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the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by King Wenclas:
"WHAT HAPPENED
INSIDE MILLER THEATER!"
Part One of King's Howl Protest Account!
(Click here for Protest photos, press & participant reports).
NOT UNTIL I walked into Miller Hall with Jelly Boy the
Clown, and felt the shouting sound of our outside sidewalk show
drop away to the controlled silence of the theater lobby, did the
personal fog I'd been in all day leave me. I snapped awake.
We hadn't known what to expect when we'd arrived outside
Columbia University to stage our "Howl" sidewalk demonstration--
whether we'd be reading before two or three people. The sudden
crowd, the exuberance, the hilarity caught us by surprise. Maybe the
people were there because of the attention we'd received from places
like MetroNY, TimeOut NY, and WNYC (we obtained more press
for the dueling events than did the high-priced publicists at Farrar
Straus Giroux book company). Maybe the reaction was spontaneous.
Our poetry show was a noisy success-- we also held tickets for the
other event. There was no need to use them. We had no plan. A
couple of us decided to walk in anyway to see what would happen.
The contrast between the Overdog event and ours was shocking. We
felt the difference-- the entire rigidly silent audience in the theater
had to feel it also, many of them clutching ULA informational
"Protest" flyers they'd been handed near the entrance. The well-
dressed establishment priests on stage must've felt it as well, all six of
them looking away as the clown and I strode slowly and deliberately
down to our seats just beneath the stage. Eyes of the audience were
upon the two of us as we took our seats.
We'd arrived in the middle of no performance. Playing was a
scratchy bad recording of Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl"--
the panel unwilling or unable to read the great work of life and
energy themselves. Frank Walsh was shouting the legendary poem to
the New York streets outside! In the hall the academic writers treated
it like a dead artifact; a preserved butterfly.
The panelists' eyes pretended to read along from texts of the work.
They resembled the parishioners of the West Philly Catholic church
I'd been coaxed to by a ladyfriend the previous day, Easter Sunday:
reverent and respectful, or asleep. To be fair there'd been more
energy in the church than in this room. The parishioners had turned
the pages in their missals, had gone through the motions of their
unquestioned rituals, with more sense of anticipation and joy than
this group.
If "Howl" is about anything it's about the joy of life, being alive,
shouting aloud and expressing a voice, but here there was none of
that. I've seen my share of beat poets and yelled "Yeah!" and "That's
right" as others snapped their fingers in time, but here there was none
of that. Reaction-- movement; hints of humanity and life-- would've
been crashingly out of place.
The recording stopped and Mark Doty wryly described his own
vague interest in the poem. Not interest, really-- only his experience
of it, good, bad, or indifferent: predictable bland epiphanies. Doty
condensed the entire long poem into a digression about sphincter
muscles.
"Allen Ginsberg would be pleased," the clown said in a Jelly Boy
voice at the conclusion of Doty's speech.
"Why, thank you!" Doty said proudly, grinning as if he'd just
received an "A."
The crowd rustled at the unscheduled dialogue. More reverberations
of worry as ULAers Frank Walsh and Patrick King made a flash
appearance near the back of the auditorium, yelled "Free the
Beats!" and vanished. Shuffled feet and moved chairs on stage.
Margo Jefferson of the New York Times stepped to the podium for
her presentation, relating how she originally didn't like "Howl" but
eventually came to an appreciation of the poem. It occurred to me
how much collective establishment literary weight was on stage; how
many grants panels sat on and grant money received; how much
institutional backing they drew on, including from prestigious
Columbia, and the New York Times, and the Academy of American
Poets, and their book companies, and Lopate's funded Chair at
Hofstra, and many other hefty colleges and foundations. Opposing
them were two of the poorest of writers, the young street performing
clown next to the older beat-up spokesman of the rag-tag collection
of misfits of the ULA. In resources, credentials, and prestige it'd be
an unequal match. We had on our side only truth, commitment,
voice, and energy.
Margo Jefferson mentioned Ginsberg's fight against hypocrisy.
I repeated, scarcely audibly, "hypocrisy." Margo instantly halted.
I was acknowledged; I was seen.
"Excuse me?" she asked as she stared at me.
I spread my arms wide. "This entire show is filled with hypocrisy!"
The Overdog faces on stage frowned as if I'd broken a cardinal
Commandment. Phillip Lopate dressed in blue looked blustery and
huffy. All-orange Margo-- curly orange hair falling over fit orange-
clothed body-- tensed her fitness in readiness. Doty alternated a grin
and a grimace, while a man in a black hat looked away.
"There will be a question period afterward at which you'll be given an
opportunity to speak," black-haired Jason Shinder intoned judge-like
from the stage, displaying mandarin robes on his face, his posture,
and his voice.
Impressive Margo meanwhile was satisfied with Shinder's statement--
or maybe with the fact I could and would speak-- and continued her
talk as the atmosphere in the sound-stifled hall became more edgy.
The six gods of establishment literature were lit by glowing light--
inert idols mostly, like Moloch-- while the audience there to worship
them remained in blind obscurity.
Next up was walking pomposity in the person of Phillip Lopate. He
was ready to fight!-- though the clown and I to this point had said
hardly anything. It was our presence which bothered people-- and the
unignorable unforgiveable fact of the enthusiasm of our outdoor
reading. Enthusiasm! It was nowhere to be found in this place; this
"Miller Theater" with its scheduled slick showcases of literary
tombdom, slickly-printed pamphlets with oh-so precisely modulated
presentation (small letters guaranteed not to disturb or awaken
anybody) announcing that all you'll get really from the events is the
well-dressed pamphlet (I demean it by calling it "pamphlet"); take the
thing and be happy, because the rest, the modulated words and
cautious caretaker poses, is expensive carpeting.
Lopate's stance was as defensive as his defensive words in the Farrar
Giroux etc anthology. Unstated yet underlined and obvious were his
thoughts: "What will Allen think of me; will he think me a conformist
asshole?" (Read his remarks in the book-- the answer to his own
question is obvious.)
Pugnacious Lopate! to whom anyone under the age of 70 is a punk
who needs to obtain the chain of a mortgage, whether it's remotely
within their means or not. The living propounding pontificating
antithesis of Beat had taken the stage.
Lopate announced he was putting aside his prepared remarks in order
to address a flyer he'd received in the mail from an irritating little
organization known as the "ULA." Audience aghast but pleased that
he strayed from his text; delighted that he would deal with the
bothersome noisy people outside who'd handed some of them
discomforting flyers. The subject of disturbing words on a flyer was
something with which they could now identify. Lopate read from the
flyer sent his way, which briefly and pointedly laid out the ULA case.
He read the words scornfully-- "display their safe tameness in Miller
Hall as if in a dog show"-- as if they were not true!
Loudly and alone I applauded the end of the flyer's statement, and
said, "Here is your dog show!" again spreading my arms wide toward
the stage-- but Lopate like a slow-moving train wasn't stopping for
anything-- he kept pushing forward to read from his response, his full-
of-holes letter to the ULA about which, like a small child achieving a
simple task, he was unfathomably pleased. The well-rewarded
tenured Insider's Insider Adams Chair Professor of Hofstra University
bemoaned the four teaching jobs he said he was forced to work in
order to feed his family. (One envisioned a grimy tiny Dickensian
household filled with grubby unfed small children running barefoot--
pretty good Lopate for a guy your age!) The audience nodded in
sympathy. The nature of American rat-race civilization is that no
matter how affluent-- how temporarily comfortable-- we are, we're
captured by a pervasive sense of economic insecurity. (Bill Gates
with his billions worries that some Wal-Mart heir is close and
gaining.) Man, this Lopate guy was okay. Forget all that "beat"itude
crap they were hearing, which they listened to from mindless rote
obligation. Here was someone who spoke to them! (At income tax
time no less.) For solace they clutched their purses and pocketbooks
tighter around themselves.
Expanding on his simple theme, like Benji the Idiot playing with a
thread, Lopate ripped into Beat icons Jack Kerouac and Neal
Cassady, mocking the way those two lower-class hobo poets, those
unchained spiritual heroes, had died. The audience laughed, failing to
see the bitter irony. Exactly WHAT were these people celebrating?
Not the Beats!
"Fuck you!" Jelly Boy Eric said in his real voice to Lopate.
The outburst was countered by sustained applause of the audience as
Lopate concluded by saying even Beat poets need health insurance.
Lopate had expressed the ethos of the unfree man-- security chosen
over liberty.
As egregiously, he'd carelessly dismissed the many millions of
Americans without health insurance, including untold numbers of
broke and starving poets-- as if their predicament were a matter of
choice. On what planet did this esteemed essayist live? Not mine!
This was not the voice of Allen Ginsberg but of Norman Podhoretz.
I've got mine, Jack, Lopate was saying, while the audience applauded.
I stood and faced the crowd, observing their faces. Their masks had
dropped-- as had the mask of approved literature on stage. I tried to
tell the audience that few of the street writers out there had health
insurance. I pointed. "You're the clean and the saved. What do you
know about the Beats?!" People shouted back. "Learn your history!"
an angry matron yelled.
I washed in their hostility, the bad guy hooted by the mob at a
wrestling show as security personnel surrounded me and escorted me
away. Near the top of the aisle I glanced back to witness the most
surprising scene of all: Margo Jefferson and Ann Douglas bounding
from the stage yelling, "No! Bring him back!"-- but I also saw Jason
Shinder glaring at me with contorted face.
Outside, Frank Walsh and Pat King were packing things up, ready to
leave. "Where's Eric?" Jelly's brother Matt asked. "We can't miss the
last Chinatown bus."
The New York City sky had darkened. Jelly Boy inside the hall
must've talked his way into keeping his seat. I couldn't adequately
explain to the others what'd happened in there, other than that we'd
made our point, I think. All else was the confusion I'd brought into
this-- the pleading Lopate had put into his letter (the part he'd
skipped when reading it to the audience) that we not get too carried
away; EXPECTING that we'd be inside. Our reputation has always
been greater than the reality. But where was that fearless sideshow
clown I'd left within? ...to be continued...
...COMING MONDAY, MAY 1st:
PART TWO OF THIS MONDAY REPORT!
THE FATE OF JELLY BOY REVEALED!
WENCLAS RE-JOINS THE FRAY! FACEOFF
WITH SHINDER AND A MOUSETRAPPED
TONGUE!? COMING NEXT WEEK...
Click here for more info on the ULA's Columbia Howl Protest.
………………………………………………………………………
King Wenclas is the ULA's publicity director.
Check out his lit-blog, Attacking the Demi-Puppets!
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GO HERE TO ENTER THE MONDAY REPORT BOX.
