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THE GARDEN OF EROS The Stor tory of the Paris Expatriates and the Post-W ost-War Literary Scene John Calder (Alma) John Calder. The enduring English publisher. Who took chances, Burroughs, Beckett and others. Morphed into Calder and Boyars at one point. Apparently that fusion ended in acrimony. He’s been around the block a few times, paid his dues, has stories to tell and was in on so many events important in the alternative English publishing scene post war. So there are few better equipped to relate that ‘underground’ publishing story that takes in Paris, New York, Spain, London, and involves Grove Press, Maurice Girodias, the Olympia Press, Evergreen Review, Henry Miller, censorship battles, Alexander Trocchi and so much more besides. Nothing happens without a precedent and Calder outlines the stories and history that came before the turbulent 1950s and 1960s. The factions at work in war torn Paris during the Second World War, the politics that divided the literary world, the resistors and the Nazi collaborators. The internecine struggles for cultural ascendancy. Calder paints a lively, stressful landscape. And then Paris is liberated and the city swings back into its previous life. Hemingway propping up a bar. Henry Miller like a deer frozen in the headlights at a court hearing to determine if he was an obscene writer or not. The French were forgiving and lenient and sometimes persistently draconian. George Plimpton and The Paris Review journal that emerged from the wreckage of the war and in influx of Americans into Paris – this gets the full spotlight from Calder. Naturally there is a revolving door of writers, editors, chancers, lovely young girls who worked at the Review, writers. Of course Calder speculates on the probability of The Paris Review being financed by the CIA. How else would it have survived so long? One figure stands out like a colossus in Calder’s book, that of Maurice Girodias. A renegade publisher if ever there was one. His Olympia Press a curious mixture of the avant-garde and the pornographic. For every Burroughs or Beckett there was a ‘db’ – a dirty book. Girodias published them endlessly and was chased through the courts incessantly for his brash nerve and cheek. The Calder portrait of Girodias, as he tracks and remembers him through the decades, is surprisingly affectionate, when you consider Girodias was a rogue, who was a slippery customer when it came to paying his bills. If you need to discover Maurice Girodias, you need look no further than Calder. Alexander Trocchi, another ‘character’ who charmed and conned his way through life and who ultimately succumbed to his drug addiction, he too receives the Calder spotlight. Grove Press, Barney Rosset, they went together like hand and glove. Calder, again, draws a picture of a shy, yet brash Rosset. A man who would not entertain any view other than his own, an individualist, risk taker. A man who – as is well documented – took on the censorship police and won. Calder does a good job. John Calder was there, an insider, consequently his recollections and thoughts are invaluable. He has an easy style, a little ‘old school.’ A rewarding book. Paperback by Alma Press ISBN 978-09574522-1-3 Brian Dalton NEELI CHERKOVSKI Falling Light (Edition Baes) Back last year Edition Baes, the publishing house founded by Elias Schneitter, issued a lovingly presented hardcover containing the poetry of Neeli Cherkovski. Now Cherkovski has been something of an enduring presence on the San Francisco poetry landscape for a decade or two. Mostly published in small editions, firmly rooted in that old North Beach and Beat tradition of the 1950s. Sometimes I feel about him that he was born too late, instead he should have been part of that San Francisco poetry renaissance of the 1950s and mixed with Whalen, Welch, McClure, Snyder, Rexroth and all the others who made up that scene. Instead he has positioned himself in a place totally his own. He was a close friend of Charles Bukowski, which shows he has allegiance to no one, heck, they even started a short lived magazine together. Cherkovski also produced the first biography of Bukowski. Plus another biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And he’s responsible for the excellent Whitman’s Wild Children, I fear that one is out of print. That’s a crime. Here in this new book are contemporary poems and some older ones. Poetry recalling Harold Norse, times in East Hollywood with Bukowski, for Ezra Pound, Coit Tower, of course an SF landmark. There is a melancholy that bathes everything he writes. Published in English with a German language text alongside. ISBN 9-78-3950-355970 Hardcover Edition Baes www.edition-baes.at Dawn Swoop 62
Diane di Prima having her long hair brushed by Shirley Berman at the Berman home at Crater Lane in 1962. Also in the picture is Tosh, the son of Shirley and Wallace Berman. Wallace Berman took the photo. In 1962 Di Prima had published her book The New Handbook of Heaven - issued by Dave Hasewood’s excellent and infuential Auerhahn Press in San Francisco. Di Prima was very much a believer in the small press way of doing things, bypassing the mainstream altogether. Later on she was to found her own press in New York City. In that she had much in common with Wallace and Shirley Berman and their Semina publications. In hindsight might this time have planted the seed of the future in Diane di Prima’s mind?
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Number 73 Summer 2014 £4.50 Lew We
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Number 73 Summer 2014 Editor ditor.
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fall 1972 I moved from California t
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Robert Duncan, Jess, and Friends Du
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Robert Duncan, Jess, and Friends ra
Page 11 and 12: BILL BURROUGHS IN AMSTERDAM by Eddi
Page 13 and 14: Bill Burroughs in Amsterdam ‘Patt
Page 15 and 16: A Half-American Writer During the p
Page 17 and 18: A Half-American Writer Another impo
Page 19 and 20: CONVERSATIONS with KEN KESEY edited
Page 21 and 22: company alongside Charles Olson, Ro
Page 23 and 24: abstract expressionist painters wer
Page 25 and 26: Jeffers is my God interest in it. H
Page 27 and 28: Cajoled Not notified of ancient Cur
Page 29 and 30: Ginsberg on Kerouac Buddhism, too,
Page 31 and 32: Ginsberg on Kerouac after being in
Page 33 and 34: Ginsberg on Kerouac Inter ntervie v
Page 35 and 36: ----------- It’s Monday morning.
Page 37 and 38: they discover a dead seal and say,
Page 39 and 40: We pick up all our garbage and spli
Page 41 and 42: eaders. Since I was driving taxi, I
Page 43 and 44: Write a Madder Letter if You Can by
Page 45 and 46: Write a Madder Letter if You Can ho
Page 47 and 48: Billy Burroughs’ Prediction by Ed
Page 49 and 50: Billy Burroughs’ Prediction Despi
Page 51 and 52: THE BEAT SCENE REVIEW SECTION Dexte
Page 53 and 54: Damn Fine Letters work but he reall
Page 55 and 56: Jack Kerouac The Haunted Life and O
Page 57 and 58: The Haunted Life talk on porches, l
Page 59 and 60: Amiri Baraka & Edward Dorn The Coll
Page 61: Amiri Baraka & Edward Dorn happens
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