From: deane@quest.arc.nasa.gov Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 21:01 NZD
Related material: comments on literature from Deane Rink part 1, part 2, Reader's Room
When I was but a lad, the beatniks were fascinating oddities for me. I grew up in upstate New York and had heard much about Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg, Lawrence Ferlighetti and others. Their main attraction was their non-conformity; after all I was growing up in the Fifties, in the world of Willy Loman and grey flannel suits.
But my literary appreciation of them was superficial at best. I read NAKED LUNCH because every kid did; it was among the first acclaimed books that had really pornographic images in it, and even if they didn't make coherent sense to a 14-year-old, they were exciting. ON THE ROAD appealed to my trapped sense, my need to get out of Binghamton, New York, but the writing was ho-hum. It was only when I read Howl and Kaddish that I realized the power of language that this dissenting side of American literature delivered to me. I too could see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, butfor me it wasn't the madness of junk or urban oppression, it was the madness of conformity and sheeplike behavior.
By the time I had graduated from college, I had had occasion to hear Allen Ginsburg read his poems and recite his mantras three or four times, and he was for me easily the most charismatic poet. I became a passionate supporter of his when it became apparent that we were on the same side in the escalating Vietnam War debate. I actually saw him at the Pentagon in 1968, trying to exorcise it, a new kind of political protest, and read about it delightedly when Norman Mailer published THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT. But he was of another generation; we were hippies, and we thought the beats were square.
In the late 1970s, a friend of mine from college came out to San Francisco to visit. He had been hanging around the New York literary scene for years, appearing on obscure cable poetry shows, running an interview of literary types who happened to pass through Ithaca, N.Y. for cable access. One day, out of the blue, when I had visited him in Manhattan, he asked me if I'd like to meet Allen Ginsburg. Of course, I jumped at the chance.
We proceeded to the Lower East Side, where Ginsburg and his longtime companion Peter Orlovsky maintained a fourth floor walk-up. My friend rang the bell and a bearded, gruff Ginsburg poked his head out the window and yelled "Catch." He threw the key to the street door down and David, my friend, caught it.
Four stories of grimy tenement later, there I was, in a living room/working office of Allen Ginsburg. I hadn't had a chance to prepare for this meeting, so I could only gawk in awe as Allen and Peter acted out their delicate mating dance before us. Peter was used to supplicants coming to admire Allen, and gracefully placed himself in the background.
When I stated that I came from upstate New York originally, Allen fondly talked about the farm and truck garden he and Peter had up the Hudson. I dearly wanted to talk poetics with him, but was too shy, too intimidated, by the swath this man had cut through traditional culture. Not only was he a poet, a popular bard, a respected anti-war leader, an out-of-the-closet gay before that was commonplace, an early experimenter of LSD and other consciousness-raising substances, but he seemed to enjoy himself, to not take anything too seriously or let public ridicule of his stances bother him.
I had just graduated from law school in California, and had used what modest legal sills I possessed to file a Freedom of Information Act against the FBI for keeping files on me for my anti-war activities. Somehow I blurted this out, knowing that Allen would probably be sympathetic. And, boy, was I right. The stilted conversational tone changed, and he guffawed. "How many pages did they give you?" he asked.
"Isn't it awful that you had to page ten cents a page for a photocopy of your own files?"
I proudly stated, "They had a pretty big one on me, somewhere above 250 pages. But it didn't teach me much. It was just a stupid bureaucratic debate about whether I was threatening enough to lock up in times of national emergency or civil insurrection. They decided that I wasn't that violent."
Allen looked at me and said something to the effect that the value of the files wasn't in the amount, or the jargon that the uncomprehending agents slung, but in the small piece of a bigger puzzle that each person's files represents. He walked into the other room and pointed to what must have been twenty looseleaf folders, each containing a more thick file than my entire one. "They've been tracking me since Columbia days," he said. "They can't deal with my sex drive, they can't deal with my friends, they can't deal with my unwillingness to remain silent. They betray our country's ideals whenever they translate their disapproval for my lifestyle into an act of oppression."
He pulled down one of the volumes and thumbed through it. He pointed to blackened out parts, supposedly confidential informants or agents whose identity was excluded from FOIA legislation. He could see that I was intimidated and said that I should encourage my friends to do the same, that we should all sit down and re-live our protest days, analyzing who, why, and how our idealistic movement was undermined and betrayed by money and threats.
He said that they (Nixon, Mitchell, Kissinger) were the true outlaws, that J. Edgar Hoover was a closet queen who used oppression to balance his repression, that only if we all stood up like Peter Finch in NETWORK and shouted "I'm not gonna take it anymore," would we ever free ourselves from tyrants cloaking themselves as politicians. Then he calmed down a little, and gave me a great big smile. He looked over at David and nodded at me. "Is this guy a poet like you?" David answered that I was a prose writer in college, and I could have killed David when he added, "He gave that up when he decided to go to law school." But Allen was too wise to let one friend advance himself at the expense of another. He said "He hasn't given it up. He's just got a deep cover going."
An hour later, we walked down the stairs, charmed and entranced. First politics, then poetics, then organic gardening, had been Allen's (and Peter's) topics. Allen Ginsburg had exhibited more fatherly sensitivity than many real fathers could ever dream of.
Cut to two decades later, the present day. I work for a husband and wife producing team who now live in New Jersey, and who are actively raising their four kids. I am a temporary guest in their basement as I work on editing some educational films from my 1994-95 Antarctic materials.
Their oldest daughter is about 16, maybe 17, and has a distinct literary flair. Her poet boyfriend of the same age and her have just returned glowing, from Allen Ginsburg's walk-up apartment. Somehow, they met him at a public reading, and he has taken them under his wing, gently encouraging their writing, telling them that a life of the mind and literary pleasure is a possibility, at a time when I'm quite sure nobody else encourages this. And I smile, because I begin to realize that this man's greatest achievement may not be his poems, may not be his public persona. This man is about passing the torch of poetry to whomever reaches out to accept it, and that is his true greatness.
Deane Rink
I've managed to successfully elude the Beat poets/writers. For no more substantive reason other than what I call the "grateful dead syndrome." There's a passel of people who detested Grateful Dead (including myself) simply because they detest the Bhagwan like devotion of the so called "deadheads." Same thing for me with the Beats.
Coming from a generation or so behind you, I've always been surrounded by certain cliques of "retro-ism" in my milieu. Mostly it's just fashion, or a professed allegiance to all songs written in the decade, or a vindication of one's own love affair with dope. Not that there is anything wrong with the fashion, the music, or, by golly, the dope. It's the REASON for the dedication--the convenience of it--that seems to permeate most of this younger set that irritates me. Lip service is given to the ideals, and blind devotion to the logo. Your ideas have all been commoditized, soundbited, and compressed into manageable chews for the younger generation, Deane. And, they're spending their money, and chomping away.
Of course, I'm being exceptionally cynical. I think it's the law that's doing it to me, and finals. Can't wait until I get to work for the large insurance companies and sue the consumers who forget to read the fine print.
Non lex sed feces,
JON
This site is hosted by Acunet, in Marlboro, MA, providers of dial-up Internet access, high-speed DSL, Web hosting, Web design, and AcuShop (TM) business-to-consumer and business-to-business eCommerce solutions.
Return to the B&R Samizdat Express
Pet Care | Surgeon: Los Angeles Plastic Surgery | Facial Surgery: Los Angeles Facelift| Hair Loss? Try Hair Restoration | Online Auction | Pet Owners: Veterinary Directory | Health Directory of Nutrition Business | Pet, Home, Garden | Wholesale Distributors | Class Action Lawsuits | |