Barney Rosset and Grove Press

Okay. The thing of it is this: I keep saying that when I was young, the world was a very different place. A pretty easy statement, on the face of it. But the meaning of it goes much deeper. Forget that it was a world before home computers or cell phones, or for that matter wireless phones at all. A phone was a heavy Bakelite thing with a cord that emerged from a nearby wall.

When you picked it up, and sometimes tapped on the little head rest lever a couple of times, an operator (in my case located over the 5 and 10 cent store downtown) would come on and ask what you wanted. They'd tell you the time, Or if school was cancelled that day. Or connect you to someone down the street or clear across town, or out into the world beyond. I am fond of saying that I remember steam trains. I remember watching them water up from the tower at the station at the end of Allen Street where I lived.

This was before the big highway systems were built. When radio was AM. Tv had come in and we'd sit and watch programs on the 13inch tube. There was no such thing as a remote control. Oh, it was all wonderful. And no one spent time cursing, dressing scandalously, dancing provocatively (Ed Sullivan had seen to that!), or telling dirty jokes in public. It had been 20 years since Clark Gable caused a ruckus when he'd used the word "damn" at the end of Gone With the Wind and no one had dared utter it in public since. Besides, that kind of talk wasn't fit to be spoken around women. And there was no such thing as teenage pregnancy or unwed mothers. Young women who had sullied their reputations often took long visits to their Aunt Ida in the country - never-mind that we were a town of less than 2,000 people surrounded by farms and country was a short walk or drive away. No nudity. On the beaches and in detective shows in movies and on tv young attractive women were causing a stir by wearing a two piece bathing suit called a bikini. It had only been a few years since men at the beach had stopped having to wear tops. Not only was sex not discussed, it was barely admitted, and it was a word that was never spoken. I was in my mid teens before it was even considered okay to spell it out in polite society.

Things started to change. A guy named Hugh Hefner started publishing a magazine which had fiction with ideas in it and pictures of naked women, with folds of silk or flower fronds covering up unmentionables. The United States Post Office seized a shipment of a book that it deemed obscene. The author was a man named David Herbert Richards Lawrence who had died nearly 30 years before. The book was Lady Chatterly's Lover. It had won awards and critical raves when it was published in England. In 1928. The publisher who dared to print it and ship it in the United States was Grove Press. A court judge decided the book, with its "unexpurgated" passages had redeeming social value. Grove then published Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. That one went all the way to the US Supreme Court who allowed it to be published. Grove press published Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot. And then there were works by Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Paul Sartre. And in the late 1960's, William Burrough's Naked Lunch, another visitor to the Supreme Court. By the time Grove published The Story of  O., there were no more trials.

Grove Press had a magazine, a sort of sister publication, a literary magazine called The Evergreen Review. It published everybody from Jack Kerouac to Malcom X and Che Guevara. Gary Snyder, John Rechy, Alan Ginzberg, Paul Goodman, Jean Genet, and oh, so many more of the avant garde of the 50's and 60's. I still have (and treasure) a hardbound collection of works from the magazine. (Unless I sold it that time trying to keep the electricity on.)

The owner of Grove Press even took a shot at film distribution, releasing "I Am Curious (Yellow)", a film with male and female frontal nudity. I know I saw it, taking an hour long bus ride to Philadelphia to do so.

The man behind all of this, the man who changed what could be written, printed, spoken out loud, seen in public, the owner of Grove Press, a guy named Barney Rosset died yesterday at the age of 89.

He had quickly become passe in the world he did so much to create. Women's Rights groups took him to task for publishing works in which women were often subjugated and dehumanized. He fired employees who tried to unionize.  In 1985, he sold, and was fired from, Grove Press. A few years ago, he started publishing the Evergreen Review as an online magazine. The 2012 Spring issue went online the day before he died, publishing articles like this:

         

I just wanted to take a minute to remember him. Although the world may be a coarser and more vulgar place, it - and especially the United States - is more adult, more thoughtful, more intellectually based  because of him. I read a lot of Grove Press books. When I ran bookstores for a living, I sold a lot of Grove Press Books. We're the better for it.

His memoir, "The Subject is Left Handed" (a line taken from his FBI file), will be published later this year.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Rosset. Rest in Peace.

Fat Tuesday - catching up before giving up

It's Fat Tuesday. Going to Mardi Gras/Carnivale (In New Orleans, Rio, and Venice - maybe in that order) would be on my bucket list if I made one. So would going to the Great Pyramid complex, Stonehenge, Machu Pichu, and etc. But all that is another story.

 



I haven't watched Black Orpheus for several years now; it's set during Carnivale in Rio. Here's the oddball trailer for the movie, which doesn't even mention the film's title:





Today I want to take a moment to wish klahanie a Happy Anniversary! It's 5 years since his blog was started. Congrats and Best Wishes!

Today is also Mother Language Day according to spam I just got from Cultural Survival. It's another do-gooder site. I don't know how they got my email, I didn't sign up for them as far as I can remember. I get a lot of these kinds of things. I also just got one from AARP-Vermont, also spam. I can't take many more of these kinds of emails and websites. They make me more depressed than I already am. If I wrote to my government representatives or signed a petition for every one of these I get, I wouldn't have any time in my day to do anything else. For some of these, I get interested but need to know more before I sign something. I just can't accept some of this stuff on face value. If I start to look up certain claims and statements of alleged fact, I'll never have time to sign the damn petitions or send a note to my government representatives. I fully expect a petition to come my way from the girl whose father unloaded several shots into her computer over a Facebook post. No, I'm not making that up. Here's the video, now seen by about 30 million people -but I warn you he uses adult language:



Doesn't that just restore your faith in people?

I also just got an email that my Comcast bill was ready for viewing. Say what? Sure enough, even though they disconnected me, they applied a bunch of credits I hadn't gotten - and billed me for next month!

I had intended to write a bit more about Showbiz Gospel, and wend that into the upcoming Academy Awards, but I just noticed the time. Where has the morning gone? I've been upset that I might not see this year's Oscarfest. I used to hold a "Dish the Oscars" party. I still have fond memories of Princess Wendy (returning to Brattleboro in a week's time) jumping up from her seat when Titanic won its first Tech award. She began performing the ritual of exorcism. By the time that movie won the final award of the evening (Best Picture) everyone there was jumping up to make the sign of the cross and chant "the power of Christ compels you - OUT". (Ego te absolvo in nomine Patris, et Filiii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.) Anyway, Laura lent me a usb plug in wireless thingy, which is how I'm able to connect to the internet. My how times have changed - I discovered the wireless signal's presence when I went to copy some old files. I had put in wireless when I was living out in the sticks, as my landlady had a signal I could use. In those days, the wireless modem was a plug in card, which required a bit of work to install in the computer's innards. So, she suggested that the Oscars might be streamed and that I should write them to ask. I used a form on the Oscar website (a mirror of the official AMPAS site) to ask. I got a form letter in reply that noted that they couldn't answer every comment made (even though I had carefully marked my form "information request" which was a check-off box). They referred me to ABC. I went to ABC (a division of Disney) and filled out another form, also checking the "information request" box. And got a form letter in reply. That one told me they couldn't respond to every comment and to go write ABC.

And I haven't even started yet on my TracFone exploits...

But never mind. I just got my 25th or so email invitation to join the National Association of Professional Women. It's warmed up outside to 30 degrees F. I think I'll go run a few errands. Who knows, maybe the streets downtown will be full of dancers celebrating.

Showbiz Gospel

Somedays, he murmured to himself, somedays.

This morning, a bit after the store where I work opened, there were three of us in the front end. Two young women and myself. The two women were talking. As I walked the few steps from my register to where they were standing, I began to hear what they were saying. They were looking at the cover of People magazine, which of course had the Whitney Houston story splashed across its cover. The magazine had, I had gratefully noticed, used a glamour shot of Ms. Houston from when she was young, beautiful, and on top of the world. I first heard the younger woman, all of 18 years, saying that she'd heard of her but didn't really know who she was. The other woman, who I'd guess is in her early 20's and who recently moved here from upstate near Burlington, said that she knew her big song was "I Will Always Love You", but she couldn't remember how it went.

After watching the webcast of Ms. Houston's funeral service, I had commented that I now wanted to change my plans. I'd long ago given up any idea of a funeral, and had noted that I wanted to be cremated and have my ashes blown in a few people's faces. Now I'm thinking of being sent off to my final resting place by a 100+ voice gospel choir. (Okay, I'm kidding, but gosh, would it ever be a fun time for my friends.)

This isn't really something new, though. I've long had a thing for gospel, though I've never really collected it, read up on it, or studied it. It goes back to, well, I suppose it goes back to the hymn sings I loved to attend when I was young. I sang in a youth choir (I think I posted a picture about a year ago). I especially loved the sound of a hundred voices resonating in a wooden church. You haven't heard Amazing Grace until you've been in the center of such a church and such a group. But Methodists don't sing Gospel. Methodists are, in the words of Norman McLaren's A River Runs Through It, "Baptists who can read". Methodists have summer camps, and in those days camp would hold a last night  pledge your soul to the Lord campfire, and there was always an older black woman present, singing gospel tunes while you signaled your pledge by "throwing your faggot on the fire". Needless to say, these observances made me very nervous; I always kept a watchful eye that they weren't coming for me.

Maybe it was the Hall Johnson Choir in the movie version of The Green Pastures. Maybe it was shows on tv. Or, maybe it was the Broadway musical Purlie. Or the Gospel film whose name I can't remember (was it just called Gospel?) that we distributed when I was at Films, Inc. Whatever. Show-biz Gospel. When I first started looking for a place to live in New York City, which would have been 1972, there was a new rock musical which opened on Broadway called "Dude". It was written and staged by the guys who had created "Hair". It was a disaster. Clive Barnes, the critic for the New York Times, had commented that if  it had another two weeks to work on its problems, it could have been a great show. I went to see it. It was uneven, but it was also wonderful. I ended up becoming friends with the brother of one of the creators, who passed me in for the rest of the very short run.  See, what most of the critics didn't get was that the loose story line was a continuation of the story of the main character from Hair. Except, in this case, the role was played by two black guys; a very young Ralph Carter and, as his older self, a Gospel singer named Nat Morris. Also in the cast were a few other singers with Gospel backgrounds: Nell Carter, Salome Bey, Delores Hall. The music had a sort of rock country feel, but as the show came closer to closing, the Gospel singers took over. During the final performance, young Ralph Carter decided he wasn't going to be shown up by the older Dude, and he vocally let loose. The rest of the show took on the aura of a revival meeting. It was a wonderful night to be there.

In 1985 a show opened called "The Gospel at Colonus". It was the Oedipus story, told as Church. It was freakin' fabulous. The role of Oedipus was portrayed by the Five Blind Boys from Alabama. The Messenger was a then less well known Morgan Freeman. The Chorus was performed by the choir from the Abyssinian Baptist Church. It was, happily, recorded for broadcast on PBS. I taped it, and still have it in my Betamax collection of stuff. All that's in storage these days and last time I checked, there was trouble with the Betamax. I haven't seen the tape for about 10 years now. So, while thinking about it, I checked You Tube. And they have a promo clip! So here's a sample of one of the most unusual and most enjoyable shows ever produced on Broadway; I hope you enjoy it!

A Meditation on Valentine's Day

I remember you,

You're the one who made

My dreams come true

A few kisses ago. 

I remember you,
You're the one who said
"I love you, too,"  I do.
Didn't you know?

I remember, too,
A distant bell,

And stars that fell like rain
Out of the blue.

When my life is through,
And the angels ask me to recall
The thrill of them all,

Then I shall tell them
I remember you.

And when my life is through,
And the angels ask me to recall
The thrill of them all,

Then I shall tell them
I remember you.

"I Remember You" was written by Johnny Mercer

Paying the Piper

"The time has come, the walrus said...."

The simple facts of the matter are this: I owe Comcast money. Comcast provides my tv, my phone and my internet. I can not afford to pay up on the schedule they want - it would take me a few more days (next Thursday's paycheck, to be precise) to pay them up to the point they want, and I would immediately have the next month's payment to deal with, and that money needs to go to the landlord.

So, sometime on Sunday Feb. 12th, 2012, or shortly thereafter, they will be disconnecting me.

It's really stupid in the long run. It will take me awhile to pay them off completely, plus all the fees they are inevitably going to charge, plus the monies they will want in advance. They will lose my business, which doesn't mean much to them. I am going to have to get and invest in a cell phone, money which could be going to my bill.

As it is, I pay for tv channels in which I am not interested, and which I do not watch. I have to pay for "levels" of service to get the channels and choices I want. The Comcast people have told me that this having to take a bundle approach is due to legislation passed by the US Congress.

Whatever the story is, unless there is some little miracle along the way, my ability to post, use the internet, and the ability of my family, friends, and workplace to get a hold of me is about to be severely compromised.

If, and when, I can afford to re-up, I won't be going for anything other than basic cable, just the way I wanted to start out. Oh, well, their loss.

The computer I'm currently using doesn't seem to have what it takes to set up a wireless connection - my old computer found one when I booted it up again to copy files off of it. Of course, it barely runs. Funny, I thought when I bought this one that it had a wireless thingy built in, but at the moment it sure doesn't want to be found. Oh, well.

Right now I'm going to go and sulk a bit before I start the long walk to work. I wish the buses ran a little more frequently. But then again, there's a lot of things I wish for these days, and my wishes don't really seem to have much to do with it, or come true.

I'm sure I'll have more to post by Saturday, which is my day off, and the last day on which I can be sure of having an internet connection. Look for a mega post, I guess.

To paraphrase the carpenter, I've had a pleasant run.

Now, even the Dead are dying

George Romero's 1968 movie "Night of the Living Dead" was not properly copyrighted. There used to be lots of bad dupes and third rate extra poor quality videos copies of it out there. Personally, I think that helped  build the movie's reputation. It was like you were seeing something you really shouldn't be seeing, something surreptitiously filmed, something that was - and maybe should be - suppressed. As the years went by, the original negative became available (long story), prints were struck and --- it still played.



Today brought word that Bill Hinzman, known far and wide as the Cemetery Zombie passed away yesterday. He was basically the first new world order screen zombie, of the slow lurching eat your flesh and brains school of zombie-dom.

He was a second cameraman on the shoot when Romero pressed him into service. He later collaborated with Romero on The Crazies, and the 1974 tv documentary O.J. Simpson : The Juice on the Loose.

He directed two low budget horrors, The Majorettes, and Flesh Eater, in which he reprised his role as the Cemetary Zombie. He was 75.

In one of those synchronicity of events thingys, yesterday also saw the passing of Josephine Streiner. She played one of the ghouls on Night of the Living Dead - it was her car that Barbara wreaked trying to get away from Hinzman's Cemetery Zombie; in real life she was the mother of Russell Streiner who produced the movie, and Gary Streiner, who was its sound engineer.

Russ (left) and Gary (right) Streiner

The brothers have asked that those who wish to remember their mother send a contribution to Fix the Chapel, a fund set up to save (and restore) the Evans City, Pa. Chapel used in the filming from destruction. (Gary Streiner is the director of that project.)

Fix the Chapel (a.k.a. Save the Chapel - website)

Save the Chapel Facebook page

At the website, one can even buy t-shirts and hoodies as part of the fundriaser:

Personally, I except both Mr. Hinzman and Ms. Streiner to come lurching towards me, later, tonight, alone, in the dark.... they can never die, now.

Monday today, all day.

If you work in retail, you rarely get weekends.

But one still hates Mondays.

...and that's the kind of day it is shaping up to be.

Found on the web today

Sleepily, from the vaults

There seems to be a change underway. I start nodding off around 8 to 8:30pm these days, waking up once or thrice until I finally go to bed. If I'm not falling asleep, I alternate between feeling overly warm on the verge of sweating (or sweating slightly) and occasional chills. I've put weight on. It's winter and I suppose I'm really seeking to hibernate. There's lots of rational reasons for all of this, from starting work at 6:45am one day, and working afternoon and evening until 8pm or later the next, having to keep the thermometer set high so that my neighbor on the same heating circuit gets enough heat, aging, etc. I now wake up and get up around the time I used to go to bed - well, after a rather successful night anyway. I find it all fairly annoying.

As I go looking for various files whose names I no longer remember (if indeed I ever knew them) I find some things that I'd saved and forgotten. Like the text of the poem, "When I Am Old I Shall Wear Purple". Like the following. It's been on my computer since last May. I just found it again. And maybe it's because I'm starting to yawn and beginning to nod off, but I find myself laughing a little bit as I read it. Maybe Laura sent it to me (but I don't see anything like it in her emails from last May), or maybe I just picked it up somewhere. Whatever.

----------------


TEXTING for the Older crowd


Since more and more over 50's are texting and tweeting there
appears to be a need for a STC (Senior Texting Code). If you
qualify for Senior Discounts this is the code for you.
 
 
ATD: At The Doctor's
 
BFF: Best Friend Fainted
 
BTW: Bring The Wheelchair

BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth
 
CBM: Covered By Medicare
 
CGU: Can't get up
 
CUATSC: See You At The Senior Center
 
DWI: Driving While Incontinent
 
FWB: Friend With Beta Blockers
 
FWIW: Forgot Where I Was

FYI: Found Your Insulin
 
GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low!
 
GHA: Got Heartburn Again
 
HGBM: Had Good Bowel Movement
 
IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On?
 
LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out
 
LOL: Living On Lipitor
 
LWO: Lawrence Welk's On
 
OMMR: On My Massage Recliner
 
OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas.
 
ROFL... CGU: Rolling On The Floor Laughing... And Can't Get Up
 
TTYL: Talk To You Louder
 
WAITT: Who Am I Talking To?

WTFA: Wet The Furniture Again
 
WTP: Where's The Prunes?
 
WWNO: Walker Wheels Need Oil
 
GGLKI: (Gotta Go, Laxative Kicking In)
 
SDO: sorry, dosed off….zzzzz

-------------------------------------------

Over at Austanspace, Laura has written a nice little piece about recent unfortunate trends in horror stories,   films, and characters. The following is for her. Hey, I find it scary....

fin

The flood this time - continued

All in all, I spent over 6 hours yesterday dealing with cleanup from the mini flood in the building's basement. The box of DVDs that was sitting on the floor absorbed enough moisture that the box itself had to be thrown out. But the contents were, by and large, dry. The DVD box for The Chronicles of Narnia pt1 suffered some damage. I'm not sure how that disc even got into my collection - it must have snuck in with some of the review copy DVDs I got when I was running the video store. I've never seen the movie(s). And I guess I should confess that I've never read the books. It's just as well, if I had them, they'd probably have been lost in the flood, too.

Which is my way of noting that I have had several storage places over the years. All of the Vermont ones (with the singular exception of a friend's barn which amusingly enough has holes in the roof) have had water damage to my stuff -damage to the privately printed complete Richard Burton translation of the Arabian Nights was the real heartbreaker. I had my copy since my days running a very big bookstore in New York City, the Bookmasters store across 33rd Street from Madison Square Garden, and across 7th Avenue from the Statler-Hilton Hotel.

The last time I saw that set of books for sale was in Boston in the late 1980s or early 1990s. (I'd get lost in time if I tied to come up with the right year...) and it went for $1,000.00 I think my copy is currently in storage in my friend's barn. I don't remember what all I sold when I first went flat out broke a few years ago. Sigh. Sold all the Edward Gorey books, a lot of the Roman and Greek classics I never got around to reading, the resource materials I had for all that "in a timeline as written" reading that I never got around to (ancient maps, books of architecture and costume, etc.) Ah, well. Semi-retirement's coming.

Oh. That Bookmasters store.

Yes, that's me somewhere around November 1977.
The books and promo materials were delivered in an ambulance.
I have a picture of it around here somewhere. I'll look.

Madison Square Garden was built on the former site of the Pennsylvania Station, NYC's great transit terminal. By my day, the station had been torn down, moved underground and had the Garden built over it. The loss of the old building used to be regarded as one of the great architectural tragedys of the modern world. I never got to see it. I do remember the old Whatchi ma hootziz over on Lexington there, you know , ah ---- Grand Central Station. So, I can sort of suss out from the photos how Penn Station looked and must have felt. Sorta.

These pics from the wonderful Shorpy site give a good idea of the sheer size of the place...

These give a good idea of the atmospherics:

So, that's what used to be across the street from the store. Across the street on he 7th Avenue side was, as I mentioned, the Stater-Hilton Hotel. Which had previously been The Pennsylvania Hotel. Which just celebrated its 93rd Birthday 4 days ago. Inside the Main Entrance, to the left of the lobby, walled off and unused, is a huge old dining room/supper club. The room has two raised wings for a total space of 58 feet by 142 feet. The ceiling is 22 feet high. It used to be the Cafe Rouge. Although its had several uses over the years, including an ignominious turn as a souvenir shop (with the old dance floor showing underneath the worn linoleum), I've read that it's all still there, the fountain and everything.

It was the premier night club in New York City in the late 1930's and early 1940's. Artie Shaw played there. During his engagement in November of 1939, he quit the business there. Benny Goodman played there. Duke Ellington played there. Basie played there. Most of the big bands did. And for about three years at the beginning of the 1940's, it was home base for Glenn Miller and his Orchestra. Miller hired a couple of the unemployed Shaw musicians, including Shaw's main arranger, Jerry Gray. While with Miller, Gray came up with "Pennsylvania 6, 5000", which became a huge Miller hit. It's the hotel's telephone number, said to be the oldest number in continuous use.

There were broadcasts from the Cafe several nights a week, and on weekends there were even broadcasts in the late afternoons - it was also the site of many of Miller's "Sunset Serenades" USO shows. There were also broadcasts from the hotel's cellar club., around the corner and slightly down the side street, the Madhattan Room. For a couple of seasons it was the home base of Benny Goodman from the days when Harry James and Ziggy Elman were in the trumpet section, and  Gene Krupa was the drummer, when Swing was was becoming king.

Over the years, the Hotel fell on hard times, and its once great reputation nearly destroyed. The current owner bought it in 1997 with the intention of demolishing it for a new high rise. A group formed to save it, but their attempts to get landmark status for the building and for the Cafe failed. Last December the owners suddenly changed their minds and say they now intend to renovate it. 

       Fin.