Beatdom 1

Beatdom
Beatdom
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Beatdom
Beatdom
Created by Kirsty Bisset and David Wills
Edited by David Wills
Published by City of Recovery Press
--We are again a beaten generation, suffering amid unrivalled prosperity…
Lost in ignorance in a time of education… Confused and controlled and
taught too many things… Tamed by a world of passivity and acceptance,
obscured by pretensions and the illusion of revolution… We are tired of
the benefits wrought by the Beats and the generations and movements
they inspired… Ours is a generation looking to the past, like theirs, but
lost in the present and uncaring for the future, I suppose, like them…
Beatdom examines the Beat Generation in depth, but looks at the world
around us through eyes created by our predecessors, and exploits the
talents of people learning from the artists of the past, struggling to survive
in a world of apathy…
Beatdom is indulgence and sorrow combined and confused and seeking
clarity and union and that sense of community that’s garnered by something
as simple as a label…
Beatdom is in good company, downtrodden all, and fighting for the
preservation of the past and the highlighting of the failures and injustices
of the present, though sceptical of even contemplating the future…
---
Beatdom
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Beatdom
Issue Five
January 2010
Created by Kirsty Bisset and David Wills
Edited by David Wills
Published by City of Recovery Press
www.beatdom.com
www.cityofrecovery.com
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Beatdom
Contents
Regulars
6 Letter from the Editor
40 Modern Beat
44 Poetry
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12
14
21
29
50
Features
The Visions of Burroughs
Naked Lunch at 50
Naked Lunch on Film
The Battle for Kerouac’s Estate
Lady Beats
Do the Beats Still Matter?
Interviews
18 ‘Howl’ Goes to Hollywood
68 Helen Weaver
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52
54
Fiction/ Art/ Memoirs
Someone to Write to
Hence the Drama
Deep Fried Ductape and Sushi Knives pt. 2
Beatdom
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Dear All,
now on, Beatdom’s fiction, creative non-fiction
and poetry sections will be larger than in previous
issues. No longer will we dwell so heavily on the
past – we will now look forward and together we
will shape the future.
In this special fifth issue of Beatdom – which
marks the two year anniversary of the magazine! –
we bring authors and poets from around the world
and invite them to find new readers in the devoted,
loyal and wonderful readership of Beatdom
magazine.
I am, therefore, very excited about the line-up
we have assembled for this issue, and which I
sincerely hope will form the basis of future issues.
We have some magnificent poets, including the
frighteningly talented Joshua Chase, and some
fantastic new writers, including Brin Friesen and
D. Harlan Wilson.
But we are not totally neglecting the past. Beatdom
was founded, after all, as a Beat Generation-themed
literary journal and we will continue to bring you
the best of the Beats, including two essays on the
impact of the Beat Generation upon the modern
world, and an interview with the Academy Award
winning directors of the new movie, “Howl.”
In this issue we take another look at the women
of the Beat Generation, the fiasco surrounding the
recent settlement of the Kerouac Estate Battle,
as well as three essays on William S. Burroughs,
in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the
publication of Naked Lunch.
Beatdom #5 will also explore the continuing
influence of the Beat Generation as books continue
to be published and films made about our literary
heroes.
I’m sure you will all love reading Beatdom’s fifth
issue, and in joining us in a celebration of the
fiftieth anniversary of the publication of one of the
Beat Generation’s most important texts.
Beatdom was founded for two purposes: 1) to
further the cause of Beat Generation literary
studies, and 2) to further the cause of contemporary
literature through said studies.
When I edited the first issue I was looking primarily
for literary and historical essays centering on the
Beat Generation. Ideally these essays would break
open areas of study that hadn’t previously been
given the attention they deserved.
But there were also works of fiction and of creative
non-fiction, and lots of poetry. Originally I wanted
these things to show an obvious Beat-inspiration,
but as we’ve gone on it has become apparent that
this is not particularly important.
The people who read Beatdom are fans of the
Beat Generation and I want to keep it that way.
Everything since the Beat Generation has been
touched by their work and their philosophies and
it doesn’t matter whether or not someone claims to
be ‘Beat’ or to be inspired by the Beats. We are all,
in some way, children of the Beat Generation.
I’d rather receive a poem that shows little
resemblance to any Beat work, but which I can
study and find Ginsbergian influence, than to
receive a rip-off of ‘Howl’.
What is important is that we acknowledge that we
are not the Beats and that we are not necessarily
‘Modern Beats’. Yes, it is possible to trace our
influence back to the Beats, but it is also possible
to trace their influence back to the Romantics or
the Transcendentalists. The key is that the Beats
took their influence and created something daring
and new.
I want to help the world of literature take its
influence and move forward. Our world is different
from the Beats’ world and we should tackle it
armed with their influence and our own ideas.
Beatdom is here to help literature move forward.
I want to help new or struggling artists find an Yours Beatifically,
audience and improve their craft, and so, from David S. Wills
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Beatdom
David S Wills – Founder and editor of Beatdom
magazine, Mr. Wills lives in Asia and teaches for
a living. He now writes for various publications,
but still spends his free time drinking and reading.
If there’s no name on the article, he wrote it.
Edaurdo Jones - Writer, Art Editor... The Voice
of the Doomed. Beatdom’s regular storyteller of
the warped, derranged kind... A fan favourite and
all-round Gonzo motherfucker...
Steven O’Sullivan – Staff writer. Mr. O’Sullivan
approached Beatdom as a fan, and soon become
a chief writer after he made his passion for the
Beats abundantly clear through he own unique
style.
Jim Petty - Graphic designer.
Josh Chase - Poet and Associated Press
correspondant. From Minneapolis, Minn.
Hannah Withrow - Writer from Denver, Colorado.
Lives near Ginsberg’s old place. Has Elise
Cowen’s face tattooed on her arm.
D. Harlan Wilson - Award-winning novelist, short
story writer, literary critic, screenwriter, and
associate professor of English at Wright State
University-Lake Campus.
Brin Friesen - Fiction writer from Cuba; author of
the beautiful “Someone to Write to”
car and no money.
Michael Shorb - Poet. His work has appeared in
more than 100 magazines and anthologies.
Helen Weaver - Author of The Awakener, who
was kind enough to give Beatdom a long,
informative interview about her former boyfriend,
Jack Kerouac.
Neal Fox - Illustrator. Hard drinking tattoo artist
and father from in and around Maryland, DC
area.
Sham A. Lam Jnr. - Ilustrator and professional
soup tester.
Stammy Asend - Illustrator. Terrorist performance
artist, member of the Status Faction.
With special thanks to:
Dave Moore - Kerouac scholar and contributor
for issue four, who provided valuable advice for
Beatdom contributors.
Beatdom Magazine
www.beatdom.com
Cover Illustration courtesy of Issac Bonan
Harry Burrus - Poet, playwright, screenwriter,
photographer, and Beat enthusiast.
Publisher: Mauling Press/ City of Recovery
Press
www.cityofrecovery.com
Isaac Bonan - French illustrator, who penned the
cover picture of Ginsberg.
Editor: David S. Wills
[email protected]
George Wielgus - Not a poet, not a teacher,
not an artist, not a director, not multi-hyphenate
anything really.
Regulars: Steven O’Sullivan, Eduardo Jones,
Jesse.S. Mitchell - Poet, father of three, has no
All letters, questions, submissions etc., to [email protected]
Beatdom
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The V
Illustration by
Graziano Origa
It’s like a compass. A compass operates on magnetics.
People always seem to be in such a rush to articulate
themselves. But maybe we just can’t articulate certain
emotions. Maybe there’s just those things we’re
inexplicably drawn to. Maybe. A kind of primordial
magnet inside us that knows better than we do.
Something like love; if love stepped on broken glass
and stumbled around a little and had a couple more
drinks and... well, I don’t know.
Here we go.
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Burroughs. We’ve read his books, we’re well aware
of his literary impact (if you don’t, then go home and
read Junky immediately and cry yourself to sleep for
about a week or so); especially regarding a writer’s
right to obscenity. Burroughs’ pioneering success at
getting Naked Lunch published in lieu of obscenity
charges is right up there alongside Ginsberg and
Howl.
That’s all well and good. But. . .
Libertarian triumph is not really what concerns me
Visions of Burroughs
regarding Burroughs. Visions, rather, pique my frustrated attempts don’t clear anything up, they just
interest in him.
seem to build a wall between you and the rest of the
world. But you know that it’s important. Whatever it
In Kerouac’s On the Road we find Burroughs, alias is, you know that it matters. It’s eating you up inside,
Old Bull Lee, gracefully slumming it in a mansion keeping you up at night and it just won’t come. But it’s
shack outside of New Orleans with his beloved, the reason you had that one more drink, it’s the reason
pre-William Tell Joan Vollmer. In between front- you quit that job and up and relocated without so much
yard soda can shoot-outs and absolute drug-induced as a word to those that seemed closest to you. Tearing
space-outs, he is a man concerned with direction. your roots out thru your head just seemed to make
Visions, Burroughs seems to believe, will guide us sense, but any time someone demands an explanation
thru life. A fleeting, subliminal influence; holding out you can’t do it justice. You can’t really do anything for
just long enough to give us a turn. After Jack gets an that matter except stare at them awkwardly with your
inexplicable feeling about a horse at the racetrack that mouth open and crooked, your nose just as crooked as
ends up winning, Burroughs refuses to dismiss it as your thoughts.
coincidence. A brief dissertation on visions follows:
It’s like in Hunter S. Thompson’s Rum Diary when
“How do you know your father, who was
Thompson’s alter ego, Kemp, imagines himself being
an old horseplayer, just didn’t momentarily
interviewed and questioned as to why it was that he
communicate to you that Big Pop was
up and left New York City. Thompson blamed it on
going to win the race? The name brought
the ‘sack’. The inevitable sack that comes down over
the feeling up in you. . . Mankind will
your head and snuffs out your life right before you.
someday realize that we are actually in
contact with the dead. . . if we only exerted
So what the hell are you going to do about it? I guess
enough mental will, we could predict what
we need some kind of a compass to steer us away
is going to happen within the next hundred
from that looming goddamn sack.
years and be able to take steps to avoid
catastrophe.”
Maybe it is visions that serve as that compass. Visions
so fleeting that you can’t even pinpoint them when
Granted, this kind of belief can be construed as perhaps they flash across your mind. But at the same time,
a bit too mystical for truly practical application. Or they’re so vibrant and painful that you’re forced into
maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just mystical enough. It action. After it passes you can’t determine the why or
doesn’t seem to me that the Beats ever particularly the how. The push came nonetheless. The push out
shunned the concepts of mysticism. If anything of the way of the sack. One more step in the right
Ginsberg and Snyder rather embraced them. Burroughs direction. One more intelligently placed bet on the
exudes a unique concern for humanity on the whole, right horse. That’s how it worked for Kerouac at
unlike many of the Beats who seemed more interested least. That’s what sparked Burroughs’ diatribe on the
in forming a microcosmic society that adhered to their visions in the first place. Something steering us in the
ideology.
right direction.
What concerns me is that interest in minutiae. The I suppose, in a technical sense, you could label
thought that maybe visions grasp those feelings our Burroughs a writer. Novelist. Whatever. Seems like
tongues can’t seem to articulate.
that’d be kind of missing the reality though. After all,
the man didn’t start writing for quite a long time, and
The weight of the inarticulate can be overwhelming at even after he started, he was constantly being pushed
times. The vicious frustration that seems to shut you by others to keep on. In the 50s he had settled in at
off from the world. They’re staring at you, your lips Tangiers to focus more seriously on his writing, yet
moving, forming shoddy attempts at cohesion. . . yet it was not until Ginsberg and Kerouac arrived in ‘57
all that’s coming is drivel. After enough time, your and pushed him to utilize the “cut-up” technique, that
Beatdom
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Naked Lunch became the literary phenomenon that it
is known as today.
Despite finishing what many see as his magnum opus,
it would be several more years before Naked Lunch
was even published. When controversial publisher
Maurice Girodias decided to take on Naked Lunch it
was not at Burroughs insistence. Rather, Girodias had
been following the controversies that had sprung up in
resistance to the content of the book. Burroughs was
simply along for the ride; completely unconcerned
with any kind of literary gain or notoriety. And
additionally, the paycheck that would hopefully come.
Burroughs was at a tough point in his life financially
and any kind of monetary break would be a muchwelcomed one. After the sale of the international
rights to Naked Lunch, a $3,000 advance went to
Burroughs from Grove Press. He immediately used it
to purchase drugs.
With this brief history of the creation of Naked Lunch,
we see Burroughs writing as a means to ends, not as a
focus. Ends of travel, drugs, young boys. . . not press
parties, exposure, renown. Searching after visions and
inspiration. That innate, primordial compass guiding
him bit by bit.
If the act of writing itself was simply an aesthetic
devotion. . . it follows that something equally as honest
would serve as a catalyst. Joan Vollmer’s accidental
death, served from his own hands in a drunken game
of William Tell gone tragically wrong, proved to be
that catalyst. He is quoted as crediting the incident for
pushing his life into a different direction:
“I am forced to the appalling conclusion
that I would never have become a writer
but for Joan’s death, and to a realization of
the extent to which this event has motivated
and formulated my writing. I live with
the constant threat of possession, and a
constant need to escape from possession,
from control. So the death of Joan brought
me in contact with the invader, the Ugly
Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long
struggle, in which I have had no choice
except to write my way out.”
Ugly Spirits are vague and vengeful demons. No
choice except to write one’s way out? Out of what?
That possessive entrapment that looms constantly over
one’s head? And what, exactly, might that be? The sack.
A vision. We can see how desperately Vollmer’s death
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affected him. Not simply affected him, but sparked
him. And where did it drive him? To exotic locales,
drug-induced run-ins with degenerates. . . it drove
him to ends of one kind or another. The best way he
could possibly hope to articulate that haunting vision
that drove him was to credit it as a vague and vengeful
Ugly Spirit that refused to abandon his heels.
Vollmer’s death, manifest in the act of writing,
magnetized itself to Burroughs. So he kept moving,
kept running; occasionally throwing out slips of paper
that attempted to make sense of it all. Of course, he
barely had the time to even consider them. He just spat
them out and left them behind for others to judge.
hundred words you are able to work it out for someone
else. Not for yourself, though.
Maybe that’s the juxtaposition of the two. A compass
to show you the way and a vision to get you started.
Not that you’ll understand either of them. And maybe
you don’t need to. After all, it doesn’t really matter
Magnetized. Like a compass. Maybe after fourteen where you find it.
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Burroughs’ classic novel challenged society, changed
literature, and has now slipped into old age
“‘Disgusting,’ they said . . . ‘Pornographic’ . . . ‘UnAmerican trash’ . . . ‘Unpublishable’ . . . Well, it
came out in 1959, and it found an audience . . . Town
meetings . . . Book burnings . . . And an Inquiry by the
State Supreme Court . . . That book made quite a little
impression . . .” — William Burroughs
so it wasn’t until 1962 that Naked Lunch came to be
published by Grove Press. The two editions differed
greatly because the Grove Press version was based
on a much earlier manuscript, given to them by Allen
Ginsberg.
The title of the book is a somewhat contentious issue.
According to Burroughs’ introduction, Jack Kerouac
In 2006 Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” turned fifty years old. was responsible for naming the book, and that “the
A year later, in 2007, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road hit title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a
that same milestone. Now it’s William S. Burroughs’ frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end
(the oldest of the trio) turn to see his masterpiece turn of every fork.” Kerouac appreciated the accreditation,
fifty.
as he stated in a 1960 letter to Ginsberg, but pointed
In July of 1959 Naked Lunch was published in France out that the phrase had been misread. Originally it had
by Olympia Press. American obscenity laws prohibited been “Naked Lust”.
the publication of the book in the United States, and And so from the misread “Naked Lust” we came to
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“Naked Lunch”, which the publisher of the book and Naked Lunch, which is why it is so surprising that
many of fans over the years have all mistaken for The Ginsberg so adequately put forth its case in Boston,
Naked Lunch. Over the years editions have varied in and why critics reacted so well to David Cronenberg’s
titling the book with or without the article “the”.
1991 film version.
But the debate over the title of the novel is hardly the Naked Lunch isn’t meant to make any particular
limit of its controversy. Naked Lunch caused an uproar sense in a conventional, linear way. The book is
upon publication, and has been infamous ever since. intended to be read in any order, in keeping with
Its obscenity trial in Boston was the last significant the cut-up method used to create it from Burroughs’
obscenity trial in American literature.
giant manuscript, and the chaotic volumes of writing
Upon its publication in the United States it was banned from which various parts of his novels were drawn.
in both Boston and Los Angeles. The
He believed that by distorting the text
Los Angeles ban was repealed in 1965
he was revealing implicit meanings. As
Naked
Lunch
and the Boston ban was repealed in
Ginsberg demonstrated in his courtroom
1966, due to the fact that the books wasn’t meant to defense, Naked Lunch was hardly lacking
were deemed to have some social
in meaning.
make any parvalue.
There are passages in the text that deal
Ginsberg – who helped Burroughs ticular sense in
with capital punishment, with drugs,
write Naked Lunch – was instrumental
The prose flits between locations
a conventional, sex…
in orchestrating its success over
from New York to Tangiers, and predicts
the obscenity charges brought in a linear way.
with startling precision a future that the
Boston courtroom. He was, of course,
book continues to outgrow. It deals with
no stranger to such controversy and
themes and ideas that are still relevant
censorship. In 1957 the Supreme Court’s Roth v. today – and as such one could claim is more significant
United States decision saved all copies of “Howl” a piece of writing that either On the Road or “Howl”.
from being destroyed and freed Lawrence Ferlinghetti One could spend years pulling Naked Lunch apart
from criminal charges of distributing obscene material and explaining each scene or sentence or moment. In
through his City Lights bookstore.
doing so, if Burroughs’ theory has any credence, we
Ginsberg thus testified as an expert witness on behalf are exploring the author’s mind.
of Grove Press, who succeeded in having the book Indeed, Naked Lunch was more than social
tried instead of individual retailers – as a means of commentary – it was a highly personal book in many
protecting its constitutional rights. When he appeared respects. Although Kerouac and Ginsberg helped
in court he even went as far as to wear a shirt, tie and Burroughs compile his book, it was drawn from
jacket – something that was unheard of for Ginsberg stories and journals inspired by his own warped life.
at the time. He normally fit the bill as a stereotypical Naked Lunch unfolded sporadically over nine years
Beatnik.
and never truly settled on any finalized version. It was
Ginsberg spoke about the novel in court for more than – like Burroughs himself – in a constant state of flux
an hour, discussing its structure, themes and literary and development. Reading the “Editor’s Note” from
merit. Having helped Burroughs compose it appeared the Restored Text edition, it is a wonder that the novel
to have given Ginsberg a better understanding of ever came to be published.
Naked Lunch even than its author. He dissected every But published it was, thanks entirely to Ginsberg’s
element of the book and demonstrated how it acted as role as literary agent for the Beats. He managed
an incredibly complex piece of social criticism, and to have excerpts published by Robert Creeley’s
was therefore an important piece of art.
Black Mountain Review, LeRoi Jones’ Yugen, and –
Despite Ginsberg’s testimony – not to mention that of controversially – the Chicago Review. The book was
Norman Mailer and the other witnesses – the judge composed throughout travels on four continents, but
branded Naked Lunch obscene, and few people were finally came to a “final” version only when Maurice
surprised.
Girodas told Burroughs that he had two weeks to
th
However, on July 7 , 1966 the Massachusetts Supreme make the Olympia Press deadline.
Judicial Court ruled in favour of the appeal that was
launched by the defense, and a huge victory was For more information on Naked Lunch and its fiftieth
struck for free speech and for art. Naked Lunch was anniversary, please see www.nakedlunch.org or read
no longer deemed “obscene”.
Naked Lunch @ 50: Anniversary Essays, published
by Southern Illinoi University Press
It is notoriously difficult to describe or summarize
Beatdom
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Naked Lunch
on Film:
Filming the “Unfilmable”
The novel does not obviously lend itself to
adaptation for the screen: it has dozens
of characters, few of whom are developed
from their initial appearance; the action
is set in cities all over the world; it is
composed of many small, fragmentary,
kaleidoscopic scenes; and there is no
traditional story line. It is a novel with a
great deal of talk, and the rule of film is
that movies move, with minimal talk.
William S. Burroughs, speaking in 1991
With the publication of Naked Lunch there
immediately came the cries of “obscene!” from so
many conservatives and critics. Nevertheless, the
book won its obscenity trial and was released to
the general public in the United States, becoming
a notorious classic – one of the most depraved
and perverse books in modern history, and more
importantly a ferocious assault on society and
government.
It seemed unlikely, then, that Naked Lunch would
one day become a feature film. Yet, not long after
the obscenity trial that declared the book of enough
social value to be unleashed upon the public, William
S. Burroughs was plotting its way into cinema.
From the late sixties until the mid seventies
Burroughs tried to turn his literary masterpiece into
a commercially viable film. He enlisted the help of
legendary British director and producer, Antony
Balch, and fellow cut up master and friend, Brion
Gysin.
The three men formed a production company in
1970, called Friendly Films Limited. They reviewed
screenplays, treatments and ran through ideas
together on how to make Naked Lunch work as a
movie.
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Beatdom
Of course, there were myriad problems. For
one thing, it had been a major headache releasing
the book because of laws regarding obscenity. It
wouldn’t be easy to put together such a pornographic
project without incurring the wrath of the censors,
or, once again, the law.
Furthermore, Naked Lunch isn’t comprised of a
traditional narrative that would adapt well to the
screen. The story jumps around wildly through time
and space, with characters rarely developing, if at
all. Its fragmentary composition would surely baffle
film-goers.
This all made the project increasingly unlikely,
especially given the cost of making films. Whereas
as book could be written with no more wasted than
the time and effort of the author (and perhaps a few
hundred sheets of paper) a movie cost at least a few
hundred thousand dollars to make. And Naked Lunch
would have been no ordinary movie: the constant
shift from city to city to city would demand filming
on location on several different continents.
It is hardly surprising, then, that many considered
Naked Lunch “unfilmable”.
Documents still exist in the archive of Terry Wilson
– a friend of Burroughs, Gysin and Balch – that let
us see the visions the three men had for filming the
“unfilmable” project. Through letters, screenplays
and storyboards it is possible to examine the vision
these three men had in attempting to bring Naked
Lunch to the screen.
To get around the disjointed narrative the story
was to be reordered around certain key points –
“intersection points” – that Burroughs dictated. This
would have given the plot a little more coherence.
Additionally, characters would develop more than
in the novel, in line with what Burroughs’ later
works suggested would happen – switching quickly
through a variety of possible scenarios.
Of course, Naked Lunch was never an entirely be seen in the following excerpt of a synopsis, one
fictional book. Certain elements were highly of many versions of many possible plots:
autobiographical, and it was possible to elaborate
Some say that A.J. is the real controller of
upon the text by simply looking at reality. Gysinthe world. A.J. kept Dentway alive to use
who was the primary screenplay writer for the project
his genius, hidden in his secret fortress
– only had to look back at people and places he and
in the heart of Africa in Interzone. Lee
Burroughs had encountered together in Tangiers, to
travels on a very strange airline to
find inspiration for additional material. As Gysin
Interzone, determined to find Dentway
said, “Interzone, of course, was Burroughs’ very
and get his secret. However, on arrival
personal vision of the Tangier scene in the 1950’s,
in this strange land he finds that no one
here reinterpreted by me to include the cast of
has ever heard of A.J. or his fortress . .
characters whom we both knew there at that time.” . no one that is, except for a small boy.
The result was a strange mix of fiction and reality.
The Shoe Shine boy tells Lee he knows the
It was also a challenge finding someone to play the
hideout and will take him there. On arrival
role of William Lee, who would most likely have
at the fortress they are met by Salvador
taken a larger role in the movie than in the book (as
O’Leary Chapultapec, A.J.’s right hand
in fact was the case in Cronenberg’s movie, twenty
man who was expecting them. Inside the
years later). Burroughs wrote a confusing, frantic
th
fortress, Salvador shows Lee the hospital
note to Gysin on May 6 1971:
wing where the captured Dr. Benway, who
has gone mad, is perfecting his newest
You see Lee in a sense is an idealized
and even more hideous technique for
image of the writer able to do all sorts of
A.J. A secret meeting for heads of state
things the writer can’t do well so maybe
and visitors from space will be held to
start would be possible writer I mean
demonstrate Dentway’s latest horror. The
actor who could do a predistiginal you
show is so frightening that Lee, helped by
dig. You want somebody to shoot find
the Shoe Shine boy, sets fire to the fortress
somebody knows how to shoot just like we
and escapes. Nick’s hand extinguishes
find somebody who knows how to hang
the fire which is in the ashtray on the
for the hanging scenes. Just a thought.
Everhard bar and hands Lee his junk. Lee
CAN WE MAKE OUR OWN LEE FROM
leaves the bath at dawn and buys an old
THE C SCRIPT? It seems to me that
typewriter . . .
the first essential for Lee is PHYSICAL
PRESENCE BEING THERE. Love,
One of the more interesting things to note from this
William.
excerpt is the cut that keeps the story flowing in
To get around the shifting and switching of time spite of the massive jump in time and space. They
and space, Gysin proposed something called intended to an image of a fire in a jungle fortress and
“Transvestite Airlines” – a device used to transport cut it into a gay bar ashtray.
characters from one time/location to another in an
In 1963 Burroughs, Gysin and Balch collaborated
instant.
Perhaps the least surprising element intended on the short film Towers Open Fire. Directed by
for use was that of wild and creative cuts to slice Balch, the film featured Moroccan music performed
through the randomness of the text. One can’t help by Gysin, and voice-overs by the unmistakable
but observe that readers of Naked Lunch decades Burroughs.
Perhaps of most interest to us are the shots of
after its first publication probably perceive the book
differently in part because of the developments of Burroughs and Gysin performing their cut-up
cinema, which have imposed upon our minds a technique, by slicing up a piece of writing and
framework of possibility – allowing present day then reading the disjointed results. We also see the
readers to imagine such cuts as we read, applying “Dreammachine”, Gysin’s zoetropic device that is
some of the rules of experimental cinema to the text watched through closed eyes…
In 1966 Burroughs and Gysin worked together to
of an experimental novel.
An example of the above techniques and ideas can create the short film, The Cut Ups. Whilst filmed
Beatdom
15
before they began plotting a movie of Naked
Lunch, The Cut Ups nonetheless came from their
collaboration in the aftermath of the publication
of Naked Lunch and thus may be able to tell us a
little about what we could have expected from the
doomed project.
In a word, The Cut Ups is weird. It is a highly
experimental film, with a soundtrack of the words
“Yes” “Hello” “Look at that picture. Does it seem
to be persisting?” “Good” and “Thank you!” run
together over a series of seemingly disconnected
images that feels very much like an odd dream
sequence.
The clips that accompany the unusual soundtrack
are mostly of Gysin and Burroughs. When Gysin
appears we see him wearing a sweater with a
calligraphic design of his own creation, walking
through the street. In another scene he is working on
paintings. We also see his “Dreammachine”. These
scenes often begin with a roller painting a grid.
Burroughs is usually seen looking for or hiding
something or things. He is going through a large
collection of objects.
All of this is cut together extremely fast, with
some of the action sped up. An image is barely on
screen for more than a second or two, but then we
return moments later and see another brief glimpse
of whatever seemingly random thing it was that we
were being shown.
These films can both be seen on Towers Open
Fire and Other Films by Antony Balch. They also
collaborated on other projects, which can be viewed
freely on www.ubu.com along with a great many
other Beat resources.
In 1991 Naked Lunch was finally committed to
film by the director David Cronenberg, and with
Burroughs’ permission. Cronenberg acknowledged
the book’s label of being “unfilmable”, saying that a
straight forward adaptation would “cost 100 million
dollars and be banned in every country in the world.”
Indeed, that’s not hard to imagine.
Instead of filming the events and characters of the
book, Cronenberg merged the book with the life of
Burroughs, and even with some of his other works.
It is metatextual in as much as the film depiction the
creation of the book.
Interestingly, Cronenberg decided to blur the
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lines between reality and hallucination. What
transpires the in novel and what actually happened
to Burroughs in life are all viewed as a hazy drugtrip. One is never entirely sure what is going on.
Many well known friends and associates of
Burroughs are depicted in the movie, including Jack
Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, as well as events that
formed part of the Beat consciousness, such as the
shooting of Joan Vollmer.
In fact, one could view the movie less as an
adaptation of the book than as an biopic with
elements of Naked Lunch thrown in to represent the
perpetual junk haze in which Burroughs spent most
of his life.
The movie featured some of the book’s most
memorable moments, including the characters
William Lee and Dr. Benway, as well as the
Mugumps and the talking asshole, and the locations
Interzone and Annexia. All of these were used very
differently in the movie than in the book.
With the release of Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch,
Burroughs distanced himself somewhat from
previous attempts to film the “unfilmable”. He said
that “the late Brion Gysin and Antony Balch, set
out to adapt it for film,” failing to mention his own
input. Also, Gysin’s screenplay had been “long on
burlesque . . . a series of music-hall comedy songs
that he composed.” He appeared content with the
result of a twenty year pursuit for a silver-screen
version of his literary classic.
Indeed, fans and critics seemed generally sated by
Cronenberg’s effort. Whilst many complained about
a lack of faith to the original text, many realised that
it had indeed been “unfilmable” in its true form.
Cronenberg had certainly achieved something
spectacular by coming this close.
It should be noted, however, that Burroughs
scholar Timothy S. Murphy made some very
interesting points in criticising the movie. He argues
that whereas Burroughs’ depiction of drug abuse
and homosexuality were politically and socially
charged, Cronenberg’s proved merely for-show, a
heartless portrait of something without any meaning.
Moreover, the literary techniques Burroughs used for
his devastating social and political critiques become
merely the ramblings of a junky in the movie, rather
than something to be respected and studied.
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An Interview with the Oscar winning directors of Howl.
Perhaps the most exciting movie of 2010 for
Beatdom readers is ‘Howl’, a 1950s era feature film
about Allen Ginsberg’s obscenity trial for his epic,
generation-defining poem of the same name.
The movie will star James Franco as a young
Ginsberg, with Alan Alda as Judge Clayton Horn,
Jeff Daniels as prosecution witness Prof. David
Kirk, Mary-Louise Park as prosecution witness Gail
Potter, David Strathairn as prosecution attorney
Ralph MacIntosh and Paul Rudd as defense witness
Luther Nichols.
Directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are
both Academy Award winners as documentarians,
and the Allen Ginsberg Trust asked them to director
the movie to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘Howl’.
Gus Van Sant is the producer.
‘Howl’ is appearing at an important moment in
time. When Ginsberg wrote his masterpiece in
1955, America was in a difficult place. His poem
changed literature by tackling this weird world with
an autobiographical, highly personal eulogy for his
friends.
Now we are once again in an intimidating world.
America’s military mistakes are costing the people,
while freedom is speech is being assaulted. Now
more than ever the world needs to remember Allen
Ginsberg.
Just as ‘Howl’ was a groundbreaking poem, the
movie is certain to defy expectations. Trying to pin
down just what it will look like is no walk in the
park. Eric Drooker has animated long tracts of the
movie, which is partly based on the poem itself,
and partly based on the obscenity trial. There is
documentary footage spliced with the acting of some
of Hollywood’s finest contemporary talent.
To learn more about this exciting project, Beatdom
sat down with the Oscar winning directors…
a film to commemorate the 50th anniversary of
‘Howl’… That’s a huge compliment on your work.
Did they explain why they believed you were the
right directors for the project?
No, but we were honored to take on the challenge.
In Beatdom, we try and tie the Beats to the modern
world as much as possible… So, how relevant do you
think the themes of the poem, as well as the results of
the trial, are in today’s society?
The poem is a cri de coeur against an increasingly
militarized, consumeristic, dehumanized society
that was born out of World War II. Those trends are
still very much a part of the fabric of our lives today.
We’re still at war, our economy is still based on
more and more consumption and devastation of the
environment. It could have been written today—and
it would still be shocking.
The world of contemporary art and entertainment
owes more to the Beats than most people would
admit. How significant do you think the ‘Howl’
obscenity trial was to subsequent artists?
That’s hard to assess. Just knowing that it was judged
“not obscene” and that it continues to be published,
widely read and taught in high schools and colleges,
has got to have had an impact. Allen described the
poem as promoting “frankness,” and set an example
for subsequent generations of artists.
Now, let’s talk about the movie… Allen Ginsberg is a
one-off, ridiculously unique character. How did you
go about trying to capture him and present him on
film?
Through his own words and ideas, as best we could.
As documentarians, it was natural for us to start with
existing documents. We learned about an interview
that he gave to a Time Magazine reporter while
I read that the Allen Ginsberg Trust actually the obscenity trial was happening, but that Time
contacted the two of you with the idea of creating never published. That inspired us to reconstruct this
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Beatdom
Illustration by Isaac Bonan
‘Howl’ is a cri de coeur against an increasingly militarized,
consumeristic, dehumanized society that was born out of World
War II. Those trends are still very much a part of the fabric of our
lives today. We’re still at war, our economy is still based on more
and more consumption and devastation of the environment. It
could have been written today—and it would still be shocking.
Beatdom
19
“missing interview” using transcripts of existing
interviews with Allen that he had given over the
years. To illustrate the important relationships in his
life—with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Peter
Orlovsky—we worked with our cinematographer
Ed Lachman to adapt the black-and-white style of
photographs and 16mm movies of the period to evoke
the mood of the time. And we worked extensively
with James Franco to bring texture and substance to
the role—he’s an amazing actor.
What exactly will the movie focus on? It’s called
‘Howl’, and said to revolve around the trial, but how
much of Ginsberg’s life, the influence of the Beat
Generation, and the actually poem itself, have you
managed to capture in the movie?
Our goal was to try to convey the personal and artistic
transformation that Allen had to go through in order
for him to get to the point where he could create
this totally unprecedented masterpiece. We use the
central relationships in his life at the time—the guys
he loved—as the focus of his journey. The immediate
effects, and the most virulent, was the arrest of the
publisher on obscenity charges. The trial itself is an
absurd exercise in defining socially acceptable art
and sexuality; at the same time, it helps elucidate
aspects of the poetry.
What made you cast James Franco as Ginsberg?
What do you think he will bring to such a challenging
role?
James didn’t seem like an obvious choice at first, but
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Beatdom
half-Jewish!
Gus Van Sant, our executive
producer, encouraged us to
consider James. Then, as
we learned about his serious
commitment to art and
literature—the guy is in three
masters programs!—and after
meeting with him and seeing
some of his work, we realized
he could bring something
really interesting to the role.
The film is about the poet as
a young man—Allen was 29
when he wrote “Howl.” We
had been looking at photos
of young Allen, who was
quite adorable, so the casting
seemed less outlandish than
it might appear. James is even
James worked really hard to make Allen’s words
his own, and to embody his vocal and physical
mannerisms. Rob and I worked with him several
times over the course of the year it took us to raise
the financing—so this was totally speculative on
James’s part, and demonstrated a real commitment
to the project. By the time we went into production,
we felt he was truly channeling Allen.
I heard that Ginsberg collaborator Eric Drooker
will be involved in the movie… What exactly is his
role in ‘Howl’? We struggled for several years trying to come
up with a cinematic form that would be formally
groundbreaking in a way that would do justice to
“Howl”—a work that broke rules, developed and
helped create new forms of artistic expression, and
changed the way we think about poetry and literature.
It was daunting. The first glimmer of an idea came
when we discovered “Illuminated Poems,” the
book of Allen’s poetry that Eric illustrated. We
met with Eric to talk about his collaboration with
Allen, and gradually came up with the idea of
creating an animated interpretation of the poem.
That mushroomed into a bigger collaboration with
John Hays, a very talented animation director, and
eventually with Juck Somsaman and his crew in
Bangkok, where the images are coming to life.
Beatdom
21
“Money is the root of all evil”
For I will
Write
In my will
“I regret that I was not able
To love money more.”
Jack Kerouac, 238th Chorus, Mexico City Blues
Jack Kerouac died on October 21 , 1969, of cirrhosis
of the liver. By the time he died he had become a
shell of the man he once was. He lived with his
mother, drank himself beyond recognition, and was
flat broke.
But as we all know, Kerouac’s fame only grew after
his death, and in death came the respect he craved
in life. His unpublished works were published, and
his out of print books were brought back into print.
People began caring about Kerouac again.
Many of the greatest writers, musicians and
artists of the latter half of the twentieth century
claim that Kerouac was a huge inspiration in their
life. On the Road is now required reading in high
schools and universities, and instead of Kerouac
being loved only by literate fratboys, his work is
considered by scholars and published by Penguin
Classics. His influence upon Western society has
been immeasurable.
In the past few years there has been a flurry of
activity surrounding Kerouac’s old work. The
fiftieth anniversary of the publication of On the Road
came and brought the release of the original scroll
version. And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks,
co-written with William S. Burroughs, Wake Up:
The Life of the Buddha, and The Sea is my Brother,
have all been recently published.
So it is no surprise that Kerouac’s estate is worth
a little more than the ninety-one dollars he owned
when he died. After fifty years of fame and forty
years of posthumous analysis, Kerouac’s estate is
now valued at up to forty million dollars.
However, there has been somewhat of a furore
over the ownership of that estate, and recently a
long battle was ended with the shocking verdict of
the American legal system, which deemed the will
of Kerouac’s mother to have been a fake.
st
people who were expecting to be included. Instead,
he left everything to his mother – a woman who had
been an ogre-like figure throughout Kerouac’s life.
When she died in 1973, Gabriel Kerouac allegedly
passed control of Kerouac’s estate to his third wife,
Stella Sampas.
Kerouac’s will deliberately overlooked Sampas,
against whom Kerouac had allegedly planned upon
entering divorce proceedings. In a letter posted to
his nephew, Paul Blake Jnr, on October 20th, 1969
(the day before his death), Kerouac said,
I’ve turned over my entire estate to
Memere, and if she dies before me, it is
then turned to you, and if I die thereafter,
it all goes to you…
I just wanted to leave my “estate” (which
is what it really is) to someone directly
connected to the last remaining drop of
my direct blood line, which is, me, sister
Carolyn, your mom, and not to leave a
dingblasted fucking goddam thing to my
wife’s one hundred Greek relatives. I also
plan to divorce, or have her marriage to
me, annulled. Just telling you the facts of
how it is…
I want you to know that if you’re a crazy
nut you can do anything you want with
my property if I kick the bucket because
we’re of the same blood.
Paul Blake Jnr has spent much of his life in poverty
and consequently sold the famous letter from his
uncle to art dealer Alan Horowitz, who sold it to
the New York Public Library. At present it remains
in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of
English and American Literature. The Sampas
family, however, claims that the letter is a forgery.
When an attempt was made to make the note
public, the Sampas family threatened a lawsuit,
claiming that it was part of the Kerouac archive, but
that it was also a forgery… One must wonder why
they were so protective over something that they so
strongly disputed.
In 1990, Stella Sampas died and left control of
the estate to her family. Her brother, John Sampas,
assumed control of the estate and became Kerouac’s
literary executor. With the continuing fame of
Kerouac and his work, the family profited by selling
the scroll manuscript of On the Road for more than
two million dollars to Jim Irsay, and even a raincoat,
When Kerouac died, his will ignored many of the hat and suitcase to Johnny Depp for around forty
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Beatdom
thousand dollars.
Whilst the constant passing of ownership seems
strange and confusing, the person who was most
confused was Jan Kerouac, Jack Kerouac’s daughter
by Joan Haverty. Having been denied any part in
the control of her father’s estate, she called into
question the validity of Gabriel Kerouac’s will.
Her suspicions had been raised when she noticed,
in 1994, that her grandmother had evidently spelled
her name wrong on her own will.
Therefore, Jan Kerouac’s charge was that the
signature on Gabriel Kerouac’s will had to have been
forged, and that neither she nor her son had wanted
control of the estate to rest outside the immediate
family. The Sampas family’s ownership was thus
illegal, in Jan Kerouac’s eyes.
In 1994, Jan Kerouac went to court to prove her
argument. She cited the 1969 letter from Kerouac
to his nephew that stated he wished his estate to
be controlled by his blood family after his death.
In the letter ee also discussed the idea of divorcing
his wife, Stella, to whom Gabriel Kerouac’s will left
the estate. Furthermore, the man who’d allegedly
witnessed the signing of the will – Clifford Larkin –
admitted to having witnessed no such thing. It was
even suggested that Gabriel Kerouac was medically
incapable of signing anything. After all, she was a
frail old woman with few physical abilities, and the
signature was strong and defined – that of someone
with significant strength in their arm.
Jan Kerouac died in 1996, naming Kerouac
biographer Gregory Nicosia (who wrote Memory
Babe) as her literary executor, and her husband –
John Lash – as overall executor. Lash, however,
disagreed with her charge against the Sampas family
and in 1999 Nicosia resigned from his post. The case
was dismissed soon after.
Kerouac’s nephew, Paul Blake Jnr, has always kept
fighting the same battle as Jan Kerouac, and recently
he carried the litigation to court again, and won. It
is argued, however, that Blake never particularly
cared, and that he only took it this far on the advice
of Nicosia, who brought him food when he was
homeless, and dragged him along in his fight against
the Sampas family.
Citing medical evidence and the testimony of
a handwriting expert, Judge George W. Greer of
Pinellas County, Florida, declared Gabriel Kerouac’s
will a forgery. It seems, then, that the ownership of
Kerouac’s estate by the Sampas family – aside from
the one-third dowers entitlement to Stella Sampas –
was illegal, and came to pass only through an act of
criminal fraud.
Now, fourteen years after Jan Kerouac’s death, it
seems she has succeeded in liberating Kerouac’s
estate from its wrongful owners.
The question now, however, is what will happen
if Paul Blake Jnr comes to control the estate. Jan
Kerouac always said she wanted her father’s work
given to a library, but it is argued that the Sampas
family rejected numerous offers from libraries. No
one even knows what exactly they owned, or the
precise value of Kerouac’s estate. Fans of Kerouac
tend to gather in opposition to John Sampas because
of the sale of so many artefacts, but he argues that
he has done Kerouac’s work a great service.
The problem now is that there is no evidence to
suggest that any member of the Sampas family
committed the act of fraud. They were not even
involved in the 2009 court case. Kerouac’s estate
passed from Jack to Memere to Stella and then to
John Sampas. Mr. Sampas can therefore hardly be
considered the crook he is portrayed by Nicosia and
so many irate Kerouac fans.
Furthermore, it would be impossible to reclaim
the sold items and return them to Blake – Kerouac’s
only living blood relative. It would be unreasonable,
too, to expect Sampas to repay Blake for the items
he has already sold, considering he probably acted
without knowledge of the forged will.
If Sampas is to hand over the remaining items
to Blake, that might only account for a few pieces
of writing, as Isaac Gewirtz, curator of the Berg
Collection in New York, says “98% of what survives
of his writing, not including correspondence, is
here and are available for study.” Nicosia claims
that thousands of pieces of Kerouac’s writing to
collectors, although the Sampas claims that it was
only fifty or sixty, and that they were sold to generate
the required operation capital for the estate. These
documents were copied and are presently available
to view at the Berg.
Critics, however, posit that there are some major
gaps in the collection. While Sampas sold around
2,000 items to the Berg Collection for an undisclosed
sum in 2001, there are no complete drafts of The
Dharma Bums or Vanity of Duluoz, absolutely
nothing on Big Sur, and of course, the most famous
piece – the original scroll manuscript of On the
Road, one of the most famous documents in literary
history – has itself been on the road since being sold
to Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts and
close friend of Hunter S. Thompson.
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Illustration by Isaac Bonan
24
Beatdom
Jeffrey Weinberg – John Sampas’ consultant from
1991 to 1993 – claimed to have negotiated the sale
of a hand-illuminated manuscript of Book of Dreams
to a Rhode Island lawyer for more than $25,000, as
well as many other letters and rarities.
However, the scroll of Big Sur belongs to Helen
Suprenant, heir of Stella Sampas. Nicosia eludes to it
having been sold to a random collector, but it seems
to have been given to Suprenant as an inheritance.
The scroll for The Dharma Bums was purchased
by the Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida, in
cooperation with a university. The Kerouac House,
for those who don’t know, is a former residence of
Kerouac that John Sampas helped Bob Kealing find
and preserve turn into a literary monument.
As for the On the Road scroll, the fee it commanded
and the fact that it is not readily available for
study are offset by the fact that it tours the world,
allowing people to view Kerouac’s work up close.
Furthermore, the Berg Collection has a digitised
version available for study, as well as a scanned
replica.
Bob Rosenthal of the Allen Ginsberg Trust claims
that it doesn’t matter whether or not the Sampas
family sold pieces of the Kerouac archive, because
many buyers apparently bought only with the
intention of donating to the Berg Collection.
In terms of royalties, On the Road alone sells
around 60,000 copies per year. Blake’s lawyers
are looking into his claim to some of that money,
although Blake claims he is only interested in
looking after his uncle’s work. Experts say that
Blake may be entitled to a third of the Kerouac
estate, but no one really knows what comprises that
collection, or what its value may be. Jan Kerouac
was added to the list of copyright owners in 1985,
when the copyright was up for renewal, after being
told in 1982, at a Kerouac conference in Boulder,
Colorado, by John Steinbeck’s son, that she needn’t
have prostituted herself and lived in poverty for so
long – she was entitled to a share of the royalties.
Only the Sampas family know for sure what
remains of the Kerouac estate. Douglas Brinkley
has been allowed to view the collection for what he
planned on being the first official Kerouac biography,
but when he failed to deliver the manuscript in
time for the 50th anniversary of the publication of
On the Road, the project appeared to be cancelled.
Sampas himself claimed that there are no decent
biographies of Kerouac in existence – something
that Beatdom would vehemently deny. One only has
to look at Paul Maher Jnr’s Kerouac: The Definitive
Biography, Ann Charters’ Kerouac: A Biography or
Barry Gifford’s Jack’s Book: An Oral Biography of
Jack Kerouac to see that Sampas’ claim is absurd.
They may not be perfect, but perhaps Sampas is
guilty of a little hyperbole.
One might well wonder what Kerouac’s
contemporaries thought of the situation… After all,
it seems unusual that for so long the battle raged
between Jan Kerouac, Paul Blake Jnr and the
Sampas family. Why didn’t Kerouac’s friends enter
into the debate?
Well, the case was never exactly obvious. There
was no way of knowing what Gabrielle Kerouac
wanted, and so the words of Kerouac’s own friends
are hardly worth much. Jan Kerouac was never a
part of any circle of Beat Generation writers. She
barely knew her father, and whilst Paul Blake Jnr
and his uncle shared a close relationship, Blake was
never as driven as Jan Kerouac in pursuit of the
settlement of the estate.
Jan Kerouac’s godfather, Allen Ginsberg, waded
briefly into the argument, examining the debate
in the early ‘90s. He apparently studied the case
for a few days before deciding the Jan Kerouac
had no particularly strong claim to the estate. By
all accounts, he was never particularly fond of his
goddaughter, whom many consider coldly ignored
by the otherwise loveable Ginsberg.
According to Aram Saroyan,
Nicosia had… been organizing a fund
raiser to help Jan with her medical bills
and told me Allen had called friends
like Gary Snyder and Michael McClure
and discouraged their participation and
later about the Kerouac conference in
Manhattan: With some of the participants
having a claim to be there far less valid
than Jan Kerouac’s, she along with Gerry
Nicosia were thrown out of the conference
by campus police when she attempted to
get on the podium and speak about her
father’s archives.
Gregory Corso, however, disagreed, and signed
a petition to allow Jan Kerouac to speak at the
conference in New York in 1995 that was held in
honour of her father. But as Nicosia later claimed,
“John Sampas was calling for the university police
to arrest her, and Allen said, ‘Yes, take her out, she’s
irrelevant.’ I stood up from the audience and started
Beatdom
25
yelling at Allen: ‘Allen, you’ve got to let her speak!
She’s Jack’s daughter!’ Sampas said, ‘Get rid of
him, too!’”
William S. Burroughs seems to have sympathised
somewhat with Jan Kerouac’s claim, and gave her
several of his paintings to sell. One of those paintings
was sold sight-unseen to a bidder for $3000. The
money went to pay for her dialysis, which she
required four times a day.
Brenda Knight, the author of the fantastic book
Women of the Beat Generation, said that Kerouac’s
friends “were worried about getting ‘blacklisted’
in an unofficial way.” Such was the power of the
Sampas family that other writers were afraid of
speaking against them. Gerald Nicosia speculated
that perhaps they were afraid of aligning themselves
with Jan Kerouac, who only met her father twice. He
claimed that the Sampas family had spread rumours
about her that had damaged her reputation, and that
scared away members of the Beat Generation.
Nicosia himself claims to have been stopped in
numerous endeavours by the apparently wicked
Sampas clan. For one thing he claims that John
Sampas forced his Kerouac biography out of print.
Michael Lally – a writer and friend of Nicosia
–claims that a book he wrote that was in preproduction
with Penguin books, was scuppered after he aligned
himself against the Sampas family.
John Sampas, however, replied by saying: ““I’m
a nobody. They make me out to be some powerful
Mafia character. I’m just Jack Kerouac’s brother-inlaw… Nicosia is a well known ‘nut case’ who has
been stalking the Kerouac estate for years.”
Recently, a debate has been raging between two
Kerouac scholars that may lend credit to Sampas’
remark about Nicosia’s integrity. Although it has no
real consequence for the estate of Jack Kerouac, the
argument throws a shadow of doubt over Nicosia,
who supported Jan Kerouac and Paul Blake Jnr. It
also casts a dark shadow over the past forty years of
Kerouac studies.
At Litkicks (a fantastic website devoted to all
things literary) Gerald Nicosia and Paul Maher Jnr
took their personal and professional differences and
exposed them to the world on the discussion board
of a page titled “Kerouac Estate Battle Again”.
The author of the brief update regarding the news
announcement was Levi Asher, a member of the
well known Beat-L community in the 1990s. The
Beat website was a target of Nicosia’s incessant
spamming for his cause, and eventually the group
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Beatdom
disbanded after the flame war became too much for
members to cope with. Nicosia would respond to
arguments against him with ten page point-by-point
retaliations. In the end, Nicosia went as far as to file
a half a million dollar defamation suit against one of
his detractors, Dianne de Rooy. The group founder,
Bill Gargan even attempted to ban discussion of the
Kerouac estate, but in the end Nicosia threatened
him with legal action and forced the group to shut
down.
It should be noted that John Sampas was also a
member of the Beat-L group, although he never
posted. He admits to giving encouragement to
Nicosia’s detractors offline, but maintains that he
liked to read only because he enjoyed seeing what
people thought of Kerouac’s work.
Many comments on the Litkicks board were left
in admiration of Nicosia, but several alluded to or
charged him with certain morally dubious actions.
Asher himself pointed out that Nicosia acted on
behalf of Jan Kerouac when Asher published one of
her short stories. Nicosia didn’t care that Asher had
Kerouac’s permission to do so.
Attila Gyenis – editor of Dharma Beat – argued that
Nicosia had misrepresented certain facts, including
saying that Jan Kerouac received no money from
the Sampas family, when she did in fact receive a
yearly payment.
It didn’t take long for Nicosia to pass comment on
the topic, and on the other members of the group.
He denied the accusation that he misrepresented
Jan Kerouac’s royalties, explaining that she was
nonetheless lied to be the Sampas family, who
tried to pay her nothing, and then less than she was
entitled to, and finally paid her $50,000 per year
only when her medical expenses exceeded that
amount. According to Jeffrey Weinberg, Sampas
“did absolutely nothing to help Jan Kerouac, which I
think is despicable. It was legal, but it wasn’t moral.”
Sampas denies this, claiming that he offered more
money, but that the offer was pointedly rejected.
Nicosia then posited that John Sampas heavily
censored Kerouac’s writings, citing Rod Anstee’s
study that showed 300 deletions that were never
marked. If true, that would be an astonishing blow
to Sampas’ credibility.
He also repeated the claim that Sampas had
distributed Kerouac’s work to collectors around the
globe, and that the Berg Collection was woefully
lacking the scrolls, on which Kerouac wrote
between eight and ten of his novels, including On
the Road, The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans,
Big Sur, Desolation Angels, Satori in Paris, Vanity
of Duluoz, and Mexico City Blues.
One might wonder why exactly Nicosia levels
his complaint at Sampas and not at, for just one
example, the Ginsberg Trust, who auctioned his
personal effects at Sotheby’s. Or the countless
girlfriends and Kerouac associates who sold their
personal Kerouac-related effects for personal
gain, rather than donating them generously to the
public interest. Indeed, according to Sampas, Jan
Kerouac sold furniture for years by lying to people
and claiming it was used by her father to write his
novels.
Finally, Nicosia claims that the Sampas family
forced the closure of his Memory Babe archive
at the University of
Bought for more Massachusetts, Lowell.
He says that it took him
than two million eleven years of legal
dollars by Jim
action and that John
Irsay, Kerouac’s Sampas kept pressuring
the university to keep
120 ft scroll is
the archive shut.
After these arguments,
always “on the
Paul Maher Jnr jumped
road.”
into the fray with some
It made the Ker- crude personal insults
ouac Estate a nice and some questioning
of Nicosia’s work in
little bit of “oper- comparison to his own
ating capital,” too. efforts, which were
apparently made with the
blessing and supervision
– although not too much supervision, he states – of
John Sampas.
Maher also claims that the Berg Collection’s
inventory refutes Nicosia’s claim that Sampas is
selling off the Kerouac archive irresponsibly. He
also claims that if Sampas were to auction off the
estate piece by piece it would be perfectly legal, and
that other authors have their work distributed across
the world.
It seems as though Maher is missing the point a
little, with Nicosia’s argument being that the scrolls
(or rather, as he would call them, “the rolls”) are not
available for study, and that it would be easier to
have everything in one public collection. He does,
however, make a reasonable argument by stating
that it would be unreasonable to expect everything
to be gathered in one place. He says that the Berg
Collection is a phenomenal resource as it is.
After this, the two scholars get down to arguing
matters surrounding their respective books. Nicosia
asks why Maher used his work without crediting
him – citing a witness from the University of
Massachusetts. Maher argued back that Nicosia
had profited from Xeroxing Kerouac’s unpublished
writings – an act of obvious copyright infringement
– and sold it to a university, therefore it was never
Nicosia’s to begin with and that he need never have
credited Nicosia. In fact, Maher claims, since the
Sampas family was in control of the Kerouac estate,
he could well have credited John Sampas.
Next, he offered the fact that Nicosia had sent
threatening, paranoid e-mails to Maher’s publishers,
and to Douglas Brinkley – whom the Kerouac estate
had asked to write the official Kerouac biography –
with insults about Maher.
Maher also claims that he doesn’t care at all about
the court verdict and that it makes no difference
to anything. However, in his personal blog (the
arrogantly titled “You Don’t Know Jack”) he
discusses the matter differently, calling it a “botched
decision” and defending the Sampas family – with
whom he, for posterity’s sake distanced himself
from on Litkicks. He offers a portrayal of Stella
as a literal saint, deserving of everything Kerouac
owed, and eluding to a relationship with Gabrielle
that would have resulted in her bequeathing Sampas
everything in her will.
Maher also offered several documents – which
have subsequently disappeared from the webhost
– that show Jan Kerouac’s apparent desire to part
company with Nicosia… Indeed, a little digging
will show that prior to her death, she was trying
desperately to get away from her literary executor.
Nicosia was busy suing her relatives and guiding
her literary career, and she wanted to get rid of
him. But, just like when Kerouac tried to get rid
of his wife, his daughter tried to ditch Nicosia and
died before she could follow through. Nicosia,
however, managed to convince Kerouac to sign a
will that left him as her “literary representative”,
in charge of all posthumous works. He has used
this position to sue her beloved heirs, her brother
David and her ex-husband John Nash. One of the
documents she wanted to sign before her death was
intended to repeal Nicosia’s position as her “literary
representative”.
It is claimed that he travelled to Jan Kerouac’s
apartment immediately after her death, took all of
her possessions, then proceeded to destroy them,
store them or hide them, depending upon their value
and relation to his actions.
Beatdom
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In life and death, Jan Kerouac’s name has been used
by Nicosia to make money and to gain a reputation.
He uses her sad life story to manipulate journalists
and judges. Allegedly, he even managed to sell
Jack Kerouac’s name to Levi-Strauss for $11,000,
apparently because he copyrighted Kerouac’s name
and image in the state of California.
And that’s about all I’m going to write on the subject
of Gerald Nicosia and Paul Maher Jnr. Suffice it
to say they continued their petty banter for some
time after that. Their argument is fascinating as an
example of the turbulent world of literary studies,
which many would think dull and uninteresting.
But people care. Sometimes they care enough to
act like fools. Sometimes they care enough to lie,
to insult others, and to bicker in front of bemused
on lookers.
But the fact is that they care. Kerouac is still as
relevant today as he ever was. His readers and
scholars care so deeply about him, and think they
understand him because of the intimate, personal
nature of his writing, that they are willing to make
grand leaps in faith to defend him and his legacy.
Whilst both Nicosia and Maher appear to be
incredibly childish, I must say that I am lost in
navigating this labyrinth of accusations, facts and
lies. Their language is both grandiose and pathetic,
with reason and logic largely lost in the midst of a
flame war that is more commonly in the domain of
the humble, non-professional nerd... We know for
one thing that Gabrielle’s will was forged. It doesn’t
take a genius to see that she was incapable of signing
her name, and that control of the estate should never
have gone to Stella Sampas. When it comes down to
it, money ruined everything. It looks as though the
Sampas family cheated Jan Kerouac out of money
and profited unfairly from her father’s estate. But
under John Sampas’ stewardship the name of Jack
Kerouac rose from that of a famous author to that
of a literary icon, studied the world over and given
the respect he desired. One could try to predict what
will happen next on a purely legal basis, but the
only thing that is for sure is that Kerouac fans and
scholars will be divided and reduced to the level of
bickering children for years to come.
28
Beatdom
Sources
This isn’t an easy subject to research… For the basic
facts pertaining to the court case, please consult
Google News and look through old reports from
reputable publications.
For more about Sampas, Nicosia and the debate
that has long since raged you might want to prepare
yourself. Nicosia’s confrontational information logjam makes it hard to pick truth from fact. Likewise,
Maher’s arrogant style of forcing facts at you makes
it hard to take him seriously.
Be prepared to do some digging. Be a sensible
reader, too. Don’t believe everything you read.
Always remain sceptical. And for the love of god,
don’t offend Gerald Nicosia… He might just take
you to court.
Asher, Levi, ‘Not the Jack Kerouac Estate
Battle Again…’ http://www.litkicks.com/
KerouacEstateBattleAgain/
Maher Jnr, Paul, ‘Professors of Babylon’, http://
kerouacquarterly.blogspot.com/2010/01/professorsof-babylon.html
Maughan, Stephen, ‘And the Beat Goes on’, http://
www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/201001/
kerouac-1.phtml
Nicosia, Gerald, ‘Press Conference Speech, June
5 2007’, http://whollycommunion.blogspot.
com/2007/09/gerald-nicosia-press-conferencespeech.html
Nicosia, Gerald, ‘Report from the Kerouac
Front Thirty Years After his Death’, http://
www.geraldnicosia.com/html/geraldframeset2.
html?kerouachtml/kerouacreport.html~content
Roadrat, ‘Fight over all things Kerouac’, http://
www.roadratroberts1.bravepages.com/JACK%20
KEROUAC%203.htm
An
Intimate
Guide
to the
Women
of the
Beat
Generation
by Hannah Withrow
Diane di Prima
I begin my immersion into female Beat writers fittingly
with Diane di Prima; referred to in one anthology as
“Poet Priestess,” she is one of the more well-known
of these women. My introduction to her large body
of work was Memoirs of a Beatnik, a piece of erotica.
Ridiculous orgies, almost constant sex, nude modeling
to pay the bills, always high, always scandalous. Most
of her other work is more classically respected as
literature—poetry, editing literary journals, novels,
that sort of thing. In the Afterword to Memoirs,
written in 1987, she describes the writing process for
that particular book,
Gobs of words would go off to New York
whenever the rent was due, and come back
with “MORE SEX” scrawled across the
top page in Maurice’s inimitable hand,
and I would dream up odd angles of
bodies or weird combinations of humans
and cram them in and send it off again.
Sometimes I’d wander the house looking
for folks to check things out with: “Lie
down,” I’d say, “I want to see if this is
possible.”
That’s how it was in 1969. For a disreputable Beat
lady there was not to be an actual memoir; any
attempt at truth-telling. Who would want to read that?
That wouldn’t sell. What did such a woman have to
say? Instead the book had to be one of those secret
pleasures for women, if tainted by the forceful hand
of commerce. A glimpse into the still forbidden world
of female expression and pleasure, though its content
was likely somewhat controlled by di Prima’s male
editor. Perhaps a young house-bound mother read
it; she hid it under the mattress by day. She did not
speak of it with her well-mannered friends. But when
she got a moment to herself, perhaps she snuck it into
the living room inside a ladylike publication while
the children played pick-up sticks, and perhaps she
whispered the rolling words, poetry and adventure to
herself. Hot, hot, hot! A woman liking sex, a woman
Beatdom
29
grasping for sex—what a revelation—a dirty secret
revelation.
Even for me, reading this in 2008 in the privacy
of my own apartment I feel self-conscious, not sure
that I am allowed to read such a book. I rush home
from work to devour its pages; shudder with her as
she kisses college girlfriends, beds the sad-greeneyed junkie, and romps in the bedroom with Allen
and Jack. I gush about the book to a friend—the
prose—the beautiful prose. He wants me to bring it
for him to check out, I can’t do it. Would I bring him
a vibrator? He can’t possibly understand. It won’t be
the same for a boy, not the same at all. No, this book
is one I will pass around to girl friends, recommend
for a quiet night at home.
Ms. di Prima didn’t get to write her real memoir
until 2001, Recollections of My Life as a Woman: the
New York Years. A big fat juicy memoir, no longer
a total literary prostitute, she had put in her time,
waited and worked. Books and books of poetry, many
self-published, very difficult to acquire these days,
page after page, typing away, listening to the men
read. Writing-teaching-grey-hairs-fighting-marryingdivorcing-mentoring-mothering-scrimping-saving,
she had put in her time.
This memoir focuses more heavily on the scary
side to sex. In those days every intimate encounter
would literally put your life in danger. With limited
access and few effective options for birth control,
randy women were faced with illegal and dangerous
abortions, the perils of childbirth, and the disgust of
parents and society at large. Lesbian activities could
get you institutionalized. There they might perform
unethical experiments, engage patients in bullshit
analysis, and electroshock was a given. Lobotomies
were preformed, sterilization presumed to be a
favor to society, and the prescribed levels of lithium
were off the charts. But Diane di Prima did not let
it stop her. She writes, “Every chance encounter was
weighed: was it worth, ultimately, dying for, if it came
to that? And the answer was usually yes… It was not
that I held my life so cheap, but held experience, the
savoring of life so dear.”
Still, she laments the “rule of Cool,” that kept her
time-after-time from revealing true feelings, hurt, love,
rejection, and desire, from friends and lovers. People
were supposed to be free; claims should not be made
on them. Lovers could love others, dear friends could
leave town on a whim, and breakups were supposed to
happen without comment. Sometimes di Prima wanted
to say, “stay,” but felt she wasn’t allowed to. She
writes, “With all my belief in freedom I was in pain,
of course, was wounded again and again in the course
30
Beatdom
of this love. But for me these wounds were a kind
of decoration. The scars of intentional battle against
deadening rules, against all sense of possession of the
Other, against my unruly, starving, clamorous self.”
But she used the rules for her own benefit as well,
gave herself permission to love anyone anytime, had
her children without consulting the fathers or asking
anything of them, and living wherever she wanted to
live.
This defiance and unwillingness to be controlled is
part of the attitude that kept her going, what stopped
her from being shoved down by misogyny and the
literary glass ceiling of the times. She stood up and
read her poems; she printed journals and books, her
own and those of others she admired. She started
theaters, had babies when she felt like it, stuck with
her values and ideals. She would not be told. Scary
and powerful. Diane di Prima is my fucking hero. Get
me some of Those ovaries.
Hettie Jones
How I Became Hettie Jones, where has book been all
my life? Fascinating stuff, white Jewish woman, secret
poet, marries black activist poet, LeRoi Jones, New
York in the 50s. Sexism and racism compounding to
crush her and her family. Hettie sleeps with another
man; LeRoi (at that time also involved with Diane
di Prima) is infuriated. At home they scream at each
other. He calls her a whore, she reminds him of his
infidelities, he smashes plates—he wants to hit her—
she dares him. He does it. Terrible sexism, Hettie
the abused wife. But Mrs. Jones reminds the reader
that this is a more complicated story: “Two twentyfive-year-old kids with a kid, in the middle of a lot
of commotion. Do you see race in this? Have you
forgotten? It would get worse.” Gender isn’t what
eventually tore them apart, race is. And Hettie Jones
takes her blackwhite children with her on the subway,
they get stares and yells, cruel comments, can’t rent
in this buildings, threats. This is as close as a white
woman can get to knowing racism. Walk a mile in
his shoes, carry the children that are also his, back
sweating under the double-triple burden. Hettie Jones
talks about her own troubles and the troubles of others
without giving in to the easy outs of comparison and
minimization of the pain of others.
Hettie Jones wrote her poems in secret. She listened
and praised her husband. Lugged her baby belly over
to see Jack Kerouac and listen to the words bouncing
off the walls with shining eyes. Hettie Jones did not
read her poems out loud. She was afraid they were
bad. She wrote her poems and destroyed them, began
a children’s book and lost the manuscript. It took
years for her to gain her footing, to trust herself. To
make and give art. Hettie Jones had something to say.
Lucky for me she managed to get some of it out. I,
too, have thrown out poetry. Have thought I was no
good. Me, what am I, what have I to say? I close my
eyes and lean back, I imagine Hettie Jones pushing
the heavy stroller, doing all the grunt work for LeRoi
Jones’ projects. Putting together their literary magazine
Yugen, a magazine he got all the credit for, typing
his poems and plays, cleaning and doing his editing,
raising babies, and earning the money to feed them.
Hettie Jones became an abomination to her family
for her rebellion yet remained tied to the kitchen. She
got to be near greatness and people thought that was
supposed to be enough for a woman.
Joyce Johnson
By the time I get to Joyce Johnson’s Minor Characters
I am in love with these ladies. I go online and order
myself a black beret. If it wasn’t so hot out I would
get black tights too; maybe I will this fall. Friends
start calling me Annie Hall and making countless
other beret references. I clarify that I am going for a
Beat aesthetic; I started reading female Beat memoirs
and poetry in hopes of uncovering the female art
inspired by the movement and how it was limited by
the pervasive sexism and racism of the male leaders.
I want to know how and why they made art in such
a mean and dirty world. I am so glad I have looked;
I have found a new bundle of beautiful writers and
artistic mothers. Women I can declare as influences.
Joyce Johnson is sweet. I think we would have been
friends if we had met in her teens or early twenties.
At thirteen she began making treks to Greenwich
Village lingering hopefully around the oh-so-cool
Trotskyites, hoping to be noticed by one of the
attractively disheveled older men and adopted into
the scene. Hanging out in skeezy coffee shops singing
songs of the proletariat and learning to smoke, she
unknowingly hung out in proximity to such artists as
e e cummings, W.H. Auden, and Jackson Pollock. I
want to drink ten-cent coffee and overhear Franz Kline
discussing abstract expressionism. I want to copy the
garb of the bohemian and brilliant, slipping into my
affect with dangling earrings and a sinewy belt as I
head to the Village on a subway towards hip.
While I certainly spent my share of time as a teen
riding around in cars with disheveled older males and
hanging around scenes I was not yet old enough or
cool enough to actually be part of, I wasn’t exactly
chilling with some of the greatest artists of the 20th
century. So while I’d like to think I would have been
friends with Joyce Johnson, it seems quite likely that
she was much smarter, hipper, and luckier than I ever
will be.
I suppose I should just take a number in my envy
of her. I mean, she was Jack Kerouac’s lover during
the time in his life when his fame was just beginning.
There has to have been scores of young women and
men thinking how romantic and wonderful it would
be. Except that it sounds awful to me. I really like
his writing and all, but from what I can tell he was
totally neurotic and obsessed with his mother, not
to mention a raging alcoholic. Don’t get me wrong,
when I first read The Dharma Bums my toes fell off at
“Avalokitesvara’s ten-wondered universe of dark and
diamonds,” but all this Memere stuff is creepy and
sad to me. What I am most envious of is her ability
to be a part of such a wild scene and survive it. The
drugs and music, the many lovers, the late nights, the
drunken poetry readings, the press jangling her phone
at all hours looking for Jack, looking for a quote, the
manic friends in and out of institutions, bumming
money and a begging for a place to crash. And here
she is managing to become successful, functional, and
not dead in the midst of craziness and creation. How
wonderful to be best friends with the sad, possibly
insane and hidden poet Elise Cowen, to have another
best friend in Hettie Jones, to publish a fantastic novel
by the age of twenty-six, and to have fucked some
seriously hot men—also exceptional poets.
Joyce
Johnson allowed herself to be an accessory. As a
female, choosing such an unconventional life meant
losing her family and that whole support system. And
boy Beats weren’t exactly the types to bring home
the bacon. No, they were hustlers and moochers,
at the expense of the disempowered ladies around
them, ladies inspired by their art and a lifestyle that
couldn’t quite be theirs. Joyce Johnson was one of
those women. I imagine she worked twice as hard as
any of the male Beats, full-time at a real job, writing
her novel by night, but always prepared to drop
everything if her Jack showed up. He came and went,
she stayed and toiled, took care of herself and others.
Had to keep it together for no one else seemed able.
She writes,
The great accomplishment was to
avoid actual employment for as long as
possible and by whatever means. But it
was all right for women to go out and
earn wages, since they had no important
Beatdom
31
creative endeavors to be distracted from.
The women didn’t mind, or if they did,
they never said—not until years later.
discovered Kerouac and spent long evenings in coffee
shops staring at his handsome face on the cover of my
copy of The Subterraneans (an uncomfortably racist
novel where Kerouac appropriates the painful story
I can’t be mad at her for living this way. What models of a female lover’s descent into madness). I bought a
did she have for independent female life? And who book of Buddhist scriptures and didn’t edit my poetry
would have supported her in such an endeavor? I that year. I quit going to church and drank too much.
forget how impossible it all was, how much disgust I thought salvation came from art, often forgetting
and disapproval she faced for all her actions. Johnson that art comes from artists, and artists are people, just
writes of John Clellon Holmes’s portrayal of the Beats people, people with problems and flaws. And if a Jack
Kerouac had come along and asked, I too would have
in his novel Go,
stopped the clock to make him grilled cheese with
tomato and run my fingers over his desperate head.
And whereas he scrupulously matches
Just today, I turned on the documentary, What
each of the male characters in his roman
Happened to Kerouac? There is a clip from 1959 (the
à clef to their originals, the ‘girls’ are
year after Kerouac and Johnson broke up) of him on
variously ‘amalgams of several people’;
the Steve Allen Show, he reads from On the Road his
‘accurate to the young women of the
lips pouting, his pauses perfect. Isn’t that what makes
time’; ‘a type rather than an individual.’
a good writer, someone who creates wells in your eyes
He can’t quite remember them—there
and makes you fall a bit in love sans reason? Yeah, I
were anonymous passengers on the big
get it, Joyce Johnson. I think I get it.
Greyhound bus of experience. Lacking
centers, how could they burn with the
fever that infected his young men?
Carolyn Cassady
It must have been hard to think of herself of an equal to
these men with them constantly brushing her thoughts I have to try to like Carolyn Cassady. She isn’t as
or comments to the side, not ever really seeing her.
charming as the others but she matters. I think about
her struggles of time, place, poverty and womanhood,
Not everyone has the confidence of di Prima, who contextualize her as trapped in a cycle of abuse with
called the males on their shit continually, refused to the stunning deadbeat Dean Moriarty incarnate—the
internalize their misogyny. In Sam Kashner’s book, inspiring “N” of “Howl.” She is the loyal housewife
When I was Cool, a memoir of his experiences at the on steroids, raising the children and supporting the
Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets studying family on almost nothing while Neal Cassady rode
under aging Ginsberg, Corso, and Burroughs in the around America in stolen vehicles, sleeping with
mid seventies he writes about his experience meeting every crazy chick he met. She stayed; she gave him
Diane di Prima whom he mistakenly credits with what he needed to survive in his own restless way,
having been married to LeRoi Jones (probably having almost always with someone to come back to. Sure,
been misinformed by Ginsberg). Allen Ginsberg she kicked him out, split with him from time to time,
introduces di Prima “as a poet from Hunter High eventually for good. But she continued to care for
School in New York and a lover of LeRoi Jones.” She him, if from a distance. Her book, Off the Road: My
immediately calls him out in front of everyone, “You Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg, involves
do that to all the girls. You need to know who they’ve seemingly endless yelling, screaming and crying at
slept with to figure out why they’re important to you. his outrageous behavior. Then she goes into ecstasy
It’s annoying.” Kashner is impressed at her ability to at every attempt for change and improvement, but, no
stand up to Ginsberg and takes careful notes during matter what he has done this time, she is always there
her lecture.
for Neal Cassady to come back to penitent and needy.
Where would Joyce Johnson have received the Carolyn Cassady had her moments when she refused
support she needed to carry on independently? to be a doormat. When Jack Kerouac brings a black
Twenty-one and in love with poetry and a poet. How woman into her house and takes her up to his room,
could I judge her for it? I know what I was like at Carolyn Cassady will not stand for such behavior in
twenty-one; lacking the strength of identity to ground front of her children and demands that Jack and her
myself, I floated from one idea to the next, felt no real husband get her out. Her description of the woman is
truths applied to my existence. At twenty-one, I too jarring:
32
Beatdom
self-identification. She lived so long in his shadow,
everyone always praising admiring and loving him
while she made pizza and cleaned up after the manic
parties. I have moments when I feel really bad for her.
Her attempts at asserting herself always seem to fall
flat, just mirroring Neal’s choices, he sleeps around
so she begins to sleep with Jack Kerouac. Finally, by
maintaining a tenuous ménage à trois, she gets enough
of the attention and love she craves. Yet it all unravels
when Neal gets jealous, and once again she puts his
needs and desires first. More sacrifices to make Neal
Mrs. Cassady can’t believe it when neither Jack nor happy. So many lost chances, chances to do better and
Neal defends her against this woman she so despises, get away, she never makes the leap. Carolyn Cassady
and feels herself a sad victim, blubbering and blaming was the stone on which an icon was built.
their actions on the fact that she looked unattractive
that day in her robe with half her face swollen with
a case of Bell’s palsy. She tries to assure the woman Bonnie Bremser
that she “has nothing against her personally,” and is
shocked that her statement only makes the woman In Bonnie Bremser’s Troia: Mexican Memoirs the
angrier. This is the moment where she chooses to Beat lady lifestyle gets distilled to its scary core. Ray
take a stand. When the family takes a trip to visit Bremser becomes a fugitive of the law, escapes with
her family in Tennessee, she mentions being amused his wife and baby to Mexico. Here they descend into a
at Neal’s “failure to get the right slant (for a white cavity of addiction and hopelessness. Again, this is a
guy) on how to treat black people.” His friendliness to case of the lady Beat supporting her artist man. Bonnie
Southern blacks causes them to freeze up in suspicion Bremser (also known as Branda Frazer) becomes a
as they were accustomed to only ugly hostility from prostitute for her husband. He sits in the hotel room
white people. “I explained to him how I’d had to writing tortured poems and gets mad, hits her if she
learn the techniques and attitudes of Southern whites, doesn’t come back with cash. She has many lovers
although I’d hated it and it had been a major cause of and revels in their attention and affection, but she
my leaving the South.” Her attitude is, oh well “It’s hates it when they begin to play a role in her domestic
all emotional and ingrained.” She seems to think it is life. She does not want her choices and self-esteem to
cute that Neal doesn’t get it.
Many of the other be questioned. In her head it all makes sense. A trick
female Beat writers seemed to be trying so much turned lover begins to ask uncomfortable questions
harder to understand the people around them and fight and she tries her best to deflect,
against the reigning principles of the day. It’s easy for
me to judge her and feel angry about her ignorance
He told me that he couldn’t see how
and ugly behavior. However, Carolyn Cassady was
I had stayed with Ray so long when I
much more isolated than the other women I read,
received the treatment that I did, and he
few female friends to work and struggle with. No
didn’t understand when I told him that I
one to challenge her in this way. Perhaps she would
loved Ray, so I resorted to excuses about
have been different if she were able to hang in New
his being a poet and a beautiful soul, et
York with the aforementioned women.
The back
cetera, to defend my love which Pedrito
of her own book identifies her as “Neal’s wife,” not
made me ashamed of.
Carolyn Cassady, not Carolyn, not Cassady an artist
in her own right (actually more prolific than her Her book reads like a Greek epic; Bonnie Bremser and
husband ever was). Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, and Ray search and search for peace, for a break from the
Allen Ginsberg all get their full names printed in the watchful eye of the law, for a good time, a good high.
blurb, from reading the back you would think the Sometimes they find these things, but it never lasts.
book was all about them, not an autobiography by the Troia is painful to read. The book was drawn from
woman who spent years of her life picking up their a series of letters to Ray, written immediately after
pieces and putting them back together so they could the events detailed in the book had transpired while
go out and be famous. That is probably a somewhat he was, again, incarcerated. Bremser, the narrator, is
accurate description of Carolyn Cassady’s own not much healed, is still trapped in the arms and mind
She lunged at me flashing her black eyes,
narrowing them into slits, then opening
them wide with hate, the yellow eyeballs
around the black center like the eyes of
toy animals. Slowly she coiled words
around her tongue, and they slithered
out between her teeth, smashing against
my ears like a string of firecrackers gone
wild.
Beatdom
33
of her abuser. The control he has over her and the
sickness of their relationship is chilling. She writes:
Ray threatens to leave me, and I threaten
to leave him if the violence continues.
He maintains it is good for a chick to
get pounded on once in a while for it
increases the circulation and makes her
pretty. I am brought back to our meeting
in Washington, D.C.; we fucked a lot
the first time, all night and all day. Ray
also says that fucking is good for chicks:
the more they fuck the better they look
and are, and later when he went to jail
I figured I should uphold his views and
fucked everyone in sight, from the first
night to the last.
I just want to cry, I’ve heard this talk before, the girls
who become parrots for the men they love. He says,
he says, he says, and it isn’t just the words coming
out of their mouths it’s the things they do. I remember
a teenage client I once had squirming away; telling
me it was none of my business if I asked too many
questions about her relationship. If I said anything
remotely critical about her boyfriend/pimp she was
out the door and into his arms, telling him to whisper
again all his rules, the truths she knew she were all
she had to live by to be safe in his love. The only
things she had to know and do to keep being his and
not have to think anymore.
In the end the couple finds their way separately back
in New York after a lengthy separation resulting from
the fraying of nerves and her refusal to continue living
under his palm. They meet fatefully on the street and
come together again, ready to forget all and be swept
back into their sicksad love. Bonnie Bremser and her
man inject amphetamine and achieve the “perfect
fuck.” The book stops there. The book doesn’t say
that once reunited they are torn apart again, Ray
Bremser goes back to prison and Bonnie Bremser gets
the space she needs to write her memoir. She smokes
pot like it’s the seventies and spews forth a stream-ofconsciousness, Kerouac-style, which is often illogical
and random. The book is packed to the brim with
emotion and honesty. Reading it, I can pretend to feel
myself in her ratty costume walking the streets to the
disdain of many, not being street wise, getting ripped
off, getting scared, getting treated like a whore. And
I can pretend to feel her love of husband and baby in
its crushing weight, taking away all logic and pushing
her through sticky drunk nights, just one more lay and
then I can go home.
34
Beatdom
Elise Cowen
Elise Cowen jumped out the window. She’s a
ghost now, a ghost with burned papers. Few of her
poems survive, her parents having destroyed them
upon her untimely death. They burned them due to
the scandalous life they told of—drugs depression
homosexuality fornication. Just eighty-three
remaining poems, eighty-three poems and countless
memories told mostly by Joyce Johnson and Leo Skir.
I read accounts, I read poems, and she eludes me. Is
Elise Cowen a fairy story? Was she ever anything but
a ghost? I can’t find a single account of her where
she seems anything other than a doomed woman at
all times.
She loved Ginsberg, sad silly girl, she loved him
and he slept with her for a while during his dabbles
in heterosexuality due mainly to advice given to
him in analysis. Analysis. Elise Cowen understood
analysis; she spent plenty of time in Bellevue herself.
It didn’t seem to do much good; Elise Cowen’s life
story is a spiral of bad choices. Reading about it, I
say, don’t don’t don’t! Don’t sleep with your Barnard
professor, don’t keep house for him while he walks
all over you. Don’t live alone. Don’t drink so much.
Don’t take a female lover only because Allen has
met Peter Orlovsky. No no no no, don’t move in with
them it will only hurt worse. Don’t run away to San
Francisco all alone. Don’t jump out the window, the
closed window. Don’t die. Write more poems. Please,
more poems.
It’s painful to read about Cowen’s love for Ginsberg,
for he doesn’t care. It means nothing to him. She
barely exists as a person in his mind. She loses her
identity to him. Her friend Leo Skir writes of her,
From then on until the time she died, her
world was Allen. When he was interested
in Zen, so was she. When he became
interested in Chassidism, so did she. Did
he drink mocha coffee? So drank she.
When he went down to Peru there was
Peter [Orlovsky], left behind downstairs,
still there to be with. Peter loved a girl
from New Jersey. Elise loved the New
Jersey girl. When Allen came back, the
New Jersey girl moved in with Elise.
It makes me a little angry to think of this wonderful
poet’s personality disintegrating into a replica of
her imperfect hero. Elise Cowen does not write the
poetry of a follower. She has her own voice, though
certainly hints of Ginsberg peek through. These are
the poems of a lost and miserable woman; she had
much to say that was just her. She had a beautiful
mind but couldn’t see it. Couldn’t bear to be Elise,
just Elise. She brings to life the morbid realization of
what happens to someone who believes it when she
hears that to be a woman is not to be a whole human.
To be a woman is not good enough.
Every line of poetry by this woman rattles about it my
head for hours after reading it. “Emily white witch of
Amherst/ The shy white witch of Amherst/ Killed her
teachers/ With her love.” Elise Cowen feels like my
Emily Dickinson, a white witch but in black, a spirit
trailing along touching everything. Always vaguely
mourning something, she is the kind of woman who
makes unrequited love, oppression, and melancholy
look exquisite, romantic. She makes me want to slip
back into depression and self-destructive thoughts,
life is so bad and Cowen makes it so pretty when it’s
ugly. What does she mean? What does she say about
poet womanhood? Are all sad lady poets doomed as
she was?
Death I’m comingWait for meI know
you’ll be At the subway stationLoaded
with galoshes, raincoat, umbrella,
babushkaAnd your single simple
answerTo every meaning
I want to believe that it shouldn’t be fatal for a
woman to love art; I want to have faith in the world
and humanity. Poetry is something good and private;
there are many who don’t seem to want women to
have anything good or private. It is easy to think that
maybe women like Elise Cowen are the ones who love
poetry most and best. There is something romantic
about the idea that poetry can kill you if you love it
too much. Loving something that might be pure in
this fucked up place is hazardous to one’s health.
But there is more to the story, the truth is, poetry
didn’t kill her, sexism did. Elise Cowen could never
be Allen Ginsberg because she was a woman, and
that knowledge ultimately killed her. She could not
see that being Elise Cowen was just as good because
there was no evidence that it was. Elise Cowen makes
me hope for reincarnation. I hope she gets second
chance, and no one better burn her fucking poems
next time around.
What they all mean...
These Beat ladies they make me feel things. Some
sort of double X memory within me, memory of pain
and punishment, memory of how I got to this place,
this lucky place. And it is a lucky place I realize, for
while some might drop hints that I should be looking
to get married now and that they don’t think this or
that is the right decision, they will not shove me in
an institution and they will not have the final say. Nor
will any man kick me around.
Freedom is not something you have or don’t have, it
comes in steps, degrees, small doses. I believe the lady
Beats helped bump up my dosage; they helped create
a climate for the radical politics and revolutionary
beliefs of the sixties and seventies. They made art,
they wrote, even if it was hidden or burned, these
writings told their secret knowledge, their tired anger.
It told of all that was wrong. Elise Cowen writes, “I
borrowed the heads of corpses/ To do my reading by/
I found my name on every page/ And every word a
lie.” Now, with these women I can find my name on
a page and isn’t always a lie; for they know what it is
to be a lady who writes.
Sources:
Bremser, Bonnie. Troia: Mexican Memoirs. New
York: Croton Press, 1969.Cassady, Carolyn. Off
the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and
Ginsberg. New
York: Viking Penguin, 1990.di Prima, Diane.
Memoirs of a Beatnik. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Last
Gasp of San
Francisco, 1988.---. Recollections of My Life
as a Woman: The New York Years. New York: Viking
Penguin, 2001.Johnson, Joyce. Minor
Characters: A Young Woman’s Coming-of-Age in the
Beat Orbit
of Jack Kerouac. New York: Doubleday,
1983. Johnson, Ronna C., and Nancy M. Grace,
eds. Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing
the Beat Generation. Piscataway: Rutgers,
The State University, 2002.Jones, Hettie. How I
Became Hettie Jones. New York: Grove Press, 1990.
Kashner, Sam. When I Was Cool: My Life at the
Jack Kerouac School. New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, Inc., 2004.Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma
Bums. New York: Signet, 1959. Knight, Brenda,
ed. Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers,
Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution.
New York: MJF Books, 1996.Peabody, Richard, ed.
A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat
Generation.
New York: Serpent’s Tail, 1997.
Beatdom
35
36
Beatdom
remember the texture of her skin brailed with goosebumps––mostly I remembered her by the way she
breathed. When the camera pulled back to reveal her
face I wasn’t surprised anymore to see her. But this
was a younger version. My version was 23. This girl
might have been 20. Maybe less. The camera pulled
back further and showed the man she was with as she
painted her name across his chest. We’d sent dozens of
letters to each other but I’d never seen her handwriting
before. He mentioned a hot tub in a scripted indecent
proposal and she grabbed his hand and looked at him
and delivered some scripted tease response. She must
have gotten on the show when she first moved to that
new city to be discovered as an actress.
The year before I’d flown across the continent to
meet her. She laid out her offer, “If I like you, you’ll
sleep in my bed. If I don’t, there’s a Holiday Inn three
blocks down the street. That’s the best parachute I can
offer.” I wasn’t sure what good a parachute would do
when this was really a shipwreck.
Ten minutes before I left for the airport to meet her we
were on the phone. I was nervous and she was scared.
“Are you expecting me to kiss you right when I see
you?” I asked.
“Everything starts over when we meet.”
“I know.”
“Everything. Maybe I won’t even like you.”
“I know. And you won’t feel disappointed, you’ll
feel betrayed.”
“Maybe you won’t like me.”
“But it’s still a conversation––on the page, over
the phone, in a café, in your bed. It’s the same
conversation.”
“Nope. We lose the fantasy. We don’t have
conversations anyway. We argue. Even if it works it
can’t work. I can’t do long distance. I have a life here
and you have a life there.”
“So what happens when we meet?”
“We could try shaking hands.”
“What if I can’t let go?”
“Then don’t.”
She hung up.
I’d gotten there at three-thirty in the morning and was
across a street staring up at her building with my back
against a brick wall. I was trying to pick out her window
but they all had the same strange intensity about them.
I was looking for a window that I might be looking out
of from inside her apartment.
I saw her shuffling up the sidewalk across the street in
ballerina slippers. She stopped in front of her building
just as a cab pulled up and a man exited with a bouquet
of roses in his hand. He shouted “Hey!” in her direction
raising the flowers. She glared at him. I walked over to
the curb to have a better view. He shouted again and
this time she looked around and noticed a woman in
her building behind her who held the door open and the
man ran over. As the cab rolled away from the curb she
saw me and without even a pause crossed the street.
“So, are you bored yet?” she asked.
“You look different.”
“Different?”
“I’m surprised.”
“I look different and you’re surprised. This is very
flattering. You must be an author, huh?”
Actresses shouldn’t be better looking than their
headshots. She didn’t have any right looking better
than that photo. I couldn’t make eye contact with her.
Punching your weight is a good rule. But she was my
type: way out of my league. I looked down the street for
the Holiday Inn and found the sign.
I leaned in and kissed her.
“Are you bored?”
“What?”
“Are––you––bored?”
“I’m nervous. And I’ve been waiting here for two
hours.”
“Are you bored?”
“Of standing here?”
She lit a cigarette and gave me the Medusa glare.
“You’re asking me if I’m bored of standing here and
wanna go up to your apartment?”
“No.”
She turned toward the street and nudged her head. I
followed her into a building, past a doorman, down a
hallway, into an elevator, around a corner, through her
door, past a roommate who, despite gracing the cover
of Playboy’s Lingerie issue five months later, made no
impression on me, entered her room, and finally leaned
against her window looking out over the street to see
where I’d sat against the brick wall. She took down her
hair on the edge of the bed. She was a little over five
feet tall and 98 pounds and I’d never been more scared
of somebody in my life.
Girls in ivory towers with impenetrable castles
have intercoms. They have email addresses too. And
Myspace accounts. That’s how I’d connected with her.
First I’d seen her portrait and then I’d read her profile,
which included my bookshelf as a reading list and,
more importantly, answered the question of who she
was looking for with, “Someone to write to.”
I asked if she’d read any of the books she had listed.
She wrote back that I could go fuck myself. I asked
Beatdom
37
which Salinger story was her favorite and she told me
to go fuck myself again. The next day she added me as
a friend. I asked what gives.
“Wish you could see me laugh. I had a list of slobs
like you going after me and I had the delete page set
up with all of them—including you, Romeo—when my
computer froze. I slammed my fist into my keyboard
and it added them and, unfortunately, you. I guess we’re
gonna be friends.”
“Never doubt my resourcefulness or means.
Irretrievable online seduction assured.”
“Loser.”
A week later we fell asleep to each other on the phone
three nights in a row. With the time difference she’d
fall asleep before me. But I’d lie there listening to her
breathing for a couple hours. Occasionally she’d wake
up and see if I was still there.
Then we missed a night. She sent me a note, “You’re
really going to make me fall asleep alone?”
I called her.
“Why aren’t you here?” she asked me.
“That’s a dumb question.”
“Why dumb?”
“Because I’ll get a plane ticket tomorrow.”
“You’re in love with me.”
“You’re doomed.”
“Admit it.”
“I’ll crush you.”
“Admit it.”
38
Beatdom
“If I was drunk I might let you blow me.”
“That’s awful.”
“I know, but my hands are shaking.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know if you meant what you
said.”
“You’ll come anyway, so what does it matter?”
“I won’t come without being invited.”
“Yeah you will.”
“No Space Invader action. We roll fifty-fifty on this,
especially if a broke-ass writer is picking up the tab.”
“I brought you with me to the park today.”
“That’s an obscene way of putting it.”
“I know you love me.”
* * *
She entered a massive walk-in closet and deposited
her ballerina slippers. Books were all over the place in
her apartment. Good books. No shelves.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“Of Human Bondage.”
“Figures.”
“Let’s just sleep tonight.”
I smiled.
“Look. I’m exhausted. You’re here for five days.
There’s plenty of time for other activities.”
So we shifted into various shapes over the sheets
but none fit together. The breeze tickled the blinds and
made them tap against the window. I watched this for a
while with her hair against my face. Tap, tap, tap––like
New York Skyline
Photo by David Iliff
some junkie with a syringe back home.
Early the next morning I got up to pack my stuff and
leave but she grabbed my hand and I followed her into
the living room where she climbed into the frame of a
huge window overlooking the sunrise. She smoked in a
bathrobe. I came over and she kissed my arm.
“Do you want an espresso?”
“No.”
“Coffee?”
“No thanks.”
“What are you doing?”
“I think I should go.”
“Why is this?”
I went back to her room to get my stuff. She followed
me.
“I’m not used to sleeping with somebody in my bed.
I wasn’t trying to be cold.”
“I still felt like an intruder.”
“Well, I’m going to take a shower. Am I going to do
that alone?”
When she dropped the bathrobe my glance discreetly
followed it to the ground. My mind’s kinda G-rated with
certain things. I saw bare feet at first, ankles. Nakedness
wasn’t all that important to her. In the shower she
stopped me with a strong, silent hand.
“Would you like me to wash you?” she asked.
“What is that thing?”
“A loofah.”
“Would I like you to wash me?”
Drying off after.
Her head back,
very far back, and
the hair shaken
and hanging free
from her neck, then
hurled forward with
a massive fucking
hairdryer attacking
every
strand,
changing it, her eyes
closed. There was
nothing
womanly
about her. Nothing
undeveloped. Even
womanhood couldn’t
have her. She was a
self-portrait.
She got dressed.
Maybe
dropped
something in the
process. A bra. She reached over and took a breast with
one hand, protected it almost. Even her peach fuzz
looked like a thousand little fuses. While she ignored
me and stared at her face in the mirror, looking at it
felt like looking at a candy store window. I wasn’t sure
if it was seeing my reflection or what was inside the
window that I wanted to steal that made me want to
smash the glass.
“Do you have to stare?”
“Yeah.”
We were on the bed and I was inside her, barely.
“Admit it. You’re in love with me.”
“I came here to see you didn’t I?”
“Just say it.”
“Why?”
“Admit that you’re in love with me.”
“I’m in love with you.”
“Do you have any idea how much pressure that puts
on me?”
“Is this your idea of intimacy?”
“What’s yours? Breaking into my life like some catburglar, liking what you find, and wanting to move
in?”
“Pretty much.”
I spent the first three nights in her bed and the last
two at the Holiday Inn. They had a lousy movie she’d
co-starred in on pay-per-view. I rented it two nights in a
row before I flew home and gave Mr. Haney a call.
Beatdom
39
40
Beatdom
When the Beat Generation was in its heyday, the
writers and artists that created its seminal works
were in love with literature. They looked to the past
for inspiration – to Blake, to Whitman, to Wolfe.
They paid tribute to their influences, but more
than anything they took those influence and made
something new. Their creations were in response to
the world around them – the world that was at that
time the present.
That was indeed a crazy world, wrought from
the turmoil of World War II and faced with
unprecedented prosperity and the ever looming threat
of global annihilation. These are very much things
we deal with today, and consequently Beatdom has
always sought to foster a new generation of writers
and artists. We strive towards the future with our
influences proudly showing, and with the present our
motivation. But we are not the only ones. There are
writers the world over who are changing the face of
literature. There are publications that are dedicated
to making sure readers find someone new to read;
that writers have somewhere to print their writing.
In the Modern Beat section of Beatdom we like to
show you examples of the Beat spirit transcending
the decades that have elapsed since last we could
say there honestly was a Beat Generation. Today,
instead, we will show you how the internet has
helped resurrect certain elements of the Beat
Generation for our times.
The internet is making this easier for us all. It is also
helping the environment by making it unnecessary to
waste trees in order for us to read and write. Websites
like YouTube let us speak to audiences of millions.
Poets no longer need the slam or the coffee shop to
speak to their listeners. They can stand before the
world in the aftermath of a click.
That’s the beauty of them – the freedom they offer.
That also makes it a time consuming process for
anyone wanting to “stumble” upon something of
any great worth. Consequently, good blogs often
develop dedicated followings and the bad ones fade
into nothingness.
Social networking helps aspiring writers to meet
others and make useful contacts. It also lets them
share their work with others. Many young writers
with limited promotion budgets are told by their
publishers to get MySpace and Facebook pages, and
more recently, to use Twitter.
Making contacts has always been a key to moving
up in the literary world. Bukowski – among others
– may have believed that the process of writing
was simply a man sitting in front of his typewriter,
but it’s hard to imagine that man’s work going any
further without friends.
When Beatdom first came into existence it was
largely thanks to MySpace. Many of its contributors
found the magazine through Beatdom’s MySpace
page, and most of its readers came that way,
too. Nowadays MySpace is mostly the domain
of musicians, rather than writers, and Beatdom
conducts its business largely through Facebook and
Twitter.
These things may have seemed impossible a
decade ago, and they may seem ludicrous to anyone
unfamiliar with the virtues of social networks or
the literary world, but MySpace and Facebook
allow art and ideas to be distributed easily. They
allow like-minded thinker to meet and share.
They allow the exchange of ideas and information
quickly and efficiently. Who can say that the Beat
Generation, given the chance, wouldn’t have taken
advantage of, for example, Facebook’s free and
Blogs are perhaps the best example of the world easy networking resources? I imagine that Ginsberg
opening up for talented writers, young and old. It’s would have thoroughly used and abused Facebook
not easy to gain respect or fame through blogging, to promote the work of his friends across the globe.
but the same is true for printed books. Cutting it
as a writer is always a tough job. The difference is There are also websites that use the blogging
that anyone can have a blog and anyone can read it, medium, but that use editors to vet writers and thus
anywhere in the world. It’s not so easy with books. bring their website some quality control, whilst
Publishers, agents and editors peruse the internet, opening the door to more writers than the publishing
just like everyone else. It stands to reason that they industry can afford. By only allowing the best writers
might see something they like and help that writer to contribute, these websites develop fiercely loyal
move into the professional realm. Indeed, Beatdom readerships and offer fantastic platforms for writers
has been hand picking its writers from blogs since to reach their audience.
its inception, in 2007.
They also help foster creative communities,
But, as I said, blogs can be written by anyone. wherein writers can communicate with one another
and receive feedback. Writers are often seen as
Beatdom
41
loners, but the help of others is essential in producing work of his friends.
a great piece of writing. The Beats liked to help one
It is the pleasure of Beatdom magazine to bring
another, and Allen Ginsberg was particularly fond you two examples of such websites: The Nervous
of community efforts, helping edit and promote the Breakdown and Road Junky.
The Nervous Breakdown
Founded in 2006, by author Brad Listi, The Nervous
Breakdown has grown from a small community blog
into something that reads more like a magazine. It
is written by around 200 contributors and edited by
19 editors.
Listi founded the website after writing his
bestselling novel, Attention. Deficit. Disorder.
Since then, TNB has grown, gaining remarkable
popularity. Friendships were forged, strange little
inside jokes and references have become abundant,
and two of the members actually got married, having
met through TNB.
Such is the talent pool at TNB that many of the
regular readers and writers have published successful
novels with big publishing companies, and many
are well along the road to that same end, with agents
seeking writers based upon the popularity of their
TNB posts.
TNB is now in its third incarnation, having evolved
technically and stylistically. It features edited poetry
and fiction, in addition to the material added by the
growing list of contributing writers.
The readership is particularly impressive. Having
gathered fame through the quality of its material,
TNB now has some 70,000 visitors per month, and
extremely active users who comment jovially on
each post.
Recently TNB has taken to producing live readings
at locations across the United States, drawing
readers and writers from around the world to come,
meet, mingle and share their work. These meetings
have resulted in fantastically entertaining YouTube
videos and podcasts.
42
Beatdom
The Nervous Breakdown is a fantastic example
of a writing community fifty or so years after the
Beat Generation and their late night pot, booze and
Benzedrine debates and writing sessions. Writers
have always found success in keeping to talented
groups, and TNB is our age’s answer to the Beats
and to the Lost Generation
I asked Listi what he thought about the Beats and
their relation to TNB, and had this to say:
“I count myself a fan of the Beats and feel like
TNB takes some of its cues from their spirit and
sense of community. I’m also cognizant of their
industriousness, particularly when it comes to Allen
Ginsberg, who in my view really “made” the Beat
Generation, with the help of John Clellon Holmes at
the New York Times.
“Increasingly, it seems, a writer is wholly
responsible for nearly every facet of his or her
operation. Writing is only part of it. “It’s not widely known or commonly talked
about, but Ginsberg’s background in marketing and
advertising was a significant factor in his success
as the spokesperson and “brand-maker” of the
Beats. Not really all that romantic to ponder, but
significant nevertheless. It’s nice to think of Allen
as a high priest of poetry, elevated above the scrum,
but the truth is that he was an enormously effective
businessperson, without whom “Beatdom” would
likely not exist. “Kerouac was useless when it came to this sort of
thing. So were most of the rest of them. Ginsberg
was fighting to be heard. And fighting well, it seems.
And moreover, he was fighting to have many people
heard. “I see his efforts reflected all the time in the modern
literary world, particularly online, and The Nervous
Breakdown is no exception.
“What Ginsberg and the Beats did continues to be a
model for how writers can empower themselves and
create their own communities, their own movements,
their own readerships, their own legacy.”
You can visit TNB at www.thenervousbreakdown.
com or support them on Twitter, MySpace and
Facebook.
Road Junky
Road Junky is a very different beast. It is less
obviously a community effort, and receives far more
editorial attention than The Nervous Breakdown,
but it is nonetheless reminiscent of the Beat
collaborative ethos.
Road Junky was founded in 2004 by Tom Thumb
and James Klee. The idea of Road Junky is simply
to offer an alternative to the Lonely Planet guides.
Rather than going into details about prices and
temperatures and whatnot, the articles and essays
on this travel website focus on experiences and wild
kicks.
One could say that it more like On the Road than
a conventional travel guide. Which is a great part of
its charm. There is certainly a school of thought that
says one learns more about a place through feelings
and emotions than through facts and figures.
The writers – whom Thumb refers to as Road
Junkies – are simply writers and travelers. They are
unpaid, but write frequently about places all around
the world. Many of the stories include drugs or lawbreaking shenanigans. There is a certain emphasis
on the stories being enjoyable, rather than strictly
informative.
There are forums and comment boards for
feedback, and although they do not receive the
same deluge of activity as those at TNB, they do
encourage a group spirit and a highly personalized
element is brought to the website.
As Thumb says, “we wanted to give a voice to a
generation of travelers whose perspective is too raw
and unpolished for the conventional travel writing
biz, we were interested in representing the travelers
who were more into losing themselves than finding
what their guide books told them to find. Road Junky
has helped a lot of these starving, naked souls find
a place where they see they’re not alone, a sense of
community.”
Road Junky can be read at www.roadjunky.com,
with updates posted on Twitter and Facebook.
--It is not hard to see that The Nervous Breakdown
and Road Junky are doing a world of good for the
contemporary state of writing. They are invoking a
Beat spirit that is admirable and necessary, whilst
pushing talented writers into the limelight they need
to continue doing what they do.
Beatdom
43
*Editor’s note:
When I first read the poetry of Nathn Dolby, Beatdom’s poet laureate, prior to the publication of Issue One, I
was immensely moved. Never had I been so impressed with the work of an unpublished poet. For me it was
a seminal moment in the creation of Beatdom; a major cause in getting Beatdom into the hands of as many
readers as possible.
Now, with the publication of Issue Five I have had the immeasurable pleasure of reading the work of Josh
Chase, another unpublished poet. Amid the floods of poetry I receive each day as editor of Beatdom his poems
stood out so far in my memory that I immediately found myself talking to people around the world about these
wonderful odes to everyday life.
And so, as Beatdom moves into the realm of establishing a new literary world, inspired by the Beats and the
subsequent countercultures, I am delighted to bring you another of the world’s finest poetic voices.
But that’s not to ignore the other examples of fantastic talent that grace the following pages. So please,
Ladies and Gentlemen, sit tight and enjoy the finest collection of poetry Beatdom has ever assembled.
Josh Chase
At the clinic
I wait anxiously, stuffed into
a cramped eight-seat waiting room
that everybody calls “the queue”
sitting between a stone-faced
gangster and a mother who won’t
stop barking at her three children.
I wait quietly, my eyes fixed on
the anti-dope propaganda hanging
from the wall across from me
trying to avoid contact with cranky
fiends and money-hungry cripples
looking to unload narcotics scripts.
I wait uncomfortably, my moist hands
resting in my lap, clasped together
to keep them from tapping nervously.
The curious smell drifting from a grubby
man in the opposite corner of the room
likely doesn’t help my turning stomach.
44
Beatdom
I wait desperately, my dopesick
cells burning for a nice big shot
but ultimately willing to settle
for the purple potion, a small plastic
cup of bitter juice, the only thing
on earth that keeps me alive.
Alone in TV Land
It’s official:
I am a genuine zombie.
48-hour “Cheers” marathon
I watched the whole thing.
Back-to-back episodes of “Rosanne.”
I despise that show, but
my eyes are stuck to the set
and my legs won’t move.
I’m alone in TV land,
a dark lonely room with
blue lights flashing against the walls.
I haven’t blinked since the last commercial.
I’m wasted on punchlines
Poetry
A collection of Beat-themed, counterculture-inspired poetry
from around the world
and strung out on reruns
but at least I’m in a place
where everybody knows my name.
An elegy for Mike Zigler
A minor mistake
becomes a fatal flaw
and reminds us all of mortality.
You
ripped from our grasp
by a stalking death
as strong and stubborn as stone
but delicate no more violent
than a summer butterfly.
They say you made it back to your
house, but tell me Mike: In the end
did you find your way home?
You
who might have laughed
as you’d done so
many times before,
had your fall
not been so final.
I only wish I’d known
that silly things
could become so sad.
In the bar
In the bar
where dreams come true
I sit
alone, and watch
overrated indie films
on closed caption.
The piano man
and I toast
anything.
Anything at all.
In the bar
I sit
alone.
Beatdom
45
J. S. Mitchell
Michael Shorb
I Am Immanuel Kant
Going Greyhound
I am Immanuel Kant
I am Blake’s acid stained Hands
I am Steinbeck’s best laid plans.
I am a machine
Tangled up in wires
And lights that flicker and
Burn out.
I am a human being.
I am a progressive era.
A progressive people.
The progressive nation.
The good life.
You ain’t seen America without a Greyhound ticket. ‘It’s Not Just
The Bus, It’s Us.’ I am the sky’s perspiration,
A thousand over-filled clouds on the
Horizon.
I am the dreams you forgot
And I am the aspirations
You refuse to think about.
I am Spinoza’s grinded glass
I am a criminally
Over-Romanticized past.
I am silence,
The echoing quiet that raves and seethes
Left under your surface..
I am the force that keeps the stars
Aloft.
The pull that keeps the giants in
Orbit.
I am Immanuel Kant.
It was us one autumn
morning rolling from the griddle of Sparks,
Nevada, with its fast food shop and single
slot machine, stretching our legs as the lunar
plains of the Salt Lake sped past, stopping in
Salt Lake City to view the blissed-out drunk
asleep on the vast lawn outside
the Mormon Tabernacle while inside
the choir boomed out Christianity’s Greatest Hits
to a rapt sales convention with perfect
lungs and sets of white teeth.
It was us at the Cheyenne,
Wyoming gift shop
browsing colored postcards of the last
triple hanging, pulling away in midnight drizzle with a xenophobic cowboy
lobbing out the ‘fuck you’ finger of farewell.
It was us navigating ribbons of Monet haystacks in sullen Nebraska morning, backs aching, eyes crazed by flatness.
It was us standing in the transfer line at
Chicago Terminal, uneasily noting the angry
man next in line:
shaved head, New York Yankees
cap pants and Luftwaffe flight jacket
who warned us he bore the
under thirty revolution
was reporting inverted American
flags on Canadian-made buses
46
Beatdom
directly to the Reagan White House.
And rolling into Cleveland serenaded
by an F-word chorus booming up the aisles
courtesy of the under thirty revolution,
heads sleepless and ablaze,
walking into the Post House for food
American greasy rose special
watching the cook running grimy hands up to the elbow stirring macaroni and cheese, examining the crust beneath his nails for signs of overcooking
while we drank our curdled chocolate milk.
We left Cleveland in a strong industrial
rain, recalling the old Milton poem,
“Cleveland Is Too Much With Us.”
It was us crossing the surprisingly bucolic lakes and woods of upstate New York, I-90 to Montreal, where we wandered feeling pleasantly alien in huge subterranean shopping malls.
“They’re ready for nuclear winter
here, They’d take it in stride,” I said to my wife, as we
loaded up on Scottish shortbread and miniature
bottles of brandy for the long haul,
mashing over leaves and early snow
heading west on the Canadian Plain.
A bottle of cognac and the drowsy westward
drumming of buswheels past towns laid flat
postage stamps along the highway.
The ineffable grace of names.
Towns on the Great Lakes bearing
traces of fur-trading,
antelope-dancing heritage:
Manikawa, Sioux Lookout, Blind River, Sault Saint Marie. Winnepeg was an enormous place to rest.
Armed guard dispensing dirty looks in front of the bus station toilets, Steaks big as a pair of hands,
alcoholic Indians
sprawled on benches, drinking rooms
filled with boisterous white men,
fur stores on every corner.
And the cold green galaxy of The Northwest Territory
strewn with its acid-tortured lakes stretching northward.
From Moose Jaw to Medicine Hat and Banff
a short ride through Kicking Horse Pass
to the other side of time.
We drew a cloudy day,
as though full view of such suddenly spired
peaks might blind us, might make, with their crags walked by mountain goats
and fists of hard
snow, one despise the cities
with their rugs of cracked cement and curtains
of ticker tape
their lax cargo of end-of-the-liners
staring from windows.
I stood on the molded edge of the Athabasca
Glacier like an ant on a roadway’s
edge, feeling in awe how ice
might be an unnamed God
who once covered all and will
again as time ignites it. We went by night down the treemagnified road from Kamloops to Vancouver,
ale and fish Queen of cities with vistas
raining from every street.
A city for walking, admiring swans. But go to higher ground if you’d love
Vancouver. Nothing is spread out
so perfectly balanced between
city and tree, water and sky.
It was us, feelings mixed, getting aboard
a final morning, across the Washington state line, rolling down a road
flecked with Burger Queens and redwood trees.
We smiled, leaning back,
mountains and lakes safely tucked away, heading home.
Beatdom
47
George Wielgus
Word Porn
I want to word you
I want to put my words inside of you
Don’t be afraid
I’ll start off slow, gentle
With little short words
So you relax, get comfortable
So you start you like it
Then they’ll get bigger
Harder, faster
Caressing you with lexis
Titillating with syntax
Obfusticating with metaphor
Egregious with symbolism
Steady, don’t get too excited
Words start off flaccid
But get inflated with passion
Erect with meaning
Soon they’re driving a fire inside of you
Massive throbbing words
Huge great purple-headed words
Flushed with allegorical juices
Dripping, hot, miasmic words
Spraying, coursing, biting, kissing words
Words of wanton abandon
I want to see the look on your face
As you feel my words working their literary magic
As the unrelenting flow
The pressure
The insistence of my words
Transforms your experience
From the mundane to the supreme
I want you to gasp as I thrust
A deep word
A grammar of ecstasy
A vocabulary of entries and exits
48
Beatdom
Right up inside your mental crevasses
Infiltrating areas you never knew you had
Wording, wording, wording
Suck on my words
Put my words in your mouth
And spit them back out at me
I want to ride your pentameter!
Incite me to further daring acts of wordage
Word me like you’ve never been worded before
You’ve got the best words in the world
The biggest words
The hardest words
The best words I’ve ever had
Me & Charlie B.
Meeting Charles Bukowski
Made me realize something
About myself.
“You can’t fight writing”
He said
“Either it’s a sun burning your insides
Or it’s nothing
Either it’s a rocket shooting out of your soul
Or it’s your own limp dick in your hand”
I asked him
If he felt
The booze
The gambling
The women
Were fuel for the rocket
Or
Trying to dampen the heat of the sun
He just laughed, and fidgeted in the Jacuzzi
Trying not to get his cigar wet
I’d never been in a Jacuzzi with a
75 year old
Dead poet
Before now anyhow
I felt skinny and slight next to this great white whale
of a man
A man who
Should never have lived as long as he had
A man who
Should never have succeeded like he had
A bum done good
A no-good turned bona fide literary star
But I could feel the sun
The power
The passion of him
I could see why he’d spent so many nights
Drunk
Alone
Writing
Because of this beast within him
And I realized
Since I was ten
And sat on the poolside
In Florida
Banging damp paper
With my first typewriter
Since I was thirteen
And wrote pornography
By hand
To bring the images to life
Extracted from my mind
Since I was sixteen
And wrote out my demons
Exorcising them in my journals
Saving myself from carving them
On to my skin
Since I was nineteen
And had two notebooks
One for when I was sober
One for when I was high
And the second one was full
Before I’d filled a page
Of the other
Since I was twenty-two
And had written
My first screenplay
And decided
It’s got to be a novel first
But one no-one ever reads
Until they’ve seen the film
I only realized then
In the Jacuzzi with old Charlie B.
Hell
Maybe I’m a writer
After all.
Word me, baby!
Word me faster, word me slower
Word me like you love me
Word me up to the highest highs
That’s it! That’s it!
I’m wording, oh my God, I’m wording!
Word with me! Word with me!
The climax of punctuation:
An exclamation mark!
Followed by
A tentative question mark.
Did you conjugate the verb?
Full stop.
Beatdom
49
Do the
Beats
Still
Matter?
When Jack Kerouac died in 1969, only one of his
20+ books was in print. At the time, many critics
announced the Beat Generation was irrelevant and
had faded away. Others claimed the Beats were an
insignificant force, addicted to sex and drugs, and
therefore of little permanent influence, and only
interested in the frivolity of having “kicks.” They
contended the Beats’ writing would not hold up over
time. However, objective evidence clearly establishes
those critics were dead wrong. The essential tenets of Beat philosophy still resonate
strongly today. The Beats’ rants against excessive
consumerism, government control and torture,
censorship, the increasing power of the Pentagon,
and the proliferation of American soldiers in foreign
countries are cogent now. The Beats respected and
valued the land and were advocates for a healthy
world environment, all of which continue to be
significant concerns. They promoted tolerance of
ideological differences, which they saw as being
subverted to a political sameness — the position if
you aren’t in agreement with us, you’re against us.
Sound familiar?
50
Beatdom
by Harry Burrus
Recognizing the current impact of the Beats, William
S. Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris notes,
They asked the relevant question themselves.
It was one of the things that united the
writers and adventurers we call Beat —
and their answers looked both backwards
(glancing conservatively, towards a ‘lost’
American past) and forwards, nostalgically
(to face looming death, the rags of old age
and the ruins of civilization) and heroically
(to face the unknown, that which lies
beyond the little bit of ourselves we know).
So, perhaps they matter because, at their
best, they inspire us to look back for what's
been lost and forward to what we need to
lose.
In Naked Lunch (1959), Burroughs revealed he did
not share the rose-tinted view of most Americans
in the post-WWII era. With microscopic detail, he
peeled away the picturesque façade of modern society,
exposing it for what it really was. He predicted the late
20th century AIDS crisis and the advent of the Internet
with its viruses, worms, and spam. He forecasted
the war on drugs and terrorists. Underscoring the
continuing literary and social significance of William
S. Burroughs, Harris has edited and authored a
number of Burroughs books: The Letters of WSB,
1945-1959; Yage Letters Redux; Junky: the definitive
text of Junk; William Burroughs and the Secret of
Fascination; and Everything Lost, the Latin American
Notebook of WSB.
Similarly, in Why Kerouac Matters, John Leland extols
the importance of Kerouac today. He focuses on the
Jack Kerouac-based character Sal Paradise in On the
Road instead of the one who usually attracts the most
attention, Dean Moriarty (based on Neal Cassady),
who enthusiastically pursues sex, speed, and jazz in
the novel. Leland analyzes Paradise’s impressions
from his journeys with Moriarty. He explains that
what Paradise learns about love, having a work ethic,
valuing art and education, and being spiritual are life
lessons that still echo today.
Another aspect of Kerouac’s work with current
ramifications is his criticism of haiku. He was a
major influence in bringing haiku to the West.
His interpretation of haiku was experimental and
innovative. His creation of “Western haiku” materially
impacts current poets’ approach to creating haiku
today.
City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco sells ten copies
of On the Road daily. The Kerouac estate claims
that over 100,000 copies of OTR are sold each year.
The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
in Boulder, Colorado continues to attract students,
encouraging them to link the past to the present and
to apply a fresh approach to their writing. Stanford
University bought Ginsberg’s archive and the New
York Public Library recently purchased William S.
Burroughs’ literary archive.
Time not only has substantiated the merit of the writing
of the Beats, but has validated it as well. The Beat
worldview embraced life and celebrated the human
condition. On the Road’s raw energy encourages
curiosity, the refusal to accept the status quo, and
the need to investigate what lies over the horizon. It
inspires self-pride and the drive to succeed, regardless
of social status. The Beats’ criticism of America in
the 1940s and 1950s is instructional because it applies
to many of the conditions confronting the United
States today. Current writers, artists, musicians, and
filmmakers cite the Beats as their beacons. New bios
as well as scholarly books examining their writing,
lives, and values continue to come out with great
frequency. Beat magazines, paper and online, are
widely read and popular. Their book sales are the
highest ever. Universities have Beat literature as
part of their curriculum. The significance of the Beat
writers on current American literature continues to
evolve because new work has only recently been
discovered. The unpublished work is revealed in
books and magazines and reviewed by international
newspapers and scholars. The Beats are alive and well
in these first few years of the 21stcentury and continue
to pervade our lives today.
Notification for the writers and readers
of Beatdom:
Submissions for Issue Six
Issue six of Beatdom will mark the third anniversary of the birth of Beatdom… The magazine
was born in poverty in the heart of Scotland, by two young dreamers with heads full of ideas, and
pockets full of dust.
Since then the founders, editor and writers of Beatdom have been across the globe and back
several times. In the name of work, pleasure and study we have travelled, and we do so always
with a good book in our bag and a head full of literature.
And so for Issue Six we are accepting submissions based upon theme: Literature and Travel. Of
course, preference will be given to works directly relating to the Beat Generation, but anything
pertaining to both literature and travel will be considered, whether essay, memoir, fiction or poetry.
See the website for details: www.beatdom.com
Beatdom
51
I was shopping for Hawaiian shirts in the clearance
section when a clerk appeared with a red phone on a
platter. A bird’s nest of Bobby pins held her hair in
place. I looked back and forth between the hair and
the phone.
The phone began to ring.
“It is for you, said the clerk in an eastern European
accent.
The ring was loud, but garbled, as if somebody
were trying to suffocate the phone with a pillow.
Shoppers glanced in our direction. I couldn’t be sure
that the clerk was talking to me, even though she had
addressed me squarely, even though she was looking
right at me, holding the phone out to me, and I was
looking at her, and looking at the phone, but still, I
couldn’t be sure . . .
She smiled. Long crow’s feet sprung to attention,
redefining the arch of her cheeks. “It is for you, she
repeated.
Dubious, I hung up the shirt I had been inspecting
and picked up the phone.
“Hello? said a voice. “Hello? Is this you?
“Who is this? I said.
“There’s no time for that, the voice replied. “I’m
just glad it’s you.
“Who are you?
“In five seconds you’re going to hang up the phone.
Then something bad will happen. Five seconds
passed. “Ok. Hang up the phone now.
I listened . . .
The line went dead. I hung up the phone. The clerk
thanked me and walked away, trying too hard to swing
her hips.
She came back as I was slipping into a shirt patterned
with bruised, wilted flowers. This time she wheeled
out an old television set on a metal cart. She had let
her hair down; it spilled over her shoulders in kinked
tendrils. “This will happen now, she said, turning a
knob on the TV. I glanced over my shoulders to see if
anybody was watching me. They weren’t.
Nothing but silent peppersalt on the TV. I buttoned
the shirt and waved my arms in circles to test its
flexibility. Too tight. I unbuttoned it.
52
Beatdom
The clerk eyeballed me. She had lost all of her
color. I thought she might pass out.
The peppersalt dissolved and the sound came on.
There was a commercial.
In it, a thin man in a white hospital uniform
demonstrated how to yank a tooth out of a stranger’s
mouth using household tongs. He spoke gibberish
but somehow I knew what he meant. He stood on a
busy street corner. Strangers passed by. At calculated
intervals, he tackled a stranger and put him or her in
a sleeper hold. After they passed out, he pried open
their mouths and, as promised, yanked out a tooth,
usually an incisor, but sometimes the front teeth, and
once, amazingly, a molar. Blood surged and spurted
from the resultant wounds and the strangers woke up
screaming and ran away holding their mouths. The
man stood, smoked a cigarette, gibbered at the camera,
and then it happened all over again. I couldn’t be sure
if the commercial was trying to sell tongs or to sell the
dynamism with which the man maneuvered the tongs.
Perhaps both.
The clerk turned the TV off after the sixth attack.
“Mind you, he is an amateur dentist. But one can’t
deny the virtue of his product.
I listened . . .
“Violence happens every day, she croaked in a
forcibly possessed tone. “Nobody knows why.
People live and die and are forgotten. Nobody cares.
And yet people want answers. Hence the drama of
human existence.
Ignoring her, I said, “Do you have this shirt in a
larger size. The shoulders are constricting. The
larges in this brand are like mediums, I think. Can
you check on that for me?
“Let me check on that for you, she said, in a normal
tone now. She took the shirt and draped it over the
TV and wheeled it into the changing room.
I spent twenty minutes looking at shoes. I needed
a new pair of sandals. They had been arranged on a
narrow set of shelves that rose to the ceiling of the
store. I had to use a ladder to look at them all. Several
pairs caught my attention, but whenever I reached out
for them, somebody shook the ladder from below, and
I nearly fell. It was a different person every time.
None looked familiar. I climbed down the ladder
again and again to confront them, but I was far too
slow, and by the time I reached the bottom, they had
run away.
I wandered up and down the aisles looking for the
clerk. I couldn’t find her. I asked another clerk where
she went. He asked me to describe her. I said she
was a woman and that’s all I remembered. The clerk
nodded and excused himself.
Tentatively, I crept into the changing room.
It was bright. I had to shield my eyes. I reached for
my sunglasses but they were gone. They must have
fallen off of my collar when I was scampering up and
down the shoe ladder.
I kept moving forward, hunched over, squinting,
struggling to bring things into focus. I acclimatized
slowly. I heard voices. Panicked voices. Breathing.
A few cheers.
The lights went out. The changing room fell silent.
I listened . . .
I moved forward . . . down a dark hallway, feeling
the walls. They were cold, like ice, but not quite like
ice . . .
I passed through a door into a vast amphitheater.
I could see well enough. There were at least 100
people sitting in the audience, including the glitterati
in the balconies.
A circle of light fell onto the empty stage.
Nothing happened for awhile. Then an SUV
rumbled onto the stage, spun out of control, and
crashed into a support column. A man flew through
a hole in the windshield and tumbled, with a certain
lumbering grace, onto one knee, arms outstretched,
blood coursing from his gored forehead. He wore a
disheveled brown suit and struck an a cappella high
note. He paused, and struck another note. And another
one, and another one. No microphone—his voice
was powerful and carried across the amphitheater like
timelapsed thunder. At first I thought the notes were
letters, and I thought the letters might be spelling out
my surname, but like so many things, I couldn’t be
sure, and eventually I concluded that the notes didn’t
mean or say anything; they merely went up and
down and up and down with no apparent purpose or
direction or dénouement . . . In time the man passed
out. Abruptly he fell forward and his chest and face
hit the floor of the stage with a crack of bones and
wood. Nobody clapped. The circle of light expanded
until the entire stage was in view and a movie screen
descended from the ceiling, slowly and machinically.
Sound of an old 35 mm projector sputtering to life
...
There was an advertisement for coffee . . .
Then the main attraction: a pornographic film called
Makeshift . . .
The clerk stood awkwardly in an empty park, naked
except for glossy black boots and gloves. She had
on a blonde wig. Her wrinkled breasts heaved above
a stomach defined by rolling stretch marks. Birds
chirped in the treetops. She looked into the camera
with glazed eyes and her mouth half open . . . A man
with an erection entered the scene. It was the amateur
dentist . . . The hair on his chest and stomach was
long and feathery and looked fake. He carried a pair
of bloody household tongs. I listened . . . The clerk
turned sideways, placed hands on knees and spread
her legs. Concerned whispers from the audience.
The amateur dentist positioned himself behind the
clerk. He pinched the flesh of her thigh with the tongs.
She bit her lip. He spanked her . . . and entered her.
Clapping. I listened . . . They didn’t make any noises.
Minimal facial contortions. He repeated the same
mantra, sometimes in German, mostly in English, at
calculated intervals:
“Hence the drama. Hence the drama. Foglich das
Drama. Hence the drama . . .
A stiff breeze. The leaves of Autumn fell all around
them. Beneath the movie screen, the singer bled to
death, his rich substance expanding across the stage.
I listened, feeling myself go numb . . . I listened,
feeling myself disappearing, like a puff of dust, like
the flashbulb of life, quick, sharp, gone . . . Rupture of
eardrums. The amateur dentist reached climax. The
clerk grinned and thanked him. He pushed her off of
him. He threw himself on her, forced open her mouth
and yanked out her teeth, one at a time. She screamed
until her larynx burst—soft plume of gristle—and
then she died. The amateur dentist stood and stared
at the camera, as if daring the audience to challenge
him, or at least to deny his authority and force of will.
Finally he turned and walked off-screen.
Fade out.
Credits.
The lights came on. The screen disappeared into
the ceiling.
Dazed, the audience stood, gathered their belongings
and left the amphitheater. They ambled up the aisles
and passed through the changing room into the
department store, exchanging polite comments and
talking about clothes they might buy. Behind them, a
teenager in a red striped shirt swept the aisles with a
straw broom.
Beatdom
53
...part two...
Edaurdo Jones is not only Art Director here at Beatdom… he is the Voice of the Doomed. His stories shock
and enthrall. They draw readers into a painful, depraved world they prefer to imagine doesn’t exist. That’s
fine. You just think that… If it makes life easier, if it makes you feel safer, then you go ahead and think that.
It’s probably best you do.
Part Two of his warped vision, the prophetically titled “Deep Fried Duct Tape and Sushi Knives” follows on
from Issue Four’s most beloved entry… A story set in the world’s least favourite city, Detroit, as our drugdealing sociopath goes on a rampage of revenge.
It is the continuation of this century’s greatest and most repulsive tale of drug-abuse, severe paranoia, carnal
lust, and hideous violence.
In the morning, Shelly decided he wanted to go
exploring. Jen was tired so I opted to go with him. He
had a video camera so we filmed much of the adventure.
We drove around the city taking in the ghetto ambience
of Detroit. Then we decided it'd be a good idea to go to
one of the many Casinos downtown.
With my best Raoul Duke impression, I made my way
across the main floor of the casino... Whirling lights,
sirens, and the sound of falling coins filled the air as
I walked past the one armed bandits. I watched as a
group of blue-haired octogenarians feverishly pumped
coins into the machines, giggling like schoolgirls every
time they won. To my right I watched the hardcore
gaming junkies - guys who lived breathed and ate
gambling. Who else would be sitting counting chips
at nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning? Only bottom of
the barrel junkies.
Everything that has addictive properties has its own
form of addict. We're all the same, though, whether
your drug of choice is class- A- Columbian cocaine
or collecting Hummel figurines. We'll do anything
to obtain the high we get from said drug of choice,
and everything’s a drug to someone. So basically, the
human race is a species of junkies any way you slice
54
Beatdom
it. At a casino, early in the morning, you see them all.
It's the house that broken dreams built.
Now, I'm not going to wrap you up in all the details
of my trip to the casino on this day. I've got far
better casino stories to share at some point. Let’s
just say this trip wasn't a winning trip to the casino.
It basically consisted of Shelly and I drinking at the
bar and pumping twenty-dollar bills into video poker
machines at an alarming rate. Once the house broke
us, and it didn't take long, we made our way back to
Jen's house.
Freak was there with his mule, Holly. He was getting
ready to fly to San Francisco, and figured it'd be a good
idea if I went down to Columbus to tie up some loose
ends. So that was the plan. I'd drive down with Shelly,
take care of some simple business, and wait for Freak
to return.
Real simple.
Shelly and I bonded a little bit over this trip. I had
pumped him full of chapters from Sun Tzu’s The Art
of War. One chapter that I was particularly of was the
art of employing spies. I had a small ongoing bit of a
by edaurdo jones
turf war in Columbus. I knew Shelly dealt with, and
was friendly with, some of these people. So I was
employing a spy. He had a few people in Columbus
“I can be a very
misanthropic individual
at times. I see people
who oppose me as a
disease. A disease I am
very quick to inoculate
and eradicate. I have
no problem resorting to
violence. I enjoyed it
greatly - it was almost
sexual to me at times.
Inflicting pain on my
enemies made my dick
hard.”
who owed him some money. I told him I'd be happy to
help collect it for him. I knew this would help solidify
his employment as my spy. Shelly also happened to
be working under my friend Anthony. I didn't want
Anthony to loose money since basically I made a
percent of the profits Freak made off Anthony. So all I
was really doing was collecting my money, but making
it look like I was going out of my way to help Shelly.
Subtle means of deception are key to manipulating
people into your larger game plan.
Shelly delighted in the fact he could bring the infamous
Saint with him door-to-door, shaking down delinquent
accounts. I knew Shelly’s type - a spineless coward.
A victim of bullies his whole life. The sort of person
predators prey upon. So he was now, in his mind,
in a position of power. He had a rabid pit bull at his
command - he thought. All he had to do was say "sic'em
Eddie!" Which was fine by me, since I needed to make
him feel secure in order to have him do my bidding
without making him feel I was the one in control.
People like Shelly need to feel like they're the ones in
control because they are never in control of anything.
They are stepped on their entire lives. Let them taste
a little pseudo-power, and you can get them to do
anything as long as you make it like it's their idea rather
than yours. They are merely the pawns in a game of
chess. Learn how to use your pawns correctly, and you
are a chess master.
By this time in my career I'd become a nightmare to
people. The constant amphetamine abuse had elevated
my already volatile temper and violent tendencies to
uncanny levels. I was known for kidnapping people,
beating them, and stomping enemies senseless without
a second thought. The last thing anybody wanted was
a knock on their door from me.
The first collection we made was from a kid I happened
to know. His name was Cub. Shelly had given him an
eight ball on the cuff before he came to Detroit. Shelly
went to knock on the door, while I waited in the car.
Beatdom
55
After a couple minute’s conversation and a nod from
me, Cub told Shelly he hadn't got rid of the goods
yet, and would give them back if he wanted. Shelly
said he'd take them back. So Shelly accepted what he
thought was what he had given Cub. He wouldn't find
out this wasn't the same stuff until later. This happens
to be a key fact in this tale. Shelly never really looked
at what exactly Cub had given him. The idiot.
It wasn't until we'd gotten back to Shelly’s house to for
a little tune up that we noticed this wasn't the product
Shelly had given Cub at all. He had swapped the high
quality goods I dealt with some low-grade garbage.
This was an insult to my intelligence - comparable to
painting all the walls in my house blue and thinking
I wouldn't notice. Sometimes people amaze me. The
funny thing is Shelly would have just let this slide.
Like I said - jellyfish have more spine than Shelly
could have ever wished for. I was enraged - my blood
boiled like molten lava. I hate being deceived. I would
rather fuck a cheese grater than be lied to. Almost
every relationship I've ever had in my life has ended
because of a lie. When I catch someone in a lie, God
have mercy on their soul, because the Old Testament
wrath of God aint got shit on me! Cub was going to
pay dearly.
Remember how I said speed freaks
live in strange fantasylands? I'm
going to tell you about the one I
lived in. In my delusional reality, my
associates and I were the only people
allowed to sell meth in Columbus,
Ohio. I'd put too much time in to
have any other dealers trying to suck
up any of the profits. I had a strangle
hold on the city. When I found other
dealers, I gave them two simple
options:
Option one is cease and desist what
they’re doing and work with me.
Everyone can eat, but they are going
to eat at my table.
Option two is I beat you to within
an inch of your pathetic life with
whatever blunt instrument is within
an arms length.
Few ever opted for option two. I
found that a little disappointing at
Illustration by Stammy Asend
56
Beatdom
the time because, well, option two was fun for me
- stress therapy on my twisted brain. It was rarely
necessary from the standpoint of the players, however.
My reputation for violence had swept across the midwest like the twisting fingers of God tearing across the
prairies. You might call them tornadoes.
I can be a very misanthropic individual at times. I
see people who oppose me as a disease. A disease I
am very quick to inoculate and eradicate. I have no
problem resorting to violence. I enjoyed it greatly it was almost sexual to me at times. Inflicting pain
on my enemies made my dick hard. I've gone as far
as biting a chunk of a person’s cheek off without a
second thought. Once I start, I can't stop. Something
just takes over. I don't know what it is but I seek to
destroy someone and inflict as much pain on them as
I possibly can. I go the extra mile. That’s why people
feared me. I'm not a large person by any means; I'm
about a hundred and fifty pounds, and stand five feet
seven inches. But I am willing to maim you, which is
the primary reason people don’t want to have physical
altercations with me. I won't just fight you; I'll try
to cripple you. Why this is, I don't know. Once I’ve
started, I've never been able to stop and it still rings
true to this very day. This is the primary reason I try
to avoid people in general. The simple fear of what I
know I'm capable of doing to someone when provoked
is enough to keep me a hermit.
So now, it was time to locate and punish Cub for his
crime. First, I needed to go shopping. I’ve always been
told, “Don’t go shopping without a list or you’ll come
back with a bunch of stuff you don’t need,” but this
one was easy:
one roll of threaded duct tape
one pair of pruning shears
12' of 1/4" nylon rope
Cub had retreated from his home by this time and
was hiding somewhere. I love the thrill of the hunt.
There's nothing more satisfying
than hunting some form of prey.
My chosen prey is human beings.
Anyone can hunt an animal; hunting
humans is playing on another level
entirely. The human animal has more
resources and problem-solving skills
than any other beast. Hunting Man is
a fine art I'd honed to perfection.
us they were at the kid’s mother’s house. I asked for
the address. She didn't want to comply at first. Then I
explained she could either bring me to the address or
the three of us could hang out together all day at her
house, and await their return. She saw how serious I
was, and didn't want to play hostess so... She chose for
option one. For some reason people just love option
one. She drove to her boyfriend’s parents with me
riding shotgun. Shelly followed in his car. I rode with
her so she wouldn't get any so-called bright ideas. Like
warning my prey or calling the cops.
The boy’s parents lived in a lush upscale neighborhood.
I watched the summer sun beam through the foliage of
the maple trees lining the street. It shined down like
spotlights illuminating the splotches of shade. This was
a neighborhood where people just didn't ever expect
what was about to happen. The ‘burbs aren't exactly
the type of place drug dealers come to
kidnap victims. Upon arriving at the
house, I sent Shelly to the door to get
Cub and his friend. I stayed in the car
with the girlfriend. This was another
form of insurance. Once Cub came
outside the girlfriend had performed
her duties and was free to go.
I would rather
fuck a cheese
grater than be
lied to.
Most people chose option one in this scenario as
well. Even if they go for option two, word spreads
rather quickly. This forces your prey out into the
open because nobody’s going to harbor someone a
sociopath is looking for. This hunt wasn't going to
be a long one. Shelly had an idea of where Cub was
hiding. Not to mention I'd obtained his address book
after routing through his house looking for clues to
his whereabouts. You'd be amazed at the information
you get from hitting “play messages” on an answering
machine.
Cub seemed a little shocked to see my
smiling face. I could smell the fear
emanating off his body. His eyes were
dilated and shifty; he wouldn't make
direct eye contact. He looked down at the ground. A
submissive behavior - like a puppy when encountering
the alpha male of a wolf pack. He stuttered, and
rocked back and forth as he spoke. I explained he
and his friend needed to come and speak with me
somewhere else about the situation at hand. Because
I didn't think the kid's parents would be too pleased
with him if they found out about the current situation
that was happening on their front lawn at the very
moment. The neighborhood may frown on it as well,
and probably wouldn't invite the family to the next
neighborhood block party. After all, people lived in
neighborhoods like this to avoid the inner city dregs
of society. You don't buy a half million-dollar home
to have drug dealers beating up the neighbors kids on
the front lawn. This was Mr. Roger’s neighborhood,
not Compton.
He brought me to a friend of Cub’s house. Odds
were, he was there; he'd been frequenting this house
a lot. It also happened to be on the outskirts of town.
When we got there neither Cub nor his friend were
at the residence. His girlfriend was, though. She told
The voyage to Shelly’s was a quiet one to say the
least. I watched them shake and contemplate their
fates through the rearview mirror. I was loving every
moment of this. There's nothing like knowing you have
total dominance in a situation like this. It's a whole
It's really simple just go to every
person’s house the prey may be
hiding at. Explain to them they have
two options:
Option one: give up said person.
Option two: well, you already know option two.
Beatdom
57
other kind of high. The only way I can really sum it up
is that I'm a bit of a control freak. So if I know have
total control of a human being, I feel like a kid who
just found a hundred dollar bill in front of the local
candy store. It's sick I know, but hey - it's me.
We arrived at Shelly's. I brought my new "buddies"
down into the basement - shopping bag in hand to discuss theft and deception. I sat the boys down,
and began to give them an in-depth lecture on the
consequences of theft and deception. It didn't take
long for Cub to fess up to the fact he'd exchanged
the trash for my high quality product. You see I have
simple philosophy when it comes to selling drugs. I'll
only buy and sell the best. I'd rather starve to death
than sell garbage. This philosophy had also kept me
out of jail and in business forever. It's simple really. If
a snitch gets busted, who's he going to rat on - the guy
with the best stuff or the guy who's been ripping him
off with cut garbage? Rule number one: never cut the
drugs, greed leads to jail. Distributing quality product
also allows you to take breaks when the heat is so hot
on the streets that your sneakers melt to the concrete. I
could take breaks for months, jump back in the game,
and have all the customers back I'd previously dealt
with because they knew I only dealt with the best.
Cub told me the drugs were stored at his friend’s house
- the friend sitting next to him. I explained I was going
to take all the drugs, and the person who was the owner
of said drugs could come see me to reclaim them. He
said there was no way he could that. I then reached
in my shopping bag. I emptied the contents onto the
table. I then explained how I was going to tie him up
with the rope, duct tape his mouth shut, and cut one
of his fingers off every five minutes with the pruning
shears until he decided to give me what I wanted.
Cub was pale white. His friend didn't believe me until
he looked at Cub and asked, “Is he serious?” Cub
nodded his head. The kid then began to cry... He began
to wail on and on about how he didn't deserve this,
how he just kept the drugs at his house for his friend.
With this I started to laugh. I calmly explained to him
that selling drugs for a living is not a game. People
such as myself are very serious about what we do. I
also informed him that if he didn't want to encounter
people like me it was best not to stash other people’s
drugs at his house. I then said it was time to go and get
the stuff.
Just as we were about to get in the car Cub said,
"Are you sure you really want to do this, Eddie? Do
58
Beatdom
you know whose stuff this is?"
"Yeah it's Corrie’s."
"No, it's a pair of the Brothers’ stuff. One of them has
the same name as you."
I knew the Brothers; they had always been cool with
me. In fact, I'd been trying to get in touch with them to
do some business, but since I was involved in a little
bit of a turf war with some people I knew, it was hard
to get in contact with them. I then told the kid with
Cub not to worry - I wasn't going to take the Brothers’
product. I then asked if he'd pass on a message and
have them contact me.
The rest of the day was spent running around collecting
money and visiting friends. That night we'd decided to
go to a party. It was the usual scene - kegs of beer
and young drunken trollops flashing cleavage and
panty shots. On the back deck, the testosterone-filled
binge drinkers circled around their alter, offering up
the 10 gallon sacrifice of hops and barley to the Gods
of Anheuser-Busch.
I knew most of the people there, so, of course, I had
my little band of drug sluts hanging all over me.
whispering the lewd and torrid details of sexual acts
some still illegal in 28 states of the Union that they
were willing to perform on me once they got me
alone. Now there's one thing I'm truly addicted to, and
that is sex. Yes, I'm an addict; my appetite for naked
female flesh is insatiable. There's nothing in this world
capable of giving the feeling that sex does. The only
thing better than just sex is the combination of sex and
drugs. So with much haste I told Shelly it was time to
leave and get a hotel.
I have a love of hotels. In fact, I live in a hotel at this
very moment. Basically, I love room service and maid
service. The fact that I can just lay back relax and
know with a simple phone call I can have anything my
heart desires brought to me on one of those carts is a
beautiful thing. Not to mention I don't need to clean,
and a set of clean crisp sheets is a phone call away
as well. I don't like just any room, either. I have suite
fetish. I want to have my own ‘lil luxury apartment not some crab shack room that smells like bad sex and
cheap booze.
So we got a room at one those extended stay hotels.
They basically rent you a two level town house with
a fireplace and everything for about a hundred and
eighty bucks a night. They only had a single floor
handicap suite available, though, so we took it. This
was awesome - instead of two levels, I had the greatest
bathroom I've ever seen in my life. It was huge as big
as a regular hotel room, with a sit down shower with
multiple showerheads. It was a virtual porn studio.
I loved it. Shelly, however, did not have the same
appreciation as I had for the room. From what I had
gathered from the lad he was basically asexual - the
boy had no interest in sex.
We ended up partying into the early afternoon with
a handful of girls, and this kid Seamus who was one
of the girls’ boyfriends. I knew him through a couple
of my friends. As the day drew on Shelly was rapidly
getting on my nerves. He'd set the air conditioner at
such a sub artic temperature the girls were borrowing
sweatshirts from me. This was the complete polar
opposite effect of my plan. I wanted the girls to be
taking their clothes off not putting more on! He'd also
suddenly become born again hard. He began to think
Illustration by Stammy Asend
his little adventure with me had baptized him into
the world of misanthropic sociopaths such as myself.
God, why do all speed freaks have these delusions of
grandeur? I thought.
I've noticed that many a person who couldn't punch
their way out of a wet paper bag after a couple days
with me goes through the exact same transformation.
Suddenly they think they're capable of being like me.
The persona has a way of rubbing off on people like
wet paint. I decided it would be a good idea to separate
myself from Shelly at this point.
I took the girlfriend of one of the dealers I was
involved in the turf war with’s girlfriends to the sex
toy shop. Sex is a great means of revenge. If I have
a problem with a guy, I'll fuck his girlfriend, just to
get as deep into his psyche as I can. So a hotel room
full of speed sluts definitely needed some weapons of
Beatdom
59
sexual destruction. Three hundred dollars worth of
lubed condoms and multi-colored dildos later, I made
my way back to the hotel.
When I got back I discovered Shelly was now drunk
on pseudo-power. He was ordering the girls around.
He then got in an argument with one particular girl.
They were shouting rather loudly at one another. I told
them to both shut up, then I decided I needed to go for
a walk before I started flipping out. So I left the room
and walked over to the pool to cool my head. After
about fifteen minutes, I started back to the room. I was
about two doors away from the room when I heard
their now screaming voices. The last thing I wanted
was security or the cops thinking there was domestic
violence happening in that room. So, I entered the door
rapidly, walked straight over to Shelly and said,
"You better shut the fuck up, because I will smash
you before I have the cops smashing down the door
because they think you’re beating a woman in here."
I'll never forget the words that came out of his mouth.
This quite possibly could be one of the stupidest things
ever said by a human being...
"Then go ahead and smash me, motherfucker."
I have no clue what was running through his mind
when he said this, but that’s all it took. Before he
even finished the sentence, I smashed him in the
eye. His eyebrow was split wide open. He began to
cry and asked why I hit him. I mean, this kid was a
total moron. He'd just witnessed me kidnap someone
from their mother’s house and threaten to cut all their
fingers off with a pair of pruning shears. Did he really
think I wasn't going to hit him when he’d given me his
explicit permission?
I then explained the finer points of poker to the boy.
You can't call someone’s bluff who doesn't bluff and I
NEVER bluff. He soon left crying.
Most of the people in the room left rather rapidly after
this spectacle. Leaving only Seamus, his girlfriend,
and one of her friends, along with myself in the room.
This was fine by me; I had wanted to work out some
pent up emotions in a more intimate way anyhow. I'm
not one to kiss and tell - let’s just say the next couple
hours were rather stress relieving.
After what happened happened, Seamus and I started
to pound back a half gallon of rum together. We sat in
front of the hotel room, talking about this and that. I
60
Beatdom
noticed a toad hopping by and quickly scooped it up
in my hands. I dubbed him George the Toad. I brought
George into the hotel room, and let him hop about.
After watching him for a little while, I decided to
perform a scientific experiment. I wanted to see the
effects of meth-amphetamines on an amphibian.
I reached in my pocket, pulled out a bag of speed, and
removed approximately a tenth of a gram shard. This
was about enough to give the average human meth
user a pretty good initial high. I took the shard, opened
George’s mouth, and placed it in. Within seconds, the
bastard was hopping at light speed around the room.
I then watched him closer and I swear to God the
fucker was grinding his teeth. I couldn't believe my
eyes - this toad was tweaked. Then I thought about
the approximate ratio to body size this toad had just
ingested. I figured he might have weighed about an
ounce. I just fed him about one twenty-eighth hundred
of his total body weight. Think about it - if a tenth
of a gram can rip your average human being to the
gills imagine how fucked this toad was. I then set
him free to explore the world in probably the greatest
methamphetamine psychosis in the history of the
world.
My experiment didn't last much longer. The phone
rang. It was B. He was screaming at me about hitting
Shelly and said he was on his way to see what was up.
Anthony and I had been feuding for a couple months.
Shelly and B worked for Anthony. Starting to get
the picture? I could tell by B's voice something was
up. My fear kicked into overdrive. I was ready to be
killed. I had grabbed a Stanley razor utility knife - the
kind you could extend about six inches out. I put it in
my back pocket. My mind was racing like a dragster
in fifth gear. I was going to do what ever it took to get
out of this with my life.
About fifteen minutes later I heard the knock on the
door. I had Seamus answer it. B and this kid Kellog
that I was friends with came bursting in. I caught a
glimpse of a Glock forty tucked in the back of B's
pants. I reached for it, and B spun around. Before he
could grab it, I pushed him down onto his ass on the
couch. I reached in my back pocket and pulled out the
knife extending the blade in the same motion. What
happened next has never truly been clear in my mind.
Kellog was sitting in a chair at the desk behind me. All
I heard was him say was
“Nice shorts motherfucker,” and reach for his waste
band.
With this, my animal instinct for survival kicked in. I
spun around and dove across the room in a millisecond.
I flipped him back up onto the desk. As quick as this
happened, Seamus grabbed the arm I had the razor in. I
had Kellog by the neck and was trying to slit his throat
with the razor, and with the massive dose of adrenaline,
I actually tore the tendons in Seamus's shoulder from
pulling so hard forward. I remember screaming,
"You ready to die, motherfucker? ‘Cause today’s the
day!"
Seamus and everyone in the room was pleading with
me to let Kellog go. I was too far into the back of
beyond.
what happened. I told her to get me from the waffle
house behind the hotel.
I raced to the waffle house, walked up to the counter not even thinking about what I must have looked like.
I blurted at the waitress, "Black coffee and chocolate
cake now!"
She looked at me, horrified, but quickly got me what
I wanted. As I sat and ate my cake, I had this eerie
feeling of a thousand eyes on me. I slowly looked
behind me and saw the entire restaurant staring at me
their mouths aghast.
Just as I saw them, I caught a glimpse of myself in the
mirror hanging on the wall. I was covered from head to
toe in blood. I was sopping in it. In the same moment,
"See, See, See, how quick it takes to die? SEE HOW reality came crashing down on me. B's girlfriend
QUICK YOU'RE GOING TO DIE."
walked in. She took one look at me and said,
With one final pull and swipe of the knife, I broke free
of Seamus. Kellog lifted his hand to protect his throat
at the same second. I had only been inches from his
throat throughout the entire ordeal. I remember the
shear terror in his eyes to this day. He looked as if he
was looking the devil himself square in the eyes. The
next thing I heard was,
“Fuck, he cut me.” Blood was everywhere - all over
the walls, the ceiling, the desk, the floor... I hadn't cut
his throat, but cut his thumb off with a single stroke. It
was hanging, bone and all, by a thread.
Everyone just froze. I walked slowly to the bathroom
and closed the door. I readied myself for the hail of
gunfire that was surely about to rain through the door.
I couldn't hear anything - all I could see was that door.
I braced myself for my last stand against the toilet.
Eddie the Saint was about to meet his maker in the
shitter. Kind of poetic, actually. I was as ready as I
would ever be.
It never came, though. Everyone was in such shock,
they just fled. I don't know how long I was in the
bathroom before I realized this fact. It could have been
years for all I knew.
I remember coming out and knowing I had to flee. I
grabbed a towel and began wiping the puddles of blood
off of everything. It was the most surreal moment of
my life. I rushed about the room panicking, grabbing
my belongings and stuffing what ever I could get my
hands on into a bag. I then bolted out the door, calling
B's girlfriend, Stephanie, on my cell. She already knew
“Come on! Now!”
I pulled a hundred dollar bill from my pocket and
placed it on the counter and said,
"Keep the change."
I ran from the restaurant into the waiting getaway
vehicle. The car ride was full of commotion and
questions to exactly what had happened. I still don't
know exactly what happened but I swear I thought he
was reaching for a gun. All I knew was people were
definitely going to be looking for me.
Stephanie asked where the hell I wanted to go. I needed
to get the fuck out of Columbus, but her car wasn't
going to make it anywhere. So I opted for Self's house.
Self wasn't involved in any of this meth madness, so
surely it was probably the safest place I could be. I
called incessantly, but to no avail. Fuck it, I thought, I'll
break in. I bolted from the car to Self's front porch. The
only thoughts racing in my head - Don't let anybody
see me. It took me all of two seconds to jimmy open
Self’s window and crawl through it.
It was approximately eight in the morning. At this
time, Self lived with one of the best friends I've ever
had in my life. His name is Blasto. Blasto had nothing
to do with the drug scene. He didn't use drugs and he
didn't associate with drug dealers - well, except for me.
He had always been a source of guidance for me, and
believe you me - at this moment I needed guidance
more than ever before. I burst into his room screaming
for him to wake up.
Beatdom
61
would fill my eyes and lungs in order to incapacitate
me. Then, the crushing blows of Louisville Sluggers
would cave my skull in like an eggshell, my brains
leaking out my ears onto the carpet, a sort of abstract
art project in gore. But I wasn't going out without a
"Eddie, what the fuck have you done this time?"
fight. Like I said before, Edaurdo Jones doesn't die
easy my friend. I leaped from the couch with my trusty
"I don’t fucking know, man. The fucker tried to shoot Stanley razor knife in hand. I saw the first shadow
me. I had to defend myself. They're all out to get me. coming through the very window I had used to gain
They tried to set me the fuck up. Bastard Shelly… entry to Self's house earlier in the day. Some scum
kill that fucker-first… I gotta regroup - meth-tweakin’ must have been tailing me following my every move,
toad - Seamus’ girlfriend in the bathroom - fucking just waiting for the proper moment to rally the troops,
sluts-things got nuts - gotta hide - gotta prepare - cant and then descend on the sleeping beast.
sleep - they'll get me if I sleep - I'm done for - what the
fuck is that sound? - you gotta fuckin’ help me!"
I grabbed the first thing I could reach and hurled it
at the figure climbing through the window. Now, this
This rambling madness had awoken Self who came item wasn't exactly a lethal weapon by any means.
running down the hall to Blasto’s room, asking, “What It was a pillow. Just as it left my grasp, I heard the
the fuck is going on?” Then he saw me and just said as scream...
straight-faced as possible,
"Eddie! It's Jess! Calm down!"
“Now Eddie, what the fuck did you get yourself into
this time?”
Jess was Self's girlfriend. I stood grateful that the
object I'd grabbed hastily to repel my attackers had
"Don't really know - everything was fine - employing been a pillow and not an ashtray or some other blunt
spies - back fired in my face - tried to kill me the instrument as I watched it hit her in the skull. It seems
fuckers - total set up - got the bastards though - cut they'd gone out for a night of drinking at Bernie’s, and
Kellog’s thumb off - teach the fuckers to fuck with the had left through the backdoor - forgetting they'd left
likes of me - bloody mess - should have seen the look the front door chained for my protection.
in his eyes - he saw the devil incarnate - who the fuck
did they think were fuckin' with? - I don't die easy - I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I was not under attack,
I take everyone I can with me - they're going to be but merely awakened by my drunken protectors. After
coming though, need to prepare."
apologizing for my actions, I went back to sleep. I
awoke late in the afternoon. It was time to contact
"You cut his thumb off?"
Freak. Surely, the news of the thumb incident had
reached him by now.
"Fuck, yeah - cut the fucker clean the fuck off. Was
trying for this throat but the fucker locked me with his "Hello Freak, Edaurdo here."
fuckin’ hand!"
"What have you done now you fucking psychotic
"You need to slow down Eddie. Just slow down. What bastard?"
happened - exactly? You’re not making any sense"
"I guess you've heard then?"
It very well took me the better part of four hours to
finally calm down enough to actually give the two of "Heard? Everybody west of the Mississippi has heard,
them a semi comprehensible version of the events that you fuck!"
had transpired. Although once I finally did, it still didn't
make much sense to any of us. I finally drifted off to "I figured as much. Now you need to get me the fuck
sleep on their couch sometime in the early afternoon. out of here."
He woke, startled - took one look at me - and you
could tell by his face he thought he was in the midst of
a horrific nightmare.
I awoke to the sound of the door chain slamming open
and catching the door before it opened. FUCK, they’ve
found me! Surely, I was about to be on the receiving
end of a savage beating. Perhaps a strong blast of mace
62
Beatdom
"Get you the fuck out of there? Because of your crazy
ass the ides of March is upon us."
"What are you talking about?"
"Don't give me that shit you filthy bastard. You couldn't
resist trying to get over on Anthony could you?"
"What the fuck are you talking about getting over on
Anthony? That bastard sent his goons to kill me!"
"Of course he did; you robbed his runner."
"Robbed his runner?"
"Yeah, Shelly, you fuck. You bashed him in the face
and ran his pockets for half an onion, you greedy
prick!"
Now things were starting to make sense. That son
of bitch Shelly had used my assault as a way to rob
Anthony. He knew Anthony and I had been on bad
terms for months. The only thing really keeping us
from killing each other had been Freak. So, who was
Anthony going to believe? A bleeding Shelly or his
arch nemesis? The crafty little fucker had almost
orchestrated the perfect burn. He just hadn't factored
in my survival instinct. If all had gone according
to Shelly’s plan, I would have been dead or at least
hospitalized in critical condition. But, like I said
before, Edaurdo Jones doesn't die easy.
"Robbed Shelly?"
"Yeah, robbed Shelly!"
"I didn't rob that little
fuck. I swear on my
balls, I didn't."
"So what
saying?"
are
you
"I'm saying that little
bastard robbed Anthony
and tried to have me
assassinated in the
process."
"Alright. You need
to get back to Detroit
immediately. I'll wire
you some cash for
travel expenses."
"Okay. What’s the
security question and
answer?"
"The question will be
who's your daddy and
the answer big worm.
"You bastard, I'm not
using that! They'll think
I'm some homosexual
whore getting money
wired from his sugar
daddy-pimp."
Illustration by Sham
A. Lam Jnr
Beatdom
63
"That’s what you get for this mess, fucko. It's going to
take forever to fix this shit."
"Alright I suppose it really doesn't matter as long as
I'm out of this fucking city."
"By the way I got us a new place."
"Really? Where?"
"The place they killed Robocop."
"You’re fucking kidding right? You got us living in
that nightmare?"
"It's not that bad - you never saw the rest of the place.
64
Beatdom
It's actually pretty nice."
"Nice? There is nothing nice about that fucking place!
A kid got his head blown off in the kitchen of that
place! The last thing I want is the ghost of some
fucking raver haunting me."
"Calm down. There's no ghosts here...Well except for
Ghost, and he's alive."
Now, something I neglected to tell you about the
Bagley building. For several years George had rented
the space out as an after hours club. One ill-fated night
this kid got his head blown off over a burn on a drug
deal. So the story goes. The kid was standing in the
kitchen huffing on a nitrous oxide balloon when the
burnee walked up behind him and blew his brains out.
Illustration by Neal
Fox
That’s just the way
Detroit is. Life is
cheaper than a hand
job from a two-dollar
crack whore.
I wasn't looking
forward to my new
home, but, fuck it anything was better
than waiting for the
hammer to come
down in Columbus. I
had Self drive me to
the nearest Western
Union. I got my
money. The clerk did
look at me like I was
some twisted gigolo
getting money wired
from his man pimp.
I didn't care. All I
wanted was out of
that
god-forsaken
city by any means
necessary. So I
really didn't give a
flying fuck if some
minimum
wage
earning fuck stick
thought I was a manwhore or not.
Self dropped me at
the bus station with
about five minutes to spare. A good inhale of exhaust
fumes and a small struggle with a fellow passenger
over seating and I was off.
"Fuck you whores! You couldn't get me."
That was the thought that ran through my head as the
bus pulled out of the station and onto the Interstate.
I settled back in my seat, preparing for a nice fourhour nap before the orgy of decadence began again in
Detroit.
Sometime in the early evening, the Hound pulled into
Mo-town. I hurried off the bus, a sweaty mess, to the
nearest payphone, punched in the Freak’s digits and
listen to the ringing.
"Come on you fucker, pick up."
"Hello. Colonel Kurtz speaking."
"Colonel, this Edaurdo. Where the fuck are you? Didn't
you remember I was coming in at this time?"
"Oh fuck, Edaurdo. I forgot."
This was typical of Freak, the fucker only ever thought
of himself. Only when it came to certain things though.
Things like picking up your friends from bus stations.
"Figures, you fuck. Come get me."
"Well I can't right now. You should jump in a cab and
get here ASAP. I've got to show what I was doing while
you were off playing Kaiser Soze in Columbus.”
"I'm on my way."
I hailed a cab.
"Where to buddy?"
"Bagley Road. And don't try taking me for a ride. I'm
on important business."
"Bagley road! I'm going to have to charge you twenty
bucks to take you to that neighborhood."
"What? You thieving bastard! It's only two miles away
at best."
"Listen pal, I'm not driving into that death trap for less
than twenty bucks. You don't like it - walk."
The bastard had me by the balls. Cab drivers in Detroit
are just as corrupt as the pigs in the city. He did have
a valid point though. For all he knew, I was bringing
him down Bagley for a setup. I could have easily had
a gang of thugs waiting at said address to pull him out
of the cab club him to death and strip his cab down
to the frame in minutes. So twenty dollars was worth
the risk to him. Like I said before, life is cheap in the
Motorcity.
"Okay, you got a deal, you rotten prick."
Within five minutes I was at the front door of my new
home. The door was locked, but I noticed the door on
the iron balcony above me was open.
Beatdom
65
"Freak, Freak, you fucker open the door. It's Edaurdo,
you bastard!"
Within seconds, Junior came out onto the balcony.
"I'll throw you down the keys."
I caught the keys, unlocked the door, and made my
way upstairs. I entered my new abode. Freak was
right. This part of the building looked like a normal
apartment. Carpet covered the floors. The walls were
freshly painted. No thick clouds of dust filled the air.
It was rather nice.
"So what’s up?"
"Nothing. I need to get high now."
"By all means, step into my office. I got just what the
doctor ordered."
We entered his bedroom. He bent down and pulled a
gallon bag half way full of glass out from under his
bed.
"See? While you were out playing Captain Psycho, I
was busy doing more constructive things."
"I guess you were."
"Yeah, but your little adventure is going to make it
rather difficult to unload this shit."
"Who fucking cares? Just gimme some."
Freak reached in the bag pulled out a healthy handful
and tossed it on the small desk in his room.
"Is that enough?"
"For now, sure."
I crushed the shards into a fine powder, cut out a threeinch rail, and sniffed it one motion.
dopamine rivals that of Romeo and Juliette as far as
star-crossed lovers are concerned. Yes, I love drugs
and they love me, but we were never meant to be.
Okay, and on to my new living situation. This section
of the house wasn't too bad. The problem I had was
with our sort of roommate/ house manager - Junior.
Something rubbed me the wrong way about this fucker
and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But I knew
he was not to be trusted. He had the shifty eyes of a
rodent, and the bullshit that spilled from his lips rivaled
tall tales of Americana. This fuck was a conman. Not a
very good one, but a con nonetheless.
The next few days I'd see deeper into his bullshit and
Ghost’s as well. They sat in a strange fantasyland,
trying to get a non-existent record label of the ground
with Ghost acting as executive producer, even though
they had not one piece of recording equipment or ability
to create music period. By day three, my tolerance to
these two idiots was wearing paper-thin. I needed out
of this house and fast. Luckily, at some point, Ghost
had left and Jen had come by. Seeing my contempt for
my surroundings, she offered to take me to her house
for a little break from the madness and a place to wash
my clothes.
Jen brought me to her home in an upscale suburb of
Detroit. She lived in a condo on a golf course. It was a
much needed change of pace. The rest of that evening
consisted of deep intellectual conversation, paranoid
conspiracy theories, laundry, and acts of carnal animal
lust.
By this time, you’re probably wondering what the
hell the title of this story has to do with anything
in this story. So now, let me enlighten you. At
some point in the moments just before sunrise, I
heard Jen's house phone ringing. Now, ordinarily
I'd never answer someone else’s telephone, but
on this occasion, I was deep into psychosis and
probably didn't even know it wasn't my phone.
"Hello."
"Now, that’s what I'm fucking talking about."
"Who the fuck is this?"
I felt the chemical burn in my nasal cavity as the
static engulfed my brain. Aaaaaaaaaaah, sweet relief.
Nothing like the initial zap of the first hit after a couple
days of sobriety. It's kind of like Christmas, Easter,
Halloween, the Fourth of July, and your birthday all
rolled into one, with ‘lil sugar plum fairies dancing
around your head. You see, my love affair with
"Edaurdo. Who may I ask is this?"
66
Beatdom
"Ghost, mother fucker! What the fuck are you doing at
my girl’s house?"
This was a good question, and one for which I really
didn't have an answer. I couldn't really tell him even
though he was probably sure I'd just violated his socalled girlfriend seven ways from Sunday. After all,
for what reason would another man be answering the
phone located next to her bed at five o'clock in the
morning?
"I think you have a wrong number."
"Your a fucking dead man! They call me Ghost cuz I
make ghosts!"
"Sir, I'm telling you, I think you've dialed the wrong
number. Please just get off the line and try your call
again."
With this, I hung the phone up. Within seconds, it
started ringing off the hook. Jen was comatose from
popping Xanax by the handful. I didn't see any point in
waking her yet. He may very well have bought into the
whole dialing the wrong number bit. The phone just
kept ringing and ringing for the next half of an hour.
Then I heard the sharp raps on the door. I made my
way to a window and peaked through a crack in the
blinds. There stood Ghost and a couple of his buddies.
The phone started ringing again. This time when the
answering machine picked up, I heard,
“Listen, motherfucker, I know you’re in there, and if
Jen doesn't come down here now I'm coming in.”
I figured now was as good a time as any to wake Jen
up, and enlighten her to the facts of this precarious
situation we had at hand here. Needless to say, she
wasn't happy and called Ghost on the phone.
While this was going on, I made my downstairs to the
kitchen. This was the one place I felt I could mount
a viable defense. I could see all entrances from this
position. Not to mention my excellent arsenal of
weapons. I quickly grabbed two large frying pans and a
couple saucepans put them on the burners on high and
poured cooking oil into each one. This was step one
in my line of defense. I'd wait by the wall out of sight
with one of the pans of boiling oil. When the attackers
came, I'd fling the oil into their faces, scalding their
eyes out of their sockets.
Step two would involve a twelve-inch razor sharp sushi
knife. I duct taped the knife into my clenched left fist
with it pointing downwards. I duct taped it into my fist
so I wouldn't drop it when I was attacked. I could cut,
slash, and stab my way out of an onslaught of multiple
attackers provided I didn't lose the knife. What better
way to guarantee keeping hold of said object than to
tape the fucker into my clenched fist?
So, with these steps taken, I awaited my fate.
Several minutes passed as I watched the oil begin to
boil. Fuck, are they coming or not? I heard Jen make
her way down the stairs. The sound of the deadbolt
clicking open came next. Okay, Eddie, brace yourself
- any second now. Any second now. The anxiety of
this moment - the wait - was worse than anything that
could have happened, once what was about to happen,
happened. No hot balls of lead shredding my internal
organs or crushing blows of batons or the slicing of
knives through my tendons could be as bad as the
feeling I had waiting for it to happen.
My gears spun at full throttle contemplating my
impending doom. The real question was, how many
would I take with me? Perhaps all, at least one,
hopefully a couple. Seconds passed like hours. Then
I heard the door reopen. Here it comes, Eddie, here it
comes. I heard the footsteps making their way towards
me. I grabbed the handle of the frying pan. I braced
myself flat against the wall closest to the opening of
the kitchen. Here it comes. Get ready. Then just as I
heard the footsteps in the perfect position, I heard Jen's
voice.
"Eddie where are you?"
She walked around the corner to find me with a
pan of boiling oil, and the sushi knife duct taped in
my fist. The shear look of horror in her eyes spoke
multitudes of unsaid words. There I was looking
like some freak of nature psycho. Which I was.
It turns out she talked Ghost away from the whole
situation. Maybe if I hadn't been so completely
whacked out of my gourd, I would have realized
nothing would have come of the situation. But, in
the throws of paranoia, and given the events that had
transpired in the past week, I was in no mood to sit
back and let rationality take its place. Jen and I didn't
talk for a while after this incident. Now at this point
in my life, I understand why. The sight of a raving
psychotic thumb remover standing in your kitchen
with pots of boiling oil and a razor sharp sushi knife
duct taped in his hand, just may be too much for a
young lady to take in. In hindsight, I see the truth in
the quote at the beginning of this tale. Because I was
no longer Edaurdo Jones.
I was one hundred percent crystal meth.
Beatdom
67
Recent history has seen the women in the life of Jack
Kerouac finally bring to public attention their side of
the story. Portrayed in his work in what some deem a
sexist manner, they have been releasing memoirs and
telling the world about Kerouac.
In 1983, Joyce Johnson wrote Minor Characters; in
1990, Carolyn Cassady published Off the Road; and
in 2000 there was Joan Haverty’s Nobody’s Wife,
with a foreword by Jan Kerouac.
These books have added much to the world of Kerouac
scholarship, providing both an intimate portrait of
Kerouac, as well as offering counter-points to many
of the claims he made in his books.
Now it’s Helen Weaver’s turn.
Weaver met Kerouac and Ginsberg in 1953 and was
carried away by the Beats. She soon became Kerouac’s
girlfriend, and in her book, The Awakener: A Memoir
of Kerouac and the Fifties, she offers a wonderful,
personal picture of the Beat Generation and the 1950s
Greenwich Village scene.
The Awakener is a story of spiritual and sexual
awakening; a valuable insight to a special place in
time that is of great interest to any reader of the Beat
Generation.
I’ve always been amused by the name he gave me.
“Heaper” was a reference to a passage in The Song
of Songs that he quoted to me the first time we made
love: “Thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about
with lilies.” I never forgot that and obviously he didn’t
either.
David Wills: What do you say to the critics who claim
Kerouac was a sexist? Helen Weaver: I’d have to agree with them–up to
a point. It was the fifties! And Jack was capable of
saying things like “women must be guided by men.”
Yuk! But he was also capable of great sensitivity and
empathy. If the most important people in his life were mostly
male (the big exception was his mother, who was the
love of his life) I think that was because his mission in
life was writing. Not that many women were writing in
the fifties, so by definition his colleagues were mostly
men. As Joyce Johnson so aptly put it, we would have
been “excess baggage on the road.”
David Wills: You talk about Kerouac’s backpack full
of manuscripts. Do you recall what he was working
on or what he was carrying when he appeared on your
doorstep?
David Wills: How did you feel about Kerouac’s Helen
Weaver:
Well,
he
had
already
depiction of you as Ruth Heaper in Desolation started Desolation Angels so he had the first part of
Angels?
that, plus Tristessa and Mexico City Blues. He and
Allen Ginsberg had just hitchhiked from Mexico,
Helen Weaver: I was and am very happy with it. I where he’d been working on those three books. I still
was touched by his portrait of me and honored to be a have a Mexican coin (cinco centavos) Jack gave me
part of that book, which I think is one of his best. I was that day on my bedside table, for luck.
particularly moved that there was no bitterness in his
portrayal of me. Jack was very hurt when I asked him David Wills: The first paragraph of your book really
to leave in January 1957 but by the time he finished gives the reader an intimate portrait of the lives of the
writing Desolation Angels a few years later he had two Helens. This isn’t going to be a prudish, glossobviously forgiven me.
over-the-sensitive-parts kind of book, is it?
68
Beatdom
Helen Weaver: You got that right. I have to say, I just
love that first sentence where I’m sitting on the john
in my pajamas when the buzzer rings. It’s like, Here I
am, world–get used to it!
It took me years to come up with that beginning. For a
long time I was stuck on the idea that the book should
begin in Grand Central Station, on the evening when I
took Jack home to Scarsdale to meet my parents. You
know, disreputable raggedy boyfriend vs. conservative
parents in rich snooty suburb? But it just didn’t work.
As soon as I decided to begin with the morning I met
Jack, I knew I had it. David Wills: In the book you talk about Kerouac’s
insistence upon the fact that it’s “all a dream.” Why
was he saying this and what problems did it cause?
Helen Weaver: That was Jack’s Buddhism. The
Buddha taught that the physical world around us is
an illusion, as is our fixed idea that each of us is a
separate self. When I met him, Jack had recently
been introduced to Buddhism by Gary Snyder and he
carried a copy of Dwight Goddard’s Buddhist Bible in
his rucksack. The first morning we spent together, as
he was unpacking his rucksack, he read me a passage
from that book:
I soon discovered that Jack was very unreliable about
time: he’d show up three hours late for dinner, or
sometimes not at all until the next day. When I tried to
discuss our “problems” with him his eyes would just
glaze over and he’d tell me “Everything is fine, don’t
worry. Nothing is real–it’s all a dream.” So early on,
I got the impression that his Buddhism was just a big
philosophical rationalization for doing whatever he
wanted.
But as I got older the idea that the physical world is an
illusion began to sound less strange, especially in the
All the mind’s arbitrary conceptions of matter,
light of quantum physics. Jack’s mantra that “nothing
phenomena, and of all conditioning factors and all
is real, it’s all a dream” began to make perfect sense
conceptions and ideas relating thereto are like a dream,
to me. In fact, it sounded like a pretty accurate
a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, the evanescent dew,
description of the universe. Ultimately, I was drawn
the lightning’s flash. Every true disciple should thus
to Buddhism myself. But that was many years later,
look upon all phenomena and upon all the activities
long after Jack died. of the mind, and keep his mind empty and self-less
and tranquil.
David Wills: How did you go about writing The
Awakener? I mean, after half a century it must have
I thought this was very eloquent but at age 25 the idea
been difficult to recall many relevant details. that the physical world is an illusion didn’t appeal to
me. It was a world I was just beginning to make my
Helen Weaver: The day I met him was etched into
peace with. my mind in vivid detail. From almost the moment I
laid eyes on him, I knew that one day I would have
Beatdom
69
to write about him. Then when things started going The acquisitions editor there loved the book, but the
south between us–his drinking was really bugging me, contract they offered me was unacceptable, so it was
and the chaotic schedule–I began writing as a form of back to the drawing board.
therapy. So I have the Jack Kerouac Journal.
My friend (and former rival for Jack’s affections)
When he went to Orlando for Christmas with his mother, Joyce Johnson kept telling me to try City Lights. I
his sister, and his nephew, we exchanged letters. I’m had actually written a letter to Lawrence Ferlinghetti
an obsessive archivist, and I kept everything–every in 2007, but never got an answer (he was 88 and
letter and postcard he wrote me, every tiny little note semi-retired). But Joyce urged me to contact her
he left on my door, every review, every newspaper or friend Nancy Phillips at City Lights. It turned out
magazine clipping that had to do with him or Allen. I she was semi-retired too, but she put in a good word
knew I would need all these things some day. It was with senior editor Robert Sharrard. I took a chance
just a matter of finding the right time to gather it all up and emailed him the first chapter. He asked to see the
and weave it together.
rest, and pretty soon he called me up and offered me
a contract. There were many false starts over the years. In the end,
what I had to deal with was not so much a scarcity of It was a good contract, and it got even better thanks
material as an embarrassment of riches. to the free contract service at the National Writers
Union, of which I am a member. I’m actually grateful
David Wills: How did you go about trying to publish to that recalcitrant contract person at Inner Traditions,
the book? One would imagine that the story sells because City Lights is the ideal publisher for this book.
itself. I mean, Ferlinghetti and City Lights are mentioned
in the very first chapter, when Allen excitedly tells
Helen Weaver: If only! It doesn’t work that way, I’m Helen and me about the forthcoming publication
afraid. of Howl. For a book about Kerouac, City Lights is a
no brainer. I always knew that my book about Jack would be
published, even if it wasn’t any good, just because David Wills: What did you learn from Kerouac when
of his status as an American icon. In a way that you knew him, and what of his wisdom have you
slowed me down, because I wanted it to be as good as come to appreciate with time?
possible. I couldn’t just dash it off. And a good thing I
didn’t, because my feelings about Jack changed over Helen Weaver: Oh boy! I’m afraid when I knew him
the years. He died in 1969; I didn’t appreciate him I didn’t learn much. I was a stubborn little intellectual.
fully as a writer until almost twenty years later.
Well, I did learn – or maybe knowing him made me
more conscious of–my own ambition to be a writer. I don’t have an agent, but I had a lot of help from
my friends: Dan Wakefield, author of New York in Our very first conversation was about writing. When
the Fifties; Michael Korda, for whom I did a lot of he took a dogeared copy of The Town and the City out
translating work when he was editor in chief at Simon of his rucksack, he told me, “It’s like Thomas Wolfe.”
& Schuster; and Bob Gottlieb, who was editor in chief I had read Look Homeward, Angel in high school and
of Knopf and later of The New Yorker. They all went fallen in love with it, but in college I discovered Henry
out of their way to open doors for me in the rather James, and decided I had outgrown Wolfe. insular world of New York publishing. I told Jack that Wolfe lacked discipline, and was lucky
I submitted the book seven or eight times and acquired he had Maxwell Perkins for an editor. Well, that was
some very enthusiastic rejection letters: You’re a good like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and the battle
writer, you paint a vivid picture of the times, but it’s was joined. We debated the merits of Wolfe vs. James
not quite right for our list, etc.
like two old friends.
Through a writer and free lance editor named Deborah
Straw (who had reviewed my 2001 book The Daisy
Sutra for Publishers Weekly) I got a reading at Inner
Traditions, a New Age publisher up in Vermont.
70
Beatdom
I certainly learned what it was like to live with a genius.
Frieda Lawrence wrote her friend Mabel Dodge, “Try
it then yourself, living with a genius, see what it is
like and how easy it is.” Not that this stopped me from
being attracted to some very extreme types. But living
with Jack was an education. I learned that I needed a
more peaceful, organized existence. Perhaps that was
when I learned that I am a solitary, that I love and
need vast amounts of solitude, which goes very well
with writing.
writer should try reading him aloud. “That’s the secret, that’s the test of poetry. And that’s
the reason On the Road has sold over three million
copies. On the Road is a poem.”
Back in 1970 when I was working as an editor at
And with time I’ve come to embrace the very Buddhist Chelsea House Publishers, I rejected Visions of Cody.
philosophy that I originally dismissed. Right now, I’m rereading that book and discovering all
the things I missed. So I’m still learning to appreciate
Most of all, I’ve come to appreciate Kerouac as a Jack’s wisdom. writer. Too bad it took so many years; but in this I am like
When I read The Town and the City in 1956 I was in love many of my contemporaries. It took America a long
with him, and I admired it very much. By the time On time to give Jack Kerouac the respect he deserves.
the Road came out in 1957 I had moved on, and I read
that book through the eyes of the disappointed lover. So writing this book has been, at least in part, an act
The sexism blinded me to the poetry, and I didn’t of atonement.
understand or appreciate that book–again, until long
after Jack had died. I tell the story of how this came about in The
Awakener:
“I was visiting my niece Annie and her
boyfriend Nate up in Vermont, and we were
talking about Kerouac. I had recently started
reading all of his books in preparation for
writing about him. I kept coming upon words
I didn’t know, like prognathic (jutting-jawed)
and hincty:that last one wasn’t in Webster’s
Unabridged, and I wondered if he made it
up.
“So Nate got out his Oxford English
Dictionary. It said “hincty” was American
slang and meant conceited, snobbish, stuck
up, and it quoted On the Road: “Wetting
their eyebrows with hincty fingertip.” The
OED said it was on page 86 but we looked in
Nate’s paperback copy of On the Road and
we couldn’t find it.
“Just in case we missed it I read page 86 out
loud. That page fell in the middle of the story
about the little Mexican girl, with a great
description of the streets of Hollywood. “And that was when it happened. For the first
time in my life, I heard the music of Kerouac’s
words. For the first time in my life, I got it.
And I remembered hearing somewhere that
people who don’t think Kerouac is a great
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