I often hear people complain about “dirty hippies”. Well, cleanliness is a virtue. But I’ve never understood why anybody would hate hippies. Is it that their exuberance is embarrassing? I like hippies, and I also like several writers identified with the post-Beat/hippie literary tradition of the 1960s and 1970s, many of whom are still active (or being remembered) today.
1. Johnny Depp is the star of a new film based on Hunter S. Thompson’s novel of sin and excitement in Puerto Rico, The Rum Diary. Haven’t seen it yet, but early indications are encouraging.
2. The late-career writings of the once-acclaimed novelist Ken Kesey were scant and unimpressive, but I recently wondered if this only indicated that Kesey had lost interest in the book format, and if there might be more substance to Kesey’s later collectivist theatrical experiments than is commonly thought. Mike Egan’s new book Ken Kesey and Storytelling as Collaborative Ritual
3. Karen Lillis has written a memoir, Bagging the Beats at Midnight, about her years as a bookseller at the endangered St. Mark’s Bookshop (which remains one of the best places in New York City, and I hope it will never go away). Bagging the Beats includes chapters with titles like “Susan Sontag Wants The Manager & Richard Hell Wants the Bathroom Key”.
4. Beatitude
5. Indefatigable Beat/Buddhist poet Anne Waldman has spent twenty years composing an epic poem, a postmodern spin on classical creation mythology. I’d be lying if I told you I read the entire 720-page verse play now published in a single thick volume as The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment
6. Empty Mirror Books calls out: Ted Joans lives!
7. A new site devoted to Charles Plymell, Zap Comix founder, jazz poet, Beat novelist, proud dirty hippie forever.
8. Flannery O’Connor did not care for the Beat Generation.
9. Loren Glass has written a two-part profile of Grove Books/Evergreen Review publisher Barney Rosset.
10. Swinging London happener Barry Miles, once a groovy literary Austin Powers of his day, has written a new book called In the Seventies: Adventures in the Counterculture.
11. I’ll be very excited to read the first major biography of author Kurt Vonnegut, And So It Goes, which will hit the streets in early November. Biographer Charles Shields has been blogging the biographical process.
12. Bruce Jay Friedman, a hot writer on the scene in the 1960s and 1970s (and, more quietly, since), has published a memoir of his literary career, Lucky Bruce
13. Joseph Heller’s daughter Erica Heller has written a memoir too: Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22
14. More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
15. Kenneth Patchen: A Centennial Selection
16. Some Beat historians protest: Shig Murao is in danger of being written out of the history of City Lights and the San Francisco Beat era.
17. A new play based on the autobiographical poem Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg has been staged in New York City.
18. The Wars of Love and other Poems
When Jack Gilbert, some time in the 1970’s in San Francisco, asked his poetry class, “Who here aspires to write a masterpiece?”, not one hand was raised. I, on the other hand, wanted to do just that; after reading Blake’s Prophetic Books for the first time, as a naive youth, I said to myself: “Wow! I’d like to write one of those!” So I tried my best; it took me thirty-three years.
The idol of “street language” that entered my art in the 1970’s was of no interest to me; I wanted to write in a dense, heightened, magical, poetic language such as ear of cabbie or bar-fly had never heard. I respect those poets who, like my mentor Lew Welch, can bring high poetic diction and “the common speech of the Tribe” seamlessly together; in many ways I like that kind of poetry better than I do my own. But I was given to write in a certain style, to fill in a certain blank square on the map of the English language, and so I complied. The Muse assigns styles as God assigns fates, and thus—to paraphrase the Hindu scriptures—”it is better to write one’s own poetry, no matter how poorly, than to try and write somebody else’s, no matter how well.”
19. David Foster Wallace was more or less a dirty hippie postmodernist (though he probably hated hippies too) back in the 90s when he was hanging around with Jeffrey Eugenides, Mary Karr and Jonathan Franzen. Speaking of Eugenides — everybody’s talking about his new novel, The Marriage Plot
20. From those dirty hippies over at Reality Sandwich: Occupation Poetry.
10 Responses
Excellent reading as always,
Excellent reading as always, Levi.
I very much like the Beats but I have to agree with Flannery O’Connor, something about indulging everything sensual smacks of indiscipline.
Not so sure about her knocking them for looking like poets though. It’s a good point really but I get to thinking looking like poet may be inevitable. Case in point, some of the recent poet laureates (US) look kinda similar on the face of things (Collins, Kooser, Merwin, Levin). Deserves some more thought.
Thanks for the great post.
Levi, I believe Easy Rider
Levi, I believe Easy Rider answers your question about why people hate hippies:
George Hanson: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.
Billy: Man, everybody got chicken, that’s what happened. Hey, we can’t even get into like, a second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel, you dig? They think we’re gonna cut their throat or somethin’. They’re scared, man.
George Hanson: They’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ’em.
Billy: Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.
George Hanson: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about.
George Hanson: Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what’s it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.
Billy: Well, it don’t make ’em runnin’ scared.
George Hanson: No, it makes ’em dangerous.
Good call, Nardo! Great
Good call, Nardo! Great movie.
O’Connor’s essay has some
O’Connor’s essay has some interesting bon mots–if predictably moralistic– but you should be aware the “Maverick Philosopher” (aka Billy Vallicelli, whose blog you linked to) is anything but a beat, unless like Rudy Giuliani or Christie counts as a “beat” too–and is hardly talented or clever enough to be a …LFCeline sort of character. He puts on a sort of bogus beatnik schtick once in a while, between posts calling for arresting all non-conservatives, DFH’s , or praising religious extremists, and his “philosophy”–sort of a bizarre platonic thing (yet…anyone who read the cliffsnotes to the Republic might recall…even the austere athenians were not quite nazis). He allows no comments except to a few fellow jaggoffs. Anti-semitic as well–read between the lines. MavP was a member of the “Right Reason” blog a few years back–neo-con guys who thought Bush was soft. He’s ….un joto grande
Thanks for the comment, Ezra
Thanks for the comment, Ezra Hound. Regarding the Maverick Philosopher: well, I certainly don’t agree with his politics, but I don’t think there’s anything insidious or secretive about his conservative beliefs. He shares his political opinions openly, as every blogger should. And I think he’s a lively writer with a brisk and readable style, which is more than I can say for 9 out of 10 philosophy bloggers I try to read. So he’s okay with me, even though I disagree with him on nearly every political issue.
the Mav P. does at time
the Mav P. does at time allude to that cold war “philosopher” Ayn Rand. Perhaps a shared interest in the divine Ayn, Lit Kicks? That’s Vallicelli’s politics at least (and probably his metaphysics, regardless of his supposed love of the klassics). Existence mutha-f-ing exists
Nice compilation, Levi. I
Nice compilation, Levi. I recently read Flannery O’Connor’s novel ‘The Violent Bear It Away” and her book of short stories ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find.’ She was a great writer and very dark. Men do not come off well at all in her fiction. Not to be trusted. That was probably her main problem with the Beats–they were men.
I would definitely add
I would definitely add Richard Brautigan to this list of dirty hippie writers.
He brought a purely psychedelic/freewheeling/survivalist/dirty hippie vibe to literature that you don’t really see that often, even from other “hippie” writers.
Hi Levi,
I share your view on
Hi Levi,
I share your view on hippies. To put it succinctly, they got a bad rap. To rectify that I wrote a comic narrative fiction biography piece called The Beauregarde Affair, where I take a year or so from the hipster 70’s and compress it into a month of madness. With flashbacks, of course. And illustrations. It just came out on Amazon a couple of weeks ago.
Although I was a ‘nobody’ back then, or especially because I was just that, I feel my story more accurately portrays the average Joe Hippie than books written by people more prominently featured in the crosshairs of the media eye. Please feel free to visit my website and take a gander.
Cheers!
Brian
Btw – what about The Fanman by Kotzwinkle?
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