Book Review

Our Lady Of the Flowers

by Jean Genet

     What would you do if you were locked up alone in a prison cell for a crime you know you are guilty of? One obvious answer is that you might spend a lot of time fantasizing about life on the outside. Another thing you might do is masturbate. This is what Jean Genet does in Our Lady Of the Flowers.

     The prisoner Jean awaits trial for theft. He sticks pages from magazines on his cell wall and, while pleasuring himself, he uses his imagination to construct lives for them and stories about who they are. Divine is the protagonist of the non-linear narrative. He is a gay, cross-dressing prostitute who lives in an attic apartment with his lover, a pimp named Darling. Divine is close to thirty, worried about aging and wracked by insecurities, a decaying mental state that is made worse by living in a society that despises gay people. His friends are spiteful and mean and Darling does not pay him the attention he deserves. Divine is marginalized in the underclass of homosexuals and criminals and that underclass is marginalized by the host society so there is nowhere else for him to go except into fantasies.

     Genet constructs his narrative along strings of associations. Jean’s prison cell is easily transformed into Divine’s attic apartment. The other characters in Divine’s story are aspects of Jean’s personality. Notice how he physically describes Divine’s and Darling’s physical appearance using identical wording and then look at a picture of Jean Genet; you will find that they correspond exactly. Divine, in his imagination, associates the downtrodden society he belongs to with the heavenly realm of Catholic saints and scatological references to farts, shit, and toilets are transmuted into pearls, gems, and sunlight. After Divine gets rejected by the church for his sexuality and criminal behavior, he seeks transcendence in the imminent world of prostitutes and thieves; in his fantasies he sublimates his reality by canonizing these outcasts so that he both transubstantiates them and transgresses Catholic dogma. Jean creates a chain of association between his own imagination and Divine’s dreams of security and acceptance.

     The links of this chain are rooted in Divine’s childhood with the narrative shift being demarcated by switching to the child’s given name of Louis Culafroy. He grows up in rural France as much an outcast there as he is in Paris. His mother neglects him and his father is absent; take note that there is no God or Heavenly Father in Divine’s mysticism. The other children bully him and ignore him but he lives in the nicest house in the town. Culafroy’s family descended from the old aristocracy and as a child he imagines himself in relation to nobility and royalty to compensate for his loneliness. To his mother he is an outsider just as much as he is at school. Jean’s cell becomes Divine’s apartment which becomes Culafroy’s bedroom where he spends his time pretending. He asks his mother to buy him a violin but she says no so he makes one out of cardboard. In his fantasies, the unplayable violin becomes a vehicle for him to imagine playing a real violin, mastering the art of music, and becoming a world-class violinist. The chain of contrasts and wish-fulfillment fantasies is again realized in the narrative.

     Culafroy’s first sexual experience is with an older man who catches snakes by the river. When Culafroy touches one of the snakes, he feels the essence of a whole collection of serpents entering his body and becoming a permanent part of him. The symbolism is both unmistakably Christian and homoerotic. Culafroy’s fall from grace initiates a chain of association between him and religious imagery. Jean builds on this association by telling the story of how Culafroy got put into a juvenile detention center for stealing. He escapes by stealing again, this time from the laundry room where he puts on a nun’s habit and walks out; thus we see how dressing as a woman helps him escape the ugly reality he does not want to belong to. Of course, as Divine finds out later in Paris, as he sits in a cafe with both gay and straight people who all seem to despise him, cross-dressing does not actually resolve the problems he wishes to solve.

     Eventually Darling falls in love with another gay prostitute and moves out of Divine’s apartment, abandoning him. This is when a teenage boy who killed an old man during a burglary moves in. Divine falls in love and christens him Our Lady Of the Flowers. At about the same time, Divine’s mother arrives in Paris, searching for her son who she had not seen for a very long time. Notice the connection between Our Lady Of the Flowers, an alternate name for St. Marie or the Virgin Mary and Culafroy’s neglectful mother. The aging Divine seeks for atonement with a teenager to compensate for the love he never got from his uncaring mother. But Our Lady Of the Flowers fall in love with an attractive Black man and then gets sent to prison. Divine’s mother, horrified to see the life her son is living, shoots him. The illusions are shattered and Divine never fulfills his ultimate dream; he spends his life trying to please other people and never gets his ultimate wish: the acceptance and love he desires. Despite being a thief, he never wanted to hurt anybody and his only true crime was being different.

     The crime of theft is a central and reoccurring theme throughout the novel. The teenager Culafroy gets sent to a detention center for stealing and he escapes by stealing the outfit of a nun. Divine makes money as a streetwalker but he also earns a living by shoplifting items to be fenced. Towards the end of the novel, Divine is shoplifting in a department store. The items he steals are luxury goods like wallets, perfumes, and expensive scarfs. Being the outcast that he is, the host society has stolen the opportunity for Divine to make an honest living so that he can buy these items legally. Theft is a means of compensating for the place in society he has been denied because of his sexuality. Likewise he steals imagery from the Catholic church and uses it to ornament the people he associates with because the church has denied him membership and the sense of belonging he craves. For Jean, Culafroy, and Divine stealing is as central to his identity as fantasy. Then he gets caught by the department store’s policeman only then he isn’t dressed as a woman. Divine isn’t Divine anymore because Divine is Jean and Jean is on his way to a prison cell. The illusion is pierced, the fantasy collapses, Divine’s attic becomes Jean’s prison and everything has come full circle.

     Our Lady Of the Flowers is a lot more than a portrait of a gay man in French society. It examines the nature of an outcast’s identity, thrown into a world of modern, existential alienation. It examines the nature of creativity and the writing of literature. It shows how fantasy can make a person complete when they are denied the chance to obtain what they should be allowed to have. It shows how imagination is necessary. There is one passage in the book where Jean and a Black cellmate, who may or may not be imaginary, are painting an army of toy soldiers blue as if they are gods creating human beings. But underneath the blue paint and metal surfaces, the toy soldiers are hollow, they are something wrapped around nothing, a synthesis of being and nothingness. The soldiers are the world of people where the illusion of reality is a cover for the emptiness of life. In the end, the illusion may not be real but without it there is nothing so the illusion may be all that Jean has to cling to in order to stay alive. That is how a reader with nothing in common with Jean can find a way to relate to him.

Genet, Jean. Our Lady Of the Flowers. Panther Books, London: 1969.

 

Book Review

Book Review

Junky by William S. Burroughs

     In 1950 or so, the family of William S. Burroughs were embarrassed by his lifestyle and drug addiction so they cut off his trust fund, leaving him stranded without a steady income. Dealing heroin only gave him enough money to keep his habit going and fencing stolen goods didn’t prove to be very lucrative either. Burroughs decided to write a novel for the pulp market in order to buy food and pay rent. Writing about what he knew helped him make an easy transition into the world of cheap and sleazy paperbacks. Junky, originally published under the pen name William Lee, was his first published book and initiated the world into the mythos of WSB. But Burroughs had natural talent and this book is far better than standard pulp fiction fare.

     Junky is the most straightforward novel Burroughs ever wrote. Going by the name of Bill, the narrator spends time in New York City, New Orleans, and Mexico City doing all the things a heroin addict does. He deals to maintain his habit, spends a lot of time buying and getting his fixes, rolling drunks in the subway for money, going in and out of jails and rehab centers, and spending as much time kicking his habits as he does indulging in them. There appears to be two Bills in this narrative; one Bill is using heroin and the other Bill is trying not to use heroin. The latter Bill is the darker of the two. When he isn’t shooting up he compensates by smoking weed, sniffing coke, getting blind drunk, and experimenting with hallucinogens. Sometimes he also plays with guns and has sex with teenage Mexican boy prostitutes.

     That is what happens throughout the whole book. What really makes it great is the Burroughs style. In his spartan sentences, he describes people and places using the least number of words possible but such bone-dry descriptions are always clear. This is direct, no frills communication and if his other books make you feel confused or alienated from the text, you should try out Junky to get a good grasp of what Burroughs was all about. His sparse prose is delivered so that you can always hear his nasal, monotonous voice reciting these lines in a way that is avuncular and hypnotic, speaking directly to that part of your brain that makes him impossible to forget.

     Then there is the humor. It should come as no surprise that heroin addicts are a sorry bunch of characters. Burroughs describes these outcasts and losers with a stark, deadpan approach that is often hilarious. He comes across as what he is: an upper class rich guy thrown into a scumpit society where his only connection to the other people in it is through their shared sickness of drug addiction. He cannot admire or glamorize these people. He doesn’t even feel affection for them. He just describes them as they are with gallows humor. Burroughs’ literary persona is so rigid and unemotional that you could be forgiven for not immediately recognizing all the jokes he makes but once you get a sense for what he is about, there might be times when you cannot stop laughing.

     Junky is one of the first books you should read if you are new to Beat Generation literature. It is also a lucid entry into the mind of William S. Burroughs. It stays interesting after multiple readings too and can actually function as a skeleton key to the more stupefying novels of this genius writer. But do not enter the world of this author blindly since readers unfamiliar with this man should be warned: the literature of William S. Burroughs could possibly be works of The Devil.

Burroughs, William S. Junky. Penguin Books, New York: 1977.

Greetings from New York

Greetings from New York

short documentary about New York City (1983)

Book Review

Book Review

The Fall by Albert Camus

     People are two-faced. If you haven’t figured that out by now you haven’t made much intellectual progress in life. Albert Camus wrote The Fall to illustrate this point. Not only does he portray the inner and outer life of a modern man but he also wants you to realize that you are two-faced as well. This short novel is a product of its time and seems dated today.

     The narrator is Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a lawyer who defends criminals who committed their acts of crime because of unfavorable circumstances. He helps blind people cross the street, picks up objects dropped by frail old ladies, and treats everybody with kindness and respect. His public persona is that of a good-natured saint. He is also a womanizer, a mind-fucker, a manipulator, and he acts with indifference when he walks by a woman on a bridge and realizes she has fallen into the canal after he goes by. In his inner life he thinks of himself as an ubermensch, a man who needs no morality because he is superior to everybody else. Just like Bill Cosby, his public persona and the reality of his inner mind do not match.

     The story is told first-person by Clamence. He addresses you, the reader, as if you are physically there in his presence. His life story is a confession in which he tells all his dirty secrets. As a reader you are supposed to be horrified by him and you are also supposed to see yourself in him because, most likely, you have done some of the things he has done and thought some of the same things he has thought.

     Well, yes but so what? This was written after Freud’s psychoanalysis and Erving Goffman’s social action theory were introduced to Western intellectuals. This theme of the multi-faceted individual had even been explored in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There was nothing especially ground-breaking or revolutionary about this book. It might have been when it was first published but now it mostly seems like a retelling of an old tale.

     I have very little to say about The Fall. The writing is good but I’m too old to appreciate it. If you’ve lived long enough and gone through periods of self-analysis and deep introspection, this book will seem like what it really is: a good book for a young college student starting on their own intellectual or literary journey.

Camus, Albert. The Fall. Vintage Books, New York: 1956.

Disinformation Campaigns Are Murky Blends of Truth, Lies and Sincere Beliefs

Though disinformation does serve an agenda, it is often camouflaged in facts and advanced by innocent and often well-meaning individuals.

Read the full article on Snopes here

Book Review

Book Review

Memoirs Of a Beatnik by Diane Di Prima

     In eastern India there are ancient Hindu temples that are famous for the sexually explicit sculptures lining the outsides of the buildings, showing every conceivable act of intercourse known to the minds of ancient civilization. The purpose of these pornographic artworks are to distract those who are unworthy of entering the temples. People who are preoccupied with their carnal pleasures get stuck looking carefully at every detail and can never enter the inner sanctum where the divine cosmic truth is revealed only to those who have proven themselves worthy by bypassing the prurient carvings. These Hindu temples can act as an analogy for reading Diane Di Prima’s Memoirs Of a Beatnik. While this book is neither a profound work of religious faith nor a highly crafted work of classical art, the analogy still holds because if you get distracted by its sexually oriented passages you will miss out on the more significant writings about the bohemian life in 1950s New York City.

     Some people have criticized this book for being pornographic. While it is true that some sections of each chapter have explicit descriptions that leave nothing to the imagination, it is not fair to call the book itself a work of pornography. Even though Di Prima’s depictions of sex are sometimes raw, vulgar, and even written with banal language, she does write with a certain sensibility and self-confidence so that it does not come across as sleazy. In the group sex passages, she and her partners transgress gender and racial barriers. In another part, she sleeps with two male friends because one of them is sublimating his homosexual desiresthrough her; she curiously even exhibits some sexual sadism during this encounter. One particularly harrowing chapter involves her lesbian relationship with a girl named Tomi; the author spends a weekend with Tomi’s family only to find herself in the middle of a nightmare involving alcoholism, voyeurism, sodomy, rape, and incest. Promiscuity and sexual experimentation have typically been parts of the bohemian lifestyle going back at least to the beginning of the 19^th century and Diane Di Prima does not try to hide this aspect of the Beat Generation in any way.

     Those explicit scenes can be taken lightly. The real thrust of this book is Di Prima’s coming of age story. In her late teens, she leaves her parents’ home to go to college. She drops out and does all the things you would expect a beatnik to do. There are coffee houses, jazz, dancing, pot smoking, parties, living n the streets, art, book stores, squatting, and whatever else you might expect from any given counter-culture. The content of her story is nothing new or surprising but she writes in a way that is frank and honest. The clear and simple descriptiveness never comes off as pretentious. The prose may not be complex but it is smoothly and finely crafted to convey a sense of freedom and loose living. Her prose is celebratory and liberating. Also, one personality trait that pervades all her writing is the motherly and nurturing care she provides for all her friends in the scene. Whether it is sex, food, shelter, drugs, or money, she gives of herself generously to all the ragged souls who wander into her charmed circle.

     Diane Di Prima wrote Memoirs Of a Beatnik solely to make money at a time when she was broke. It was published in 1968 by the infamous and controversial Olympia Press. The semi-fictional sex was added it because the publisher demanded it. The unspoken rule is that real art is never made for the sake of money. So this book may not actually be completely authentic. But the author did draw on her own life experience to write some of it and there are certainly times when her sincerity shines through. This is not the best of Diane Di Prima’s writing though. If you want to know what she is truly capable of, read her poetry. She writes excellent poetry and unfortunately, she is terribly underrated.

     If you’ve ever been part of a counter-culture, you have probably met a few people like Diane Di Prima and there will be a lot you can relate to in these pages. If you haven’t been part of a scene then it’s time to throw your cellphone away and start living for a change.

Di Prima, Diane. Memoirs Of a Beatnik. Last Gasp, San Francisco: 1988.

My Most Difficult Book: The Story of Lolita

My Most Difficult Book: The Story of Lolita

documentary about Vladimir Nabokov (1989)

On Evil May Day, Londoners Rioted Over Foreigners Stealing Their Jobs

It’s been 500 years since London’s artisans turned a festival into a rampage

Read the full article on Smithsonian here

The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European

The portrayal of Jesus as a white, European man has come under renewed scrutiny during this period of introspection over the legacy of racism in society.

Read the full article on The Conversation here

Where are the bones of Hans Holbein? I spent lockdown solving art's grisliest mystery

He was a star of the Renaissance, an unflinching painter of death and horror in a time of rampant plague. Yet he ended up in an unmarked grave in London. Or so it has always been believed …

Read the full article on The Guardian here

The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever

Ole J. Benedictow describes how he calculated that the Black Death killed 50 million people in the 14th century, or 60 per cent of Europe’s entire population.

Read the full article on History Today here

Book Review

Book Review

The Plague by Albert Camus

     In The Plague, Albert Camus tells the story of the Black Death reappearing in the French Colonial town of Oran on the coast of Algeria. This novel was written as a companion piece to his theoretical work The Rebel. The principles in that book are explained through the thoughts and actions of the main characters.

     The idea of metaphysical rebellion is central to Camus’s thought; it is the belief that the world, as it exists, is meaningless and humans must rebel against such absurdity to make life meaningful and worth living. Oran itself can be seen as a microcosm of world society and the appearance of the plague can be interpreted as the absurdity that must be rebelled against and overcome. The plague serves no purpose and it has no meaning in and of itself. The citizens in this novel need to choose what it means so they can defeat it. Otherwise the plague is just a plague; it has no consciousness or volition, it is entirely neutral and can only do what it does because that is all it can do. The plague also corresponds with Camus’s concept of absolute nihilism which he defines in The Rebel as a negation of all existence. Absolute nihilism destroys without creating anything in its place.

     As the town’s rats begin to die en masse, Dr. Rieux, the central character begins to take notice. He runs the town’s main hospital and manages the handling of the crisis. It is through his interactions with the other characters that his stoic point of view is expressed and it is through his relations with them that the ideas they represent also get revealed.

     One important character is Paneloux, the Catholic priest who gives two sermons in the town’s cathedral to inspire the people of his flock. In one sermon he declares that the plague is meant to punish the town for turning away from God and only those who embrace God will live until it ends. Rieux and the others reject this notion but since Paneloux wants to serve humanity as well as God, they allow him to help in caring for victims of the disease. In another sermon he explains again that the Black Death is meant to inspire people’s love for God but by the end of the book it becomes obvious that his religious theories have no correspondence with reality. Camus uses Paneloux to show how religion is not a sufficient form of rebellion against absurdity since it signifies a submission and acceptance of the will of God and church, which he also believes to be a false belief. Paneloux made the wrong choice by embracing religious faith and his actions and beliefs ended up being of little consequence in Oran.

     Another significant character is Tarrou. This heavyset man works closely with Rieux in the care and management of the patients. In one conversation he explains how he embraced communism when he was young. The pacifist Tarrou later rejected communism because he saw how it eventually curtailed people’s freedom and dignity, resulting in violence and mass murder for the sake of a ruling elite. He admits that he had little interest in the mechanics of Marxist economics or politics but the idea of serving humanity motivated him more than anything else. Tarrou represents Camus’s view that communism worked as a form of metaphysical rebellion but ultimately failed because it resulted in the enslavement of people rather than their liberation.

     It is significant that both Tarrou and Paneloux die of the plague. Their deaths are emblematic of his rejection of religion and communism as forms of rebellion.

     One character who does not die is the journalist Rambert. He is a young man who has recently fallen in love with a woman living in Paris. He can not get out of Oran to see her because the town is quarantined to prevent the plague from escaping to other places. He makes arrangement with some Spanish gangsters to be smuggled out. Rambert gets caught between his individual desire for love and happiness and his duty to help Rieux in treating the patients. He asks Rieux for advice on what to do but Rieux is indifferent; both choices are equally ethical from his point of view. It is the choices one makes that give life its meaning. Rambert symbolizes Camus’s concept of the ultimately moral form of rebellion so the author allows his character to live and get his due rewards at the end of the story.

     Two lesser characters are the ironically named Grand and the gangster Cottard. Grand is an elderly man, possibly at the onset of senility, whose goal in life is to write a novel even though he has no talent and rewrites the first sentence over and over again as if he is suffering fron obsessive compulsive disorder. During the time of the plague, he sacrifices his writing to volunteer his time and effort to assisting Dr. Rieux at the hospital. Even though he plays a minor function, Rieux describes him as an ethically pure man. Cottard is the opposite. He is the happiest person in the book since the police were after him for a crime he committed long ago and then leave him alone while they work to maintain order in Oran. Meanwhile, Cottard, through his connections with the Spanish gangsters, finds ways to make money off smuggling operations since resources are scarce due to the town’s quarantine. His happiness is gained through bad faith and ignorance, the opposite of what Camus wishes to idealize in his study of metaphysical rebellion. Incidentally, Cottard is subtly linked with Meursault from The Stranger; in an early chapter he gets into an argument with some people in a grocery story who want to see Meursault get executed but Cottard wants the protagonist of that novel to be set free. Cottard does not die but you can tell what Camus thinks of him by what happens to him in the end.

     The Plague is not without it problems. The narrator’s voice is too intrusive at times and there are long passages where he describes thoughts and situations in abstract language. Several sections read more like essays than fiction and the omniscient description can be overbearing. It could have been more like a story if Camus had allowed his ideas to be expressed through the actions and conversations of the people in the book. But then again, when he does allow that to happen the effect is not as strong as it could have been either; the characters all symbolize concepts that Camus explains in his philosophical writings but they do not act like natural people because of their all too obvious symbolical function. Since they are characters built up around ideas rather than being characters with ideas, they come off as flat and two-dimensional. When Rieux has discussions with them, it reads like Camus talking to himself rather than real people debating and analyzing issues.

     The Plague is not one of Camus’s best books. The brevity of his other novels makes them stronger while the length and depth of his theoretical works also makes those books more complete. But familiarity with the latter makes it easy to see how The Plague continues on from The Stranger and functions as an auto-correction for those who misinterpret that first novel by thinking of Meursault as a hero.

Camus, Albert. The Plague. Vintage Books, New York: 1972. 

P16.D4: Etereal Ephemera

P16.D4: Ethereal Ephemera

full movie

If You Drink Coffee Black, You’re Probably A Psychopath

When a friend orders coffee just as it is and drinks it black, you might get a little suspicious. You might think that they are tired and do not want to dilute the caffeine or perhaps that they have a little bit of a caffeine of addiction. Among these suspicions, you may make inferences like that the coffee-lover is working too hard and that is why they are tired. What you probably don’t think of first, however, is that your friend may be a psychopath

Read the full essay on Consumer Health Digest

Turkey Converts Istanbul's Iconic Hagia Sophia Back Into A Mosque

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ordered the Hagia Sophia museum, one of Istanbul's most famous landmarks, to be converted into a mosque.

Read the full article on NPR here

THE DAY DASHIELL HAMMETT WAS DRAGGED INTO COURT OVER A BAIL FUND FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS AND REFUSED TO NAME NAMES

 

The godfather of noir fiction went up against a notorious Communist hunter and refused to back down. It would cost him his freedom.

Read the full article on Crime Reads here

Melania Trump sculpture in Slovenia set on fire on US Independence Day

A quirky wooden sculpture of US First Lady Melania Trump is reported to have been set on fire near her hometown in Slovenia, prompting its removal.

Read the full article on BBC News here

'Landscape of fear': what a mass of rotting reindeer carcasses taught scientists

When 323 reindeer were killed by lightning on a remote Norwegian plateau, their bodies were left for nature to take its course

Read the full article on The Guardian here

Gimme Shelter: the Brief And Strange History of CHOP (AKA CHAZ)

The end has come for CHOP—or CHAZ. At first the six-block area just east of downtown Seattle was called CHAZ. The area was occupied by protesters on June 8^th after it was reluctantly ceded to them by Seattle Mayor Jennie Durkan and the police. That was the day that the Seattle Police Department vacated and locked up its East Precinct building on 12^th Avenue. When the police left, the occupiers painted “People” over the “Police” in the sign, “Seattle Police Department, East Precinct.” Then they declared the surrounding area the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, soon referred to simply as CHAZ. Whatever exactly it was, it had a name. Then some black community leaders suggested it be called Capitol Hill Organize Protest. Hence, CHOP, although CHAZ was still being used. Whatever you call it, as of the First of July it was no more.

Read the full article on Counterpunch here

Book Review

Book Review

The First Third & Other Writings

by Neal Cassady

     Neal Cassady was possibly one of the most famous non-fictional literary figures ever. Written about most famously by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he also played important roles in the writings of John Clellon Holmes, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, and Sonny Barger. So when the rising stars of the Beat Generation literary movement insisted he try to write a novel, Neal Cassady gave in and tried. The results were not spectacular but for fans of the great American counter-cultures of the 20^th century, his book The First Third & Other Writings will probably be worth at least one good read.

     The First Third is Neal Cassady’s attempt at writing an autobiographical novel. In the Prologue, he gives accounts of his family history, both from his father’s and mother’s sides. The story of his father’s life and ancestry are detailed, possibly inaccurate, and sometimes you might wonder why Cassady thought to say as much as he did. A similar comment could be made about his mother’s life story and family tree with the addition that it is hard to tell what he meant to say until the mention of his mother’s birth. These passages have their moments but it often reads like Neal Cassady was more concerned with getting the stories on paper than he was in making them interesting. The writing is adequately good and clear in some spots but in other places it is more like lists of information than actual literature.

     The main passages of The First Third are all about Cassady’s childhood. Some parts of it are vivid and even exciting. The story takes place during the Great Depression. His father, also named Neal, was a barber and an alcoholic. They spend a lot of time in the streets of Denver and sleeping in skid row hotels while his father gets too drunk to function in any meaningful way. Cassady writes about his wanderings through the city and his exploratory adventures in junkyards and other industrial wastelands. He also goes on a hitchhiking trip across the country with his father. Later in the autobiography, he goes to live with his mother; his older step-brothers are bullies and little Neal watches as they beat the hell out of his father for being drunk. Neal Cassady also begins sexual experimentation with other kids in his neighborhood at a precocious age; a child psychologist would probably attribute this to parental neglect, something that appears to have been a big factor in the childhood of the author. But Neal Cassady never writes as though he feels sorry for himself; this is not victim literature and he often writes as if his obviously painful life were fun and a never-ending adventure.

     Some of the most clearly written passages are also the most grotesque. In one instance, six year old Neal enters a hotel room where a drunken bum with no legs is masturbating. This, in itself, does not surprise him but what he does find shocking is that a man in his 40s is able to get a hard-on. The kid had a lot to learn. Another time, his sadistic older brothers torture a cat to death by stomping on its head until its brains pop out. They throw the dead cat down an alley and Neal goes to look at it. He finds, by coincidence, that the corpse landed on a book that had been stolen from him a long time ago. His descriptions of playing doctor with little girls aren’t exactly pretty either.

     There are some badly written passages too, in fact, there are lots of them. Cassady often tried to write marathon sentences, going on for as long as he could without using a period. There are many parts that degenerate into nonsense and babbling. There are also several passages where he introduces a character or a plot line then goes off on tangents that lead to further tangents without him ever returning to the original point. Or if he does return to where he started, it doesn’t make sense because the sidetrack went on for so long you forget what it was it was originally meant to be about. Supposedly Neal Cassady wrote this with the intention of writing like his favorite author, Marcel Proust. But writing under such an influence with a mind moving at warp-speed did not do Cassady justice. His writing is too self-conscious to ever really take off and fly for prolonged periods of time. A lot of the times the narrative is like climbing a hill while dragging a bag full of bricks behind you.

     But when Neal Cassady wrote at his best, there is something genuine and stylistically American so that it winds up being tragic that he did not try harder to pursue a literary career. There is something reminiscent of great American authors like Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, and John Steinbeck in the way he writes about his family and the American experience.

     The sections of story fragments and letters at the end of this volume are some of the better narratives. The story about Cherry Mary is hilarious. There is a lot of stuff about stealing cars and some crude sex talk that sounds like male locker room conversations. One chapter is the beginning of a story about a great race car driver that is obviously modeled on Neal Cassady himself. The race car driver always wins in competitions because his mind works 500 times faster than everybody else’s. These passages are more true to the character and personality of Neal Cassady himself. When he doesn’t try too hard to be a great writer, his inhibitions come down, his self-consciousness disappears, and he writes the way he thinks. This still isn’t great literature but it is more interesting and true to life than what Cassady wrote in The First Third.

     This book is not going to have wide appeal. The writing is not great and it will not speak to most readers. It definitely is an item of interest for those who are in love with the Neal Cassady mythology. Despite the rough pacing and confusing descriptions, this still comes across clearly as his own genuine voice rather than a version of the man as portrayed by other great writers. There is just enough good writing here to make you wish he had tried harder as an author. Neal Cassady was probably too manic, too energetic, too scatter-brained to really sit down for long periods in order to concentrate on writing in earnest. Then again, we are fortunate that he lived the way he did because the whirlwind of his life stirred up so much interesting culture and controversy in his wake. We are fortunate that he chose the life of a wild role model rather than a writer, even if he was a bad role model.

Cassady, Neal. The First Third & Other Writings. City Lights, San Francisco: 1992.