Growing up, always clustered on one of my parents' many bookshelves, were myriad copies of The Paris Review, the literary magazine founded in 1953 by the late George Plimpton.
Plimpton was a larger than life character, a bon vivant extrodinaire, whose parties were almost as famous as his magazine that published such luminaries as Samuel Becket, Jack Kerouac, and Philip Roth. Plimpton not only edited the magazine and hosted the parties but he also wrote books chronicling his one-shot experiences as a football player and a boxer, as well as his friendship with Robert Kennedy (with whom Plimpton was with when RFK was killed). Plimpton also died suddenly, in 2003, and since then the editorship of The Paris Review has passed through a few hands, sometimes with troubling results.
This year a young woman named Emily Nemens has become the editor and she is promising to make the ultimate good-'ol-boy, Old New York swinging literary journal into a fully "woke" #MeToo multi-media enterprise. How this will unfold remains to be seen but it's a tribute to the magazine and Plimpton's legacy that it has survived fifteen-years after his death, and that someone like Nemens, as different form Plimpton as one can be, can take the helm. And maybe she'll discover the 21st Century version of Jack Kerouac (who won't necessarily be a man).
One of my favorite books is Jack Kerouac's 1957 classic On the Road, the quintessential 20th American adventure story of two lost souls who have "Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the the road."
Famously Kerouac wrote the novel on a giant scroll in three weeks but it took four years to get published, thanks to a man named Sterling Lord. A brilliant agent, he managed to get the down-on-his-luck Kerouac $1,000 for the book that wound-up burnishing the writer, and Beat generation, into America culture.
Later on, Lord would represent, amongst many other writers Ken Kesey for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Nicholas Pileggi for Wiseguy that became the great movie Goodfellas.
Born, raised, and educated in Iowa, Lord migrated to NYC as an adult to become the gold-standard for literary agents. His legacy was immense. He was the "guy-behind-the-guy," the patron and promoter of great work who recognized genius and then shared it with all of us.
Sterling Lord has died at the age of 102 -- long-outliving some of his more famous clients who lived fast, hard and, like Kerouac, died much too young.
What an amazing life and legacy Sterling Lord left us. RIP.
Vivian Gornick is a legend in NYC writing circles, having published numerous memories and books of essays about her life and times -- coming of age during the eras of Civil Rights, the Women's Movement, Vietnam, Stagflation, and many other such delights. She blazed the trail in crafting "the confessional" long before it became a mainstay of the publishing world.
She was also a reporter, who wrote for the Village Voice from 1969 to 1977.
In late October 1969 Gornick went to Jack Kerouac's funeral up in Massachusetts. The already-legendary Beat writer, scribe of the classic On the Road, had recently died from alcoholism at the age of 47. Gornick reported on it, seeing people like Alan Ginsberg and Jimmy Breslin there, and there was definitely a sense at this funeral that only had a man but an entire way of life had passed with him. By 1969, the Jazz loving, "hip-cat, groovy man", scatting don't-have-a-care-in-the-world world of the Beat generation had already become passe; now was the time of the Hippy, the protester -- and, more ominously, the Silent Majority.
I'm a huge fan of Kerouac's work, so much so that I even wrote a novel in the vein of On the Road. For me, Kerouac was about freedom, about the wildness of America, about celebrating everything great about being alive and about America. Right now we're living in another dark time, at a time when it's easy to be scared about the possibility of the American idea. A lot of people aren't happy (and you can include me, mostly, amongst them). But Kerouac had an answer for that, of sorts, probably knowing that his death was imminent and his life a short one: "Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream."
The New York Times has published an impressive list of some of the legendary bars, restaurants, hotels, buildings -- even a church! -- where the great writers in history use to hang out, drink, chat, and make merry.
There are some obvious places on this list like (the Chelsea Hotel, the White Horse Tavern, Elaine's) as well as some places that are reminders that the literary history of NYC is not exclusively white -- for example, a building in Harlem where W.E.B Dubois and other great black writers would congregate, or the largely Hispanic Nuyrican Cafe. Reading about these places, you are mentally and emotionally transported back to a time where the written word, and the lively mind, were celebrated.
That said, there are some notable omissions on this list, and I'll mention two of them.
First, there's Pete's Tavern on Irving Place where the famous short story writer O Henry often hung out and wrote, as well as where Ludwig Bemelsmans literally wrote the first and quite legendary children's book Madeleine. Pete's Tavern was more than a hangout -- it was a workplace, an incubator of literary inspiration.
Second, the West End Gate in Morningside Heights near Columbia University. This was a popular hangout for the Beat Generation authors, like Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsburg, and William S. Buroughs. It even got implicated in a murder in 1944 involving a Columbia student named Lucien Carr -- bizarre story that become a movie called Kill Your Darlings several years ago.
There are literary and other cultural hangouts all over this town -- and that's part of what makes NYC so great.
Writing is solitary work. It's also very earnest work. There's only so many ways to write something, anything, without it becoming boring, pretentious, or incomprehensible. Writing needs to be clear or at least readable in order to capture a reader's continuing interest. Writing also requires discipline -- just sitting down and doing it, over and over again, editing and rewriting your words into something comprehensible.
It's not a surprise then that many writers are what we call "nerds" -- socially withdraw, socially awkward people interested more in a life of the mind than a life outside their door. It's also why the concept of the "reclusive writer" -- like JD Salinger or Harper Lee -- is so potent.
To be a writer is in a sense to be alone, to be apart, to observe and reflect the world rather that participate in it. To be its conscience instead of its muse.
That's what makes the life and career of Kathy Acker so interesting. She was a writer but she was most certainly not a nerd. She was the closes thing a writer can be to a punk rocker -- her work is often called "experimental", "transgressive, "post-modern." She was a novelist and essayist, and dabbled in playwriting. Long before it became fashionable, she was writing about the long-term effects of childhood trauma, bisexuality, and the rebellious spirit. The titles to some of her work: "I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac", "Don Quixote: Which Was My Dream", "P@#$y, King of the Pirates", "Blood and Guts in High School", and her 1979 Pushcart Prize winning story "N.Y.C. in 1979". She also wrote things with titles that were subversively conventional: "Great Expectations" and "Florida."
Born in NYC in 1947, Kathy Acker grew up in a privileged but troubled home on Sutton Place. She was one of those New Yorkers who was from the city but who found more of a voice on the West Coast, eventually migrating to San Francisco before moving to London. She would return to live in NYC on occasion but, after a cancer diagnosis, she became a fan of alternative medicine, dying in an "alternative cancer clinic" in 1997, aged 50.
Kathy lived a wild, exhausting life. She was no hermit. While a prolific writer, she also taught writing classes, held odd jobs, moved around constantly, married twice, and had many affairs with both men and women. She was openly bi at a time when few weren't. She even, allegedly, appeared in adult movies.
Kathy Acker was, in short, a restless spirit. And now, more than 25 years after her death, her work still resonates. She has been the subject of not one but two biographies, one called After Kathy Acker, the other called Eat Your Mind.
I will admit that I never heard of Kathy Acker until I stumbled across these biographies. She was a little before my time. But I became intrigued.
Writers like Kathy Acker or Ernest Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson or Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac have always inspired me with awe. These were people who had wild lives, myriad experiences, lived life at 100 miles an hour -- and yet still found the time and energy and peace of mind to sit down and do the hard, solitary work of writing. They travelled extensively, drank and did drugs, had lots of sex, met lots of people, did all sorts of things -- and wrote. How they did all that and could still write brilliantly and earn a living is stunning to me.
Talking about "experimental" or "transgressive writing", I like to think that this blog is just that. But probably not. It's not up to me or any writer to declare themselves that, only the public. But, for Kathy Acker, the public most certainly did.
This is a post about my favorite kind of person, the NYC hustler -- in this case, a few of them. They include a poet, a movie theater programmer, a nasty guy who wrote nasty books, and a kooky faith healer. It's also about a structure that could have become one of our iconic buildings -- and was! -- until it wasn't.
They were (and are) regular New Yorkers who hustled in their odd respective fields and found great success -- and, in one case, great failure. All of them except one are gone now but let's remember them:
The poet was named Marie Ponsot who just died at 98. She was one of the last links to the Beat generation, a contemporary and colleague to folks like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and others. Her poems were about the complications of love and existence and she won big awards and taught at Queens College. Interestingly, she took a long hiatus from her career to raise seven kids but then later resumed publishing and teaching to great acclaim. Then there's Ben Barenholtz who used to program the downtown Elgin and Waverly movie theaters before having a very successful career in film distribution and producing -- including taking a chance on a couple of young filmmakers called the Coen Brothers. Ben's biggest claim to fame, besides launching two of America's greatest cinematic talents, was basically inventing the Midnight Movie. In 1970, he started programming movies at or past midnight, a move that people thought was crazy at the time -- until it was met with massive success. The midnight movie is now a tradition around the world and this guy was the hustler who started it.
And then there's another writer, a wacky guy named Harold Robbins who died almost 20 years ago. A Jewish kid from Brooklyn, he migrated to Hollywood where he wrote trashy books that become popular trashy movies. He made tons and tons of money and lived it up in lavish style. Lots of coke, lots of booze, lots of broads, lots of craziness ensued. He was also a complete liar, trying to convince people that he was some kind of war hero -- his life was fiction as much as his books. Of course, it all ended in tears -- by the time he died he was broke, disabled, homeless. He's one of those guys who lost everything but gained every kind of amazing experience in life that most of us could only dream of.
Okay, so this one isn't gone, she's still alive and apparently thriving. She's another New Yorker gone Hollywood -- Audrey Hope, "crystal healer" to the stars! She apparently uses crystals on the bodies of celebrities to help them restore "balance" and achieve "wellness" and all sorts of crap and yet apparently she makes a great living and is very popular. Talk about a hustler but apparently she's totally legit. Gotta give her credit for that! And keeping with the crystal theme -- did you know that Bryant Park is only a park today because the structure that once stood there, the New York Crystal Palace, burned down in 1858 (part of it also burned down in 1856)? This was a huge exhibition space, domed and massive, based on a similar structure built and designed by Prince Albert in London. It was, at the time, the tallest building in the city. The Crystal Palace was deemed so impressive and major that, at the opening ceremony in 1853, it was dedicated by then President Franklin Pierce. Within just a few short years it was gone, a hustle that failed. But for a time it reigned in glory. (It reminds me that great speech Tywin Lannister gives in Game of Thrones about how the castle Harrenhal was supposed to be the great legacy of the lord who built it but then it was destroyed by dragon fire by Aegon Targaryen). These are my kinds of people, the hustler, the strivers, the people who took chances and made something. In many way, this little blog is my attempt to be one of these kinds of people -- people we should never forget.
I don't want to be rich, famous, or even that good-looking. I just want to be remembered -- fondly.
Fondly remembered by those who knew me -- and perhaps by some who wish they had.
To me, being fondly remembered is the only measure of a life well-lived. Everything else is puffery, nonsense. A person's real legacy exists in the hearts and minds of those who remember.
I never knew or heard of a man named Hassan Heiserman during his lifetime, but I wish I had. He was one of the last people to come of age during the "Beat Generation" and he knew them all -- he was Allan Ginsburg's roommate, Jack Kerouac created a character in his novel Big Sur after him, and he was Miles Davis' drug dealer. More than that, Hassan was a man on the move, living (squatting really) mostly in NYC but also wandering the country, meeting interesting people, having adventures, and experiencing life to the fullest. He was a man of his times who observed and lived them, he was a walking chronicler of his age. He was "groovy", a real "beat", in the very best meaning of the terms. And, after his recent death, he was very fondly remembered.
Hassan wasn't rich -- far, far from it. Most of his life he was homeless, crashing on people's couches, he never really had a real career except for driving a cab, he lived on the edge, on the fringe, in perpetual movement. Up until the end of his life.
And even though I and many of the people I know have many more material, earthly goods than he did, I envy him. He saw and experienced it all. He lived a full life. Nothing groovier.
I probably won't be remembered. This blog will probably won't be remembered. But I'll try to live a full life -- and maybe, like Hassan, be remembered a little bit fondly by someone.
"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old
broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense
all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West
Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of
it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where
they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know
that God is
Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on
the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the
earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and
nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags
of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean
Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."
A few months back I published my first e-book, a novel called Leaving New York. It's a rip-roaring yarn about two lost souls from NYC who take a wild road trip across America.
It's fast, it's funny, it's philosophical, and it's a hell of a good read. Don't take my word for it: read some of the excerpts that I posted on this here blog.
Leaving New York is the kind of fun novel that the publishing powers-that-be don't seem be publishing anymore -- so I did it for them. When it comes to this book, imagine that JD Salinger, Jack Kerouac, Quentin Tarantino, MTV and Facebook got together and had a baby and it would basically read something like Leaving New York.
Best of all? It's all yours for only $0.99! If you have an Amazon Kindle, you can buy and download it for this ridiculously low price and get hours of entertainment. It's the deal of the year!
You can find a link to the novel on Amazon here or you can click on the cover icon on the right-hand side of this blog.
