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Really Lost Books
Fade Out
Douglas Woolf
(Penguin)
by Kevin Ring
It took twelve years for Douglas Woolf to see
his 1959 novel Fade Out get publication in England as
a mass market paperback. It had limited circulation
through Weidenfeld and Nicholson in England in
1968. The paperback copy I have here on the table
was issued in 1971 in this country. He’s been locked
in my memory banks for a considerable time. His
name cropped up first in New
American Story back in 1965, issued
“Was born
in 1956 in
an Arizona
ghost town,
where I
wrote most
of Fade
Out...”
in the USA by Barney Rosset’s Grove
Press. Again Penguin got that book
out in England in 1971. Douglas
Woolf maybe felt 1971 was going to
be his breakthrough year in Europe.
My copy of New American Story was
found in a used bookstore about
1978, the previous owner’s name
‘Mark Vallance’ is inscribed neatly
inside and he’s dated it 1972. This is
where Woolf comes in for me. Edited
by Donald Allen, he of Grey Fox Press
fame and Robert Creeley, the
anthology collects work by such names
as William Burroughs, Hubert Selby Jr., Ed Dorn,
John Rechy, William Eastlake, Leroi Jones, Michael
Rumaker and Jack Kerouac. And Douglas Woolf. I
wondered where Woolf fitted in that picture? He
doesn’t seem to have mixed with the Beats. There are
no photos of him with Creeley, or Dorn. He seems a
maverick in a true sense.
The Woolf stories in New American Story
are The Flyman and The Cat. It is illuminating to read
what I assume is Woolf’s self penned mini biography
at the rear of that book, “Began in Lower Manhattan
in 1922, and at a tender age was taken to the foot of
Rockingstone Hill, in the suburbs. Moved back and
forth until I went to Massachusetts for school and
Harvard. Left childhood scenes for three years in AFS
and AAF, as ambulance driver and airplane navigator,
and have seldom returned except for short visits. Tried
L.A., Denver, Miami, Chicago, joined by my wife on
the way. Two daughters followed, and a degree from the
University of New Mexico. Was born in
1951 in a lookout tower on Cibola
National Forest, and returned next two
summers, during the last and best of
which I wrote the Hypocritic Days in
three sleepless months sitting on a ruptured
disc. Have since moved through most of
the far and southwest states as itinerant
worker in ballparks, coliseums, icecream
trucks, beanfields, etc, etc, settling for as
long as a year at a time. Was born in 1956
in an Arizona ghost town, where I wrote
most of Fade Out. Was born in an
Arizona copper town in 1958, and wrote
Wall to Wall. Born in an Idaho lead and
zinc town, 1960 and in San Isabel Forest,
1962, but it gets harder every time. Died Spokane in
1964, when John – Juan was born.”
His name crops in the recently published
Selected Letters of Robert Creeley. Woolf is mentioned
by Creeley in passing in a note to Ed Dorn in
September 1960, it is possibly in connection with
New American Story. The mention is fleeting. By
January 1961 Creeley is recommending Woolf ’s work
to English poet and magazine editor Tom Raworth,
listing Woolf’s address as Box 4321, Spokane 31,
Washington. Raworth is looking for writers to fill the
pages of his Outburst magazine. Woolf is in good
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