The Harder They Come
T.C. Boyle wrote The Harder They Come. It is based on the story of Aaron Bassler. A young man takes the wrong drugs, is inspired by the wrong stories, kills two men, and is killed by the police.
In one book tour interview, Mr. Boyle talks about the violence in America. There usually is a recent event to refer to. With more guns, and more anger, people are getting hurt. Rather than deliver a lecture, Mr. Boyle tells a story.
Adam is a troubled young man. He prefers to be called Colter, in honor of a frontier hero. He spends most of his time in the woods of Northern California. Adam shacks up with Sara, another lost soul. Things go relatively smoothly until the house Adam lives in is sold.
While all this is going on, Adam’s father, Sten, tries to enjoy his retirement. One of Sten’s neighbors is fired up about the Mexicans growing dope in the forests, and wants to do something. The man goes hiking in the forests, looking for drug activity. He stumbles onto Adam, who is living in the woods. After a verbal confrontation, Adam shoots the hiker dead. Before long there is another killing in the forest, and a massive manhunt ensues. After coltering his way out of danger for a month, the police find Adam, with fatal consequences.
The story is well written and entertaining, as is all T.C. Boyle product. At times the plot takes twists that are tough to believe. Sara sees a police car in a parking lot, and wants revenge. People in this tale are always getting even for something. Sara goes into the police car, opens the cover to the gas tank, and pours a container of sugar water into the fuel. This does not seem likely.
There are no easy answers. Weapons are easily available to drug addled young men. Everyone who lives in a coastal paradise is angry. Eventually it all boil over, people get hurt, and PG has a story to read. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Slaughterhouse-Five Part Three
Welcome to part three of the Vonnegutian excavation of Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. Parts one and two have already been published. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. It is written like J. R. R. Tolkien. This is a repost.
It is a lovely last day of July in Georgia. This chapter will be include chapters three and four. This project is at a lovely interlude. The rythyms and methods have been established. It is still fun to write, without the dreary duty involved in the final chapters. Hopefully it will be fun to read. It is early enough in the day that the window can be left open. Joggers and dog walkers are in the road, accompanied by baby strollers and cell phones. It is a great day in post racial Amerika.
Billy Pilgrim (BP) has been captured by the Germans. It was the tail end of the war, and most of the elite soldiers were pushing up Russian daisies. The Germans who captured BP were teenage boys and toothless old men. Their uniforms were taken off of dead soldiers. This ghoulish bit of recycling was marked by the phrase “so it goes.” It is noted in this text as SIG020.
The commander of the unit, that captured BP, was a corporal. He had been wounded four times, and sent back into action. The corporal wore golden cavalry boots, stolen off a dead Hungarian colonel. SIG021. This theme of stealing footwear from prisoners will be played out soon.
Roland Weary is well equipped. He has a spectacular hunting knife, scarves, boots, and a bullet proof Bible. When he is captured, the Germans take all his pretties away. His combat boots are taken off his feet, and given to one of the teenage boys. The boy had wooden clogs, which were given to Roland Weary. It did not work out well for the captured Amerikan.
While admiring the manly footwear of the colonel, BP hears three shots in the distance. Two Amerikan scouts were killed. SIG022. These scouts had been with BP, and Roland Weary, and had left them. Roland Weary thought thet him, and the scouts, were the Three Musketeers. The scouts thought Roland Weary was an obnoxious jerk. As KV said in another book, some people are just no damn good. Some people say that KV had a negative attitude.
While the Germans were dealing with him, BP began to time travel. He wound up in Ilium NY, 1967, when BP was 44 years old. His apparent date of birth varies throughout the text, which is not a big deal on Tralfamadore. BP, a wealthy optometrist, drives a Cadillac El Dorado Coupe de Ville. It has a bumber sticker that says “Impeach Earl Warren.”
PG was 13 yo in part of 1967, and can remember Earl Warren. The man was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. This version of SCOTUS handed down decisions about school desegregation, and Miranda rights, that upset conservatives. Before that, Mr. Warren was Governor of California, and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate in 1948. This was an election the Republicans had no business losing, but Harry Truman got the electoral votes. Earl Warren is little remembered today. The fact that PG recognizes the name, and the bumper sticker, makes him feel old in 2015.
BP had a good life in 1967. He drove a Cadillac, and made lots of money. BP went to Lions Club meetings, where the speaker said to bomb North Vietnam back into the stone age. His daughter was about to be married. One problem is the death of a beloved dog, Spot. SIG023.
1967 was much more appealing than the 1944 reality of capture by Germans. BP, however, was an optimist, and eventually an optometrist. It was all about how you see things. BP saw soldiers with piano teeth, and corpses with blue and ivory feet. SIG024. Soon, the captured Amerikans were paraded in front of a movie camera. There was no film in the camera, but the POW did not know that. On the horizon was a puff of smoke. A battle was being fought, and soldiers were dying. SIG025.
Eventually, the POW were loaded into train cars. The cars were marked with orange and black stripes, as a signal to the allied bombers. Later, when Barbara Pilgrim was married, the tents at the reception had orange and black stripes. The reception was in no danger of enemy bombers, even though it was hosted by a time traveling former POW.
While on the train car, BP had to endure a conversation with a geriatric Colonel, whose lungs rattled like greasy paper bags. The Colonel invited everyone to a barbeque in Cody WY. After a while, PG was ushered into a different train car from the Colonel, who outranked him. Soon, word arrived that a man had died in another car. SIG026. The deceased combatant was Wild Bob. SIG027. BP was chatting with a hobo, who said he had seen much worse than this. Little did he know what awaited him. Or maybe he did know. This is the end of chapter three.
At the start of chapter four, we learn that BP’s wife is named Valencia. Her daughter has just been married, before having a reception in an orange and black tent. BP is having trouble sleeping, and goes downstairs. There is a half empty bottle of champagne. Yes, the bottle is half empty, not half full, as if that is an important distinction on Tralfamadore. BP pulls the cork out of the bottle, and there is no fizz. The champagne is dead. SIG028.
Soon, the spaceshop … no mister clumsy typist, it is a space ship, not a space shop. … the spaceship from Tralfamadore lands in the back yard. Trallies do not speak. However, they have a voice synthesizer which imitates earthling sounds. This tactic is employed for comic effect in the movie. While BP is screwing Montana Wildhack, the voice machine asks if they are mating.
Nobody dies during the Tralfamadorian abduction, and there is no occasion for an SIG. This is made up for when BP returns to the POW train. First, the hobo says “You think this is bad? This ain’t bad.” SIG 029. Then, there is a death in the car ahead of BP. Roland Weary succumbs to gangrene, brought about by marching, in wooden clogs. SIG030. Roland Weary blames BP for his death.
This is one of the moments when PG feels a bond with BP, who, it should be remembered, is a fictional character. You meet someone, under bad circumstances, who is an asshole. Something bad happens to the asshole, who follows the asshole tradition of looking for someone to blame his misfortune on. The lucky person is you. It is not always pleasant. This thought may, or may not, be with BP as he finally gets off the POW wagon. BP is the next to last person off the train. The last person off is the dead hobo. SIG031.
When the POW arrive, they are led to a pile of clothing. It was overcoats, taken from other POW, who are now taking the German dirt nap. SIG032. BP gets a civilian coat, with a fur collar. It is way too small for him, and looks like a three cornered hat. SIG033.
BP meets Edgar Derby, who will play an important role in this story. We already know this. KV does not like suspense. Mr. Derby cradled the head of Roland Weary as the asshole left the planet. SIG034. KV cannot resist the temptation to tell us what will happen to Mr. Derby in sixty eight days. SIG035.
By now, BP is naked. This is part of the introduction to POW life. By coincidence, when BP went to Tralfamadore, the first thing they said to do was take off the clothes. BP is being deloused, which is an underrated function in wartime. The clothing of BP goes through a chemical process that kills lice, bacteria, and cooties. SIG036. This is the last SIG in this installment.
Before long, BP time travels back to Tralfamadore. The trallie is explaining a few basic things to BP. At this point we get the most important quote in SF. PG read this in 1978, and never forgot it. PG looked for this quote on the internet, and nobody thought it was important enough to share. It is amazing that this should be so esoteric, as this quote is at the end of chapter four.
“If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,’ said the Tralfamadorian, ‘I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by “free will.” I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”
On The Road: The End
The On The Road series is sputtering to a halt. PG seems to remember doing the first 2 chapters of part 4. He did not copy the link to the overview. The next step is to review the last 15 days of posting, to see if it turns up. It turns out PG wrote The Bike Wreck in the waiting room of a doc-in-a-box.
The injured shoulder is still a problem. Such is the life of an old fogie. Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady and Sal Paradise/Jack Kerouac both croaked in their forties. Life fast and leave a pretty corpse. Pictures of merry prankster Neal are not pretty. Even compared to William F. Buckley, Kerouac is not pretty. Maybe the best thing to do is wallow in youtube degenerate research, take notes, and put off writing this book report one more day.
A few slack days passed. Just bite the bullet, start to write something, and maybe the creative juices will kick in. In chapter 3, Dean arrives in Denver. D&S go out looking for kicks, and come home without getting kicked. “Say, Dean gets crazier every year, doesn’t he?” “I had finally found the castle where the great snake of the world was about to rise up.”
In chapter 4 of part 4, the crew starts to go to Mexico. D&S now have a third stooge, Stan, who gets bitten by a critter, and needs to go see a doctor. Soon, they are in the endless travel vortex of Texas. “Texas was undeniable; we burned slowly into Abilene and woke up to look at it. “Imagine living in this town a thousand miles from cities. Whoop, whoop, over there by the tracks, old town Abilene where they shipped the cows and shot it up for gumshoes and drank red-eye. Look out there” yelled Dean out the window with his mouth contorted like W.C.Fields.” At some point, Dean quits talking for a few minutes, then starts back again. Soon, the border came and went.“Behind us lay the whole of America and everything Dean and I had previously known about life, and life on the road. We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic.”
“The boys were sleeping, and I was alone in my eternity at the wheel, and the road ran straight as an arrow. Not like driving across Carolina, or Texas, or Arizona, or Illinois; but like driving across the world and into the places where we would finally learn ourselves … These people were unmistakably Indians and were not at all like the Pedros and Panchos of silly civilized American lore — they had high cheekbones, and slanted eyes, and soft ways; they were not fools, they were not clowns; they were great, grave Indians and they were the source of mankind and the fathers of it… For when destruction comes to the world of “history” and the Apocalypse of the Fellahin returns once more as so many times before, people will still stare with the same eyes from the caves of Mexico as well as from the caves of Bali, where it all began and where Adam was suckled and taught to know.”
Before long, the boys were in Gregoria. A guide named Victor appeared. Soon los muchachos tienen marihuana para fumar. The next verse, in this Gregorian chant, was a visit to a whorehouse. “Soon it would be mysterious night in old gone Gregoria. The mambo never let up for a moment, it frenzied on like an endless journey in the jungle. I couldn’t take my eyes off the little dark girl and the way, like a queen, she walked around and was even reduced by the sullen bartender to menial tasks such as bringing us drinks and sweeping the back.”
“I was set upon by a fat and uninteresting girl with a puppy dog, who got sore at me when I took a dislike to the dog because it kept trying to bite me.” Dean had no such troubles. Dean Moriarty, or real life destination Neal Cassady, was a legendary stud. Everybody Knows, Nobody Cares, Or: Neal Cassady’s Penis. When you ask if the Cassady hopalong was cut, or uncut, you are directed to That time Gore Vidal porked Jack Kerouac. To Mr. Vidal’s surprise, Mr. Kerouac was circumcized.
As Allen Ginsberg/Carlo Marx knew, Neal’s goodies were not for ladies only. At one point early in their relationship, Carolyn Cassady/Camille saw more than was customary and reasonable. “What was so wrong with three people who loved each other sharing a bed at the same time? Lu Anne asks in “One and Only” (Heart Beat … shows Carolyn discovering Lu Anne in bed with Neal and Allen Ginsberg.)” Lu Anne Henderson, Marylou in OTR, was Neal’s first wife.
The boys go on to Mexico City, another gone party out of control. Sal gets some kind of tourist bug, and is deathly ill. “I didn’t know who he was anymore, and he knew this, and sympathized, and pulled the blanket over my shoulders.” Dean needs to get back to his wives, and leaves Sal to fend for himself. You knew I was a scorpion when you gave me a ride.
Part five is only a few pages long. Sal gets back to New York eventually. Dean sends him a letter. “I wrote to Dean and told him. He wrote back a huge letter eighteen thousand words long, all about his young years in Denver, and said he was coming to get me an personally select the old truck himslef and drive us home.” This letter was said to inspire Sal’s not-writing-typing style, and may have been plagiarized. “The letter was put up for sale at Christie’s in 2016, but failed to reach the $400,000 minimum. It was offered again in March at Heritage Auctions, where Emory purchased it for $206,250, including buyer’s premium, according to information on the auction house’s website.”
So much for the gasoline soaked adventures of Dean and Sal. The previous installments of this series are available. part one part two part three part four part five part six Pictures for part seven today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
2:07 P.M.
PG started to feel the familiar stiffness in his big toe. While it was not painful, it could get worse. PG decided to take the offensive, and get treated before the stiffness turns to pain. This means going to the herbal emporium of Dr. Xu. You go to the office , and sign in. He sees you when he sees you.
When facing quality time in a waiting room, it is best to bring a book. The reading material for PG these days is Skinny Legs and All, by Tom Robbins. PG read SLAA in the early 90’s, when he was working in an office downtown. Like all Robbins stories, a re-do reading will uncover noisy nuggets of knowledge, and forgotten figments of imagination.
While warming up the vehicle, PG saw the word “orchidaceous” on page 197. If something like the o-word gets PG’s attention, his response is to note the page number, and put an inkpen dot on both sides of it. As it so happens, on this day PG was looking at page 198, and saw “then allowed” with a ball point bump on both sides. This was referring to a New York art dealer.
The full sentence was “It was as if Gropius had created her, then allowed Gaudi to add the boobs.” The art-monger in question had an unremarkable face, but a generous mammary allowance. The bosomy business lady was discussing the art of Ellen Cherry Petway. At the same time, a vehicle, crafted by Boomer Petway, was eliciting exclamations of magnifque. The automobile was crafted to look like a giant turkey. It had been delivered to Ellen Cherry Charles as a love offering before the wedding. Now, the sheet metal bird was stealing the thunder of Ellen Cherry, who considers herself to be the artiste. This was not a good development for the recently consummated marriage.
The Petways are soon going to trendy New York parties. Ellen Cherry has this country-girl notion of what an art party should be like, and finds the real thing to be lacking. Boomer has another reaction. “I guess that’s what I like about ’em. … They’re just as petty as everybody else.”
Petty is one of those eye-of-the-beholder concepts. Certainly, the current social justice discourse in America explores new levels of petty every day. The five letters p-e-t-t-y can be retrofitted with all five vowels, with y left to ask why. Patty, petty, pitty, potty, putty. All five work. Even pitty does double duty as an “obsolete spelling of pity,” as well as the stage name of a Brazilian rock and roll lady.
PG stumbled onto the art party comment at 1:24 pm, soon after he got down to some serious waiting. A half hour later, Ellen Cherry tore up an invitation to Boomer’s one man show. The arty paper turned into mutually destructive snowflakes and sparks. Could Tom Robbins have foreseen the contemporary disrespect for snowflakes in 1989, when SLAA was written?
Snowflakes and sparks made their appearance on page 207. At 2:07 pm, PG was consulting with Dr. Xu. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Smash Cut
Smash Cut by Brad Gooch, turned up at the Chamblee library. The subtitle is “A Memoir of Howard & Art & the ’70s & the ’80s.” The cover has a picture of Brad Gooch and Howard Eric Brookner. The 1979 picture shows BG (google does not know his middle name) and HEB is a small, well used kitchen. Someone wrote, and then scratched out, “at the Chelsea Hotel.” In the notes, we see that BG and HEB were boyfriends in 70s and 80s Manhattan. At some point, HEB got AIDS.
April 27, 1989, was HEB’s last day on the planet. I was 16 weeks into not drinking. HEB was seven days older than me. There are many other parallels between my life, and the concurrent Brad/Howard story. Their story has a lot more famous people involved.
HEB was a filmmaker, with wealthy Jewish parents. He met BG at a bar in Lower Manhattan in 1978. They go back to Howard’s place, drink vodka, and crash. They quickly become boyfriends, and have a terrific time together when they aren’t quarreling about who is fucking who. Howard is working on a movie about William S. Burroughs. When you hang out with Mr. Burroughs, it is considered good manners to take heroin. This becomes a problem for HEB.
Meanwhile, BG was in grad school at Columbia, finishing a PhD in English. He wound up as an English professor at some college. You kind of wonder how BG had time to write a PhD dissertation, while diving into the full tilt sex and drugs of pre-aids Manhattan. Nor do we ever find out how they paid for all this high octane living.
BG becomes a model, hanging out in Europe for a while. HEB decides he doesn’t want to be BG’s boyfriend anymore. That continues off and on for a few years, until that day in 1987 when HEB finds out he is HIV positive.The first year it doesn’t really cause that many problems, but then it does. The last 40 pages of this book are incredibly tough to read. HEB goes into the hospital, it seems like he’s never going to come home. BG gets a job as a professor, and publishes a novel, in addition to being there for HEB. Eventually, HEB got another o.i., and moved on.
Smash Cut is the third book by BG I have started. The Flannery O’Connor book is excellent. The Rumi book has too many unpronounceable names. SC is an fun read, full of gossipy stories about people like Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Keith Haring. The publicity machine is already cranking up for book that BG wrote about Mr. Haring. If the last 40 pages of SC are too difficult, you can skip over it. You already know how it is going to turn out. Pictures today are by The Library of Congress
Howl-A-Thon
This is a repost from 2011. The facebook links to pictures from the event work in 2023. (one two) Some of the people were strangers in 2011, but are friends today. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.
PG was in the audience for the Howl-A-Thon Friday night. He sat in the back row, so he could discreetly leave when he got bored. To his surprise, he stayed to the end.
The scene of the event was the E church in Candler Park. The church is a classic granite chapel, originally built for an African American congregation. PG used to attend a “circle of healing”, that was held in the sanctuary. Some of that magic came back during the Howl-A-Thon.
PG found an updated version of “Howl”, which he called Howl 2011 (a.k.a. the anti howl). He thought it would be fun to read at the event. However, the Howl-A-Thon was tightly planned, and there was no room at the inn. It was suggested that PG read the updated Howl on the steps of the church. … The 2011 link to the Howl satire has an amusing message for 2023.
At 7:20 pm, PG stood up, and read “I saw the greatest hopes of my Christian nation destroyed”. No body stopped to listen, although a few shouted approval of key phrases. Most of the time, PG was reading for himself. It had an artistic feel to it. When he went inside, PG introduced himself to someone he had known 13 years ago. This person asked if PG had written that poem.
After a while, the MC smashed a pie pan against the microphone, and the performance began. He introduced Mr. Ginsberg to the audience, noting that the self promoting bard sent a copy of his work to William Faulkner. After this presentation, a young lady stood up and began to read a poem. She alternated reading with another man, until the first part of the show was over.
An evening of reading poems, by a dead beatnik, sounds dreadfully dull. The Howl-A-Thon was cleverly staged, and made the time go by fast. The title poem was read by 6 authors, with cheers for the parts that got the work banned in 1956. PG kept an eye on the door, but the police never arrived.
There was one part of the evening that PG would have changed. A young man read a poem about Mr. Ginsberg’s last day job, as a baggage handler at the Greyhound station in San Francisco. (The facility used to have a seedy building next door, The Atlanta Hotel.) If anyone had asked, PG would have said, please turn the intensity down a couple of notches. After the young man was through, the MC asked if anyone had a phone book for him to read.
The high point of the evening was reading Kaddish . The poem is the story of Naomi Ginsberg, the poet’s crazy mother. There is an image of the 12 y.o. Allen riding a bus, depressed because he couldn’t do anything for his mother. To anyone who has grown up with madness, it is a powerful image. The healing magic from 20 years ago came pouring out of the walls, to surround PG in lavender light.
Dark And Stormy Night
“I was stark naked, stoned out of my mind on heroin, and between my legs giving me head was Janis Joplin.” These 21 words open Going Down With Janis. Peggy Caserta was allegedly the gf, and definitely the heroin buddy, of the chanteuse.
There isn’t anywhere to go from there but up. As it turns out, the intercom is full of people who supply good opening lines from literature. It saves you the trouble of reading the rest of the book.
Here are Top 10 Most Outrageous Opening Lines in Literature, in reverse order. Three quotes are included from the comments. Ten are from opening sentences, which advertises Filipino Cupid. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is an edited repost from 2012. Most of the links in this paragraph no longer work.
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY Douglas Adams 1979 “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
NEUROMANCER William Gibson 1984 “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1864 “I am a sick man . . . I am a wicked man. An unattractive man, I think my liver hurts.”
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST Ken Kesey 1962 “They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.”
TRAINSPOTTING Irvine Welsh 1993 “The sweat was lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.”
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS Hunter S. Thompson 1971 “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . .’ And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming, ‘Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'”
THE METAMORPHOSIS Franz Kafka 1915 “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen, 1813 “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
The Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger, 1951 “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
Moby Dick Herman Melville, 1850 “Call me Ishmael.”
Peter Pan JM Barrie, 1911 “All children, except one, grow up.”
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy, 1873-7 “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Women Charles Bukowski “I was 50 years old and hadn’t been to bed with a woman for four years. I had no women friends. I looked at them as I passed them on the streets or wherever I saw them, but I looked at them without yearning and with a sense of futility. I masturbated regularly, but the idea of having a relationship with a woman—even on non-sexual terms—was beyond my imagination.”
The Bible author unknown Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth”
Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs “I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train… Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back.”
Publicly Shamed
When an author has book product, the author gets interviewed. This is how PG first heard of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson. The act of using “the media” to promote book product is a curious analog to shaming. To have the exhibitionism on the wtf podcast, starring the shame-proof Marc Maron, is an item on the irony buffet. This is a repost from 2015.
Justine Sacco made an unwise tweet about AIDS and white privilege. She landed in South Africa to discover herself notorious, and unemployed. The tabloid press said Max Mosley was at a Nazi themed sex party. He sued the paper about the Nazi part, won a settlement, and boasted of being a player. The tabloid newspaper got caught in another scandal, and was shut down.
This being non fiction, Mr. Ronson goes all over the place. There is a $500 a seat weekend seminar on “radical honesty.” There are academics, of various levels of intelligence, who write about shaming, prison techniques, and other trivia. There is a company who floods the internet with flattering stories about you, so that the trash goes to page three of google. There are also more people whose lives were ruined by public shaming. One example is the rape victim who committed suicide after her cross examination.
The star shaming saga is donglegate. (spell check suggestion: congregate) Two young men at a tech conference made a tacky joke. A lady, Adria Richards, took a picture of the young men. Immediately, the picture was on twitter. @adrisrichards Not cool Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles Right behind me.
In her interview with Mr. Ronson, Ms. Richards said she felt that the dongle joke jeopardized her safety. “Have you ever heard that thing, Men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” “People might consider that an overblown thing to say”… She had, after all, been in the middle of a tech conference with eight hundred bystanders” “Sure And those people would probably be white and they would probably be male.”
While researching donglegate, Mr. Ronson talked to some people at 4chan. There was a comment made. It went into the preview copies of the book, but not the final edition. This is part of the the publicity process. Someone took offense at this comment, and made an issue out of it. For more details see this story, File under ‘inevitable’: “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” author Jon Ronson slammed by Twitter-shamers.
In all of these tales, Mr. Ronson’s name was spelled correctly. Some say there is no bad publicity. Whatever is said creates awareness of your product. There is a lot of awareness for SYBPS, and Mr. Ronson, right now. @jonronson Feeling incredibly sorry for #RachelDolezal and hope she’s okay. The world knows very little about her, her motives.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Picture #06662 is from “Second International Pageant of Pulchritude and Eighth Annual Bathing Girl Revue, May 21, 22, 23, 1927, Galveston TX.”
A David Bowie Book
David Bowie: A Life was sitting on the biography shelf at the Chamblee library. It is an “oral biography.” Dylan Jones gets the blame, and the copyright. He took a bunch of interviews, and curated salient passages into a narrative. It is a fun book to read, full of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
The Amazon one star reviews beg to differ. Guitar Gregg “I thought this would be biography not assorted comments. Very few comments from David Bowie. Who cares what Debora Harry or hundreds of “Joe blows” have to say? No pictures? 500 pages? Too much too little. Buy his cd’s instead.” worst read ever “Belongs in the fire … worst read ever!”
PG enjoyed DBAL. At some point, the lurid tales of depravity got too quotable, and PG started keeping a list. In this book report, we will use this list, until the list, or the reader’s attention span, is exhausted. There may be another installment. Part one was published last week.
“There’s one instance — probably included just so it would be cited — about someone calling Bowie’s room in New York with an offer of a still-warm corpse. “The town had never seen anything like David before,” says onetime groupie Josette Caruso. “And he obviously looked like such a freak that some sick people thought he might be into necrophilia.” (He wasn’t.) (Page 142)
Page 146 “He (Lou Reed) had an auteur complex, and Bowie didn’t fit into that. Lou was also a prime member of the awkward squad. He could lose a charm competition with Van Morrison.” In 1972 David had gone through years of struggle, and was starting to make it. After the Ziggy Stardust tour, he was hot. At this time, David wound up helping two struggling artists, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop
The Elton John/Rolling Stone article was published during one Iggy phase. “May 1975 — It’s four in the morning, Hollywood time, and David Bowie is twitching with energy. … Bowie clutches his heart and beams like a proud father watching his kid in the school play. His whisper is full of wonder. “They just don’t appreciate Iggy.” he is saying. “He’s Lenny fucking Bruce and James Dean. When that adlib flow starts, there’s nobody like him. It’s verbal jazz, man!” … Bowie and Iggy never did make it back into the studio. Pop slept past the booked time, called up drunk several nights later and when Bowie told him to “go away” — meaning “hang up” — Iggy did just that. Now he’s disappeared. “I hope he’s not dead,” says Bowie, “he’s not a good act.” Iggy will show up later in this story.
Page 151 has stories from the Ziggy tour. In Seattle, the entourage went to a gay bar, and someone invited David to a party. When the next day came, and the tour needed to go to the next city, David was nowhere to be found. When he finally called the hotel, all he knew was that he was in a house, with a lot of trees around it. A hotel employee talked to David on the phone, and they managed to figure out where he was.
Page 155 Lori Mattox was a fifteen year old rock fan in 1972. “We got to the Beverly Hilton, and all went up to Bowie’s enormous suite. … We were getting stoned when, all of a sudden, the bedroom door opens and there is Bowie in this beautiful red and orange and yellow kimono … “Lori, darling, can you come with me? … Of course I did. Then he escorted me into the bedroom, gently took off my clothes, and de-virginized me.”
There is a lot of text about David’s sex life. The boy got around, in spite of, or because of, his open marriage with Angela. Apparently, nature was generous with David. While performatively gay during this era, David made plenty of exceptions with ladies. DBAL is an entertaining book.
Page 176 Ava Cherry was a girlfriend who stuck around. “… and yes, we did have some fun together. We were staying at the Sherry-Netherland one night in New York, where David had given a party for Rudolph Nureyev. At the end of the party, everyone was gone apart from me and David and Mick, (Jagger) so it just ended up with the three of us sleeping together.”
Page 263 87 pages later, David has burned out on American rock stardom, and is living on top of an auto parts store in Berlin. This is the phase which produced Low and Heroes, two creative, though non commercial, efforts. Iggy Pop is back in the picture. Longtime assistant Coco Schwab never left. Iggy Pop : “There’s sevent days in a week: two for bingeing, two for recovery, and three more for any other activity.” Coco Schwab “I remember one elevated subway ride where you ride into East Berlin with no checkpoints and then back out with Absinthe into the west. Trust Jim (Iggy) to find that one.”
Page 277 David meets Adrian Bellew, who is in Frank Zappa’s band. David is talking to Adrian about doing a tour with David. At some point, the two go to a restaurant, where they run into Frank Zappa. “…David tried to strike up a conversation with Frank, saying “This is quite a guitar player you have here” And Frank said, “Fuck you, Captain Tom.” David persisted, and said “Oh come on now, Frank, surely we can be gentleman about this?” And Frank said, “Fuck you, Captain Tom.” … so David said, “So you really have nothing to say?” To which Frank said, “Fuck you, Captain Tom.”
Picture are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the photographs in April, 1941. The setting was Chicago, IL. The bar at Palm Tavern, Negro restaurant on 47th Street. Chicago IL Having fun at roller skating party at Savoy Ballroom. Chicago IL This is a repost.
Hollywood’s Eve Part Four
This is part four of a book report on Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A., by Lili Anolik. More chapters are available. one two three Pictures for this profusion of confusion are from The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.
RACHEL KUSHNER: You mentioned to me (in an email) that you learned new things about yourself from listening to that (very juicy) podcast by Lili Anolik on Bennington College. Can you say more? BRET EASTON ELLIS: It was just odd to hear your life presented as a kind of oral history lesson and even odder to realize that this era at Bennington has somehow become a compelling story for a lot of people. If only we knew back then, I think we might have behaved a bit differently. I think there was an overemphasis on drugs (maybe not) that surprised me, and some publishing stuff surrounding Less Than Zero that I don’t quite remember in the same way a few editors do. I also learned a lot about Donna Tartt, which I hadn’t expected.
BEE is the thread that runs through all of these rags. I first heard about Eve on his podcast, including the Earl McGrath quote. Lili was a guest, probably when she was promoting HE. Lili, at some point, did a podcast series about Bennington College, featuring BEE. Finally, Eve wrote a blurb for Less Than Zero, when BEE was a young nobody.
185 “Eve wasn’t attempting books, though she did blurb one, the debut of a valley boy, a mere sixteen when he completed the first draft. “This is the novel your mother warned you about … Jim Morrison would be proud.” … BEE met Eve after LTZ was published. “My memory of Eve in the semi darkness of Ports in 1985 is that she was very buxom, very flirtatious, great smile. She wasn’t a ditzy Southern California girl. She was almost a parody of that idea. And then through the parody, this no-nonsense intelligence would come out.”
Ports was an accessory for Eve during the squalid overboogie days. “Forty years ago today, on Feb. 9, 1970, a burly actor named Jock Livingston and his artist wife, Micaela, opened an extraordinary, eccentric, and eventually rather legendary restaurant called Ports, across the street from Goldwyn Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. … The place had formerly been a bar called Sports Inn and Jock had climbed up a ladder, … and removed the first letter and the last three. … Micaela had very definite ideas about the people who dined and drank (and worked) at the establishment, and she expressed them with a biting wit. When one brash young man was overheard complaining loudly that he’d been sitting there for 10 minutes and hadn’t gotten menus, she said, sotto voce, “You haven’t even earned your napkins yet.” When a regular described a vapidly handsome young waiter as looking like an 8×10 glossy, she added, “Yes, and only on one side.”
Self promotion is important in the BEE-Lili-Eve world. Capitalist BEE is currently hustling The Shards. Lili returns the favor on facebook: “Lili Anolik reads the iconic opening of Less Than Zero. Return to 1980’s Los Angeles with Bret’s new novel, The Shards, on January 17th. Pre-order now.”
One page 198, Mirandi Babitz enters. Mirandi (née Miriam,) the younger sister of Eve, was a valuable source for Lili. Mirandi was an important part of the story. Mirandi was dating Julian Wasser when he took the chess photograph. Mirandi owned a leather shop, and made a pair for Jim Morrison.
222 “Miranda watched Morrison perform at the London Fog, then called Eve.”You have to see this guy, he’s Edith Piaf with a dick.” Eve stopped by the club the next night, seduced Morrison the night after that … her description of Morrison was pretty irresistible, and Eve, as a rule, didn’t resist.”
241 *”I’m not going to identify this famous lover or any of the other famous lovers mentioned in this section. Why not? To paraphrase Eve, so I don’t get sued!”
250 “… after we’ve brought Eve to the Village Idiot for a lunch of Ale steamed mussels and deep-fried brussel sprouts and cinnamon-sugar-dusted churros, after Eve dragged me to a nearby 7-Eleven so I can buy her $100 worth of British tabloids and disposable e-cigarettes” When Lili caught up with Eve, the LA woman was in reduced circumstances. Eve never really had a job, and when she caught on fire, there were $$ problems. Even in her glory days, Eve knew how to work people. What are tits for?”
Lili pursued Eve. There was a profitable story to be told. Lili saw a payday, took Eve to lunch, and bought her prezzies. When Eve finally accepted Lili’s invitation, the author flew from New York to Los Angeles the next day. Being a doctor’s wife has its advantages. The End
Hollywood’s Eve Part Three
This is a book report on Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A., by Lili Anolik. More chapters are available. one two four Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
109 Eve’s Hollywood was the first book Eve published. Even with a salacious cover photo by girlfriend Annie Leibovitz, the book did not do well. Goodreads has a page of quotes, some of which may not be from EH. “I dressed next to her in gym (on my other side was this nice girl named Cathy whose only flaw was that she was kind of gullible and that kept me from being too shocked when I saw her in Life magazine crouched under a rock as one of the “Manson Family” and called Gypsy).” … “You can’t read Proust at the Laundromat.”
EH is dedicated to a bunch of people, many of whom are famous. One was her Hollywood High English teacher, Harry Major. “And to Mr. Major, I’m sorry I turned out this way.” Mr. Major died February 10, 2014, at 82. He would write young men in prison, and offer them a place to stay. Scott Kratlin took him up on his offer, and showed his appreciation by murdering Mr. Major.
114 Carrie Fisher wound up in Eve’s orbit, even if nobody could remember later. The answering machine at the Fisher house had this message. “Hello and welcome to Carrie’s voice mail. Due to recent electroconvulsive therapy, please pay close attention to the following options. Leave your name, number, and a brief history as to how Carrie knows you, and she will get back to you if this jogs what’s left of her memory. Thank you for calling, and have a great day.”
135 * “Beth Manville is, like every other character in Slow Days Fast Company, a real person, Her name was Peg Thorsdale, and she was the best friend of Petey Mazza (“Jo Marchese”), wife of Aldo Mazza (“Mason Marchese”). And same as Beth, Peg killed herself. Petey was upset by Eve’s story, and what she thought was an unfair swipe at Peg. Slow Days s became a source of tension between Petey and Eve, which, Eve being Eve, scarcely noticed. A strange coincidence:”… Slow Days was reissued in 2016. The publisher had Petey and Aldo’s copy. … “ the inscription: 4/24/77 To Petey and Aldo. Without you I’d be nothing. Love, Eve Babitz. Under Eve’s name was a lipstick kiss, the pink still bright, even after all these years.”
123 * “As I mentioned in the previous section, Fiorucci was the very last work of Eve’s that I read. I did not have to pay $2,000 for the privilege as I feared I might. In the summer of 2016, Jewish Family Services cleaned Eve’s condo. A copy was found. She let me borrow it for the afternoon.”
HE was written before the publication of I Used To Be Charming, a collection of articles Eve wrote. IUTBC contains Fiorucci, another payday for Eve. Here is what chamblee54 said: “Fiorucci, the book takes up the last 48 pages of IUTBC. Eve wrote text for a collection of graphics from the Fiorucci fashion emporium. Fiorucci closed its retail stores in the eighties, and is mostly known today because it rhymes with Gucci. “Zeigt und erklärt, wie und warum Fiorucci in den 70ern und 80ern bigger than life war. Das Buch ist Kunst, Marketinghandbuch und Poesiealbum in einem.”
Hollywood’s Eve Part Two
Publishing Hollywood’s Eve Part One had an unexpected complication. When tweeting the link, I thought it would be cool to tag author @LiliAnolik. Only one problem … the link would not come up. I thought her name was spelled Lily, with a y. Fortunately, WordPress is easy to edit, and I was about to correct this. … So it is another day. The episode will actually be about the Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. Lili has a lot of *notes, for details that don’t fit her narrative. One way to cover HE is to go through the *notes, and see what they inspire.
016 * “Eve has told this story both orally and in writing many—many times as in many—many times. Though the major details remain constant, the minor change. … I went with this one for no better reason than because I like it best.” Julian Wasser was a photographer, a bf of Mirandi Babitz … Eve’s sister … and a California player in 1963. He took a famous picture of Eve playing chess with Marcel Duchamp. Eve’s fashion statement in the picture was very well received.
023 “What are tits for?” * “A rhetorical question posed by Eve, in casual conversation.”
034 “New York is hot in the summer, so I got a boyfriend who had air-conditioning. Ralph Metzner. Ralph was part of Timothy Leary’s team. I hated Tim. He was an alcoholic, and he always ordered everybody around as soon as he walked into a room. He made me type all his lectures, and he couldn’t write.” Eve went to New York in 1966, stayed a year, and had a lot of adventures.
044 “In every young man’s life there is an Eve Babitz. It is usually Eve Babitz.” This observation is in every piece ever written about Eve, so we can now take that off the to-do list. It is blamed on Earl McGrath, who was a well connected piece of work. “I was researching a piece on Andy Warhol and … Edie Sedgwick and received a message …He needed to reschedule the day of our interview. “ Earl’s memorial service has been postponed to let the smart set at Jerry Hall’s wedding to Rupert Murdoch fly across the Atlantic including the bride and groom.”
Earl McGrath is one of the degrees of connection that populated Eve’s life. Earl came from humbled beginnings, and charmed/fucked his way into friendships with many famous people. Eve met Earl one morning at Peter Pilafian’s house. Earl came by one morning to hit on Peter, and became friends with Eve. Earl and Eve were faghag buddies, until they were not. Earl appears in “Slow Days Fast Company” as a toxic queen. … Earl does not have a wikipedia page. Nor does Lili Anolik. As best I can determine, Earl did not have a middle name.
060 It is another rule … all stories about sixties California must mention Charles Manson. “The first time I saw Sharon was at the Cafe’ de Paris in Rome. It was 1961, the same year I saw the pope. I couldn’t believe anyone was that beautiful.” Later, Bobby Beausoleil stayed with Eve for a week. “He’d worn a sign that said “I am Bummer Bob.” I let him stay but hadn’t slept with him because anyone who called himself that, I figured, must have the clap.”
097 *”Once when we were at lunch a woman—Eve’s age—perfectly pleasant seeming, waved from a neighboring table. Eve didn’t return the wave. I asked Eve who the woman was, and she said, eyes wide, voice grave, “That’s my enemy.” (Eve and the woman had, as it happened, shared a boyfriend forty years before.)”
100 Eve wrote to Joseph Heller: “I am a stacked eighteen-year-old blond on Sunset Boulevard. I am also a writer. Eve Babitz.” This letter is another part of the Eve legend. As in other Eve stories, there are several versions, so you must pick the one you like. In this interview, Lili says that Eve had an affair with Mr. Heller. Google does not confirm this detail.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” Other parts of the Hollywood’s Eve series are available. one three four
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