Table Of Content

rground unde the in and JSSman hip to beat to rock to American culture punk- mutiny in SUKENICK RONALD FPT ISBN D-bfla-DbSflT-T down and in Life in the Underground RONALD SUKENICK Down andIn is Ronald Sukenick'sstoryofthe undergroundcultureinAmericaasitgrewout of the old Greenwich Village Bohemia—the storyofHipstersandBeatniks, Rock'n' Rollers and Punks, has-beens and artists, intellectuals and outrageous characters, all those who felt freeto livelife withoutinhibitions. Down andIn is historybut itis also theleg- end of a counterculture that opposed official culture and yet in an astonishingly short time came to dictate tastes in arts and letters. Ronald Sukenick tells the story of the ambig- uous triumph and subsequent burn-out, sell-out, andwipe-outofthe counterculture— while the underground went underground again—through taped interviews, newspaper articles, memoirs, and influential creative works from the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, and many others. And from all the talk and writing, experienceand creativechaos,webegin to seejust howwegot from the fifties and sixties to the heavily mannered and slick culture of theeighties. Sukenickdeepens this history with his own life in the underground, experiences that have shaped him irrevocably. Down and In's story is not simply documented in libraries, muse- ums, and old underground newspapers, but is tracked through the bars and cafes, joints and hang-outs, as well as the electric and frenzied lives that inhabited them—through the San Remo, which linked the old Bohemians with (continuedon backflap) yf- 1- DOWN AND IN BOOKS BY RONALD SUKENICK Down andIn: Life in the Underground BlownAway The Endless Short Story In Form: Digressions on theArt ofFiction Long TalkingBad ConditionsBlues 98.6 Out The Death oftheNovelandother Stories Up Wallace Stevens: Musing the Obscure DOWN UNDERGROUND THE LIFE IN RONALD SUKENICK BE BEECH TREE BOOKS WILLIAM MORROW New York — Copyright © 1987 by Ronald Sukenick Briefsections ofthis book have appeared in TheNew York TimesBookReview. I would like to acknowledgegratefully the University ofColorado, Boulder Council on Research and Creative Work, forits support for research on this book. All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced or utilized in any form orby any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, Beech Tree Books, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016. Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sukenick, Ronald. Down and in. — — —1. Sukenick, Ronald Homes and haunts New York (State) Greenwich Village (N.Y.) 2. Greenwich Village (New York, N.Y.)—Soci—al life and customs. 3. Bohemianism New York (State) Greenwich Village (N.Y.) 4. Bohemianism — — United States. 5. New York—(N.Y.) Social—life and customs. 6. Authors,—American 20th ce—ntury Biography. 7.Authors, American New York (State) Greenwich Village (N.Y.)—Biography. 1. Title. PS3569.U33Z465 1987 974.7'1043 87-11412 ISBN 0-688-06589-9 Printed in the United States ofAmerica First Edition 123456789 10 BOOK DESIGN BY RICHARD ORIOLO BIB Theword"book"issaidtoderivefromboka.otbeech. Thebeechtreehasbeenthepatrontreeofwriterssinceancient timesand representsthefloweringolliteratureandknowledge. PREFACE Souls ofpoets deadandgone, WhatElysium haveye known, Happyfieldor mossy cavern, Choicer than theMermaid Tavern? I he tradition of Bohemia has been traced back to France in the 1830's, where it began as a by-product of the Industrial Revolution, bourgeois society, and the Romantic movement. The story that fol- lows begins 120 years later in a different country. Although I have a part in the story, it is mostly a collective narrative about the rise, de- cline, and future prospects ofa phase in that tradition. The bourgeoi- sie has been replaced by the middle class, the Industrial Revolution by the Cybernetic Revolution, and Romanticism by Postmodernism. The subterraneans, as Jack Kerouac called inhabitants of the underground who started turning up around 1950, are not the same as the older Greenwich Village Bohemians inspired by Freud, Marx, and Modernism. But the tradition endures its changes precisely because it is not the result of a willed strategy, but responds to an unchanging PREFACE antagonism between the way of life imposed by our pragmatic busi- ness society and the humanistic values by which our culture has taught us to experience and judge the quality of our individual and collective lives. For me, sneaking over to Greenwich Village from high school or living in the East Village in the sixties, the descent into the underground was a matter not of tradition but of an absolute need. The possibility of better worlds was suggested to me as a kid when I came across a small number of other kids who, like myself, were dissatisfied with the upper-middle-class milieu of Brooklyn's Mid- — wood High. I was not alone there were others whose values were not those of Dun and Bradstreet. Once discovered, the underground — became an education in survival emotional, creative, and intellectual — survival that schools did not offer. And it provided a supporting community of like-minded hold-outs from an imposed way of life that I knew was not mine. Much ofthe attraction ofthe underground derives from the circum- stance that it pursues the tiger of pleasure instead of yoking itself to the oxen of duty. Before hurling the usual charge of irresponsible hedonism, it is a good idea to reflect that the sign of free people is that they are able to do things because they like to. Bohemians do what they feel like. Desire becomes a positive force rather than one to struggle with. For all of its negations of the status quo, the underground is finally based on affirmation. A few years ago a mass- media journal not only accused Jack Kerouac ofbeing an anti-Semite, which he was, but also charged Allen Ginsberg with being one, which he isn't. I called Ginsberg and urged him to write a denial, but he said that negation leads only to further negation. Several months later I happened to be sitting in a Polish restaurant in the East Village on Yom Kippur eve when Ginsberg, a dedicated Buddhist, came in wear- ing a dark suit, tie, and yarmulke, urgently wanting to know where he could find a temple. The meaning I take from this coincidental parable is that the positive force of desire is more compelling than the negativity ofdenial. I question the very possibility of moral power without this affir- mative emotional dimension. Ought is not a positive number. Ought