The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones (43 page)

But finally we moved anyway, up to West 20th Street. The rent for us alone, without the Stades, was much too high. The unemployment checks were running out and in a couple months a baby would be here, so I had to go out and look for a job. I got a job as a technical editor, up on 49th Street. This meant I had to read the deathless prose of some semiliterate engineering majors and try to put it in readable scribble-scrabble. It couldn't be done. But that was a sobering experience, working 9 to 5 among some granite heads. I got the job because I could pass a typing test. The place was filled with real characters, mostly suburbanite, lower-middle-class whites whose vision of what the world is is so narrow the very look of them can suffocate you. There was Miriam the secretary and assistant office manager who was always getting into as many people's business as she could. When she left the office every night she'd gurgle, “Nightol,” like the product, making a weary joke. There was Kent Manner, a big husky vice president, who really ran the company. Every day coming out of the subway I'd see him as he whizzed past me to work without speaking. I was glad, who the fuck wanted to speak to him? At one point he called me into the office saying, “Jones, what is it Lumumba wants?” My answer was a cheap copout, I said, “Whatever everybody else wants, I guess.” And by that time I'd gotten much more political. There was Arnold, another technical editor who worked at the next desk. Arnold was funny because he was so mock serious about everything. He was like the underside of New York, the grey tedious side that is lost in the banter about the Great White Way. Arnold lived in a furnished apartment not far from the office. He lived there because it was close to the office. A two-button, patch-pocket jacket with no pretensions of anything but covering his narrow butt was enough to make Arnold sashay around telling me how well dressed he was when he looked like the j.v. floorwalker at Sterns. Arnold was the kind of guy who still went on “dates” in his late twenties. There was McMillian, the good-natured drunk who walked around telling jokes, always running scared of his job. And Monica, the older woman who was chief editor, she was quiet and scary mornings, her age probably telling her she was losing her capacity to turn it out like the biggies wanted. But afternoons, buddy, after she got a couple of them martinis under her belt she was a terror. In fact, McMillian and Monica were alike in that respect. After lunch, Jim, they were dynamite, full of
confidence and raring to go, unless of course they had that fourth martini and then they had to be carried home.

Just as I was getting into the literary life, I had to drag off to labor and I resented it. Perhaps that is why I resented the people working there so much. I would rush down into the subway and rush out, always just making it or late. But it was a must. The
Sectarian Review
had just published an article putting down the Beats. I didn't even think I was Beat or even know what that meant, except as a media term, but I resented the writer's basic bias and stupidity. It was Norman Podhoretz who wrote an article called “The Know Nothing Bohemians” (from the same guy who later came out beating his tits with an article called “My Negro Problem and Ours” in which he revealed his essential racism. And then this same boob became Reagan's far-right hand “intellectual” man. Oh well, just to think I watched him as he grew!)

In a few months I had had much correspondence from Ginsberg and some of the people he turned me on to.
Zazen
3 had Gary Snyder, William Burroughs, Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Philip Whalen as well as Robin Blaser, Gilbert Sorrentino, Diane DiPrima, and a young guy who was still in prison, Ray Bremser. (I was Ray's guardian when he got out of the slam.) I was not only in touch with the Beats, but I now had found out about the Black Mountain poets, also through Ginsberg. Ginsberg had also hipped me to the San Francisco School (old and new, some of whom were known as the Beats), the New York School (Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Jimmy Schuyler), and a host of other young people. Older poets like Charles Olson and Robert Duncan. Trendsetters like Robert Creeley and all kinds of others. Kerouac and Burroughs, of course. John Wieners, Ron Loewinsohn, Paul Blackburn, Denise Levertov, Ferlinghetti, Jack Spicer (his notes were like quick courses in contemporary American poetry). I think by that time I had even met Allen G. and his running buddy, Peter Orlovsky, just back from Paris. We'd even hung out one night at a place on Seventh Avenue South where Kerouac was reading with Philip Lamantia and Howard Hart. There was a sense of community growing among some of the young writers, and I was one of them as well as the editor of one of their magazines. I told Nellie I wanted to answer the Podhoretz letter, was it possible? And sure enough the famous noble editors allowed it. In answering the letter, not only was I beginning some public stance as an anti-academic polemicist, but it helped to consolidate some ideas in my own head about what we all were about and why Podhoretz was full of shit. In fact, why he represented a full of shit point of view.

Zazen
3 was the first from West 20th Street. It was a nice neighborhood, very surprising. Stade had gone to put down on the apartment, that was our agreed-upon tactic for stopping the usual New York racism. There were really fabulous-looking brick houses and brownstones on that block. Across the street from us was a seminary and huge church. It was a strange neighborhood. Expensive-looking and clean, I'd known nothing about it before. Going east there were still brownstones and single-family houses pitted against the larger apartments and tenements. There was a heavy Irish population strewn around from old Chelsea, and stashed between them the middle class of many nationalities (few blacks). Bill Manville, the novelist, who was writing a column then for
The Village Voice
, “Saloon Society,” lived on the top floor of our building. There were only three floors. I don't think I ever found out who lived on the second floor.

Our apartment was long, railroad style; from the living room to the study where I wrote was like half a block. But the ceilings were high, the rooms fairly large, and if we had had any money we would have been thought to be living in luxury. West 20th Street was tree-lined, the quiet elegant brownstones were on our side of the street, a large garden belonging to the seminary was on the other side. It was a lovely neighborhood.

We never had any direct harassment there for being interracial, or, more precisely, because I was black. Manville never invited us up to his sets — but then we never invited him to ours. But just looking at him you could tell he was a cold-blooded snob — his column confirmed it — so I stayed out of his way.

From literary connections, social hookups resulted. West 20th Street saw many of those we published in
Zazen
and all kinds of other folks coming in and out. The magazine was identified with the Beats, but the people tied to that name by specific identification were every which place — in San Francisco, Paris, Tangier, Mexico, London, New Mexico, and points north, west, east, and central. The groupies produced by the media, the would-be Beats, were usually a little gritty and willfully bohemian for our tastes — though there was always some media product or other showing up at our door. To rub up against what they perceived as necessary to the carrying out of their roles.

A circle of sorts developed at West 20th Street. Poet Gil Sorrentino and his first wife, Elsene; Hubert Selby, the novelist; Joel Oppenheimer, the Black Mountain poet, and his wife, Rena; poet Max Finstein — a hip redhaired double of the younger Shylock; novelist and painter Fielding Dawson (the unofficial then, later semiofficial historian for Black Mountain
College); A. B. Spellman, the poet and jazz critic (an old friend from HU); poet Joe Early, an old friend of Sorrentino's from Brooklyn, and his wife, Ann, a department store buyer; painter Basil King and his wife, writer Martha King (both Black Mountain alumni); poet Paul Celento and his wife, Ceeny, also from Brooklyn; another HU updated memory, C. D. Transan; Mark Fine, the poet; Joe Heisler, another poet, who wrote like Joel Oppenheimer, and his wife, Rene; poet Sam Abrams and his wife, Barbara; painter-writer Philo (Fy) Duncan; Larry Hellenberg, a steelworker; and a few other folks could be considered the core. But there were always people in and out, staying a few days, longer than that, or whatever. We had no guest rooms, so most of the time the couch in the “front room” was where visitors stayed.

The pattern got to be that on Fridays, after leaving my slave job, I would stop at a liquor store and get a bottle, usually Old Grand-Dad bourbon, and head home. As it got later, others would start to drift in. (From the Bronx, from Brooklyn, Lower East Side, etc.) For one stretch Fee Dawson stayed for several months on that couch. Max Finstein also cribbed with us the same way. And A. B. Spellman.

By late Friday there were usually five or six or more people in the front room. And we had what amounted to a party, all weekend. By Sunday night most of us would be wasted, from Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday impromptu sets. So that Monday morning was a hellish arrival.

The whole weekend we whooped it up. Nonstop rap sessions, putdowns, literary councils, adulterous initiatives, boozing it up and using whatever drugs existed on the scene. It was fun but a lot of it was, at least, irresponsible.

Poetry, literature, was our undying passion. Most of us would agree. That was the reason we all came together. But under that rubric (and defense) how many other less-than-kosher practices and relationships got put together?

For instance within that crowd, C.D. was sleeping with Paul's wife, Ceeny. Fy Duncan had to leave the Celentos' house where he'd been staying before he came to West 20th Street, because he'd also been sleeping with Ceeny. Mark was sleeping with Joel's wife, Rena. And, yes, later these marriages did break all the way up because of these ongoing breaches.

A typical weekend spontaneous bash at West 20th Street might see two or three affairs swirling around in plain view, with almost everybody in the crowd knowing what was going down, even the offended against.

All of us hung at the old Cedar Tavern, down on University Place. It was the hangout of a bunch of abstract expressionist painters. Jackson Pollock died just as I got there, but he had been one centerpiece. Franz Kline, Bill de Kooning, Philip Guston, Ray Parker, Norman Bluhm, Mike Goldberg, Al Leslie, John Chamberlain, David Smith, Dan Rice, and even Larry Rivers were regulars. They were the big names, people we respected. Franz Kline's style, not only painting-wise, but his personal idiosyncrasies, was one genre of lifestyle some of us imitated. Kline seemed always a little smashed, drink in hand, cigarette dangling, talking in drunken parody as abstractly as he painted. Basil King, Dan Rice, Joel Oppenheimer, and Fee Dawson used to do takes on this style, personalized but legitimately drunk. To talk in a fragmented, drunken but hopefully profound ellipsis was the goal. The torture of genius, genius unappreciated, genius assaulted by philistines, this is what was implied. Genius was not easy to understand or put up with. Basil was always getting ready to get into fights because he wanted to be too energetic with his parody of Franz. Dan and Joel almost became alcoholics, but then had the strength to go past that. I don't know about Fee.

It was from this circle that I got to know the Black Mountain school of poets and learn the fabled history of the place itself. Black Mountain was an experimental school, loosely based on somebody's idea of the Bauhaus (Josef Albers) and advanced “education” in the arts. Charles Olson, the poet, was the last rector and he was always spoken of in that circle with awe. Fee and Joel and Basil and Martha had been Charles' students. Gil and Max and Joe admired the myth and reality of the place and the literature and aesthetic that seemed to issue from it.

The house was always full of Black Mountain stories. Fee was the great storyteller (in more ways than one). And he was in the house day in day out. He might take off Monday to go stay with one of his various women. But unerringly on Friday he'd return. It was a long time before I even found out why Fy had had to leave Paul's house. I knew he had stayed there and then he'd gone. Week after week the Celentos would be there too. Paul and I got to be good friends, but the kind of wild morals of that crowd permitted them all to be mashed up together without open incident. (In a blood community or even in a working-class community of any nationality, death would've been the price of those liaisons, at least serious violence and disruption. But we were more “advanced.”)

I learned about Charles Olson's work and began to read it. Also Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan. I got hold of copies of
The Black Mountain
Review
and witnessed real excellence not only of content but design. One, a thick white-covered book, had a Dan Rice pre-minimalist abstraction that I thought was the hippest thing I'd ever seen. I learned about
Origin
, the forerunner of
BMR
. Not only those writers, but younger writers like Ed Dorn, John Wieners, Michael Rumaker, Ed Marshall, had studied there, and painters like Kline, de Kooning, Guston, Motherwell, had shown or taught there along with Albers and Reinhardt and musicians John Cage, Morton Feldman plus Merce Cunningham. All these people had come out of Black Mountain or been there at various times and we upheld its memory and its aesthetic.

I came to understand the differences in the “schools.” The Beats, the San Francisco school, the older San Francisco Renaissance group, the New York school, the Black Mountain School. Some of us were hooked up to one or the other or all at the same time. These schools were mentioned sometimes, in literary contexts, as schools, trends, realities, circles of history, experience, friendship. They did have specific styles, obvious aesthetic correlations, models historical and contemporary, teachers and even some organizations or publications to further their interests.

I had come into poetry from a wide-open perspective — anti-academic because of my experience, my social history and predilections. Obviously, as an African American I had a cultural history that should give me certain aesthetic proclivities. In the U.S. and the “western world” generally, white supremacy can warp and muffle the full recognition by a black person of this history, especially an “intellectual” trained by a system of white supremacy. A cultural history is at once the result of a particular psychological outlook which has been shaped by the sociopolitical and economic context of its development, as well as the raw material for a particular aesthetic. It determines what you think is beautiful or even intellectually significant.