Barney Rosset, Evergreen Review and "Howl," 1956

"Howl" is the howl of the generation, the howl of black jackets, of James Dean, of hip beat angels, of mad saints, of cool Zen, the howl of the Withdrawn, of the crazy Sax-man, of the endless Vision whose visionary is Allen Ginsberg ... "Howl" is essentially a poem to be read aloud but only by the Howler ... any other Howler would screw it up, thus for those who are unable to hear Ginsberg read his "Howl" will have to settle for its visuality. And visuality it has, that is, if you're hip enough to visualize it. If you're a drag go read Wilbur or something.

(Gregory Corso, 1956)

The death of publisher Barney Rosset (1922-2012) seems to conclude a landmark era of 20th-century literature, and the battle over obscenity and censorship that followed the publication of beat writers. Yet censorship is never a finished issue, nor an agreed-upon idea. Each generation wrestles with what is acceptable in print, in broadcast, and in speech. Rosset's Grove Press and Evergreen Review magazine challenged the accepted rules of 1950s America at a time when the threat of Communism made censorship of unpopular ideas a very real possibility.

Howl on Trial is the record surrounding the publication in Evergreen Review of the ecstatically mad poem by Allen Ginsberg, and the obscenity trial which followed. Corso's celebration of the poem's "visuality" was central to its meaning, and is what made the poem such a target for obscenity charges.

A quote at the Allen Ginsberg Project, from Rosset's testimony in the "Howl" trial (alongside fellow Evergreen Review publisher, Don Allen):

“The second issue of Evergreen Review, which was devoted to the work of writers in the San Francisco Bay Area, attempted in large part to show the kinds of serious writing being done by the postwar generation. We published Allen Ginsberg’s poem "Howl" in that issue because we believe that it is a significant modern poem, and that Allen Ginsberg’s intention was to sincerely and honestly present a portion of his own experience of the life of his generation…”

It's difficult now to comprehend what an impact the trial had on American culture. It's equally difficult to imagine contemporary culture without judge Clayton Horn's decision, or justice Potter Stewart's words: "In the free society to which the Constitution has committed us, it is for each to choose for himself."

Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression (City Lights, 2006, edited by Bill Morgan and Nancy Peters) is an especially timely read, collecting correspondence, reporting, magazine articles, and testimony excerpts surrounding the creation of the poem and the subsequent trial. There are some genuinely affecting early letters to friends (in one he addresses Kerouac as "Dear Almond Crackerjax"). Ginsberg was so uncertain of the trial's outcome that he spent most of the time out of the country, and as a result his letters to Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Corso, and many others are a written record of the trial behind the scenes.

The initial public success with "Howl," Ginsberg found to his amazement, was astounding. It was a foreshadowing of the unwelcome publicity to come. To his father Louis he wrote:

"The reading (at the Six Gallery) was pretty great, we had traveling photographers, who appeared on the scene from Vancouver to photograph it, a couple of amateur electronics experts who appeared with tape machines to record, request from state college for a complete recording for the night, requests for copies of the recordings, even finally organizations of bop musicians who want to write music and give big west coast traveling tours of "Howl" as a sort of Jazz Mass, recorded for a west coast company called Fantasy Records that issues a lot of national bop, etc. No kidding. You have no idea what a storm of lunatic-fringe activity I have stirred up."

(Donlin, Cassady, Ginsberg, LaVigne, and Ferlinghetti outside City Lights, 1956)

Even amid the craziness Ginsberg unwittingly "stirred up," the letters show a sense of humor and self-awareness. In the resulting wake of controversy Ginsberg often used this deprecation as a defense and a tool as he endlessly explained himself, often to uncomprehending critics. But this was a humor and a point of view no less expected among his friends. Here he is concluding his letter to Kerouac, slipping out of seriousness in an unexpected burst of humor which also wound up in the finished poem:

"What Sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed in their skulls and ate their brains and imagination?

Moloch Moloch Solitude Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars!

Children screaming under stairways! Old men weeping in parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Skeleton treasuries! Ghostly banks! Eyeless capitols!

Robot apartments! Granite phalluses and monstrous bombs!

Visions! Omens! Hallucinations! Gone down the American River!

Dreams! Miracles! Ecstasies! The whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!" etc.

Love,

Allen

By de-fusing his critics he allowed the poem's readers to see the shock of truth in the words. Ginsberg spent the remainder of his life fighting battles for creative expression, and giving artists the freedom to say what they mean. It was the poet's way of affirming Justice Stewart:

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Long ago, those who wrote our First Amendment charted a different course. They believed a society can be truly strong only when it is truly free."

(1956 City Lights photo by Allen Ginsberg)

"The Traveling Salesman's Abstract", Mark Pietrzykiowski

The Traveling Salesman's Abstract

Marc Pietrzykowski

Pardon me, ma’am, but I couldn’t help

noticing — are you familiar at all

with our 28,000 structures, sequences,

bibliographic citations, taxonomic classifications,

and sequence and structure neighbors?

We’ve extracurricular activities, Girl Scout meetings,

thermal anomalies, witch doctors…

all life-industry specific, no junk.

28,000! people still use traditional units sometimes,

but the wound is always there,

the need for new categories, external assets,

“in bounds” and “out of bounds,”

rules about who can have which sort of bird,

be it hawk, falcon, or eagle,

and be seen with it on their wrist. Ancient vases

and jars, figurines, furniture, lanterns and bird cages…

Aside from correcting the well-known defect, aside from

the ease and convenience therewith,

you’ll note that such a wealth is manifest in the spiel

we devote a sizable portion to hunting the poor,

often with pheromone-spritzed clipboards, they

don’t know to help themselves, we fix them.

How many structures have you squirreled away?

1,062? Half of them amphibolies? How sad.

You cannot share

and we cannot share with you.

Moonlighting might be the answer;

you could find yourself part-time work that’s fun,

fulfilling and financially lucrative.

A large part of the audience tunes in

just to watch the sideshow. Catch them!

Sell and be sold and your structures

and structure sequences might manifold.

Like living in a pop-up book. Exciting!

Or… let me check with the inscrutability vortex…

Ok, just this once, I am authorized to help,

just a bit. But who am I? Why listen? My ethos?

Why, my dear, I am the cat question.

I am a burst valve or two away from stopping altogether.

I’m one who’s learned to systematize, sister.

I can find a path through a weighted graph

which starts and ends at the same vertex,

includes every other vertex exactly once,

and minimizes the total cost of edges.

That’s right, doll, I’m the traveling salesman

and I’m here to make you feel a greater good.

"The Traveling Salesman's Abstract" by Mark Pietrzykiowski originally appeared online at Clutching at Straws. In a recent post he included W.H. Auden's requirements for a personal Eden, one of which was 2 Months of winter (Dec/Jan), including at least 1 heavy snowstorm that makes everyone have to stay home and drink cocoa. Pietrzykiowski's most recent collection, Following Ghosts Upriver, was published in 2011.

An excerpt from "See a Little Light," Bob Mould

New Day Rising was a very different album from Zen Arcade. They were composed only a matter of months apart but when I look back, it seems like years. Before New Day Rising, it was words floating around in notebooks, and me sweeping them up and gathering them all together in my hands like they were snowballs or fastballs, spitting on them, and throwing these words at the listener. The songs were outbursts of confusion, dealing almost exclusively with problems, and rarely offered answers. But the new songs, and their imagery, were different -- they addressed time, the transitory nature of emotions, and the passing of seasons.

"Celebrated Summer" was my first truly effective use of melancholy, a sentiment that was to become an element of my future songwriting. "I Apologize" chronicles a suspicion-filled and explosive relationship, describing how something as seemingly minor as forgetting to take out the trash can highlight how easily a relationaship can go silent. I still play those two songs in most every show.

And if Zen Arcade was the "gram of crystal meth in the first pot of coffee album," then New Day Rising was my drinking album. That's surely why the sessions don't stand out big for me. I'd been drinking heavily for a while, and you don't have to listen too hard to hear my inebriated state. "Perfect Example" was the sound of me sitting alone in front of an open microphone, a wee bit too drunk, muttering through a series of doubts, fears, and regrets. The words tumbled in free verse, and I don't think I listened to it after it was done. Then there's the mindless hardcore blast of "Whatcha Drinkin'": "I don't care what they say / I'll be drinkin' today." ...

We all make our own beds, and when the alarm goes off that's when it's time to wake up.

(from See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, the new autobiography by Bob Mould, published by Little, Brown. Mould is an American musician, singer / songwriter, producer, and DJ. An original member of the influential 1980s punk band Hüsker Dü, he released several albums after the band separated, including Workbook, Copper Blue, Body of Song, and Life and Times.

Barney Rosset (1922-2012)

Barney Rosset (1922-2012)

... After [the 1959 obscenity trial of] Lady Chatterley, [the Post Office] never got involved in obscenity suits again. They learned their lesson, I think.

But if the post office doesn’t arrest you, there are still many other possibilities for arrest. The local police can go into a store and say, Take this book off the shelves, and arrest the bookseller. In Brooklyn they came after me, the publisher, and charged me with conspiracy. They claimed that Henry Miller and I conspired to have him write Tropic of Cancer — that I commissioned him to write it in Brooklyn in 1933! That was a mistake, right? I would have been ten years old, and anyway he wrote the book in Paris. It was insane.

Then John Ciardi wrote a two-page editorial in the Saturday Review blasting the government, absolutely ridiculing the district attorney. In the course of blasting them, he told the history of the book, and that really helped us. I was brought before a grand jury. It was a big room. The jury looked like nice people. The district attorney got up and said, I understand that the children of these people on the grand jury are able to buy Tropic of Cancer at their local newsstand. I said, Well, that’s very good. And if their children bought that book and read it all the way through, then those parents should be congratulated! The district attorney just got laughed out of there by the grand jury.

All the cops in America had settled on page seven or something as the page that made the book arrestable. It’s the page where the woman is shitting five-franc pieces out of her cunt, and there are wild chickens running around — the DA asked me to read it aloud. I did, and that’s when the jury really started laughing. And then he started laughing. And so they dropped it. The grand jury would not indict me. That was only one of hundreds of cases, all over the country, in every state — literally. ...

An excerpt from Ken Jordan's Winter 1997 interview with Barney Rosset in The Paris Review. Photo by Lu Okolski from Studio360.

Charles Gatewood's "Sidetripping": William Burroughs, the loup garou of Mardi Gras

Today is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. In New Orleans or Metarie, and from Jefferson Parish to Baton Rouge, the krewes and their kings will be parading until long after sundown. Revelers are urged to beware loup-garou, who as Cajun children all know, is the werewolf who is always out to snare them. Tomorrow begins the 40 days of fasting and pennance before Easter known as Lent in the Catholic church. Until the streets are cleared of their final guests at midnight, laissez bon-temps rouler!

In the early 1970s photographer Charles Gatewood compiled a book of images he titled Sidetripping, 90 photographs that capture the oblique angles of human nature: glimpses that more often require a second look, a quick scene captured out of the corner of the eye that one may have only imagined. The book was republished in a new edition by Last Gasp in 2002.

Here is an excerpt from Gatewood's memoir, Dirty Old Man, about his frustrating attempts to get the book published. On assignment in London with Rolling Stone writer Robert Palmer to do a feature story on William Burroughs, in 1972, Gatewood approached Burroughs with the assembled photographs. The literary loup-garou agreed to write Gatewood an introduction to the book, and the photographer was overjoyed.

On the last day of our visit, I showed William Burroughs my Sidetripping book-dummy. He liked my bizarre photos, especially the naked “St. Sebastian” boy being led away by uniformed cops at Mardi Gras. He also liked my photo of a drunk fraternity boy pissing on Bourbon Street. “Wild boys,” said William. “Fine work.”

I knew Burroughs believed in verbal sorcery and the power of word-magic. Certain word combinations could be deadly, he said. Words had power. Words could kill.

“I want to make photographs that kill,” I told him.
“When Sidetripping is published,” said Burroughs, “viewers will die, for sure.”
My palms got all sweaty. “Would you write an introduction to the book?”
“Why certainly,” said William. “I’ll be delighted.”

Oh my! William S. Burroughs would introduce my book! Never mind that I didn’t have a publisher — I would certainly find one now!

In April, 1972, Burroughs sent me his three-page introduction to Sidetripping. I read the text with great excitement. It began splendidly, with a sly carny come-on:

"Step right up for the greatest show on earth. The biologic show. Any being you ever imagined in your wildest and dirtiest dreams is here and yours for a price. The biologic price you understand money has no value here … "

After quoting from New Scientist magazine (a piece about brain research), Burroughs continued:

"Charles Gatewood the sidetripping photographer takes what the walker didn’t quite see, something or somebody he may have looked quickly away from and the photo reminds him of something deja vu back in front of his eyes."

Burroughs went on to compare photographers to thieves — a nice touch. He also told how a writer named Dunne in his 1924 book An Experiment With Time found that some incidents in his dreams referred to future time:

"Point is he discovered that his dream referred not to the dream itself but to the account and photos in newspaper."

This was a cool observation — I’ve experienced pre-cognitive dreams too, many times. ...Sidetripping ends with a frat boy pissing in the street as his drunken friends watch:

"Look at the boy’s face. Smiling in the ruins. Dying? So what? We shall overcome. Ambiguous familiar in his face death child with a wide grin ambiguous familiar. AH POOK PISSED HERE."

What kind of ending was that? And who the hell was Ah Pook?

I really couldn’t criticize William’s text — could I? After all, he’d written it as a courtesy, for free. It was all I had. It would have to do.

I cut the Burroughs text into sections, and plugged the text into my Sidetripping book-dummy. There were gaps, for sure, plus that weird ending — but the surreal text did bounce off my raw photos in some powerful ways. At any rate, William Burroughs’ name now graced the cover of my book, and that was a big step forward. ...

Charles Gatewood, 2001

As it turned out, the images in Sidetripping were more confrontational than even the mysteries in Burroughs' text. In a 1996 interview Gatewood explained to Joe Donahoe:

I decided to do a photography book that would show all the madness and ask the basic question "Who is really crazy here?" I've got straight mainstream types, like here's a business man and his wife drunk at Mardi Gras, just regular folks [the "regular folks" stagger inanely, the man has the plastic rings of a Budweiser six-pack looped through his belt support, the woman plows into him with an unnatural looking motion, both have the expression and appearance of rural serial murderers]. Here's a couple of hippies drunk on Bourbon Street [two hippie kids appear out of the dark. Madness can't be said to have claimed them. Two more well mannered young people you couldn't ask for]. Here's some policemen beating up a Yippie. Here's some hard hats out to kill some freak.

There's an old Dylan song that goes "You write for your side, I'll write for mine." So I just wanted to put it all down and let others sort it out. I put a lot of Mardi Gras stuff in here. That's an event where people can get together and celebrate their deviance. That's where I first saw heavily tattooed and pierced guys.

Gatewood writes in a postscript at the RealityStudio site: "In 2011 am producing a deluxe William Burroughs book with Dana Dana Dana editions in San Francisco. It will be a handmade artist’s book containing all the best photos from our 1972 shoot, plus previously unpublished photos of William Burroughs with Jimmy Page in 1975. The book will be similar to A Complete Unknown, my limited edition artist’s book about Bob Dylan. Only 23 copies of (the Burroughs book) will be produced."

Loup-garou

However you celebrate, enjoy Mardi Gras 2012 and don't let loup-garou get his paws on you! For a French-Canadian folktale about the night prowler beast, here's a link to Rowland Robinson's 1894 book of stories, Danvis Folks.

For Mardi Gras: a late-night meeting with a loup-garou

A Loup-garou (image from Wikipedia.)

Here is a blood-chilling folk tale concerning a loup-garou, or werewolf, appearing -- out of nowhere! -- to menace a well-meaning husband, who is saved from certain disaster by the parish priest (and whiskey). With notes and further links from the fascinating website New England Folklore, curated by Peter M in Boston.

Tomorrow, laissez bon-temps rouler ... but always take care!

Many years ago on a dark snowy night a man left his warm house and hitched the horse to his sleigh. His wife was ill, and maybe close to death, so he was going to get the local Catholic priest.

As he rode down the forest road, all he heard was the hiss of the sleigh's runners and the thudding of the horse's hooves. The snow was good for sleighing and soon he was near the church.

Suddenly, the horse slowed down and the sleigh barely moved forward. The man whipped the horse, but to no avail. It was as if the sleigh was suddenly burdened with a two ton load.

Looking back, the man saw a large black wolf with its front paws on the rear of the sleigh. Its hind legs stood in the snow, and was stopping the sleigh from moving forward. The wolf's yellow eyes burned bright in the darkness.

Fear gripped the man's heart. No ordinary wolf was strong enough to stop a sleigh. This was something far worse! It was a loup-garou, a man who had sold himself to the Devil who could turn into a wolf. Sometimes the loup-garous just ate corpses, but sometimes they liked their dinner to be fresher.

The creature jumped fully onto the sleigh, and the sleigh shot forward as the horse pulled harder than ever. The loup-garou stalked to the front of the sleigh and put its front paws on the driver's shoulders. The weight was so heavy the man thought he would be crushed.

In a panic he searched his pockets for his knife. If he could cut the loup-garou its devilish magic would be dispelled and it would turn back into a human. But in the dark night, distracted by the monster's hot breath on his face, he couldn't find it.

By this point the sleigh reached the churchyard and the priest opened the front door. Seeing what was happening, he said a brief prayer. Instantly the monstrous wolf turned back into a man, who fled into the forest.

Luckily the priest had a good supply of whiskey to calm the man's nerves. Even luckier, his wife recovered from her illness and didn't die.

**********

Rowland Robinson apparently wrote fourteen fictional books which incorporated real folkore from New England. Unfortunately, he wrote most of his dialogue in dialect so it's hard for a modern reader to understand. For example, here's a direct quote from the loup-garou story, which is told by a Vermonter of French-Canadian descent. Robinson is trying to capture the storyteller's Quebecois accent:

"De hoss was scare an' run lak hol' hurricanes, 'cause de loup garou gat hees behin' foots off de graound an' can' pull back som more."

My guess at a translation: "The horse was scared and ran like old (?) hurricanes because the loup garou got his behind feet off the ground and can't pull back some more."

If you don't mind a lot of crazy dialect writing, you can find the entire text of Danvis Folks on Google Books for free.

André Breton, born Feb 19, 1896

André Breton and images, 1924 (a collage)

SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

" ...I am in no hurry to understand myself (basta! I shall always understand myself). If such and such a sentence of mine turns out to be somewhat disappointing, at least momentarily, I place my trust in the following sentence to redeem its sins; I carefully refrain from starting it over again or polishing it. The only thing that might prove fatal to me would be the slightest loss of impetus. Words, groups of words which follow one another, manifest among themselves the greatest solidarity. It is not up to me to favor one group over the other. It is up to a miraculous equivalent to intervene -- and intervene it does."

(Excerpts from the Manifesto of Surrealism Manifeste du surréalisme, 1924.

Breton was instrumental in the founding of the Bureau of Surrealist Research and was editor of the magazine La Révolution surréaliste. By the end of World War II he decided to embrace anarchism explicitly; in 1952 Breton wrote "It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself." He lived long enough into the 1960s -- to the age of 70 -- to hear himself denounced by the Lettrist movement which followed him as "a windbag leaking 'flabby rage' hysterically trying to maintain his place in times that had passed him by: 'He offers himself, himself and his generation, to every faith, to every hope, to every boutique. One has learned not to be fooled -- and there he stands." Breton died in Paris September 18, 1966. (Image from lo-fi-topo).