Irwin Corey as Panhandler-Pynchon Speech

Little did I know, when I was stopped three weeks ago in a cab across 35th st for a light, that the nonagenarian panhandler with the hat emblazoned with Remove our Corrupt Government and Uncle Sam is A Bully on its brim - would turn out to be,according to today's NY Times,Irwin Corey, the 97 year old comic actor and master of doubletalk, who raises money for progressive causes in his free time and who lives nearby in a $3.5 million dollar carriagehouse. ( His wife recently passed away at 95).
I did contribute to his cause- and in exchange he ceremoniously passed me a copy of a newspaper, which I stuffed into my bag of lunch books and upon returning to my office before the witching hour of 2pm gingerly took out, hoping it would contain the prophetic ravings of the esoteric underground-
It turned out to be the Voice, and I kept it as a souvenir because it seemed a special,magical encounter.

Here is Professor Corey' famous doubletalk speech at the National Book Awards in 1974, accepting the award for Gravity's Rainbow and as authorized by Thomas Pynchon:

Professor Irwin Corey:
However... accept this financial stipulation - ah - stipend in behalf of, uh, Richard Python for the great contribution and to quote from some of the missiles which he has contributed...Today we must all be aware that protocol takes precedence over procedure. Howewer you say - WHAT THE - what does this mean... in relation to the tabulation whereby we must once again realize that the great fiction story is now being rehearsed before our very eyes, in the Nixon administration... indicating that only an American writer can receive...the award for fction, unlike Solzinitski whose fiction doesn't hold water. Comrades - friends, we are gathered here not only to accept in behalf of one recluse - one who has found that the world in itself which seems to be a time not of the toad - to quote even Studs TurKAL. And many people ask "Who are Studs TurKAL?" It's not "Who are Studs TurKAL?" it's "Who am Studs TurKAL?" This in itself as an edifice of the great glory that has gone beyond, and the intuitive feeling of the American people, based on the assumption that the intelligence not only as Mencken once said, "He who underestimates the American pubic - public, will not go broke." This is merely a small indication of this vast throng gathered here to once again behold and to perceive that which has gone behind and to that which might go forward into the future...we've got to hurdle these obstacles. This is the main deterrent upon which we have gathered our strength and all the others who say, "What the hell did that get?" - We don't know. We've got to peforce withold the loving boy... And as Miller once said in one of his great novels- what did he ... that language is only necessary when communication is endangered. And you sit there bewildered, and Pinter who went further said "It is not the lack of communication but fear of communication." That's what the Goddamn thing is it's we fear - communication. Oh - fortunately the prize has only been given to authors - unlike the Academy Award which is given to a female and a male, indicating the derision of the human specie - God damn it! But we have no paranoia, and Mr. Pynchon has attained, and has created for himself serenity, and it is only the insanity that has kept him alive in his paranoia. We speak of the organ...of the orgasm...Who the hell wrote this? And the jury has determined to divide the prize between two writers - to Thomas Pynchon for his GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. Now GRAVITY'S RAINBOW is a token of this man's genius...he told me so himself...that he could...in other words, have been more specific, but rather than to allude the mundane, he has come to the conclusion that brevity is the importance of our shallow existence. God damn. Ladies and Gentlemen. To the distinguished panel on the, on the dais and to the other winners, for poetry and religion and science. The time will come when religion will outlive its usefulness. Marx, Groucho Marx, once said that religion is the opiate of the people. I say that when religion outlives its usefulness, then opium...will be the opiate...Ahh that's not a bad idea... All right...However, I want to thank Mr. Guinzburg, Tom Guinzburg of the Viking Press, who has made it possible for you people to be here this evening to enjoy the Friction Citation - the Fiction Citation. GRAVITY'S RAINBOW - a small contribution to a certain degree, since there are over three and a half billion people in the world today. 218 of them ... million live in the United States which is a very, very small amount compared to those that are dying elsewhere...Well, I say that you will be on the road to new horizons, for we who live in a society where sex is a commodity and a politician can become a TV personality, it's not easy to conform if you have any morality...I, I, I said that myself many years ago...But I do want to thank the bureau...I mean the committee, the organization for the $10,000 they've given out...tonight they made over $400,000 and I think that I have another appointment. I would like to stay here, but for the sake of brevity I, I must leave. I do want to thank you, I want to thank Mr. TurKAL. I want to thank Mr. Knopf who just ran through the auditorium* and I want to thank Breshnev, Kissinger - acting President of the Unites States - and also want to thank Truman Capote and thank you.

New York City still is a special place to work- even in the middle of midtown , clogged with mallstores.bike lanes and superrich detritus. A good nose ferrets out the jewels.

Amy Winehouse- The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Five days before Amy Winehouse died, I wrote this revision of the 1930's standard below

Boulevard of Broken Dreams Redux

C 2011 by Ed Kabak



I walk along the street of sadness

The boulevard of broken dreams

Where every lover and his mate

Are tossed upon the jaws of fate

and lives are shattered at the seams



You’re high today, then crash in madness

when darkness fingers your moonbeams

And every lover and her mate

Are locked inside a velvet gate

Whose latchkey’s made of broken dreams



This is where we are confined now

An endless dance on wearied feet

Our souls are lost,and we're too blind now

to what could make our lives complete



The joie d’ vivre that once had thrilled you

Has fractured into tiny screams

yet every lover, every mate

Still bet on chance and still they dance

The boulevard of broken dreams

Kabul-Old Hotel True Horror Stories and Books to Read

The suicides attacks and fires at the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel inlate June brought back sweet and sour memories of our encounter in 1971, when the hotel was newly opened. We were on a 5 week self- conducted tour of Afghanistan,India and Nepal- the first leg of which encompassed 10 days in Kabul, with trips to Jalalabad(source of much intrigue these days) and the Bamiyan valley , where we were escorted through caves to stand on the top of the legendary Greco-Buddhist Buddhas statues carved out of the cliff- two huge monuments that were a prime attraction for visitors and a reminder of Afghanistan's confluence at the center of many worlds- a crossroads of civilizations(until theTaliban, at the urging of Wahhabis detroyed them before September 11,2001.)


Who can forget that bizarre trip in the early 1970's when the King was still in power and the most dangerous thing to do was to sleep out in the open, and be exposed to bandits and cutthroats.
That first night- in the Spinzar Hotel,we watched the geckos run down the wall ,gazed out at the open stalls still lit; the skies over the thrusting jagged Hindukush peaks were blazing with stars .And then we casually went to the Afghan music room in the hotel, not yet daring to venture out since we had landed just before dark that afternoon and the night and timeless uneasy feeling in the air was just a little bit threatening.In this small upstairs foyer we listened to an Afghan version of the oud played by a young soldier off duty while another Afghan man tried to dance with the newlywed spouse who was wearing a long dress but not a burqa)-
I had to politely cut in to discourage his efforts. But those were the days when the university students were not veiled, nor were the koochi(nomads) and one third of the population seemed to be nomadic.
The last night we were there my lovely wife was just recovering from dysentery encountered at the aforesaid Intercontinental Hotel, where we were assured that the water filling our canteens had been thoroughly distilled and purified.Not! Shortly after returning to the hotel the next day from steaming Jalalabad she felt seriously illand
She remained in bed the last two days we were in Kabul. The last night, after receeiving reassurance from a local Afghan physician, who advised chewing on lemons, she was strong enough to struggle down to the dining room and order tea and bread-
For my part, having been sickened by the smoky smell of aged mutton cooking in the streets(the aroma made fecal matter seem ambrosial)- I told the waiter that I would prefer my own food and proffered a can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli bought from one of the"gourmet" stores on Chicken St-
He replied "you do not like our food sir" and I countered that I was under doctor's orders to eat Chef Boyardeee once a week-(Please remember this is a country where the Pathan code of hospitality,best exemplified by the Taliban's refusal to turn Bin Laden over to the West in 1999 since he was entitled to all the privileges of any other guest) obliges strangers to invite one into their home for dinner ; one does not want to give insult under such delicate circumsytances.
So I gingerly walked into the kitchen,and made the surprised staff remove ten inches of stale oil from an iron pot that looked as if it were minted at the time of Timerlane- and that was the best meal we had in Kabul...
We never made it back to Afghhanistan, despite plans to visit Mazar-I- Sharif, but if one wishes to read a great work of literature and crazed travel writing, Rory Stewart's The In Between Spaces, an account of his winter's journey by foot after 2001 from Herat to Kabul over the Hindukush, is one of the most compelling solo travel accounts of all time.

Robert Jay Lifton-Witness to an Extreme Century

Robert Jay Lifton, now in his 80's, has graced us with numerous works of psychology and history focusing on some of the more extreme traumas and events of our 20th century past- from thought reform and brainwashing by the Chinese, to the hibakusha-the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the meaning of living through a nuclear holocaust- to the way that the Nazi doctors were able to reconcile their respective Hippocratic oaths with carrying out torture and horrible medical experimentation on concentration camp victims.The discussion of how Nazi doctors and others make use of a kind of psychic numbing or mental separation from the horrible acts one is contemplating or engaging in, is as startling today as when I first encountered it thirty years ago in Lifton's writing. As is Lifton's poignant and brilliant mosaic of the horrors of the bomb and living in its aftermath. The descriptions of how a city like Hiroshima was literally wiped out of existence in a few instants are alone worth the price of admission to these pages.
These canvasses as well as the Vietnam war are covered in a detailed moral memoir of an engaged life that has just been published as Witness to an Extreme Century by the Free Press. Lifton was both an analyst and activist on many of these issues and has written on the protean man- always changing attitudes and consciousness, cults like Aum Shinryiko in Japan and numerous topics dealing with history and matters of human survival.
What stands out for me is his perceptive analysis of what he calls "totalism"-a totalistic mental environment in which "eight deadly sins" are present-

1-milieu control of virtually all communication in the environment
2-mystical manipulation from un uncertain source above
-3 the demand for an absolute purity of good to defeat an absoolute evil
4-the cult of self-confession(eg inChina)
5-sacred science,meaning claims for doctrinal truth that is divine and scientifically "proven"
6-loading the language--
7- doctrine taking precedence over person,with doubt considered as an aberration or personal flaw- and
8-dispensing of existence/and or the right to live between those who have a right to existence and others who ,unfortunately do not.

In this approach to totalism is much of fundamentalism , claims for national exceptionalism and superiority, cult behavior,and other aspects of authoritarian and doubtless minds.

This is one of the most important memoirs I have ever read.Cool, level headed and with some optimism too for the survival of our species, despite the ugliness of the last 100 years.

The photo above of the mushroom cloud is of Bikini atoll in the Pacific where the US conducted above ground nuclear tests right after World War II and allowed military photographers to view the explosion from less than a mile away.

Bloomsday and Al Goldstein;Robert Jay Lifton-Witness to an Extreme Century

I celebrated Bloomsday(June 16, the day in 1904 that the entire events of Ulysses take place)at Left Bank Books, the fine antiquarian/used bookshop on 8th Ave between Jane and West 12th st.
While numerous readers declaimed from various chapters of Ulysses, when it came my turn, I read sections from the Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter of Finnegan's Wake, wherein Joyce expounds on the great feminine archetype of life-giving waters, the Liffey, and in the course of doing so buries hundreds of hidden names of the world's rivers.
As if this treasonous activity weren't enough, I then proceeded to read from Selected Joyce Letters, a one volume abridgement and selection of new and previously expurgated letters published after the death of Nora Joyce, James Joyce's wife, and edited by Richard Ellmann.
In the course of doing so I explained how I found Joyce through Al Goldstein, the once famous publisher of Screw magazine and first amendment warrior.
The circuitous route went like this: I was just beginning my legal career, doing First amendment work and libel readings, when I saw the cover of the then current issue of Goldstein's sex tabloid Screw, brazenly announce the publication of just published smutty missives from James Joyce to his amour,the Irish actress Nora Barnacle in 1909.
Naturally, Al Goldstein, who was never one to turn down an opportunity to push the boundaries of free expression, took the most juicy letters just published in the Ellmann edition, and sprayed or splayed them all over the pages of his magazine.
My assignment as fledgling attorney was to write the obligatory infringement letter on behalf of Stephen Joyce and the Joyce Estate, it being understood that it was unlikely they would engage in court proceedings.
We did so, and shortly thereafter left for vacation in Afghanistan , India and Nepal( those were the days when one could still safely take one month vacations)
When I came back, numerous people visited me and asked what I was doing with multiple copies of Screw magazine in my desk drawers. I explained that these were potential plaintiff's court exhibits and asked why they had entered my office and were prowling though my desk.
All I got In return was a knowing smile...

Thus I learned two inportant lessons-1- always lock your desk when you leave on vacation and 2- James Joyce, who wrote the steamiest prose I had seen must be worth reading- So I ventured beyond the Portrait of an Artist and Dubliners into the encyclopedic dayworld of Ulysses and night world of Finnegan's Wake and life was never the same...
And it was from one of these letters that I read last week, the one sent on Dec. 16, 1909 which says F*** me in multiple imperative phrases ,each for a different and unusual position,and continues with "Basta basta per Dio -[soon I shall be in] Trieste... I shall be happy there-I figlioli,il fuoco,una buona mangiata, un caffe nero,un Brasil,(the children, a fire, a good dinner, a black coffee, a Brazil cigar)
...A hundred thousand kisses darling!
Jim
It's as hot now as it was `102 years ago...

Guyotat at World PEN Voices; BEA 2011

The photo is of the great French novelist Pierre Guyotat, who appeared at several fora at the PEN World Voices festival recently concluded, including the afore-captioned one at Maison Francaise with Edmund White.Guyotat, who is often described,somewhatsimplistically, as the heir to Rimbaud and de Sade, first came to national attention with the publication of Tomb for 5000 Soldiers(Tombeau pour cing cent mille soldats), an obsessively brilliant rant of atrocities in a military zone which evoked the Algerian war.Eden Eden Eden,which followed, was one uninterrupted stream of violent sexual activities/expressions, censored for many years by the French Government.He has proceeded , through Prostitution, printed in French and not here in English except through a brilliant recasting of language in a short piece by Bruce Benderson, to continue to subvert the French language. Coma, reprinted this year in English by Semiotexte, describes his breakdown and recovery as a writer many years ago, and he is now expanding his writing style to a confluence of memoir and language subversion, which makes easier reading for some. An altogether brilliant man and fantastic writer.NB:Red Dust has published the aforementioned Bruce Benderson's unique translation and commentary on Prostitution, which is a marvellous feat of reinvention of vocabulary akin to the translation of Perec's lipogrammatic "A Void',a three hundred page novel in French without the letter "e" brilliantly recreated in English by Gilbert Adair.


BEA 2011 starts this week; we are attending and focussing on these titles, which among others will be reviewed in these pages.(We will also cover and review the state of University Press publishing, the legal ramifications of limited library use of e-books, the state of the market and titles from small independent presses, and the mise en scene in publishing today.

Again, the following are but a few of the more obvious books we will treat in detail- The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, whose writings are finally getting as much attention in his home country as they have for decades in Europe, The Last Word, Mark Lane's summing up on the Kennedy Assassination from Skyhorse,and new works by Anne Enright,Kenneth Goldsmith, Carlos Franz, JMG Le Clezio, and the titles of Dalkey Archive, North Atlantic Press, Archipelago and a host of others. Off to the races!

Someday

Someday
C 2011 by E.M.Kabak


Someday we’ll close Guantanamo
Someday we’ll end all wars
Someday we’ll stop treating nations like a domino
And bust the financial whores

Someday we’ll stop pushing sugar and fats to folks
While millions are chewing on bones
Someday we’ll stop all the PR hoax
Someday stop killing with drones

Someday we’ll stop selling radioactivity
And building cell phone towers
Someday we’ll end our brutish proclivity
Someday we won’t abuse power

Someday we’ll end deception and stealth
And the sheep will be safe with the fox
Someday there’ll be a cap on wealth
And thought won’t default to “Lock”

Someday the rich will pay their taxes
And tribalism will dissolve
Someday we won’t push the earth off its axis
Who knows? We may even evolve.
(I might just bet on it)
Who knows-we may even evolve.