Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    <scribbled>
  

    
Hi Gail.  Thanks for those links.  Castaneda was quite the Trickster. 


I'm thinking of Bumbaugh's and my exchange about the role of the
surreal and hallucinations in the literature of this time period. 
While my approach is to analyze these texts in terms of how much they
adhere or deviate from the traditional narrative structural
form––within which surreal depictions and metaphors play a stylistic
role––I think it would also be fascinating to focus just on the
mechanisms with which surreal and hallucinated prose have been used in
literature. 

This might starting with Alice in Wonderland and proceed through
European and Beat surrealism and on to these works I've looked at. In
such a study, Castaneda's work would most certainly warrant inclusion,
whether it is non-fictional fraud, or metaphorically enlightening
fiction that was mispackaged.  There is no question his works had a
significant impact in the '70s especially.

This said, I still have a problem with bullshitters. And Carlos was a
master fraud.
  

    
Thanks, Mario, the Earl Campbell fan.  I think you've outlined
very astutely the history of the evolving drug scene. I also think it
came down much as you suggest. (Acid Dreams offers another straight-up
look at Psychedelia).  

Long ago I came to see that those of us in America (and Canada and
Western Europe) live in a proverbial drug store of legal and illegal
drugs. When it comes right down to it, the individual must come to
terms with how he or she chooses to self-medicate.  
  

    
And Gail...Andrew Leonard's little piece on playing chess with
Vonnegut is wonderful.  Thx.
  

    

> Martin Torgoff's excellent book, _Can't Find My Way Home_

We talked with Martin Torgoff here, see <inkwell.vue.214>


NOTE: Offsite readers with comments of questions can send them to
<inkwell@well.com> to have them added to the conversation.

   ******************


Back on track, it's interesting to me that when people point to The Drug
that ended the peace/love movement, heroin and speed always get mention, but
cocaine is rarely brought up.

In my experience, coke had a much broader, deleterious effect. It saw it as
a drug that inspired greed and alienation.
  

    
>>> from Cynthia:  Back on track, it's interesting to me that when
people point to The Drug that ended the peace/love movement, heroin and
speed always get mention, but cocaine is rarely brought up.

>>> In my experience, coke had a much broader, deleterious effect. It
saw it as a drug that inspired greed and alienation.

I'm not sure you're any more on track with this than the Oilers Fan,
but, hey, I agree with your observations, too. ;=)  Snorters were far,
far more prevalent than hopheads.  As for speed, it has grown over the
years into a scourge, especially in the rural areas.

In The Hippie Narrative, I tried my best to be dispassionate about my
examination of the era's drugs, and, in order to keep on track while
writing this book, I looked at various drugs in the context of the text
being studied.  The Chief Broom character in Cuckoo's Nest was peyote
inspired; Siddhartha was on a natural high, but the work exhibited a
very hallucinated tone near the end; LSD, shockingly, was the focal
point of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Divine Right's Trip; HST
in Fear & Loathing is mostly crazed from a cocktail of Acid and Speed,
it seems; The Fan Man is pothead through and through; Tom Robbins'
characters vascillates through an array of psychedelic influences;
Denis Johnson in "The Hippies" is the recovered junkie on mushrooms.  

Marcus Boon's book, "The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on
Drugs" helped me make a link between the writer's depicted drug of
choice and how that substance influenced the prose of these books.

I don't think anyone can make an honest exploration of the
counterculture without examining the drugs, but the easy dismissal of
the era's profound array of societal impacts because of drugs is
irresponsible scholarship.  Anyone trying to understand the era, must
look beyond the drugs, too. 
  

    
It was quite clear to anyone in town that the decline of Haight-Ashbury, in
the late 60s coincided with a steep rise in the use of injected drugs like
heroin and speed.  This also coincided with an influx of predators who saw
the peace and love people as easy marks.   I'm speaking both as an observer
and as a data point who was mugged just off Haight St by a couple of
junkies, in 68.  They came right out and said that they had habits to
support.
  

    
Coke didn't really come on the scene until around 1970. 
  

    
>> It was quite clear to anyone in town that the decline of
Haight-Ashbury, in the late 60s coincided with a steep rise in the use
of injected drugs like heroin and speed.

And, from everything I've read from people who were living in The
Haight from '65-'70, (Emmett Grogan, Keith Abbott, Peter Coyote, HST)
there was the pre-Media invasion where the neighborhood was a mostly
peaceful bohemian enclave; then came invasion of '67-'68 where the
Haight was flooded with streetkids, white drugs to inject and snort,
and a strange media hype that both romanticized and ostracized those in
the neighborhood; and, as you and many others point out, the scene got
strangely ugly.

Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is useful for describing the social
dynamic that led to this Psychedelia that erupted nowhere more
noticably than in Haight/Ashbury.  The flowerchild/flowerpower
hyperbole, of course, was a media creation, although the collectivist
attempts to create community in this chaotic social vacuum were not,
and there was a hippie altuism and hopefulness that went beyond the
drugs. 

The shift to hard drugs was very real, as you point out.  The cops,
who had largely ignored the Haight prior to '67 were under a lot of
political pressure to crack down on the drug scene, which they did. 
Again, The Haight got very bleak.

So, to use this neighborhood as indicative of the hippie phenomenon as
a whole, makes sense up to the beginning of 1967, but during and after
'67 The Haight became a distorted microcosm.  The hippie phenomenon,
as soon as the hard core ugliness began, was already diffusing, was
already in many different places and beginning to manifest itself in a
number of different ways.

I think the huge popularity of cocaine came later in the '70s and was
affordable, mostly, by more affluent people. I think Cynthia is
speaking of a wider cultural phenomenon in the '70s.   I don't know if
accurate data is available, but it would be interesting to compare the
numbers of young people on a yearly basis from 1965 to 1980 who
actually used marijuana, LSD and other strong hallucinogens, speed,
heroine and cocaine to look for trends.  

But, again, my focus in The Hippie Narrative, is not to ignore the
drugs, but to allow the key works of literature to depict the era,
which often included its drugs. LSD was a primary factor that
differentiated the Beats from the hippies, and LSD was the catalyst for
this Psyhedelia which is integrally linked to the hippies.  This
broader array of drugs impacted far more than the hippies.  I would not
describe today's drug culture as "hippie" though the counterculture
did much to create the drug culture, and a hippie influence is still
there.  
  

    
By the early 70s, a lot of hippies were dropping back in.  They had jobs and
the wherewithall to afford cocaine.   Coke was the antithesis drug, and was
an antidote to hippiedom.  As cdb said, it's about greed and alienation.  It
certainly brought out the worst in me.
  

    
My dad lived in the Haight during the late 40's because it was the
cheapest neighborhood he could find. He was going to UC Berkeley on the
GI bill. 
  

    
>> By the early 70s, a lot of hippies were dropping back in.  They had
jobs and the wherewithall to afford cocaine.   Coke was the antithesis
drug, and was an antidote to hippiedom.  As cdb said, it's about greed
and alienation.  It certainly brought out the worst in me.

There's an autobiography here.
  

    

And I hope rik writes it. It'd be a fascinating read!

But back to your book, Scott.  In the heart of our discussions this week, 
you mentioned Slaughterhouse-Five as one of your all time favorite books.
Then, of course, Wednesday we learn the sad news of his passing.  At
one point you used the term "Geodesic Vonnegut."  Can you explain a bit
more what you mean by this?
  

    
Some of the books I examined have virtually no literary criticism
written about them, such as Divine Right's Trip and The Fan Man, while
others such as Cuckoo's Nest, The Crying of Lot 49 and
Slaughterhouse-Five have been thoroughly examined by literary scholars
from all sorts of angles.

When I closely examined S-5 I was looking for a way to describe its
unusual "unstuck in time" literary structure.  Such descriptions are
inherently "metaphorical," but I really liked the term geodesic which
came from a John L. Somer article called "Geodesic Vonnegut; or If
Buckminster Fuller Wrote Novels."  

Fuller, of course, was the eccentric scientist who "invented" the
geodesic dome which used the least amount of materials to construct a
very strong dwelling with the most amount of space.  Also, it's the
only man-made structure that gets proportionally stronger as it
increases in size.

I thought that this was a great way to describe S-5, not only because
the G-Dome had its run as chic alternative housing in the '70s, but
because, with S-5, Vonnegut's story is much stronger in its totality
than when viewing its independent scenes.

There are three plot lines in S-5 that are broken apart, revisited
seemingly at whim, yet which come together––like triangular components
of a G-Dome––to create a schizophrenic whole which not only portrays
Billy Pilgrim's fractured psychological state, but more profoundly, the
fractured state of modern man.

Even though the novel proceeds as though it is unstuck in time,
Vonnegut's sparse prose revisits three threads of plot again and again.
 There is Billy Pilgrim in 1968 as a detached Optometrist living a
sedate, though alienated, upper-middle class life in Ohio; there is
Billy Pilgrim the 21-year-old assistant chaplain in the US Army at the
end of WWII, and; there is Billy Pilgrim who time travels to the planet
Tralfamadore where he is placed in a cage with a voluptuous earthling
with whom he is supposed to mate.

It is the juxtaposing of bits and pieces of these three plotlines that
give the novel its fractured tone.  Also, using bits of metafiction
where Vonnegut plays himself as a young soldier draws attention to the
narrative structure.  The author also gives away the ending; he
routinely breaks the traditional mold of a continuous fictional dream. 
This causes the reader to experience, to a certain extent, the
schizophrenic mental state of the protagonist.

Yet, even though we are told early in the novel that Billy Pilgrim
will survive the massive firebombing of Dresden, Germany, when this
takes place at the end of the novel, it is still climactic.  The
geodesic structure of this narrative is completed with this scene, so
to speak, and the author has found a most innovative way to convey,
viscerally, the complete fragmented essence of the protagonist.  Sound
travels too well through a G-Dome, and there is something about Billy
Pilgrim that echoes through all of us.    
  

    
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With Vonnegut's recent death and your fascinating exploration into one of
his most compelling novels, I'm getting an itch to read S5 again. I've read
it perhaps half a dozen times since I first discovered it in the '60s, but
it's been at least a decade since my last reading. What a writer he was, 
and thanks for digging into this so thoroughly, Scott.

You've called Slaughterhouse-Five an experimental form of narrative.
You've also said this about the structure of Trout Fishing in America.
How are these two novels similar and different in this regard?
  

    
Thanks, Cynthia.

In The Hippie Narrative I talk about John Gardner's book The Art of
Fiction quite a bit.  Gardner describes three types of novels: lyrical
(such as Proust's Swan's Way), juxtapositional (such as Donald
Barthelme's Snow White), or energeic (which includes most traditionally
rendered narratives where the potential of the character is actualized
through situational conflict).

Gardner also describes the continuous fictional dream as a trait of
the traditional novel.  Metafiction, where the author draws attention
to the design of his or her narrative, was used by authors such as
Vonnegut and Tom Robbins to either frame the story, or to exact some
comedic or didactic effect.  

In addition to using metafiction, Vonnegut breaks S-5 into numerous
"unstuck in time" segments, which I just described.  It should also be
noted here that Vonnegut makes this seem effortless with his unassuming
style and careful segues between sections.  He knows how to transition
without losing the reader.  Beneath this seemingly simple prose, the
structure is rather complex and we must remember that it took Vonnegut
23 years to figure out a narrative strategy through which to tell this
amazing personal story.   

Richard Brautigan has only short vignettes in Trout Fishing in America
and, hence, no sustained continuous dream to interrupt.  So to call
this metafiction would not be accurate.  Actually, it is often
difficult to tell who or what the narrator is in Trout Fishing.

S-5 and Trout Fishing are similar in their juxtapositional structures
that, with geodesic fashioning, come to create a narrative whole. 
Trout Fishing deviates more than S-5 from the conventional narrative,
because S-5 brings the three linear threads together with a crescendo. 
The climax, again, is in the scene where the fire bombing takes place.
 

By comparison, Trout Fishing is a series of vignettes that circle the
same thematic motif––trout fishing in America.  At the end of the short
novel, the reader has a multifaceted impression of  Brauigan's
pastorally-challenged imagining of all that this motif might and may no
longer be in America.

In its juxtapostional irony and full departure from the traditional
narrative form, Trout Fishing is even more important than S-5 as a
seminal work of postmodern literature.  
  

    
Scott, I just occurred to me that Eric Hoffer would have been working
and writing in San Francisco during hippie times. He must have included
hippies among his many observations of life there. Are you aware of
any?
  

    
From what little I know of Hoffer, he was big on the concept of
individual self-esteem.  Lack of this gave rise to a sort of
externalization that gave rise to such phenomenon as Nazism.  I do know
that late in his life, he was critical of the New Left and blamed this
on modern affluence which delayed the rite of passage into adulthood. 
I suspect he would view the hippies as similarly stuck in a prolonged
state of adolescence.  

To some extent he's correct, but the sort of adulthood that was
sponsoring the protracted war in Vietnam and unfettered industrial
excesses of the '60s, and which touted the consumer fruits of affluence
as sufficient to the human condition, also bears a measure of
responsibility for the youthful reaction against such a 'system.'   
  

    
One of the sublime joys of writing is not necessarily in finding
answers, but sometimes in feeling like you've stumbled upon the right
questions:


[Marcus] Boon [in The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs]
goes on to point out how the manner in which [Hunter S.] Thompson
describes his hallucinated states is related to the author’s
orientation toward the sacred context, which is to say that it is not
sacred at all, but profane:
                        
Psychedelics amplified the crisis that modernism found itself in with
regard to the question of literary form.  So long as psychedelics were
experienced within an atheistic worldview, they produced convoluted,
fragmentary, chaotic snakes of text.  When Huxley [in Doors of
Perception] took mescaline in a sacred context, this apparent disorder
subsided into a kind of lucid clarity […]  But later nontheistic
explorations of the psychedelic realms, such as Burroughs’ and Hunter
Thompson’s, returned to textual turbulence, suggesting that it too
cannot be wished away so easily. (274)           

Thompson’s text is certainly turbulent and his philosophy nontheistic.
 Intriguingly, this causal connection by Boon presupposes a larger
observation with regard to those in the counterculture.  Those inclined
toward the spiritual with its sacred context––if Boon’s premise
holds––would be more likely to find, while high on hallucinogens, a
lucid clarity in their belief in a higher force.  Thompson, by
comparison, uses textual turbulence as a literary device to help him
depict the fractured nature of the drugged state in a way that emulates
the chaos and destructiveness of the modern American State.  He is not
seeking spiritual enlightenment or lucidity, and doesn’t find it.  His
textual turbulence, while rendered in the context of a traditional
narrative structure, is also fractured in a postmodernist sense.
(185-186) 
  

    

> Those inclined toward the spiritual with its sacred context -- if Boon's
> premise holds -- would be more likely to find, while high on 
> hallucinogens, a lucid clarity in their belief in a higher force

I'm not eager to get into a discussion of religion, but this rankles
a bit. The adjectives I see in reference to use of psychedelics
by a non-religious, non-seeker seem to lean toward a negative spin of
the user. "fractured," "chaotic" and so forth. I'd argue that one
doesn't need to be a seeker to find clarity and calm in a psychedelic 
excursion. 

Do you think of yourself as a seeker, Scott? 
  

    
!
  

    


Perhaps that's not a fair question, and it's certainly not all that germane
to your book's focus, Scott. I was just curious. Let me try another tack...

There's a link on Salon.com to this conversation. It asks: "How did 
Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" influence a generation?"  I know 
you didn't write this, but how would you answer the question?
  

    
>> I'd argue that one doesn't need to be a seeker to find clarity and
calm in a psychedelic excursion.

In the '60s there was a great deal of talk about treating
hallucinogens as a sacrament, centering oneself when taking them. A
great many people have talked about psychedelics opening themselves to
believing in a higher presence.  

In Fear & Loathing, on the other hand, HST does his best to debunk the
idea of any higher light at the end of the tunnel.  His hallucinated
prose is jaded, often paranoid and, yes, frequently fractured and
chaotic. Burroughs' prose also exhibits these qualities.  

I was intrigued by Boone's observations on different prose as a way to
comment on the relationship between one's spiritual state and the
experience one might have on powerful hallucinogens.  Without
suggesting that this proves or disproves any religious premise, the
question of this correlation fascinates me. Not that I'm glad it
rankled you, but I am pleased that you are willing to challenge this
premise.  Absolutes are always dangerous, but I would still enjoy
delving into this possible connection more.   

>> Do you think of yourself as a seeker, Scott?

Yes, but I think at this time I am more of an intellectual seeker than
a spiritual one.  I do believe in a higher power and its grand
mystery, but I am also highly skeptical of organized religion or with
those who profess to have the truth. I hope to be grateful for my life
when I'm dead and welcoming to the truths of the other side when it's
time.  

I think my fascination with the Sixties has to do in a large part with
an interest in separating its sheer escapism from those earnest
attempts at human transcendence, especially through the ethereal power
of collectivist synergy.  
  

    
"How did Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" influence a
generation?"  I know you didn't write this, but how would you answer
the question?

Vonnegut managed to find an accessible, yet profoundly imploring way
through a bit of Sci-Fi, a bit of mad irony, and a bit of sensory
wisdom to cut through the
war-is-our-duty-as-God-fearing-anticommunist-Americans mindset of
1960s.  In part because of his innovative, "unstuck in time" narrative
structure that emulated a schizophrenic mindset, Vonnegut's work was
not just pacifist, but a clarion cry for human reason and
responsibility.  

The book's publication in 1969 had particular appeal to a generation
harboring legitimate questions about the Vietnam War. More than this,
S-5 offered a more mainstream voice as well in raising US involvement
in Vietnam to a level of wider condemnation.  

Though S-5 concerned WWII, it undermined the popularity of America's
involvement in that war by highlighting, what was then, a little known
fact about the fire bombing of a city that, at this late stage of the
WWII, had no strategic military justification.

For all these reasons, S-5 became a favorite of the counterculture
(and the liberal mainstream, too).