Some Recent, and Obtuse, Jack Kerouac References

If you're a reporter journalist, when in doubt, Kerouac out.

Have to write an obit of a perfectly ordinary local musician?  Kerouac that thang:
Asa Brebner, at 65; guitarist/songwriter in Boston bands and alone

He was known for an astonishing range of music, from roots-rock and punk to R&B and gospel, along with an edgy, Jack Kerouac-meets-Charles Bukowski* wit that “did not suffer fools gladly,” said longtime bandmate John Pfister.

Have to write a review of a tedious one-woman show that is, for some reason, supported by your publisher?  It's Kerouac time:

Work is a four-letter word in Claudia Shear’s 'Blown Sideways Through Life'

Under Pam Wiley’s snappy direction, Carrie McQueen delivers a spirited, R-rated, syncopated and rapid-fire performance. Shear’s jazzy language owes a debt to Jack Kerouac and other beat writers.

Have to write...something...about this year's [so far] most peculiar contender for the Democratic nomination?  There is only one way to go, and that's Kerouac:

Ladies, we need to talk about Beto

Beto spent the better part of the winter musing on his Medium account about the vicissitudes of life like a discount Jack Kerouac, only to emerge from his period " adrift" to announce that he's in fact running for vice president.

Rubin: Beto O'Rourke: Savior or slacker?

"Jack Kerouac-style, he roams around, jobless (does he not need a job?) to find himself and figure out if he wants to lead the free world," Nia-Malika Henderson wrote at CNN in January, during what she called Beto O'Rourke's "excellent adventure." "This is a luxury no woman or even minority in politics could ever have.'"

Beto and the White House

There was hope among Democratic partisans that after Mr. O’Rourke ended his impersonation of Jack Kerouac he would challenge John Cornyn, the other Republican senator, next year. But he dreams bigger than that. Instead, as he revealed last week, he would try to turn an unimpressive three terms as an obscure congressman into a run for the presidency. Mr. O’Rourke’s rollout was accompanied by a profile in Vanity Fair, replete with an Annie Leibowitz photographic album.

 *I found myself wondering what was trying to be said about the deceased musician, as both Kerouac and Bukowski were notorious drunks.  It's not really a flattering comparison.

Random "Jack Kerouac" Reference

Again, the sign of a tepid writer is to throw a Jack Kerouac reference into an article.  This time, from an article about European kickball.

What jobs would Premier League managers have if they weren't in football?

A man whose talent is equalled only by the driving force within his tortured soul, Slaven Bilic would most certainly have gone down the route of a misunderstood artist had he chosen a life away from football.

Passionate, skillful and possessing the fiery eyes of a ancient preacher, Bilic would be the first to pronounce his own genius throughout a life of struggles and constant creation, though few would listen.

He would live out his days as if attempting to recreate the beatnik scene pioneered by Jack Kerouac and his band of cohorts, and would unfortunately face his ultimate demise at the age of 70 after a fight over an unkind critique of his most recent painting.

Despite a cruel life, Bilic would eventually find posthumous fame and go on to be considered the greatest artist of his generation a mere 15 years after his death.

Yes, a multi-millionaire kickball coach notorious for taking baldness medication would be just like Kerouac.

Thursday's Place: The White Horse Tavern

There are places, some merely of the imagination, that have taken hold in history and fiction as they represent an era, a time, or a shared cultural experience that has since faded, but is certainly mourned. These places are pockets of nostalgia for what once was or could have been. Most of those to be featured, if they existed at all, are no longer with us, replaced by parking lots, or “big box” stores, or ugly houses. However, if you’re with the right people, or in the right place, to evoke them is to evoke an era that may be long gone, but permitted some creativity and joy.

The White Horse Tavern
New York City

This week's "place" is seminal in the promotion of poetry, both the kind found in high school textbooks and the kind found in court dockets, and of the folk music craze of the 1960's that produced much of the influential music of that generation and beyond.  Bonus: It's still open for business.

From something published earlier in The Coracle:

In the late 1950's, Richard Farina, a Cuban-Irish college drop-out born in Brooklyn in 1937, showed up in Greenwich Village with a dulcimer and a slight repertoire of folk songs such as people had never heard before. Turns out he was also adept at writing, having had short stories and poems published while still a student at Cornell. Being of an attractive and rakish nature, he hung out at many of the favored bars of the creative class, particularly the White Horse Tavern [where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death; Norman Mailer drank and punched people; Jim Morrison of The Doors drank too much, Jack Kerouac drank such a prodigious amount that he was banned from the property; and Delmore Schwartz, come to think of it, drank himself to death, too].

While I would encourage the reader to follow the link to the story of Richard Farina, as he is an interesting and virtually unknown personality in the development of 1960's counter-culture, I couldn't help but notice the importance of The White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village in trans-generational, self-destructive, British and American literature.  It is here that the more lubricious writers and artists have gone to appreciate their mortality, either in 1 and 1/2 ounce increments or in quantities more vast and eternal.

Like many of the places of which we will speak on Thursdays, the White Horse started as a neighborhood bar, in this case for the longshoremen working the docks in Chelsea.  Its venerable history, stretching back to 1880, has witnessed and/or participated in all of the societal and economic changes that have visited that portion of New York City.  As the neighborhood became less working and more middle-class, and distinctly more "artistic", by the 1950's the Horse [that's what the locals called it] had become a place to hear folk music, Irish folk music, poetry based on folk music, and folk musicians.  Oh, and the Welsh inebriate who hung out there all of the time because it reminded him of a pub back home.

[Really?  I've been to Wales and never saw any place that even resembled the Horse.  I think the Welshman preferred it because they let him run a prodigious tab.]

I lived nine blocks north of the place when I first moved to New York.  I never went there, as the Eagle Tavern on 14th had better Irish music, and The White Horse Tavern had become touristy enough that it was selling, God help us, t-shirts behind the bar.  In a city not lacking in places for dark slouching, or bars where poets and writers regularly got or get drunk, I really wasn't interested, until I was told they served a really good cheeseburger.  It was good, and if I could afforded them on a regular basis, I would have gone the way of Dylan Thomas, except with beef fat instead of whiskey.

So storied is The Horse in literature that it has its own page on the website of the Academy of American Poets:

The White Horse Tavern, built in 1880, has been a stomping ground for New York’s literary community since the 1950s when the bar’s most famous patron, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, was introduced to this longshoreman’s haunt. The White Horse holds the dubious distinction of being the place where Thomas drank his last whiskey. In November of 1953, Thomas beat his own personal record by downing eighteen shots of whiskey. Soon after the last drink he stumbled outside and collapsed on the sidewalk. He was taken to the Chelsea Hotel and there fell into a coma; the next morning he was transferred to St. Vincent’s Hospital where he died. In addition to the many portraits of Dylan Thomas that adorn the walls, a plaque commemorating Thomas’s last visit to the White Horse Tavern hangs above the bar. The bar soon drew more literary figures as patrons, including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Anais Nin, and James Laughlin, the founder of the publishing house New Directions. In addition, the bar was a gathering place for both the Beat writers, like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, as well as the New York School poets, such as John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara.

Anyway, any place that has such a hold on literary imagination should be visited at least once, even if it isn't the most convivial in the city.

Although, there is a tradition that is maintained that I've always appreciated.  Jack Kerouac would get so drunk at The Horse that someone once wrote "Jack, Go Home!" on the men's room wall.  While there have been some well-done renovations and restorations to the bar performed in the last sixty years, and the wall painted many times, some individual or series of individuals always ensures that, somewhere on that wall, that command to Kerouac still appears.

That kind of wit needs to be admired, don't you think?

Today's Gratuitous Jack Kerouac Reference, Marketing Edition

NEW YORK, Aug. 14, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Inspired by Jack Kerouac, Muzen Audio launches "On The Road" speakers. Inspired by the late Jack Kerouac, an iconic American novelist, the On the Road ("OTR") portable radio and bluetooth speakers cater to individuals seeking adventure and beauty. Muzen listeners live life to the fullest, using sound to enrich their everyday experiences at home and on the go.

Random "Jack Kerouac" References

The sign of a tepid writer is to refer to Jack Kerouac, however obliquely, in some article.  Heck, I've done it myself.  I particularly enjoy it when it's a review of a $1 million motor home or vacation in some resort with three hot tubs per room.  Yep, that really captures the spirit of On The Road.

Anyway, as it's far more prevalent than I originally realized, we'll offer some examples from time to time.  Here's this week's, from [no kidding] Outlook Business, a non-ironic magazine about wealthy people and their values:

I am drawn to haiku (a form of poetry) by early Japanese masters Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa and modernist Jack Kerouac. Lyrical with the subtle precision of Zen they elevate ordinary movements of nature to almost the sacred. I also want to rediscover Rabindranath Tagore’s literature.

Hahaha.  So, Kerouac is a "modernist" now.  Sure.

This Week in Gratuitous Jack Kerouac References

I have to say, it's been a banner week, too.

Holiday Gift Guide 2018: Road Trip Old-School Style With These Low Tech Gifts For Travelers
[Invoking JK to sell over-priced, useless gear. Genius!]

Nowhere but Everywhere: Experiencing Côte d’Ivoire 
[JK will help tour guides convince people to visit a country that's on half-a-dozen watch lists. Yeah!]

Huckberry’s NYC Popup Store Prepares Customers For Adventures 
[Buy our flimsy, overpriced junk and regard yourself as an...Adventurer! Since JK mostly lived in Salvation Army gear and a red plain overshirt given to him by his mother, this seems...odd.  Also, the JK-inspired "West Village Drinking Tour" should probably come with the reminder that Kerouac drank himself to death.  Now, that's a holiday tour, eh?]

Los Angeles Through the Centuries, Glimpsed by Kerouac, de Beauvoir, Waugh and Others 
[In JK's case, he was probably seeing two L.A.'s.]

And, the piece de resistance:
Harmony Delivers Kerouac-Inspired Fall/Winter Collection
[Yep, because when I think of fashion, I think of JK.]

 

Richard Farina

“We mistake induction for generation." 

I gather with a group of men a couple of times a month.  They range in age from their late 20's to late 70's.  Although we're supposedly gathered for prayer and spiritual discussion, generally we speak about home improvement, trailering techniques, pickup truck liners, and cell phone plans.  Personally, I find this somewhat of a relief as most, if not all, of my conversations are about spirituality.  Not that I have a problem with that, but I also want to know other men's experiences in using the 2 inch ball hitch.

However, the other week we veered into spiritual territory as we were lamenting the absence of a role in contemporary mainstream Protestant Christianity for men.  I observed how the language of spirituality had changed, too, in recent decades, as we tend to value the feminine empathetic over the masculine pragmatic.  While both are necessary, it is increasingly difficult to convince men that churches are anything other than women's clubs.

We began to speak about the importance of men as spiritual role models, and it was then that the conversation became more interesting, especially as I recalled, with vividity, watching as a child my father pray in church.  As he had been raised a Methodist of the frontier tradition, he knelt on one knee with his forefinger knuckle pressed to his forehead.  I was maybe five-years-old at the time and imitated him to the best of my ability.  That moment of what's called mimetic identification determined much of my subsequent life, both professionally and personally.

In turn, those present spoke of how their fathers modeled spirituality for them and, as these are the most active men in the parish, how those early, often non-verbal, images remained.

Mimetic identification is common among the young, of course, as it is a normal part of human development.  During my years teaching in independent schools at the secondary level, I would note each class' understanding of what was and was not "cool", what language, attitudes, and postures would be mimicked and from whom they would imitate.  Honestly, I wish that I'd kept a list.

Naturally, we can also see mimetics at work in our cultural history, as artists and musicians all have heroes whose style, even down to their choice of apparel, cigarettes smoked, and apartment accouterments, are imitated.  Thus, Howlin' Wolf inspires Keith Richard; Muddy Waters inspires Jeff Beck, Soren Kierkegaard inspires Albert Camus, and so on.

In the late 1950's, Richard Farina, a Cuban-Irish college drop-out born in Brooklyn in 1937, showed up in Greenwich Village with a dulcimer and a slight repertoire of folk songs such as people had never heard before. Turns out he was also adept at writing, having had short stories and poems published while still a student at Cornell.  Being of an attractive and rakish nature, he hung out at many of the favored bars of the creative class, particularly the White Horse Tavern [where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death; Norman Mailer drank and punched people; Jim Morrison of The Doors drank too much, Jack Kerouac drank such a prodigious amount that he was banned from the property; and Delmore Schwartz, come to think of it, drank himself to death, too].  

There he met Tommy Makem, one of the founding members of The Irish Rovers, and folk singer Carolyn Hester, soon to be featured on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.  These two new friends helped Farina get started as a performer and, as he became Hester's manager and husband, enough time to write publishable poetry.  They toured the United States and Europe together, eventually winding up back in New York at the recording studios of Columbia Records.  Here, as Hester was in need of a harmonica player for some of the tracks, Farina hired a young man from Minnesota to fill that role.  They would become good friends, with Farina serving as the young man's mimetic hero.

 

Farina began to explore the possibilities of folk music beyond simply performing the old tunes or re-visiting the music's classic themes.  He found that, if merged with the differentiated social concerns of the 1960's, folk music could have a role in the expanding consciousness of the era.  While songs were once about coal mines or natural disasters, now they could also explore racial inequality, the obtuse war in Vietnam, and the world-view of the post-WWII generation.

It's no wonder that Farina's harmonica-playing friend so idolized him.  So much, that the friend copied Farina's style, his method of composition, his walk, his manner of speech, and even his apparel.  Also, in homage to the former and famous habitue of The White Horse Tavern, the friend would change his name from Bob Zimmerman to Bob Dylan.

Farina's relationship would Carolyn Hester would end right at the time his relationship with Mimi Baez, Joan's sister, would begin.  Not long after his divorce from Hester, Farina would marry Baez and begin recording original works with his sister-in-law and her friends, including Pete Seeger.

Farina, Seeger, and Baez perform on TV

However, Farina was not limited solely to folk music and poetry printed in obscure journals.  In 1966, Random House published his novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, to critical success.  In fact, it is considered second only to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest as the best representative of 1960's American literature.  As one critic mentioned to me, it is "The Great Hippie Novel". [It may be the only one, too, as the decade was not noted for its traditional forms of literature.]

The novel, based on The Odyssey, is a picaresque, a lightly plotted ramble through the protagonist's college experiences and his travels in the western U.S. and revolutionary Cuba.  It was recommended for a number of literary awards and has remained in print for over fifty years.  The younger critics of the era and many university students placed it on their shelves next to Jack Kerouac's On The Road, acknowledging the novel's link to the literature of the Beat Generation and that of the new counter-culture, the so-called "hippies".

I've often wondered what would have become of Farina as his talent matured.  Clearly, if indirectly through Dylan and the Baez sisters, he made his influence on folk music known; and, while I find it a bit sophomoric these days, there is enough artistic merit in Been Down So Long... that I can't help but see the emergence of a new voice that would have continued to develop and define a generational experience.

Farina would attend a book-signing at a store in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California a couple of days after its publication and, later in the day, a party celebrating both his new book and his wife's 21st birthday.  It was, according to an acquaintance who attended, one of the happiest occasions of the mid-sixties; one of those nights when it seemed as if the world had shifted into a better consciousness.

A rare quiet moment for Mimi and Farina

High hopes can be dashed by fate, unfortunately, or by the combination of ethanol, alcohol, and testosterone.  Hitching a ride on a friend's motorcycle, Farina was killed when the bike went off the road on a notoriously tricky corner while traveling at a ridiculously high rate of speed.  With that, the newest, most accomplished, and most hopeful voice of his generation, one who was equally talented in music, composition, poetry, and prose, came to be silenced.  Farina was 29-years-old.

While we know Dylan better than Farina and, come to think of it, Joan better than Mimi, we can experience something of Farina's talent through those other performers.  None of them, however, have ever shown such a trans-artisitc ability, and that's the pity in what was lost.

Richard Farina's recordings may still be found.  As was noted above, Been Down So Long... is still in print, although one does not know how much longer that will be the case since the novel is considered "triggering" to contemporary university students.  Despite their self-defined conviction that they are the most liberal, free-thinking generation ever to grace the planet, contemporary youth seem to be not much more than tedious "church ladies" imbued with the worst aspects of neo-Puritanism and the vague bouquet of totalitarianism.

In other words, they are the very people against whom Farina railed, and that's a marvelous irony.

Lee Konitz

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

He was a good looking guy, a little inebriated but carrying it well in his athletic frame.  He was around thirty, had Gallic features, and was wearing chinos with a slightly worse-for-wear cotton dress shirt.  He wasn't wearing a tie, none of the young men in this place did, and he hadn't shaved for a day.  Still, given he was in the company of some rather strange, and also inebriated, men, he stood out.

Mainly it was because he was standing in front of the saxophonist who was on the stage and looking at him like he had just seen the face of God and lived.

As the dumb-struck man was a writer and in the midst of a colossal block that had prevented him from progressing on a novel that was, at that point, rather prosaic in its narrative style, he had gone with friends to Birdland, the famous jazz club, to forget about sentences, paragraphs, dialogue, and character development for a night of music, wine, mad dancing and wildness.  While not specifically looking for inspiration, the writer found it while listening to this week's person and, in so doing, would make literary history.

Lee Konitz is a jazz saxophonist; he plays the soprano, alto, and tenor saxes, although generally prefers the alto when he still performs, now at the age of 87.  While there are other musicians who have tragic childhood tales of daunting, even terrifying, experiences, Konitz was born in Chicago in 1927 to middle-class Austro/Russian emigres and raised to respect learning and labor.  Again, unlike a surprising number of other musicians, he could read music and transpose in his head, and was trained in composition and music theory.  He enjoyed the music of the big bands that he would hear on the radio, wanting nothing other than to compose and play with such organizations.  Because his favorite was Benny Goodman, he requested the gift of a clarinet from his parents.  Shortly afterwards, he would switch to the other woodwind and prove so adept that he was able to improvise even before he learned to match the fingering to the printed notes.

At the immediate conclusion of the Second World War, the teenage Konitz found himself performing with a variety of standard jazz bands, although he was becoming very attracted to the newness and freedom of the jumpier, improvisation-based jazz known as bebop that was being pioneered by many of the younger musicians, especially Charlie "Bird" Parker.  By 1947, he was playing compositions by the jazz great Gerry Mulligan and arrangements by Gil Evans.  After proving his chops with this formidable group, Konitz was asked by Miles Davis to sit in with his combo and attempt something radically new. 

From 1949 to 1950, Konitz, along with Mulligan, worked with Davis to record the songs that would eventually be included in 1957's Birth of the Cool, one of those albums that is always on the list of essentials.  As jazz, like sermons, is a form of proclamation, its product is best honed when played live before an audience, so both musician and listener form a moment of artistic Gestalt.  So, Davis, Konitz and their compatriots made the rounds of jazz clubs, becoming popular especially at New York's Village Vanguard, Blue Note, and, of course, Birdland.

Which brings us to that moment of wonder for the novelist and the saxophonist, where the interplay of horn and woodwinds brought him his moment of epiphany.

The novelist was Jack Kerouac and the manuscript which had been so vexing him would one day be entitled On The Road.  Of that moment in October of 1951, Kerouac would later write, "The tune they were playing was All the Things You Are . . . they slowed it down and dragged behind it at half tempo dinosaur proportions-changed the placing of the note in the middle of the harmony to an outer more precarious position where also its sense of not belonging was enhanced by the general atonality produced with everyone exteriorizing the tune's harmony."

Well, it meant something to him, anyway.

While Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker, Art Pepper, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, and Ornette Coleman are all better-known, Konitz played with and outlasted them all; he was playing at the Blue Note just a couple of years ago.  Beyond his influence on Kerouac, Konitz also influenced three generations of musicians with his original compositions and imaginative takes on American standards.  In fact, he is now so well-regarded that a couple of young saxophonists recently told me that they no longer wish to play like Parker, but like Lee.  In fact, what they said to me was, "Charlie who?"

Here, enjoy some more, won't you?

Lee Konitz

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.

____________________________________________________________________

He was a good looking guy, a little inebriated but carrying it well in his athletic frame.  He was around thirty, had Gallic features, and was wearing chinos with a slightly worse-for-wear cotton dress shirt.  He wasn't wearing a tie, none of the young men in this place did, and he hadn't shaved for a day.  Still, given he was in the company of some rather strange, and also inebriated, men, he stood out.

Mainly it was because he was standing in front of the saxophonist who was on the stage and looking at him like he had just seen the face of God and lived.

As the dumb-struck man was a writer and in the midst of a colossal block that had prevented him from progressing on a novel that was, at that point, rather prosaic in its narrative style, he had gone with friends to Birdland, the famous jazz club, to forget about sentences, paragraphs, dialogue, and character development for a night of music, wine, mad dancing and wildness.  While not specifically looking for inspiration, the writer found it while listening to this week's person and, in so doing, would make literary history.

Lee Konitz is a jazz saxophonist; he plays the soprano, alto, and tenor saxes, although generally prefers the alto when he still performs, now at the age of 87.  While there are other musicians who have tragic childhood tales of daunting, even terrifying, experiences, Konitz was born in Chicago in 1927 to middle-class Austro/Russian emigres and raised to respect learning and labor.  Again, unlike a surprising number of other musicians, he could read music and transpose in his head, and was trained in composition and music theory.  He enjoyed the music of the big bands that he would hear on the radio, wanting nothing other than to compose and play with such organizations.  Because his favorite was Benny Goodman, he requested the gift of a clarinet from his parents.  Shortly afterwards, he would switch to the other woodwind and prove so adept that he was able to improvise even before he learned to match the fingering to the printed notes.

At the immediate conclusion of the Second World War, the teenage Konitz found himself performing with a variety of standard jazz bands, although he was becoming very attracted to the newness and freedom of the jumpier, improvisation-based jazz known as bebop that was being pioneered by many of the younger musicians, especially Charlie "Bird" Parker.  By 1947, he was playing compositions by the jazz great Gerry Mulligan and arrangements by Gil Evans.  After proving his chops with this formidable group, Konitz was asked by Miles Davis to sit in with his combo and attempt something radically new. 

From 1949 to 1950, Konitz, along with Mulligan, worked with Davis to record the songs that would eventually be included in 1957's Birth of the Cool, one of those albums that is always on the list of essentials.  As jazz, like sermons, is a form of proclamation, its product is best honed when played live before an audience, so both musician and listener form a moment of artistic Gestalt.  So, Davis, Konitz and their compatriots made the rounds of jazz clubs, becoming popular especially at New York's Village Vanguard, Blue Note, and, of course, Birdland.

Which brings us to that moment of wonder for the novelist and the saxophonist, where the interplay of horn and woodwinds brought him his moment of epiphany.



The novelist was Jack Kerouac and the manuscript which had been so vexing him would one day be entitled On The Road.  Of that moment in October of 1951, Kerouac would later write, "The tune they were playing was All the Things You Are . . . they slowed it down and dragged behind it at half tempo dinosaur proportions-changed the placing of the note in the middle of the harmony to an outer more precarious position where also its sense of not belonging was enhanced by the general atonality produced with everyone exteriorizing the tune's harmony."

Well, it meant something to him, anyway.

While Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker, Art Pepper, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, and Ornette Coleman are all better-known, Konitz played with and outlasted them all; he was playing at the Blue Note just a couple of years ago.  Beyond his influence on Kerouac, Konitz also influenced three generations of musicians with his original compositions and imaginative takes on American standards.  In fact, he is now so well-regarded that a couple of young saxophonists recently told me that they no longer wish to play like Parker, but like Lee.  In fact, what they said to me was, "Charlie who?"

Here, enjoy some more, won't you?

Tonight's Irrelevant "Jack Kerouac" Reference Trifecta

The Muse, engaging in his favorite hobby

 Marijuana Scientists Are Getting High Wages

and

Interview: Shane Joyce – The Sadness of King Joyce

and

The common thread that binds Leonardo, Franklin, Einstein and Jobs

When you've either nothing to say or are simply crafting a prosaic article, always make a Kerouac reference.  It lends panache to your tedium. 

Malcolm Lowry

"I can't decide if he was a talent without genius or a genius without talent."

I was reminded of that observation, made by my former mentor James Magner, when I recently read a biography of Malcolm Lowry, a minor mid-century English poet who, in one of those curious moments of artistic clarity, managed to transcend mediocrity and write what is regarded by some as one of the best novels of the 20th century.  However, by the third chapter of the biography, I realized that he was an absolutely horrid human being and I couldn't wait to get to the final chapter where I knew he would end his life a suicide at the age of 47.  Well, let's just call it "death by misadventure", as they did at the coroner's inquest.

When I originally encountered Lowry's work in the late 1970's, it was before much was known about his personal life and history, save for what one could glean from his poetry and prose.  He was one of those poet/writers of whom I learned during my time as a graduate student/research assistant, a relative unknown who had produced some collections of poetry and a novel or two, one of which was beginning to be re-discovered by the taste makers in the New York publishing bubble. 

There is admittedly something romantic about the notion of the self-destructive writer, an image so common that it's practically an archetype.  Offhand, the names of alcoholic writers such as Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack London, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Parker, Norman Mailer, John Cheever, Frank O'Hara, Hart Crane, William Faulkner, and Edgar Allan Poe come to mind.  [I also know, as part of the useless minutiae that I seem to retain, that five of the seven American Nobel literature laureates died of alcohol abuse or related disease.] 

Except I'm not in my early 20's any longer and I have seen the ravages of alcohol and drug abuse on the users and, particularly, on the users' families and friends.  Any romantic notion has long since evaporated and, if it had not, even a casual reading of Lowry's life would cause one to reconsider.  In addition to his poetry and prose, most of which I find tepid, he also aided an annoying college classmate in committing suicide, raped his first wife, horribly beat a girlfriend, and plagiarized from his second wife and other friends and writers.  As far as I could tell, he was drunk just about every waking moment and detoxifying during the others.  He was as dissolute a person and as nightmarish a friend as one can imagine, save for approximately three years in his life when he and his second wife took up residence in a small cabin north of Vancouver where he produced the novel Under the Volcano.  That brief window of lucidity is why we still know his name.

Lowry was a rich man's son who was aided in every way by his father's money.  Naturally, Lowry hated his father for this, which was another unattractive aspect to the man.  He attended a charming little English public school [what we would call a private or "prep" school] named The Leys where he was taken under the wing of the senior master of the school, W. H. Balgarnie.  [One of The Leys former students had been James Hilton, the author of Lost Horizon and other novels of great popularity in their day.  Balgarnie served as the model for "Chips" in Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips.]  From there he went to Cambridge where he made a right nuisance out of himself but did manage to graduate and to make himself known as a writer of some ability.  Then, aided by the allowance granted to him by the father whom he hated, he set out to be a poet and author; or the most colossal drunk and horse's rear-end yet known in history.  I'll let the reader make that determination.

He lived and worked in London during the 1930's, then moved to Hollywood in an attempt to secure screenwriting jobs in the movie industry.  Honestly, he may have been the only drunken writer not to have been employed in Hollywood in those days, which may be testimony to just how much of a drunk he was.  When thus rejected, he moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where the living was easy and the mescal was cheap.  It seems remarkable to me that he would, again, make such a nuisance of himself that he would eventually be judged as even too boracho for the Mexican authorities, a tolerance that I cannot imagine being tested to its limit, based on what I've witnessed in my many trips to that country, but he was eventually "invited" to leave.  What nightmarish adventures he both witnessed and in which he participated may be gleaned by reading his one lasting gift to world literature.

The most productive period of his life would be spent in during the next three years while he lived in a squatter's shack north of Vancouver, B.C.  It was here that his second wife kept his drinking under control, where there were few distractions, and where she could both type and edit his work as he produced it.  It was as close to a normal life as he would ever have, until his neighbors would burn down the shack, of course, but that's another depressing story.

I find Under the Volcano to be one of those novels, rather like William Burrough's Naked Lunch, that a fan of literature should read at least once.  More than once is another matter entirely.  Here's a synopsis:

Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. Here the consul's debilitating malaise is drinking, and activity that has overshadowed his life. Under the Volcano is set during the most fateful day of the consul's life - the Day of the Dead, 1938. His wife, Yvonne, arrives in Quauhnahuac to rescue him and their failing marriage, inspired by a vision of life together away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their relationship to the brink of collapse. Yvonne's mission is to save the consul is further complicated by the presence of Hugh, the consul's half-brother, and Jacques, a childhood friend. The events of this one day unfold against a backdrop unforgettable for its evocation of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical. Under the Volcano remains one of the most powerful and lyrical statements on the human condition and one man's constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him.

As I noted above, it is on many lists of the top novels of the 20th century and is a harrowing read.  It ends in death, naturally, although that is hardly a surprise that I'm revealing.  John Huston made a film of it some thirty or so years ago, with Albert Finney in the lead, that well captured the tragedy and nightmarish imagery of the novel. 

Lowry's story reminds me of how often art, of any sort, is born of chaos and sometimes terrific pain.  Not just the artist's pain, either, but that of those who try to love them.  I suppose that, for the artist, trapped as they are in the cage of disease, the only redemptive outlet is that of intense self-expression, where whatever they have that is strong and sound is offered through lyricism and endeavor.  Perhaps, in retrospect, what some produce is what permits their redemption in the eyes of others.  Fortunately, Jesus redeems us despite of our sins, provided we are willing to amend our lives.  For those who cannot, though, I'm sure that redemption is also proffered.

B. Traven

The creative person should have no other biography than his works.

There is a place of ephemeral legend in Mexico, known in Spanish as "El Camino", that doesn't exist on any map, save those written in the hearts of those who yearn.  It refers to the experience of outsiders who come to the southern states to find...well, either something or nothing, depending on their desire, and become lost within the quest.  It has claimed many people, men and women, through the years.  There have been explorers, of course, who have worked their way through the jungles and beaches of Mexico; there have been poets, artists, and any number of musicians.  J. Frank Dobie, Ambrose Bierce, William Cullen Bryant, William Burroughs, Jack London, Katherine Anne Porter, Edna Ferber, Jack Kerouac, Hart Crane, and Ken Kesey offhand come to mind as just a few of the gringos and gringas who have, one way or another, hiked the mythical El Camino.  Personally, I've known a number of surfers who have looked for oblivion in the Meso-American waves.

During the 1920's and 30's a series of riveting novels, set mostly in Mexico and mostly about the spiritual experience of El Camino, had been best-sellers in Europe.  Their author, known only as B. Traven, had remained aloof from any sort of publicity.  He lived somewhere in Mexico, no one really knew where, and wrote in German, with his publisher translating his works into the various languages of his continental audience.

In 1946, the filmmaker John Huston began his walk of El Camino.  Having spent several years as the ne'er do well son of a recognizable and bankable stage and movie actor, Huston had been a boxer, drinker, flunky, go-fer, writer, and general dogsbody in the film industry until, to quote from Steely Dan, "he crossed a diamond with a pearl" and wound up writing the screenplay for and directing "The Maltese Falcon", a critical and box office hit that earned serious money for his studio, made a leading man out of Humphrey Bogart, and created the entire genre of film noir.

The only problem with being a success in a world of transient fame was that one was only popular until the next big movie came along.  This is why Huston was sitting in a humid café in Mexico City waiting to meet a man who did not exist.

Having lived and traveled freely in Europe and familiar with the popularity of Traven's work, Huston was particularly interested in Traven's 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, especially as it was the first and only Traven book translated and marketed in the United States at that time. That the novel was an American best-seller and a terrific story convinced Huston that it should be translated to the screen.  Before he could begin to do so, however, the whole world was distracted with World War II.

When Huston returned to civilian life after directing documentaries for the War Department, he again returned to his Sierra Madre project.  His first item of business was receiving the author's permission to use his novel, something that was trickier than it ordinarily would have been since no one was really sure of Traven's whereabouts or true identity.  Still, Huston was not one to be daunted and he began a near Quixotic quest to contact the author and receive his permission.

So it was that Huston found himself waiting for Traven to join him for a drink or three.  However, instead of Traven, a man introducing himself as Hal Croves turned up, explaining that he was serving as Traven's representative and had the power of attorney necessary to complete their contractual negotiations.  While Huston initially suspected the Croves was Traven, he was willing to indulge him in order to complete the film.  The meeting went well and the two met again in Acupulco to finalize the deal and appoint Croves as a "technical adviser" to the film.  In 1947 the filming began on location in Mexico with Croves a familiar personality on the set.  Once filming was completed, Hal Croves disappeared.

Tim Holt, Humphrey Bogart, and Walter Huston; and maybe Traven in the tent, who knows?

Of course, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart and Huston's father, Walter, was a huge success; nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1948 and earning Oscars for Best Screenplay Adaptation and Best Director for John Huston.  With the popularity of the film and the reignited interest in the novels of Traven,  reporters became interested in the elusive author.

However, the only connection to Traven was Hal Croves, who had not been seen for over a year.  A particularly intrepid reporter for a Mexican newspaper began a search for Croves and, instead, found a fellow in Acapulco named Traven Torsvan, a recluse called "El Gringo" by his neighbors.  His interest piqued, the reporter discovered through immigration paperwork that Torsvan was born in Chicago and had come to Mexico in 1930, eventually establishing residency.  Using questionable techniques, mainly bribery and petty theft, the reporter established that El Gringo was receiving royalty checks in the name of "B. Traven" along with correspondence from other authors.  When confronted by reporters, Torsvan, like Croves, disappeared.

A decade later, after interest in Traven and his true identity had cooled, the mysterious Hal Croves, in absentia from the human race since 1947, reappeared to serve as Traven's official representative in negotiation with European filmmakers interested in emulating Huston's success with Treasure.  He would even attend film festivals in Europe, only to be peppered by reporters with questions about his true identity.

Croves would die in 1969.  His widow, who had also been his secretary, would then reveal the true story of B. Traven.  Senora Croves told the press that her late husband had, in fact, been a German anarchist named Ret Marut [aka Otto Feige].  In Germany, her husband published a successful novel, The Death Ship, and edited an anti-government magazine for which he was eventually arrested and sentenced to death.  He managed to escape to Mexico, altering his identity to that of an American émigré.

During his years south of the border, in addition to writing over a dozen novels and short story anthologies, Feige/Marut/Torsvan/Croves/Traven also managed to work as a photographer for some expeditions into the Mexican jungles [from which the above photo, maybe of Traven, comes], as a translator and guide, and as an inn-keeper.  It was a busy life for him, but since he may have been five or so people, perhaps not that unusual.

There is now an entire industry devoted to claiming to know Traven's real identity and disparaging other theories.  It's rather entertaining but largely meaningless.  As Traven noted, for a true artist it's about the work, not the biography.  His story is yet another tale of those, like his characters, who travel El Camino in search of something that they never entirely find and leave behind a life more full of questions than answers.

B. Traven's novels are now all available in English and most are still in print; some are even available in e-book format.



Traven.  Maybe.

B. Traven

Originally published on December 26, 2014 

"The creative person should have no other biography than his works."

_________________________________________________________________________________

There is a place of ephemeral legend in Mexico, known in Spanish as "El Camino", or "The Road", that doesn't exist on any map, save those written in the hearts of ones who yearn.  It refers to the experience of outsiders who come to the southern states to find...well, either something or nothing, depending on their desire, and become lost within the quest.  It has claimed many people, men and women, through the years.

There have been explorers, of course, who have worked their way through the jungles and beaches of Mexico; there have been poets, artists, and any number of musicians.  J. Frank Dobie, Ambrose Bierce, William Cullen Bryant, William Burroughs, Jack London, Katherine Anne Porter, Edna Ferber, Jack Kerouac, Hart Crane, and Ken Kesey offhand come to mind as just a few of the gringos and gringas who have, one way or another, hiked the mythical El Camino.  Personally, I've known a number of surfers who have looked for oblivion in the Meso-American waves.

During the 1920's and 30's a series of riveting novels, set mostly in Mexico and mostly about the spiritual experience of El Camino, were best-sellers in Europe.  Their author, known only as B. Traven, had remained aloof from any sort of publicity.  He lived somewhere in Mexico, no one really knew where, and wrote in German, with his publisher translating his works into the various languages of his continental audience.

Then, in 1946, the filmmaker John Huston began his walk of El Camino.  Having spent several years as the ne'er do well son of a recognizable and bankable stage and movie actor, Huston had been a boxer, drinker, flunky, go-fer, writer, and general dogsbody in the film industry until, to quote from Steely Dan, "he crossed a diamond with a pearl" five years earlier and wound up writing the screenplay for and directing The Maltese Falcon, a critical and box office hit that earned serious money for his studio, made a leading man out of Humphrey Bogart, and created the entire genre of film noir.

The only problem with being a success in a world of transient fame was that one was only popular until the next big movie came along.  This is why Huston was sitting in a humid café in Mexico City waiting to meet a man who did not exist.

Having lived and traveled freely in Europe and familiar with the popularity of Traven's work, Huston was particularly interested in Traven's 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, especially as it was the first and only Traven book translated and marketed in the United States at that time. That the novel was an American best-seller and a terrific story convinced Huston that it should be translated to the screen.  Before he could begin to do so, however, the whole world was distracted with World War II.

When Huston returned to civilian life after directing documentaries for the War Department, he again returned to his Sierra Madre project.  His first item of business was receiving the author's permission to use his novel, something that was trickier than it ordinarily would have been since no one was really sure of Traven's whereabouts or true identity.  Still, Huston was not one to be daunted and he began a near-Quixotic quest to contact the author and receive his permission.

So it was that Huston found himself waiting for Traven to join him for a drink or three.  However, instead of Traven, a man introducing himself as Hal Croves turned up, explaining that he was serving as Traven's representative and had the power of attorney necessary to complete their contractual negotiations.  While Huston initially suspected the Croves was Traven, he was willing to indulge him in order to complete the film.  The meeting went well and the two met again in Acupulco to finalize the deal and appoint Croves as a "technical adviser" to the film.  In 1947 the filming began on location in Mexico with Croves a familiar personality on the set.  Once filming was completed, Hal Croves disappeared.

Tim Holt, Humphrey Bogart, and Walter Huston; and maybe Traven in the tent, who knows?

Of course, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart and Huston's father, Walter, was a huge success; nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1948 and earning Oscars for Best Screenplay Adaptation and Best Director for John Huston.  With the popularity of the film and the reignited interest in the novels of Traven,  reporters became interested in the elusive author.

However, the only connection to Traven was Hal Croves, who had not been seen for over a year.  A particularly intrepid reporter for a Mexican newspaper began a search for Croves and, instead, found a fellow in Acapulco named Traven Torsvan, a recluse called "El Gringo" by his neighbors.  His interest piqued, the reporter discovered through immigration paperwork that Torsvan was born in Chicago and had come to Mexico in 1930, eventually establishing residency.  Using questionable techniques, mainly bribery and petty theft, the reporter established that El Gringo was receiving royalty checks in the name of "B. Traven" along with correspondence from other authors.  When confronted by reporters, Torsvan, like Croves, disappeared.

A decade later, after interest in Traven and his true identity had cooled, the mysterious Hal Croves, in absentia from the human race since 1947, reappeared to serve as Traven's official representative in negotiation with European filmmakers interested in emulating Huston's success with Treasure.  He would even attend film festivals in Europe, only to be peppered by reporters with questions about his true identity.

Croves would die in 1969.  His widow, who had also been his secretary, would then reveal the true story of B. Traven.  Senora Croves told the press that her late husband had, in fact, been a German anarchist named Ret Marut [aka Otto Feige].  In Germany, her husband published a successful novel, The Death Ship, and edited an anti-government magazine for which he was eventually arrested and sentenced to death.  He managed to escape to Mexico, altering his identity to that of an American émigré.

During his years south of the border, in addition to writing over a dozen novels and short story anthologies, Feige/Marut/Torsvan/Croves/Traven also managed to work as a photographer for some expeditions into the Mexican jungles [from which the above photo, maybe of Traven, comes], as a translator and guide, and as an inn-keeper.  It was a busy life for him, but since he may have been five or so people, perhaps not that unusual.

There is now an entire industry devoted to claiming to know Traven's real identity and disparaging other theories.  It's rather entertaining but largely meaningless.  As Traven noted, for a true artist it's about the work, not the biography.  His story is yet another tale of those, like his characters, who travel El Camino in search of something that they never entirely find and leave behind a life more full of questions than answers.

B. Traven's novels are now all available in English and most are still in print; some are even available in e-book format.



Traven.  Maybe.

B. Traven

"The creative person should have no other biography than his works."

_________________________________________________________________________________

There is a place of ephemeral legend in Mexico, known in Spanish as "El Camino", that doesn't exist on any map, save those written in the hearts of those who yearn.  It refers to the experience of outsiders who come to the southern states to find...well, either something or nothing, depending on their desire, and become lost within the quest.  It has claimed many people, men and women, through the years.  There have been explorers, of course, who have worked their way through the jungles and beaches of Mexico; there have been poets, artists, and any number of musicians.  J. Frank Dobie, Ambrose Bierce, William Cullen Bryant, William Burroughs, Jack London, Katherine Anne Porter, Edna Ferber, Jack Kerouac, Hart Crane, and Ken Kesey offhand come to mind as just a few of the gringos and gringas who have, one way or another, hiked the mythical El Camino.  Personally, I've known a number of surfers who have looked for oblivion in the Meso-American waves.

During the 1920's and 30's a series of riveting novels, set mostly in Mexico and mostly about the spiritual experience of El Camino, had been best-sellers in Europe.  Their author, known only as B. Traven, had remained aloof from any sort of publicity.  He lived somewhere in Mexico, no one really knew where, and wrote in German, with his publisher translating his works into the various languages of his continental audience.

In 1946, the filmmaker John Huston began his walk of El Camino.  Having spent several years as the ne'er do well son of a recognizable and bankable stage and movie actor, Huston had been a boxer, drinker, flunky, go-fer, writer, and general dogsbody in the film industry until, to quote from Steely Dan, "he crossed a diamond with a pearl" and wound up writing the screenplay for and directing "The Maltese Falcon", a critical and box office hit that earned serious money for his studio, made a leading man out of Humphrey Bogart, and created the entire genre of film noir.

The only problem with being a success in a world of transient fame was that one was only popular until the next big movie came along.  This is why Huston was sitting in a humid café in Mexico City waiting to meet a man who did not exist.

Having lived and traveled freely in Europe and familiar with the popularity of Traven's work, Huston was particularly interested in Traven's 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, especially as it was the first and only Traven book translated and marketed in the United States at that time. That the novel was an American best-seller and a terrific story convinced Huston that it should be translated to the screen.  Before he could begin to do so, however, the whole world was distracted with World War II.

When Huston returned to civilian life after directing documentaries for the War Department, he again returned to his Sierra Madre project.  His first item of business was receiving the author's permission to use his novel, something that was trickier than it ordinarily would have been since no one was really sure of Traven's whereabouts or true identity.  Still, Huston was not one to be daunted and he began a near Quixotic quest to contact the author and receive his permission.

So it was that Huston found himself waiting for Traven to join him for a drink or three.  However, instead of Traven, a man introducing himself as Hal Croves turned up, explaining that he was serving as Traven's representative and had the power of attorney necessary to complete their contractual negotiations.  While Huston initially suspected the Croves was Traven, he was willing to indulge him in order to complete the film.  The meeting went well and the two met again in Acupulco to finalize the deal and appoint Croves as a "technical adviser" to the film.  In 1947 the filming began on location in Mexico with Croves a familiar personality on the set.  Once filming was completed, Hal Croves disappeared.

Tim Holt, Humphrey Bogart, and Walter Huston; and maybe Traven in the tent, who knows?

Of course, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart and Huston's father, Walter, was a huge success; nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1948 and earning Oscars for Best Screenplay Adaptation and Best Director for John Huston.  With the popularity of the film and the reignited interest in the novels of Traven,  reporters became interested in the elusive author.

However, the only connection to Traven was Hal Croves, who had not been seen for over a year.  A particularly intrepid reporter for a Mexican newspaper began a search for Croves and, instead, found a fellow in Acapulco named Traven Torsvan, a recluse called "El Gringo" by his neighbors.  His interest piqued, the reporter discovered through immigration paperwork that Torsvan was born in Chicago and had come to Mexico in 1930, eventually establishing residency.  Using questionable techniques, mainly bribery and petty theft, the reporter established that El Gringo was receiving royalty checks in the name of "B. Traven" along with correspondence from other authors.  When confronted by reporters, Torsvan, like Croves, disappeared.

A decade later, after interest in Traven and his true identity had cooled, the mysterious Hal Croves, in absentia from the human race since 1947, reappeared to serve as Traven's official representative in negotiation with European filmmakers interested in emulating Huston's success with Treasure.  He would even attend film festivals in Europe, only to be peppered by reporters with questions about his true identity.

Croves would die in 1969.  His widow, who had also been his secretary, would then reveal the true story of B. Traven.  Senora Croves told the press that her late husband had, in fact, been a German anarchist named Ret Marut [aka Otto Feige].  In Germany, her husband published a successful novel, The Death Ship, and edited an anti-government magazine for which he was eventually arrested and sentenced to death.  He managed to escape to Mexico, altering his identity to that of an American émigré.

During his years south of the border, in addition to writing over a dozen novels and short story anthologies, Feige/Marut/Torsvan/Croves/Traven also managed to work as a photographer for some expeditions into the Mexican jungles [from which the above photo, maybe of Traven, comes], as a translator and guide, and as an inn-keeper.  It was a busy life for him, but since he may have been five or so people, perhaps not that unusual.

There is now an entire industry devoted to claiming to know Traven's real identity and disparaging other theories.  It's rather entertaining but largely meaningless.  As Traven noted, for a true artist it's about the work, not the biography.  His story is yet another tale of those, like his characters, who travel El Camino in search of something that they never entirely find and leave behind a life more full of questions than answers.

B. Traven's novels are now all available in English and most are still in print; some are even available in e-book format.



Traven.  Maybe.

Today's Irrelevant Jack Kerouac Reference

Trust me, there will be a lot of these.

Slam poet of the San Juans

Thursday's Place: The Dune Shacks of Provincetown

Edward Hopper's rendition of the Cape shacks

There is something about the extreme points on the eastern shore of the United States that draws the liminal.  Save for the weather and seasonal climate, there is a lot in common between, say, Key West, Florida and Provincetown, Massachusetts.  These are communities that attract artists, writers, low-lifes [that may have been redundant], highly original entrepreneurs, and unusual businesses; the general vibe of creativity and celebration is found everywhere from the high-colored exteriors of the restored homes to the latest culinary creation on the plate in front of you.

Duval Street, Key West

Commercial Street, Provincetown

Drug and alcohol use seems to be rather freely engaged, too.  I suppose that follows from both places having once been popular with pirates.

As the artistic class, represented by Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Jimmy Buffet [well, why not?] found creative encouragement in free and easy Key West, Provincetown was no different.  Even though it is hampered by having distinct seasons, punctuated by a sometimes brutal winter, it still became a haven for those who needed the relaxed solitude [and cheap alcohol] of a liminal community .

While there is nothing quite like the quaint re-purposed fishing shanties of Key West, Provincetown may have something much better, especially for those who found that their art and its creation was more akin to a monastic endeavor than a ceaseless bacchanal.

Since that area of the Massachusetts coast can be treacherous and historically remote, shacks were built in the 19th century on the sand bluffs along the Provincetown and Truro border to house the members of an early incarnation of the U.S. Coast Guard and to serve as shelters for the survivors of shipwrecks.  So common were such wrecks that, in 1865, when Henry David Thoreau was hiking the dune trails of Cape Cod, he noted the many wizened men who would comb the beaches looking for the flotsam from recent wrecks, warily regarding an obvious city dandy like Walden Pond's resident.

While the shacks eventually lost their original purpose, as a series of lighthouses would be built to warn mariners of the coastline, they continued to be re-built season after season, often with driftwood found along the beaches, and by the 1920's were offered for sale or lease to those interested in a rustic retreat along the coastline.  One of the first to purchase a dune shack was Eugene O'Neill, arguably America's greatest playwright, as a place for solitude and concentration.  It was here that he would write "Anna Christie" and "The Hairy Ape".

As O'Neill was respected and connected in the creative world, others would hear of the shacks and begin their pilgrimage, to greater or lesser [mostly lesser] effect, to the dunes over the next decades. Even though the shacks had no electricity or running water and the heat, as even summer evenings on the Cape can get cool, was supplied by meager fireplaces, poets, writers, and artists such as e.e. cummings, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, and Jackson Pollock, would find their way to those shacks in that liminal zone on the tip of Cape Cod and, with the pilgrimage, some inspiration.

To get a flavor of shack life in the 1920's, Henry Beston's The Outermost House is still in print and contains one of the more important meditations on waves and water in the chapter entitled "The Headlong Wave".  It's worth reading for anyone who enjoys that part of the coastline, or who happens to be an elderly surfer.

Nineteen of the shacks still stand, all but one now owned by the U.S. government [naturally].  One may enter a lottery, however, to earn a chance to reside in one of the shacks for a period of time, and there is a program that encourages their continued use by artists.

Only one tour company owns the rights to carry tourists through the shack zone, which is why it's a bit expensive and offers some questionable historical facts, but it's worth it if one is interested in this side show in American arts.  Certainly, any visit to the outer reaches of Cape Cod should include at least a passing glance at those humble structures that represent so much of Eastern maritime history and the lively arts of the American Century.