Sheilah, and they moved to the Australian outback, squatting on 120 acres of remote land outside Cairns, convinced there was an oncoming Ice Age which would be best survived there. He believed that global warming was part of a natural cycle, rather than man-made.
In 2005, Stanley contracted throat cancer, attributing his survival to starving the tumour of glucose through diet. He died and his wife was injured when his car ran off a road in Queensland, and crashed into a tree. He is survived by Sheilah; by two sons, Pete and Starfinder; by two daughters, Nina and Redbird; and is remembered in the Dead's song Alice D Millionaire and Steely Dan's Kid Charlemagne.
[Michael Carlson is a sportswriter (and former tight end at Wesleyan University). He also writes obituaries for the British daily, The Guardian, where this article first appeared.]
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of a segment of American Graffiti, featuring the lead-up to the hot rod duel.
DVD Review
American Graffiti, starring Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Harrison Ford, Paul LeMat, directed by George Lucas, 1973
Recently in this space I have been deep in remembrances of the influences, great and small, of the 1950s “beats” on my own sorry teen-aged alienation and teen-aged angst (sometimes they were separate anguishes, sometimes tied together like inseparable twins, mostly the later) and the struggle to find my place in the sun, to write in bright lights my own beat plainsong. Of course, that influence was blown over me second-hand as I was just a little too young, or too wide-world unconscious, to be there at the creation, on those first roads west, those first fitfully car-driven, gas-fuelled, thumb hanging-out, sore-footed, free exploration west, in body and mind. That first great rush of the adrenal in trying to discover, eternally discover as it has turned out, the search for the meaning of the great blue-pink American West night. Ah, pioneer-boys, thanks.
I just got a whiff, a passing whiff of that electric-charged air, the sweet “be-bop”, bop-bop, real gone daddy, cooled-out, pipe-filled with whatever, jazz-sexed, high white note blown, howling in the wind plainsong afterglow. Moreover, somewhat tarnished, a little sullen and withdrawn, and media-used up by my time. More than one faux black chino-wearing, black beret’d, stringy-bearded, nightshade sun-glassed, pseudo-poetic-pounding, television-derived fakir crossed my path in Harvard Square in those high stakes early 1960s high school days. And a few real ones, as well. (A couple, whom I still pass occasionally, giving a quick nod to, have never given up the ghost and still haunt the old square looking for the long-gone, storied Hayes-Bickford, a place where the serious and the fakirs gathered in the late night before dawn hour to pour out their souls, via mouth or on paper). More to the point, I came to late to be able to settle comfortably into that anti-political world that the “beats” thrived in. Great political and social events were unfolding and I wanted in, feverishly wanted in, with both hands.
You know some of the beat leaders, the real ones, don’t you? Remembered, seemingly profusely remembered now, by every passing acquaintance with some specimen to present. Now merely photo-plastered, book wrote, college english department deconstruction’d , academic journal-debated, but then in full glory plaid shirt, white shirt, tee shirt, dungarees, chinos, sturdy foot-sore cosmic traveler shoes, visuals of heaven’s own angel bums, if there was a heaven and there were angels and if that locale needed bums.
Jack, million hungry word man-child sanctified, Lowell mills-etched and trapped and mother-fed, Jack Kerouac. Allen, om-om-om, bop, bop, mantra-man, mad Paterson-trapped, modern plainsong-poet-in-chief, Allen Ginsberg. William, sweet opium dream (or, maybe, not so sweet when the supply ran out), needle-driven, sardonic, ironic, chronic, Tangiers-trapped, Harvard man (finally, a useful one, oops, sorry), Williams S. Burroughs. Neal, wild word, wild gesture, out of ashcan all-America dream man, tire-kicking, oil-checking, gas-filling, zen master wheelman gluing the enterprise together, Neal Cassady. And a whirling crowd of others, including mad, street-wise, saint-gunsel, Gregory Corso. I am a little fuzzy these days on the genesis of my relationship to this crowd (although a reading of Ginsberg’s Howl was probably first in those frantic, high school, Harvard Square, poetry-pounding, guitar-strummed, existential word space, coffee, no sugar, I’ll have a refill, please, fugitive dream’d, coffeehouse-anchored days). This I know. I qualified, in triplicate, teen angst, teen alienation, teen luddite as a card-carrying member in those days.
That brings us to the film under review, American Graffiti, and its relationship to the birth of the search for the blue-pink great American West night promised to be discussed in the headline. Well, let me run through the plot line for those who are not familiar with idea behind the film, or are too young to have a clue as to such goings-on but might want to know what the old fogies, their parents or (ouch) grandparents were up to (or thought they were up to) back in the days, or are the peers of those 1960s baby-boomers enshrined in the film, but have forgotten a thing or two since they watched the thing in 1973 (another ouch).
The opening scene sets the whole film up. A very spiffy, well-dressed, well-scrubbed, well-mannered (mostly), middle class crew of 1962-era Southern California suburban valley kids with plenty of disposable income at hands, are gathering for one last tribal meeting before they go their separate ways in the great adult grind-it-out, eyes-straight-forward, shoulder-to-the-wheel, little boxes world at their main club house, Mel’s fast food drive-in (already I have lost the younger set on that last point, on the non-mall food court, drive-in thing, right?). How did they get to said gathering spot, you might ask? Come on now, this is wide open-spaced California suburban valley how else would they get there other that in their own personal “teen mobiles.” Jesus, do I have to tell you everything.
They come in one and twos, mainly, in some of the best-looking “boss” car (excuse my reversion to an old-time term for excellence, automobile division) that you will see these days outside of an automobile museum. And besides that, many of them, the cars that is, are “souped-up” (look that one up yourself), especially valley hot-rod-king of the hill, John (played by Paul LeMat), and his yellow (mustard yellow, wow, can you believe that?) little deuce coup (ditto on the look up). Here is the point though, the main point even in this pre-1960s rebellion period, none of the cars look anything like any parent would drive, or could drive (except the few dweeby cars borrowed for the evening from some plaint, or beaten-down, beaten down by teen argument parent). Yes indeed, this is a gathering of the California branch of “youth nation” in all their tribal finery.
As is to be expected of a teen-centered (amazingly teen-centered, adults get merely cameo appearances in this one, and that seems about right) drama the plot line thins out considerably after the flash at Mel’s. Mainly, it is about a single night’s search for the 1962 version of the California blue-pink night (more on this below). And what drives that search? Cruising, natch. Why spend the time and expense involved in a “boss” car (you know that word now, right?) if you don’t create a stir up and down the main drag boulevard looking for…. , you can easily fill in that blank yourself. The rest of the plot centers on such eternal questions as the young leaving home and hearth to face the great wide world (here to be or not to be a college freshman by stars Ron Howard, as Steve, and Richard Dreyfus, as Curt), the usual boy looking for girl thing (including by oldster hot-rod king, Johnny) that I have endlessly reported on elsewhere in this space and that is not worthy of comment in a teen film. What else could such a film be about? Teen break-ups (Howard and Cindy Williams, as Laurie), cruising, stopping at Mel’s for some car-hopped fast food, cruising, a little hot- rod duel ( between Johnny and, ah, one Harrison Ford) on those open California highways (what else are they for?), and then daylight and the rude old work-a-day world intrudes, even on sanctified teen life.
This is one time though that I do not do justice to a film with a summary because this thing is well-directed, well-produced, and well-acted by a crew of then very young unknowns (mostly) that would go on to all kinds of other cinematic successes (including hot-rod runner-up, ah, Ford). The sense of déjà vu for this Eastern U.S.-born baby-boomer, including a great high school dance segment and a soundtrack that reads out of every classic Oldies But Goodies compilation that I have ever reviewed, was palpable, without being maudlin. Kudos
So what connection can be drawn, one might rightly ask in a review of American Graffiti, a film that depicts a snapshot of a then respectable early 1960s coming-of-age teen-driven culture. With, by then, a respectable post-birth of rock and roll (cleaned up of the “bad boys” like Jerry Lee Lewis) soundtrack. That also pays homage to a then very respectable post-Great Depression Okie-Akie invasion middle class-driven suburban valley life-style, and its respectable (mostly) California teen “boss” car culture. And highlights a then respectable superficial teen angst (“do you like my finger nails painted in crimson red or rose red?”, “do you want Pepsi or Coke with your hamburger, hold the onions?”, or something along those lines) and the search for now respectably beatified “beat” culture great blue-pink American West night? A film which, moreover, has not the slightest reference to, nor can in any way be taken to have been produced under the under the sign of, the “beats.” Hell, not even a Maynard G. Krebs (from the old time media image of beatniks television show, Dobey Gillis) beatnik caricature in the lot. Nada.
The closest that any character comes is my boy John, “greaser”, deuce coup, hot rod-king-of- the-hill, and working class poet (limited lyric car poet, okay)/ existential philosopher. And he doesn’t count because he has been around since Hector was a pup, is seen as an eternal “townie” by his middle class brethren, and is a throwback to James Dean and Marlon Brando 1950s California cool. And those guys (I mean the characters they played in Rebel Without A Cause and The Wild One not them as personalities, they were cool, no question) weren’t beat, no way. Beside John’s angst, important but kind of universal as it is, for some dewy-eyed female teeny-bopper to sit next to him in that old jalopy as he cruises those great California valley night highways is not the stuff of tragedy. Not in my book anyway, and I also had more than my share of that kind of teen angst.
No, what this film connects to, and connects to visually in the first instance, is that great big old search for that pink-blue American Western night that the “beats”, at least what I think the beats were searching for when they were doing their breakout from the post- World War II American crank-out death machine night. The shift from the Eastern American dark night westward (mainly, although some of beats were already vanguard- hovering around San Francisco waiting for the boys to come off the roads from the east and establish what was what) serves as a metaphor for much of what they were up to, if only to breakout, a little, from the nine-to-five, waiting for the bomb (atomic bomb) to drop world. That visual sense is most dramatically highlighted in the very first opening shots of this film where the pink-blue sky forms the backdrop to the activity starting up at California teen-hang-out (and elsewhere as well, even stuffy old Boston), fast food drive-in, Mel’s drive-in (A&W, Adventure Car-Hop, Diary Queen, fill in your own named spot), central committee headquarters for valley California teen night. .
Wait, let me detail this a little more so there is no mistake. The film opens with the first few anxious California “boss” cars (you remember what that word means, right?), almost tear-provoking in this reviewer, because I rode in teen cars just like those, rolling into neon-sign lighted Mel’s(lights just turned on against the kitchen-backdrop dark night) just as the sun is going down. There is a big old sun-devouring red devil of a cloud flaming up in the background. That is NOT the part of the pink-blue night I am talking about. Below, just below, nearer the horizon is the one I am talking about, the symbol of the search, and the stuff of dreams, the great American blue-pink dream escape.
I can hear great yawns and see rolled eyes piercing through cyberspace as you say so what is the big deal about some foolish ephemeral passing cloud, blue-pink, pink-blue, or hell, blue-blue. Philistines! Go back now to Mel’s, or wherever the blue-pink sky announces the nights doings, the night’s promises or disappointments. Those promises or those disappointments, great or small, went to make up the birth of the search for the great American Western night, the night of our own circumscribed teen, kiddish break-outs, great or small.
Make no mistake it was not the morning, the morning of school or toil, paid or unpaid. It was not the lazy afternoon, the time of study or of the self-same toil, paid or unpaid (the unpaid kind thanked for or not, or to quote the universal parent god of the time done because we keep a roof over your head). It was the night, no the approach, the blue-pink approach of night that drove our maddened dreams, hopefully signaling good omen for the night’s work. The day was mere preclude to that tiny feverishly sought breakout (now a small thing seen, but not then). The telephoned arrangements, the groomed preparations, the gathering of the odd dollar here or there, in order to first cruise that teen empty highway and then on second pass the filling teen night.
Now do you see how the “beats”, those unnamed, unnamable, sub-consciously-embedded beats drove our bust-out dreams for travel, for adventure, for wine (later, dope),for women (or men) and for song, for shaking off the dust of the old town, great or small, as long as it moving elsewhere, and on a thumb pulled-out, hard-driven, shoe leather-beaten shod foot if need be.
American Graffiti is a snapshot of just exactly that minute, just that historic minute before the great shake-out of the 1960s for the baby-boomer generation, after that minute some of us went left politically and became social activists. We made just about every political, social, and cultural mistake along the way and lost, no, were defeated, no again, were mauled, in the end in our dreams of “seeking that newer world.” (And have spent the past forty or so years having to fight a rear-guard against the straightjacket, death machine-loving yahoos and their consorts). Ya, but hear me out. The search for the blue-pink Great American Western night was not one of those mistakes.
Ti
Jean wondered sitting on Pawtucketville silts listening to the rushing rock-strewn
Merrimack coming by, wondered like maybe those old-time Dutch sailors sighting
that green fresh breast of land that would become Long Island as they entered the sound, another
waterway a metaphor for Jack life, and found a new world unspoiled for that
fifteen minutes before they laid anchor and claim on the cheap. That wonder
drove Jack boy, all fourteen- year old Jack boy so not worried by red dress
Paula Cole coming hither Friday night dates or that damn Maggie down by the almost
Chelmsford dream side of the river, damn already the river is in play with her
Irish braids and that god damn Bible between her knees to wonder if James was
it MacNeil Abbott or Abbott MacNeil Whistler sat beside this same river
thinking about his own Mere, his mother and how he could do justice to that
forlorn Puritan face which razzled him with blacks, browns and greys, as if to
mock the very idea of mother. Hell, James, he would never be called Jimmy like
the other boys once he “did” his mother in those woe begotten colors decided he
would use the old dame, and she was an old dame to star in his various studies
of colors and only philistines would dare to call the work some mother lode
draught.
This
is where the story gets interesting, although we know that Jack was not
bothered just then by come hither girls in red dresses or Bible-kneed Irish
girls since he had, playing hooky, crept into his holy of holy spots in the
cubicle at the school library gone beyond the wonder of those muddy splat
riverbanks where he first wondered the wonder akin to those Dutch sailors
seeking his own fresh green breast of land, the land of the mind. Wondering how
to stop wondering Jack picked up a biography of James Whistler complete with
mother on the front except she was painting title called some study in black
and white, something like that by one Lancelot Grey who Jack would later find
out was the central figure in what he would wind up calling the pre-war art
cabal that was attempting to “dress up,” read, protect American art and artists
from the onslaught of European critics who basically call that art “folk art”
meaning show the bastards the door and maybe get them shown in Peoria or better
Grand Island but stay away from European shores.
Grey’s
take on Whistler, taking the American born but life-long ex-patriate in was
that he never left the American shores and stuff like that. What interested
Jack though was not that art cabal stuff (art cabal a term he would not know
until later when landing in New York he came face to face with the denizens of
that cabal through various Student Art League girlfriends and others met in
Village garrets when garrets were there and not in Soho). But that was after
the war (World War II in case a younger reader has happened on this piece) when
New York told cheapjack art Europe to fuck off, to step back and various
abstraction movements were all the rage. Just then Grey delved into Whistler’s
various non-mother pieces (than mother painting an iconic come on since back
then only the art cabal knew other paintings and the publisher insisted that
that painting be on the front).
The
most interesting one, and one that seemed to contradict what the art cabal was
doing to protect American artists, was a painting called The White Girl (now in the National Gallery but then in private
hands). Jack was fascinated by the young woman portrayed who he learned from
Grey had been one of Whistler’s mistresses. The title intrigued and confused
him since somebody else called it that study in white gag that had handcuffed poor
Mrs. Whistler when it suited her James. Jack would wonder, would have deep
chaste Roman Catholic dreams (some say that would by his writings really always
be his dreams, his Jesus-sweated dreams) and wonder what it was like to have
been James’ girlfriend, and wondered too whether James wondered that he would
paint his mistresses to help pay the rent. Jack would later laugh about how
many girls he would con into paying the rent, walking the streets if necessary
or going in some café back room to play the flute for the night’s booze and
dope money and so he had kindred feelings for Brother James somewhat akin to the
bandit prince Gregory Corso. But at fourteen in some library cubicle in Lowell
mill-town hard by the Merrimack all he could think of was how long he would
have to wonder about lots of things, too many things when the world was moving
way to quickly but he would always say with pride that James was from Lowell
and leave it at that. Even when he found out that James’ white girl was like
his Mexican junkie- whore Tristessa. By then though that fresh green breast
wonder had hardened into funk, dunk and drunk.
************
Jack
popcorn for eyeballs sitting in the last row of the orchestra section of the
old Majestic Theater off of Bridge Street across from the offices of the Lowell Sun waiting as the screen heated
up after some very ordinary news of the week reels and an off-color cartoon
which he never did get even after watching several times over the next few Saturday
matinee double-feature week. The films changed every Friday but Mr. Le Blanc
cheapened up his operation by re-running those silly cartons built for
ten-years olds with no brains but silly to a strapping boy of sixteen who
actually took girls to the shows. (Le Blanc also sold stale popcorn with so
much salt laid in it would make your eyelids curl and watered down the tonic,
old-fashioned New England word for soda, so much it might as well have been
water and even made boys like Jack with strong kidneys ran to restrooms
frequently.) Of course, that was a totally different proposition, that messing
with girls stuff that he had pretty much figured out by sixteen with plenty of street advise some of it recklessly
dangerous and no, zero, parent advise but that was when you asked a girl if she
wanted to sit in the orchestra section or go up to the heavy-breathing pitch
dark moaning balcony. If the former that would be a last date (one time he left
the girl in the front lobby to fend her herself on the way home while he went
off to Renoir’s Ice Cream Shop with Even Stephen and Dizzy Izzy). This day,
this Thursday afternoon first show skipping afternoon classes was different when
Jack was all business trying to figure some stuff out that was going to appear
on the satin silk screen.
Then
it, no, she started. All fresh as a new born daisy fending off some sidewalk
Lothario, if only in Jack’s imagination, really only some lug like a million
lugs he knew in Lowell High School and who if he hadn’t been on a mission this
afternoon could have stood in front of the high school at close of day and
counted the number of lugs from the class of 1939 carousing out the door some
he could name by name. So, no this lug was going nowhere, was getting nothing
except the desert breezes from this girl. Jack swore the girl with the Bette
Davis eyes after beating the clown off with a car jack sat in her dust-filled
private reading spot reading some French poet from the fourteenth century. Jack
pressed his popcorn eyeballs to see book jacket cover and his heart beat a mile
a minute once he saw that she, Gabby let’s give her a name, was reading his
hero prince bandit poet Francois Villon, like him a Breton when that meant
something before the wave of diasporas which led angelized angel-headed
Kerouacs to the shores of the Saint Lawrence River and downwardly mobile fates
stripped the clan of their respective dignities.
Yes,
Villon the prince of thieves who Jack had discovered in that broken- down
school library where he hid out when he could not deal with bullshit chemistry
classes or some such subject around the time that he read that book by Lancelot
Grey about that pimp daddy, holy goof (first use of the term “holy goof” came
from reading Grey) James Whistler the artist who kept himself from the Thames
and watery graves by selling his paintings or more usually “selling” his
mistresses to make the rent money when times were tough. He still loved
Whistler (although he could only mock a guy who had to practically handcuff his
mother to the chair to get her to stand still for what he called a study in
black and white, something like that) if only because he was Lowell, was a
native son and that counted a lot for Jack then even if James was not a Breton.
(Funny later he would go through seven kinds of hell with his own mother before
telling her to kiss off.) But Villon was a legitimate bandit-prince who hung
with the lumpen outside the guarded moats ready to pounce one minute on the
next jackroll victim (some historians have speculated that Villon and his
scumbags invented the jackroll, taking a bag of nails or coins if they had any
wrapping them in a small cloth and under cover of darkness bopping some old
lady or drunken sot for their dough). A lost art that Jack would use more than
once in Times Square when some pansy hipster tried to do tricks on him and he
bopped him for hot dog money at Howard Johnson’s stuff like that, yes, a lost
but helpful art for those who lived outside the law, for those whose only road
was the road.
And
there she was the girl with the Bette Davis eyes all dewy even as a desert dust
storm was brewing just outside the Gates of Eden reading Villon in French (her
mother was French a catch for her woe begotten father during World War I
service in France with the American Expeditionary Force who came back to Eden
saw the dust and stone wood and left on the next train with some Singer sewing
machine salesman with four quarters and a quart of wine). That Garden of Eden
business a gag, a gag of sorts since the diner that he father owned, no, really
her grandfather who was getting too old to run the place but too ornery to let
his deadbeat son who couldn’t keep a French whore, Gramp’s words, in the middle
of the desert from running away with the next time that came by with long pants
on was just outside the main entrance to the Petrified Forest (couldn’t later a
guy like Allan Ginsberg or even novice poet Dean Moriarty have a field day with
that idea as the 1930s was tearing America, tearing the world apart, making the
world turn in on itself). The gag was that Gramps an old Kentucky coalminer
until he was thirteen and figured out that he would rather not die in
Appalachia with the muskrats had headed out of the hills and hollows as fast as
he could. Head out to California where he had heard had streets paved of gold
and young girls ready to give whatever they had to give. But see Gramps and his
forbears were sitting folk, were tied to the tired land so long that they would
sit down anywhere where that didn’t have to pretend to seek prosperity. So
Gramps stopped at the Petrified Forest once he ran into some Nevada Jane
heading east after busting out heading west who worked at the diner and who
played the flute for him until she too ran off with some calico salesman. Gramps
just stayed put and married the first woman who smiled at him (Gabby’s grandma)
and that ended the road west in that generation.
So
poor rattled and pestered Gabby was torn between sweet perfume dreams of Left
Bank Paris cafes and that endless rock-hard dust. Then out of the blue some
pretty hobo came walking up the road to the diner all dusty and road worn, a
hobo whose name turned out to be Leslie Howard (that would be important later
to Gabby if meaningless to Jack when she inherited his life insurance policy
but that was later long after Jack had gathered in the wanderlust that set that
first Breton to Canadian shores and that fucking raging Saint Lawrence River of
no returns) Listen up, Jack did, this Leslie Howard was no stumble bum like
half the hoboes, tramps, bums, and there are social distinctions among the
brethren who were running around the country stopping at railroad jungle camps
or sleeping under unkempt bridges and arroyos but a real live itinerant
intellectual who had when he had seen the first turnings of the world inward in
those times got the hell out of Europe
as fast as he could (he would be found later when Gabby looked for next of kin
to see if anybody would contest the life insurance policy to have been Jewish
not a good thing to be in Europe in those times to be a “rootless
cosmopolitan”) This Howard, let’s call him that since it is as good as any
other and who knows what he real name was if he was on the run bedazzled Gabby
from minute one leaving that lug gas jockey out to dry with the trees. Knew his
Villon cold, knew that he too was a bandit prince who hung outside the moats
with the lumpen.
Right
then Jack’s already strong flight of fantasy knew that he was kindred, here was
guy who loved to read but could not settle down with at crazy-mixed up world
pounding tattoos in his fevered brain. If anybody had been near Jack in that
darkened orchestra section fit only for one-date girls and sullen adults they
would have heard him gasp every time this Howard said anything of import to
Gabby. Jack’s fevered mind started sketching things out, read like crazy, write
like crazy and keep on the move, always on the move. What Jack would call later
in one of his lesser but more philosophical books the quest, the grail hunt,
the breaking from the holy goofs that keep you penned in and unfree, that holy
goof a well-worn word in Jack talk. For now though just the germ of a plan.
They
say that Bretons are not only are hearty but also headstrong and Jack sensed in
Gabby just such characteristics even though she was nothing but some dirt
farmer Okie, Arkie descendent. He would forever search for his Gabby but never
find her, and frankly that search was just one among a number of searches
later. This guy Leslie, what made him tick, why Jack was drawn to him like
lemmings from the sea was more problematic. The Villon, hobo road warrior
philosopher king part was straight up. He would have a million sleepless night
visions of being out on some tramp road in say Winnemucca or Yuma facing no
dough and no food or water and glad-tiding himself into soft spot, some soft
bed if that was the way the thing played out. Pearl-diving, you know washing
dishes for his meal in some such Garden of Eden diner somewhere if necessary
just to stay on the road one more day. That part held romance, held him in
thrall.
What
Jack couldn’t figure out especially since the girl with the Bette Davis eyes
was totally smitten by him and his wayward ways against the lugs, demented
grandpas, jelly-fish fathers and abandoned down some Seine River mother not
unlike the Merrimack always close to his dreams especially that rocky crest
around the old Lowell Textile Institute why this modern day troubadour had so
little regard for himself that he would let a bum like the notorious Duke
Mantee, yes, that Duke who was the scourge of the West just then put two random
slugs into his body. He tries, and would continue to try later to understand
the idea of the retreat of the intellectuals, that the time of the caveman was
making a reappearance after so much spent trying to come up from the mud and
slime. Backwards. Damn, that bothered Jack, would bother him until his own
dying breath when he turned on the intellectuals with a vengeance. The now dank
dark movie hall left him utterly perplexed about what would happen to him when
he had to face his own road west.
Outside
the movie theater, actually he had been in the lobby when he spied her and then
hailed her, Jack stopped that come hither Paula Cole and asked her if she would
like to go to the movies that next Friday night when the films changed. When
she answered yes Jack now a veteran of the ploy asked Paula -orchestra or
balcony? Answer: “don’t be silly I would not have accepted if we weren’t going
to the balcony.” With that he would put the fate of Howard in the back of his
mind. First things first.
********************
Jack
brought the Tokay, the cheap wine of the day that got him through the day and
the only other wine beside kosher Mogen David mad monk (although just then
demurely so) Allan Ginsberg, hereafter Monk, would drink to set himself up to
read some sliver of a poem. This night expecting a bunch of people to of all
things a North Beach (San Fran) converted garage gallery something the Monk
would put an end to guys like T.S. Eliot, bum of the month Nazi-symp Ezra Pound
and about fifty other guys and twenty other gals including his high school
prose father. Would burn their old-fashioned words now of no account on a pile
of burnt offerings, a pile of faggots (he would not learn until later that
word’s common origins use to destroy brethren fellow homosexuals). Would get
the world well, for a minute, in search of some fatherless compadre, in search
of the father Jack claimed he had never known, and not he alone in the welter
of great depressions and slogging through war. Maybe in the end they were
searching for Father Death who knows. Jack passed the wine, passed all
understanding before that search was consummated.
Some
guy, some guy who claims that his mother had worked at City Lights Bookstore in
those days and had had an affair with the poet Phillip Larkin and had brought
the dago red and him to the reading. Claimed to know Jack, or maybe it was the
Monk in the old days, in the days when they raged with so many words they
couldn’t keep enough Woolworth 5 &10 notebooks in flannel shirts or golf
scorecard pencils ready wrote this, second hand about being present at the creation,
second hand. At this far remove it is hard to tell fact from fiction, tell who
is bullshitting and who has the goods especially since virtually all the
background characters are gone, some long gone. Make of that what you
will.
********
I have seen the best
poet of the generation before mine, no, let me start over, I have seen a
universal max daddy poet speaking some truths to put old Homer and freaking
staid T.S. Eliot in the shade. Starting off by
declaring that he had seen that the
best minds of his generation, guys like brother in soul Kerouac, be-bop Charlie
Parker, Phil Larkin when he was sober, Johnny Spain when off the needle and
doing cold turkey and of course the daddy them all one Carl Solomon turn to
mush. Turned out in the barren wilderness, not the friendly desert-scrapes
heading west on lonely Greyhound buses or Tourist Bureau hang-ups wilderness
out pass Butte or Boise but what a novelist named Nelson Algren who called the
shots and gave many a troubled youth the keys to the fixer man and
wellness called the neon wilderness,
called that place where the bright lights of the city blinded a proper man (or
woman) some junkie Frankie Machine haven with a wife he hated and a girlfriend
who couldn’t stick with him when he was on the junk. That neon beast from which
no one returned except for quick stays in safe haven mental asylums (called
ironically funny farms but even the Monk, whose own mother had her share of
sorrows in such places could find no humor in such designations).
Get this, no, let me
start again against the cold nose of my sister filled heart. Saw, he the Monk
okay in case I lose my train of thought passing through Salt Lake City and
thoughts of Joseph Smith’s grand hustle taking a bunch of farmers from burned
over lands to the searing sun of the western depot. Saw the same Negro streets Jack,
and one time Jack and he when he, Jack was looking for some rough trade sailors
just off the China Seas pierce earring trail saw around Blue Hill Avenue and
Dudley Street blank, 125th Street blank, Dearborn Street blank,
MacArthur Boulevard blank, Central Avenue blank, Cielo Street in Tijuana blank,
Plaza del Mayo, Montezuma revenge Mexico blank, and wasted in the sweated fetid
humid Thunderbird-lushed night dreaming of pink Cadillacs and stony-faced fixer
men getting wise by the hour on Carl’s ancient fears. (And, this is funny or so
the winos and every hobo, vagrant, escapee, drifter and grafter yelling out in
unison thought so “what is the word-Thunderbird-what is the price forty twice.”
Ready to jackroll some senior citizen lady for the price, for fucking eighty
cents which any self-respecting junkie could cadge in two minutes even in Cielo
Street, Tijuana and that is a hard peso to drill,-ready to commit mayhem at
Park Street subway stations for their “boy,” to be tamped by girl but I will be
discrete since the Feds might raid the place sometime looking for the ghost of
Trigger Burke who eluded them for a very long time. (Trigger who captured
Jack’s imagination and the Monk’s but here is the weird part Carl’s too who
started strutting like him too after the prince of bandit-poets Corso showed
him how to do that slinky swagger on the last visit before the blade at
Sandhill).
Thought that those
angel-headed hipsters hearing choruses of angels strumming their noiseless
wings, those cold as ice in a man’s veins hep cats hanging around Times,
Lafayette, Dupont, Harvard squares (you can fill in your own squares, square
the Monk laughed and Jack hee-hawed) crying in pools of blood coming out of the
wolves-stained sewers around the black corner would never stop bleating for
their liquor. Would not stop until they got popular and headed for the sallow
lights of Harvard Square where they, those angel-headed hipsters in case you (and Carl) forgot hustled young college students, young
impressionable college students green as grass whose parents had had their best
minds, those hallowed students’ mines, okay, wasted in the turbid streets of
south Long Island (not the West Egg of Gatsby’s dream out of Fitzgerald’s fresh
green breast of land to stir even sullen rough trade Dutch sailors looking for
whips and cuts, conquering everything in sight like any other poor-boy
arriviste with too much money and not enough imagination and not East Egg of
the fervid elites but any-town, Levitt-town of those who would escape to Boston
or Wisconsin to face the angel of death, that angel frightening even Monk when
Carl was not around to anchor his brain. Up front and say no go, pass, under
luminous moons which light up sparks and say to that candid world which could
have given a fuck hard times please come again no more.
Here is the beauty of
the green as grass hustle working fast to get enough to fix that jones. Dangle
some college guy, maybe with a girl, shy, with dreams of hard-core liquor or a
well-twisted joints to loosen her up and her fragile come hither virginity (reminding
Jack of that Paula Coe who played the flute for him more than one time in that
Majestic Theater balcony some hardcore Friday night and the Monk, searching for
some blue-eyed Adonis, settling for some
pimpled has been teenager seeking his own father dreams). Lay out the story-kid
your booze and something for me. Done. Later, a big bottle wrapped tight in a
paper bag. Trick, a very thin brew of whiskey split and cash for him to get
himself well. Oh the hipster cons which would have made even the Monk laugh.
The Monk saw hipsters
cadging wine drinks from sullen co-eds staying out too late in the Harvard
Square night who turned out to be slumming from some plebian colleges across
the river maybe good Irish girls from frail Catholic parishes with rosaries in
their fair-skinned hands and a novena book between their knees who nevertheless
has Protestant lusts, strong Protestant lusts busting down the shrines to
Immaculate Conception Virgin Marys pretty painted by guys like Tintoretto and
marching to the church door just behind Martin Luther and his bag of lusts and
Salvation Army clothing in their pallid hearts but unrequited. Here’s how-they those
sullen salty Irish girls, not all redheads but close would arrive at the Café Lana with ten bucks
and their virginity and leave with both leaving some guy with dreams of salty
sucking blowjobs walking out the backdoor and doing the whack job behind the
dumpster –a waste of precious fluids and according to Norman Mailer who would
have known from his perch down in Provincetown when the mix of homosexuals and
straight, except those lusty lonely Portuguese fisherman Marsden Hartley loved
to paint (and to love) the waste of world-historic
fucks which would product the best minds of the next generation all dribbled
away.
You already know about
what you need to know about Protestant girls with their upfront Protestant
lusts although they would not be caught dead, or alive, in Sally splendor
although they certainly could play the penny whistle and damn those world
historic fucks. Maybe tasty Jewish girls from the shtetl not in East or West
Egg who flocked to the other side of the river and gave Irish guys who
previously had dribbled their spunk behind dumpsters after losing out to ten
bucks and virginity in tack tickey-tack Catholic girls who refused to give that
head that would have brought some of the best minds some freaking relief
(better not say fucking relief because that would be oxymoronic). Maybe some off-center
sullen fair-skinned and blonded Quaker, Mennonite, Primitive Baptist or
Brethren of the Common Life kind of Protestant girls, like I said off-center,
who spouted something about one god and no trinities, no god and no trinities
and just feel good stuff.
All three varieties and
yes there were more off-centers but who even knew of Quakers, Mennonites, lusty
Amish girls run away from home, Tantric card-wheelers, and fresh- faced red
light district sluts who at least played the game straight-played the cash
nexus for pure pleasure and maybe to even up some scores. All-Catholic, Jewish,
Protestant, yeah, Quakers (fakirs, fakers and Shakers included), the sluts,
Mennonites and yes those lusty red-faced Amish runaways all coming together
after midnight far from the negro streets, the Monk’s beat and no anachronism
like saying black or Afro-American back to those Mister James Crow days, but
not far from the all night hustlers and dime store hipsters with their ten-cent
cigar store rings and cheap Irish whiskeys bought on the installment plan who
converged around the Hayes-Bickford just a seven league jump from the old end
of the line dead of night Redline subway stop in order to keep the angel of
death at arms’ length. The angel of death a tough bitch to break, and tougher
to cross when they deal went down. There to listen until dawn to homosexuality-
affixed hungry for the keyhole blast or the running sperm fakir poets, the Monk
number one of all the number ones and
slamming singsters (to keep up with the gangster, mobster, hipster theme, okay)
fresh out of cheapjack coffeehouses where three chords and two-line rhymes repeated
in call and response got you all the action you wanted although maybe a little
light on the breadbasket sent around to show that you were appreciated. Yeah,
now that I think about the matter more closely hard times please come again no
more.
Saw the angel of death
make her appearance one night at the Café Lana and then backstopped the Club
Nana to fetch one young thing who warbled like heaven’s own angel. Some Norman
Mailer white hipster (read the Partisan
Review essay if you don’t get this about all kinds of cultural mishmash and
sexual too just ask the Monk when he was in his hungers and not worried about
singing some Walt Whitman song about the rotgut of his generation) turned her
on to a little sister and then some boy and she no longer warbled. No longer
warbled like that angel angle heaven- shamed chorus but did sweet candy cane
tricks for high-end businessmen with homely wives or fruitless ones who had
given up that sort of “thing” after the third junior had been born and who were
ready to make her their mistress if she would just stop singing kumbaya after
every fuck like she was still a freaking warbler. A freaking virgin or
something instead of “used” goods or maybe good for schoolboys whose older
brothers took them to her for their first fling at going around the world,
welcome to the brotherhood or maybe some old fart who just wanted to relive his
dreams before the booze, the three wives and parcel of kids did him in and then
the hustler sent her back to the Club Nana to “score” from the club owner who
was connected with Nick the dream doper man, what did Nelson Algren and Frankie
Machine call him in dead of night, yes, the fixer man, Christ who would get
him- and her well –on those mean angel-abandoned death watch streets. Who knew
that one night at the Hayes (everybody called it just that after they had been
there one night), one after midnight night where they had that first cup of
weak-kneed coffee replenished to keep a place in the scoreboarded night where
hari-kara poets dreamed toke dreams, and brought paper-bag wrapped Tokay wines
just like Monk’s Jack and some Mister dreamed of fresh-faced singer girls
looking for kicks. So please, please, hard times come again no
more.
I have seen frosted
lemon trees jammed against the ferrous night, the night of silly foolish
childhood dreams and misunderstanding about the world, the world that that poet
spoke of in a teenage dream of indefinite duration about who was to have and who
was to have not once those minds were de-melted and made hip to the
tragedies of life, the close call with the mental house that awaits us all.
Yeah Monk was right even about Carl Solomon and all his sorrows before the
knife.
***********
What
the hell did sullen Carl Solomon start before he went under the knife with his
pleading for his father, a father that he had never known since he had been
left back in Poland to peddle his fruits and vegetables to his brethren and his
mother and the four kids headed to the Americas on some tub of a boat and never
looked back. Rumors abounded that he survived because he had a gentile mistress
grabbed after his wife and kids left. That at least is the story Carl told,
told endlessly which would not be so bad but the Monk picked it up in his own
moment of despair.
Monk
searched his valium brain for his own prose-filled father but that was not
nearly good enough, kept him awake at night because he had strange dreams that
his father was not some fake high school teacher writing awful poems in broken
down post-war America. Was afraid that his real father was William Appleton
Williams who denied him three times, didn’t want to believe that his broken
words would mesh so well. Had better dreams that his real father was sexy Walt
Whitman (this remember in dialogue with Carl Solomon before the knife so it is
not clear whether Carl remembered) whose vagabond dreams matched his and his homosexual
desire beating out some Johnny Reb who could give Walt the ride he desired.
Here is the trick though the Monk had sweet dreams whenever he read Leaves of Grass (usually on grass) and
he passed that on to Jack in some secret moment in Denver when some screwball
Adonis was looking for his father.
Now
Jack, funny before Carl grabbed Monk with the father who we never knew
religion, always thought he knew his father, knew the con artist, poker
cheater, movie theater ticket taker great bear of a French-Canadian who came
down the Jackson, Maine road with five cents Canadian in his pocket and dreams
of printing up ads. But that was not the father that he knew but some skinny
stiff wino pissant who he sought out in greater Denver cattle yards. Always
deferred to everlasting Mere, Mere out of some fresh Breton conceit never
getting some whiplash from old father time who died before his time of
heartache and heartbeats. So Jack conned himself into some holy goof, his words
exactly, metaphysical search going up the Bear Mountain, Jackson, Wyoming
Jackson not that trail of tears from down in Maine Jackson where the red brick
and mortar spinning wheels beckoned and he spent and spilled his young manhood
trying to get the fuck out from under even if he couldn’t drive, made him
nervous, to save his life. Funny again that fame never stopped the bleeding
inside looking behind some bushes for some father death, some father time
pissing against that Tokay dream he figured out back in about 1946 but could
never get past. The Monk did him no service on that long trail drive from
Monument Creek to Sunnyvale and then drop off and outs at Big Sur where he got
sober for a week.
Damn
that stuff is contagious, will drive you crazy, when twice removed Lance, me,
went looking for the father he never knew too. Looked for him behind closed
doors to his heart. That distant slightly dim figure who brought home not
enough pay checks. Who never talked about but never got over the Pacific war
like a lot of guys who found themselves on tubs picking up stray comrades from
washed-up beaches, picking up too guys who got too close to chore, got wasted
in some windless fire and fell down into the green-gray-blue surf that gets us
all in the end. The old man, father, never talked much, much about anything
that Lance, me would understand and so Jack-like Ma, Mere, Mom, Mere whatever
you want to call her ran rough-shot over childish dreams and insecurities.
Here’s the worst of it though, Jack-like, he never got to say good-bye to that
father he never knew and crushed his days with regret, total regret that he
didn’t have the sense of a holy goof, Jack talk, to have called a truce, even
an armed truce to the madness that wracked his silly excuse for a family, and
now all his has is slate grey stone to place the remnants down in some unknown
holy place where he can never dwell, yes, Lawrence, me, got caught in the
Monk’s version of Carl’s plainsong, no, got stuck in the damn mire.
Silly
to think that the father time search would only apply to men, young men, holy
goofs like Lawrence, me, when the max daddy sin of all was the way Jack, in
Jack speak, abandoned his Jan, his spitting image Jan, denied like Christ was
denied three times by the count. Jan who would search like some strange Kenneth
Rexroth figure for the father we all knew, or thought we knew once he pointed
us toward the light, once we got the beat, the second-hand beat that washed us
clean in places like Big Sur and Todo el Mundo where Jan still searches in some
desperate wild water surf for some broken down guy who wasted away with drink,
and she with drink too. Jesus, funny he was searching for his father too out in
Middle Eastern wildernesses, will it never end.
Contagious
that is what Sam Lowell said about the freaking search for that lost father
world made up of pure sand and not much else. Some goof, the holy part excluded
was looking for his father, his famous private detective father, a guy named
Lew Archer, who back around Jack time in California ran the rack on few good
cases and then rested for forty years something like that. Tried to claim that
his father’s life death was due to his father’s overused whip, his sorrows that
he could not go the distance with his wife, this goof’s grandmother, his code
of honor that once he took a job he was in, totally in, for good or evil,
and
maybe
that he drank too much Tokay, Jack-like when he wound up behind some freaking
wino pissant dumpster saved but some sister of mercy who could not save him in
the end. Get this though that junkie weirdo so-called grandson, some modern-day
Carl Solomon without the sorrows before he went under the knife could not be
searching for Lew, Lew Archer since Lew never had a son, had no children. Sorry
goof,
Out
on the Jersey looking east first to see the great ocean that drove his forbears
to search for fresh green breasts of land then west to seek dungeon filled
fathers never known in Denver, Santa Fe, Salt Lake City Salvation Army hotels
or whatever they call those blessed places of rest the whole deal was to figure
out a way to look for some American cowboy past, looking for the Monk’s Adonis
if he couldn’t make it with sexy Walt Whitman with the furl of whiskers. There
sat Dean Moriarty, no, fuck that, one Neal Cassidy who would ride the freight
trains west looking for that father the others really did think they had found.
Neal’s old man was in some wino jailcell speaking in tongues to a candid world.
Maybe Carl was right, Monk too we should all cry to the high heavens looking
for the fathers we never knew.
On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"(1957)- "A Confederate General From Big Sur"-A Book Review
Book Review
A Confederate General From Big Sur, Richard Brautigan, Grove Press, 1964
Recently, in reviewing another more well-known book, “Trout Fishing In America”, by the 1960s counterculture writer, Richard Brautigan, I wrote the following paragraph that applies to the book under review here, “A Confederate General From Big Sur”, as well:
“I noted in a recent review of a film documentary about the literary exploits and influences of the “beat” generation of the 1950s on my generation, the “Generation of ‘68”, that we were a less literary generation. That was one of the things that drew me to the beat literary figures like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, among others. Our generation was driven more by the sound of music and fury. Although I believe that statement holds up over time it is not true that there were no literary figures who tried to express for us what the landscape of mainstream American was like, and why it desperately needed to be changed. Enter one Richard Brautigan and his exploration on that theme, “Trout Fishing In America”.”
As I also pointed out there I was drawn to “Trout Fishing” originally based on the photograph on the cover, of all things. Once inside, however, it was clear that Brautigan had the “gift”, the madman’s gift for telling some truths about mainstream American society that the “beat” writers also tried to make us “hip” to. And, as is my wont, once I have “discovered” a writer I tend to want read everything else of value that they have written. This brings us to “Confederate General”.
The plot here centers on one Lee Mellon who is searching, in this case literally, for a Confederate general form Big Sur who may be a forbear. Along the way he has a series of adventures trying to get to the truth of the matter and also finds that others are interested in seeking the truth surrounding this figure. The hard truth is that no real records exist for this general, although then, as now, that is hardly cause for disqualification. This one is quirkier than “Trout Fishing” and in the end less satisfying. Sometimes a writer “speaks” to me more than once with his work, and sometimes not. The latter applies here.
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip (Part One And Then Link To Parts Two And Three From There) Of Jack Kerouac's (And Others)"Beat" Generation Classic "Pull My Daisy" As Mentioned In The Review Of John Cohen's "There Is No Eye" CD.
On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" (1957) Writers' Corner- Jack Kerouac's (And Others) Film"Pull My Daisy"
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip (Part One And Then Link To Parts Two And Three From There) Of Jack Kerouac's (And Others)"Beat" Generation Classic "Pull My Daisy" As Mentioned In The Review Of John Cohen's "There Is No Eye" CD. See following site for more information about "Pull My Daisy". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_My_Daisy_(poem)
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th
Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for
something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that
had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or
some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a
name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet
Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a
junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in
flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on
every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first
used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane
journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will
crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis) Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line
backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told
me, maybe my older brother Alex they called “blowing to the China seas” out in
West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one
skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women,
life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate
repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get
caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home
parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell,
let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all high holy
Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a
dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast
on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the
club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean
streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five
cents a night flea-bag sleeps, half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and
cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing
reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling
out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my
brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about
that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at
a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory
two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an
event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well
and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers,
connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to
trash those connection when they acolytes came calling looking for the “word.”
So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the
beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings
of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s
travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth
Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother
and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a
place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands). Literary
stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think
the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of
which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as
a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then
add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories
of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex
and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si,
Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine), Bart, and a few others still alive recently
had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love,
1967, their birthright event, just mentioned.
Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk
seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see
what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a
number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or
dismissed out of hand what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the
local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural
days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of
Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran
wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major
towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very
different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of
a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had
caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the
story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause
Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a
ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even
now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for
their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part).
Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to
spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant
dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high
through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a
while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and
other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that
was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not
always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first
back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into
the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more
years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end. With maybe this
difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what
is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except
commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes.
Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin
included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung
around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money
fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as
anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s
goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger”
takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not
the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close
thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But
back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now
too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners
anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor
corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe”
from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high
school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although
Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for
books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most
of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds
would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as
silk Frankie now also a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was
why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer
later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him).
Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide
in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social
pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That
sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten
billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him
about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy
life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae
for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get
out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to
folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still
doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny
Bob Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and
his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956
which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less
Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that
they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road.
They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about
some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a
mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my
brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown
up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he
had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some
grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the
base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring.
So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure
on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several
times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was
having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping
almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper
scroll in about three weeks. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the
Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug
to you.
On The 60th Anniversary -Writer's Corner-Jack Kerouac's Classic Searching For America Novel "On The Road" Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Jack Kerouac's master work "On The Road". I will be doing a separate review of this work shortly. Also see entry dated today, October 19, 2009, in this space entitled "On The Road" And On The Sidelines" reviewing a 1986 documentary about Jack Kerouac's life and some personal reflections on the effect that "On The Road" had on me as a youth.
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th
Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for
something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that
had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or
some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a
name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet
Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a
junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in
flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on
every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first
used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane
journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will
crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis) Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line
backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told
me, maybe my older brother Alex they called “blowing to the China seas” out in
West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one
skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women,
life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate
repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get
caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home
parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell,
let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all high holy
Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a
dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast
on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the
club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean
streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five
cents a night flea-bag sleeps, half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and
cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing
reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling
out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my
brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about
that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at
a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory
two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an
event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well
and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers,
connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to
trash those connection when they acolytes came calling looking for the “word.”
So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the
beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings
of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s
travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth
Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother
and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a
place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands). Literary
stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think
the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of
which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as
a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then
add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories
of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex
and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si,
Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine), Bart, and a few others still alive recently
had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love,
1967, their birthright event, just mentioned.
Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk
seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see
what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a
number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or
dismissed out of hand what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the
local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural
days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of
Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran
wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major
towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very
different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of
a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had
caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the
story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause
Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a
ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even
now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for
their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part).
Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to
spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant
dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high
through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a
while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and
other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that
was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not
always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first
back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into
the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more
years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end. With maybe this
difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what
is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except
commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes.
Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin
included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung
around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money
fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as
anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s
goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger”
takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not
the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close
thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But
back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now
too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners
anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor
corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe”
from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high
school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although
Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for
books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most
of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds
would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as
silk Frankie now also a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was
why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer
later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him).
Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide
in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social
pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That
sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten
billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him
about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy
life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae
for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get
out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to
folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still
doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny
Bob Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and
his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956
which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less
Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that
they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road.
They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about
some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a
mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my
brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown
up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he
had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some
grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the
base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring.
So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure
on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several
times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was
having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping
almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper
scroll in about three weeks. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the
Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug
to you.
