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Beats

Review

The Bunker Diaries – review

Marc Olmsted

The Bunker Diaries By Stewart Meyer Beatdom Books $19.99 The Bunker* is one of the major sites of Beat History, the downtown NYC lair of William Burroughs. Two others I can think of: The Six Gallery** where Howl was first read aloud by Allen Ginsberg. The third is the Beat Hotel in the Latin quarter of Paris,***, where Gregory Corso lived in the attic, Burroughs & Brion Gysin discovered the cut-up method with an accidental slice of newsprint, and Allen Ginsberg passed through at the end of the 1950s. photograph by James Grauerholz With only Gary Snyder remaining among us, we now must rely on younger friends of the Beats for any direct history. Stewart Meyer hung out at the Bunker quite a bit from 1978 to 1983. This was New York City’s hey-day of punk bands -- as well a wide wave of heroin use. Elsewhere in NYC, photographer Nan Goldin’s polaroids capture the baked eyes of cool kids, some on their way to the grave. ...
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Review

TRIPPING WITH A VIPER – by Anne Marie Maxwell – review

Marc Olmsted

Tripping with a Viper By Anne Marie Maxwell Mystic Boxing Commission $29.99 available at: www.sparringartists.com Reviewed by Marc Olmsted Much has evolved around Neal’s long lost Joan Anderson letter as the key to Jack Kerouac’s spontaneous bop prosody. Rediscovered, the big surprise is that it has nothing to do with Kerouac’s streamlined stream-of-consciousness experimental prose. Instead, it moved Jack into writing first person and about actual events with the mad energy of the multiple pages Neal had produced with blazing enthusiasm. Tripping with a Viper fills in some first-person Beat history that explains some more of the legend that is Neal Cassady. The viper of the title is actually also a “pot-head” as referenced in the song “When You’re a Viper,” written by Stuff Smith and first recorded by Rosetta Howard. Still, the ambiguity of this title can’t be merely shaken off. Anne Mar...
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Review

Beat Scrapbook by Gerald Nicosia – Review

Jim Feast

Gerald Nicosia, Beat Scrapbook (Brooklyn: Coolgrove Press, 2020) 113 pages, $19.95 Gerald Nicosia has dedicated all his nonfiction books to describing those who, through whatever means, fought for the underdogs. His biography of Kerouac, the finest we have, Memory Babe, describes how the Beat author, himself from the lower class, in all his writings showed his sympathy for the downtrodden, whether it be city hustlers, Mexican street walkers or those who rode the boxcars with him as he traveled the country. In fact, one of the most developed points in Memory Babe is Nicosia’s bringing out that Kerouac’s greatness as a writer is closely tied to his far-reaching humanity. Then Nicosia turned to the Vietnam vets. In his Home to War, he left indelible portraits of activists, such as Ron Kovic, who denounced the war and the shabby treatment of vets, particularly, in later years, by battling the VA and the government who long denied t...
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Review

SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS January – July 1960 by Allen Ginsberg – review

Marc Olmsted

SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS January - July 1960 by Allen Ginsberg edited by Michael Schumacher University of Minnesota Press $29.95 First, I was immediately struck by how much unpublished poetry or early drafts (such as "Aether" and "Magic Psalm") are contained in this volume - far beyond any previous journal publications of Allen Ginsberg. In fact, he mostly wrote his journal as poetry during this period. Granted much is not A-list material, as Allen correctly understood in not publishing a lot of it. But for earnest scholars and fans, it is a gold mine. There are also amazing little notations of events, such as seeing Montgomery Clift's "Raintree County" ("he too looks sad" - in fact, Monty's face-rearranging car crash occurred in the middle of filming that picture). Likewise a long dream about Marlon Brando, who imitates Jack Kerouac's voice at one point(!) and includes a dream discussion of how great Orson Welles' Magn...
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