Intellectual Curiosities and Provocations

October 1996

Jane Bowles

Africa,
Women


The farther a man follows the rainbow, the harder it is for him to get back to the life which he left starving like an old dog. Sometimes when a man gets older he has a revelation and wants awfully bad to get back to the place where he left his life, but he can't get back to that place-- not often. It's always better to stay alongside of your life.
--Jane Bowles 'Plain Pleasures'

Jane Auer was born in New York City on February 22, 1917 and raised mostly on Long Island. At twenty-one, she married Manhattanite Paul Bowles. After the civil ceremony, they took off for Panama. According to Paul Bowles' autobiography Without Stopping, Jane Bowles saw enough in Panama in ten days to enable her to use it as a locale for her first novel, 'Two Serious Ladies', which was published in 1943. From 1947, she lived abroad, mostly in Tangier, with her husband.

Arthur Rimbaud

Africa,
Biography,
French,
La Boheme,
Poetry,
Transgressive


Jean-Nicholas-Arthur Rimbaud was born on October 20, 1854 at Charleville in provincial France. His family was abandoned by their father and forced into poverty. Intrigued by the conditions, the young Rimbaud would sneak out and play with the neighborhood children. His mother, horrified that her children might become coarsened, found the means to move her brood from the worst to the best part of town.

Madame Rimbaud showed little affection to her children, instead focusing her ambitions on her two sons. Forbidden to play with other boys, Rimbaud immersed himself in his studies. Stimulated by a yearning for more in life, he became a gifted student.

Beat News: October 1 1996

Beat Generation,
Comix,
Events,
Internet Culture,
Music,
News
1. Jesse Crumb, the son of the superb underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, has illustrated a pack of Beat trading cards, published by Kitchen Sink Press and available at good bookstores or comic book shops. The cards depict Beat writers, jazz musicians and other personalities, including some unexpected choices like Babs Gonzales, Miles Davis, Tuli Kupferberg and Mort Sahl. Interestingly, Jack Kerouac is not present but only alluded to, as if to proclaim his holy status.

This article is part of the Beat News series. The next post in the series is Beat News: October 21 1996. The previous post in the series is Beat News: September 5 1996.

d. a. levy

Poetry,
Politics,
Summer Of Love

"they intend to murder you anyway"

In many ways the tragic story of d.a. levy mirrors that of the late '60s. Born October 29, 1942 in Cleveland, Ohio, levy achieved both fame and notoriety in his brief career as a poet, pamphleteer, and counter-cultural icon. Influenced perhaps as heavily by the European Surrealists as by the Beats, levy was a major influence on the underground press movement, producing scores of small books and magazines, the bulk of which he gave away on the streets, using only a primitive hand press (and later, a donated mimeograph).

The son of a Cleveland shoe salesman, levy joined the Navy as a medic shortly after graduating from high school in 1960, and was discharged after only seven months of active duty, due to "manic-depressive tendencies". He then apparently rambled about for several years, travelling to Mexico at one point, before returning to Cleveland, where he managed to scrape together enough money to buy "a 6x9 letterhead hand press", which he set up in his aunt and uncle's basement.

Beat News: October 21 1996

Beat Generation,
Events,
Film,
News,
Poetry
1. There are a ton of new Beat-related books and other publications out there. I mean a TON. I always try to keep my "Beat News" entries short and sweet, but what am I to do? Here's a few highlights:

  • Women of the Beat Generation by Brenda Knight (Conari Press): an excellent, thorough anthology of stories, poems, autobiographical fragments and biographical pieces representing the often-forgotten women who participated in the Beat movement.

This article is part of the Beat News series. The next post in the series is Beat News: November 4 1996. The previous post in the series is Beat News: October 1 1996.