Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
The WELL's Inkwell forum welcomes author Charlie Haas for a
week-long conversation focusing on his latest novel, THE CURRENT
FANTASY, published by Beck and Branch in 2024. Charlie grew up in
New York and California and now lives in Oakland. His magazine work
includes reported stories, humor, and essays for The Threepenny
Review, The New Yorker, New West, Mother Jones, Wet: The Magazine of
Gourmet Bathing, and many others.  As a student at U.C. Santa Cruz,
he began a screenwriting partnership with Tim Hunter, leading to the
movies Over the Edge (directed by Jonathan Kaplan) and Tex (directed
by Tim Hunter). Haas's later movie credits include Gremlins 2 and
Matinee, both directed by Joe Dante.  Haas's other novel is THE
ENTHUSIAST (HarperCollins, 2009), which we discussed in a previous
Inkwell conversation:
<https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/371/Charlie-Haas-The-Enthusias
t-page01.html>
  

    
Charlie, welcome back to Inkwell! Can you tell us what inspired you
to write THE CURRENT FANTASY?
  

    
It's great to be back -- thanks for having me!

I got the idea for this book when I stumbled onto some photos of
German "nature men" (which included women) taken at the turn of the
20th Century. These people looked strikingly like hippies in the
mid-1960s, but they'd shown up 50 years early. Why hadn't I been
informed of this?

I read up on the topic, in Gordon Kennedy's book "Children of the
Sun" and Martin Burgess Green's several excellent histories,
especially "Mountain of Truth." 

It turned out that there was a lively dropout culture in Germany
back then, and that some of its adherents came to California in the
1910s. These included Bill Pester, whose photo is the frontispiece
of "The Current Fantasy." (Pester was the subject of the song
"Nature Boy," written by eden ahbez, who came to the scene a bit
later.)

The California naturmenschen settled into the southern California
canyons, started health food restaurants like the Eutropheon in LA,
contributed to the spread of German Expressionist art and poetry,
and in general made a serious contribution to the bohemian style
that emerged in America. 

What interested me in all this enough to write a novel? I think it's
the <persistence> over the decades of that desire to try a different
way of living and maybe have a positive influence on society at
large... less selfishness, more humor, less fear, more honesty...
these movements that often "win by losing." I can find echoes of the
naturmenschen and Expressionists in the beats, the folk music
revivals, the hippies, Burning Man... a striking family resemblance
at times. 

I was also interested in patterns in the lives of individual artists
-- the importance of a group scene in one's early development, and
the equal importance later on of finding one's own spot and getting
down to painting or writing or whatever... as we see in the later
part of the book. 

I'll stop there, but if people are curious about this background
stuff I'll be happy to go into more detail.
  

    
I think it's interesting - feel free to expand on the background.
One question I have is whether you found evidence that the hippies
that came later had any connection to or inspiration from the
naturmenschen, or whether these were independent movements? And if
they were independent, why were they similar?

I'm also registering the title of the book as a reference to the
Merry Pranksters who came later, correct?
  

    
About the title, yes. "The current fantasy" is a phrase Tom Wolfe
uses several times in "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," his book
about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. In addition to the title,
the phrase shows up in my book when Anna asks Rose about the idea of
going to California, and in a quotation from Wolfe that serves as
the epigram for the afterword.  

About links between the hippies and the naturmenschen, I'd like to
look at that in two ways: style and individuals. Among other
instances, I think you can easily draw a line from the style of
German Expressionist theater and cinema to things like Bread and
Puppet Theater and Living Theater in the 60s to Burning Man in the
present. 

A few key individuals also link these periods together. I think of
eden ahbez, a proto-hippie who was born in the U.S. and joined Bill
Pester and other German naturmenschen in the southern California
canyons. eden wrote the song "Nature Boy" about Pester and played
piano at the Eutropheon health food restaurant in LA -- this is all
before the 50s. 

In the 60s, eden hung out with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and
recorded albums of his own song-poems at LA studios. I like to
imagine eden coming into town in the period, taking a walk on Sunset
Strip and thinking, "It's happened! Thousands of guys who look like
me!"

Similarly, there's Gypsy Boots, whose parents were German
naturmenschen. Gypsy was a longhaired health food advocate in LA in
the 50s -- he'd come swinging onto the set of "The Tonight Show" on
a vine and get Steve Allen to drink carrot juice when it was still
exotic. His memoir, published under the titles "Bare Feet and Good
Things to Eat" and "The Gypsy in Me," is fun to look at. 

Of course, once "The Current Fantasy" became a story of fictional
characters with hopes and aggravations of their own, this stuff
about movements and their aesthetics became background, but (for one
example) the Expressionist style of Rose's painting seems to me to
be inextricable from her character. 
  

    
What was your process for generating a plot and a cast of characters
based on historic characters and events? When you're writing fiction
based on actual people and events, how much is that history
inspiration, and to what extent is it a constraint?
  

    
Great question, thanks. 

Coming up with plot and characters was a <very> distinct operation
from the historical research. With the research, I had a pleasant
second-college kind of experience, reading histories, combing
through art books and newspaper microfiches at the Cal libraries,
etc. I could have geeked out on that stuff forever.

But for story and characters, the "research material" is one's own
experiences, observations, and emotions. Basically, you're saying,
"Let me take the under-examined contents of my brain, spread it out
on the coffee table, and turn it into a narrative. How hard could it
be?"

Pretty hard. I knew early on that I wanted a family to act as
audience surrogates, experiencing that bohemian culture from outside
and then inside, but their four specific identities came slowly.

And to your question about history being a constraint -- I started
out with an idea of Richard that was close to Otto Gross, the
real-life ringleader at Ascona. Gross was a fascinating, brilliant
renegade, but ultimately too amoral and destructive a person to act
the way I wanted Richard to. So in that case it was a matter of
forcibly peeling away from the real-life stuff in order to get what
the story needed.

Rose, the Lanz family, and the others are wholly fictional, so I had
the advantage of writing them from the ground up. 

And then it was the usual trial-and-error seance in pursuit of a
workable story. Along the way (often on waking up in the morning, or
on a walk), critical pieces would tumble into place. Like (avoiding
a spoiler here) "Oh -- X and Y sleep together! Of course. That's the
justice the story needs here."
  

    
You mention trial-and-error - does the evolution of characters
require a lot of revising? For example, you're halfway through the
book and realize that a particular character has taken actions or
positions earlier in the book that are inconsistent with the evolved
vision?
  

    
Oh gosh -- so much revision, and so many pages, scenes, and
characters that got discarded. 

A small example is Frederick. I wrote him as a jerk, but there was a
point where I realized it wasn't that simple, that he's a jerk who's
a talented artist. That changes Gerhard's understanding of him,
which is good for Gerhard's character too. I feel like a lot of what
happens in this story is people (especially the four Lanzes) having
their expectations challenged and changing their minds, on the way
to what they're like at the end. 

And for all the characters, there's a gradual process, draft by
draft, of getting closer to their true reactions to things. A little
closer to their hearts each time. 

Naturally I wish I worked this process worked faster, but it works
at the speed it works at. 
  

    
This was a really fun book. I was fascinated by the idea that there
were hippies 50 years before there were hippies. 

Given our time, I also couldn't but notice how the fate of the
colony is a reflection of the anti-German hysteria that followed the
declaration of war against Germany in 1917. To what degree were you
reflecting the time, vs simply looking at the various anti-Muslim
and anti-hispanic fears of today?
  

    
This is great. I suppose you're aware of Oakland's own German heritage like
the Altenheim residential complex and the Naturfreunde park in the hills.
German-speaking people helped make this town.
  

    
Andrew, about German roots in Oakland -- absolutely. I pass the
Altenheim pretty often and always stop to take it in.

Ari, I was always up for parallels between that time and ours, and I
think it's natural for the anti-German sentiment to echo ICE and
Islamophobia. That said, the details in the novel are all drawn from
history. A book called "Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World
War I" by Frederick Luebke was especially helpful. So stuff like the
Boy Scouts having gatherings where they broke Beethoven records, or
the enemy registration Benji signs, or the restrictions on German
assemblies and movements -- all real. 
  

    
Thanks, Charlie. I do remember being astounded when I read about it
how much virulent anti-German sentiment there was. I guess up until
that point, I assumed that white Europeans mostly got a pass after
the initial anti-Irish or anti-Italian fervor had passed. But,
especially in the case of German Americans as the US entered WWI,
that was untrue - the German language press pretty much disappeared,
for instance, and many people changed their names.
  

    
Another question - the kids in the main family, for the most part,
did well. I think that _is_ the American immigrant story for the
most part - parents get by and the kids succeed. But, I'm also aware
that the story is not as true as the stories imply. Within the
Jewish community, for instance, we always tell our story as though
all the kids became doctors or lawyers, but, in fact, many didn't.

Was this something you thought much about, or were you more
attracted to the idea of using the kids stories to highlight big
changes in the country? (Apologies if I am inserting spoilers)
  

    
Ari, thanks for another good question. I have to say, I wasn't
really looking to use Lilli and Benji's progress as representative
of cultural change or anything like that. I wanted their paths to
reflect their own identities, along with how they resolved being
Anna and Gerhard's kids and their Sunland experience. 

So here we get into the stuff fiction writers are always saying
about the characters having minds of their own and doing things that
surprise the writer. That sounds hokey but I think it's true, if you
interpret it to mean that the writer's decisions frequently find
their way up from the unconscious. 

It's always seemed funny to me that Gerhard sees Lilli's career
choice as an explicit rebuke to his beliefs, while Lilli
unconsciously echoes Richard in her sales pitch at Rosewood Glen.
Very little about the characters is as clear-cut as they themselves
think it is. It seems lifelike to me when people surprise themselves
(see also Rose's decision about her life after Sunland).    
  

    
I don't want to interrupt this excellent line of questioning, so I;ll just
say I LOVED this book and I'm glad you're here, Charlie!

I also love the fact that the title invokes the '60s iteration of this
movement and you did nothing to belabor it.
  

    
Unfortunately, I haven't read the book, although the comments here
are leading me to buy it.

You might have answered this in the book, but I'm wondering about
the term "nature men."  My first thought was are they naturists, as
in nudists?  And if not, why were they called "nature men"?
  

    
Hi Charlie. I loved the book because it showed me how it would have
been to have lived a life completely different from anything I've
experienced, and that's what I look for in my reading. This is, in a
way, what all fiction is; yours was particularly successful in never
telling or preaching, but in immersing me in these characters'
particular interesting lives. 

I have a different question: I'm curious about the state of
publishing in this upside-down-world time. I write a bit, and once
tried to get one of my books published by one of the big houses -
and failed, crushingly, so I self-published. You're with a press
called Beck & Branch, and I wonder how that's going. 
  

    
For a little more about Charlie and the photo that inspired him:

<https://splashpad.org/charlie-haas-a-novelist-in-the-neighborhood/>
  

    
David, thanks so much, and congratulations on "Aging Gratefully"! My
copy arrived today. Beautiful work!

Linda, thanks for the "nature men" question. The people in that
movement sometimes went clothing-optional while dancing or farming
or whatever, but that wasn't the main meaning. It was a "back to
nature" movement at a time of massive urbanization and
industrialization. In particular, the people in that circle were in
retreat from the internet of their time: telephones, telegraph,
cinema. In the book, the Sunlanders won't use electric or steam
machinery on their farm, though the water-driven sawmill is
considered okay.

Renshin, thanks so much for the kind words and the publishing
question. 

Without question, publishing keeps getting harder, and I think that
fact has to be read alongside the recent studies showing that
student reading scores are going down along with the percentage of
Americans who read books for fun. 

I had a novel ("The Enthusiast") published by HarperCollins, which
was a good experience, though it certainly wasn't a source of fame
and riches. Beck and Branch, which published "The Current Fantasy,"
is a writers' co-op whose members are invited in and have published
at least one book with a commercial publisher. 

They're a great, supportive group of people. Co-founder Raul Ramos y
Sanchez designed the cover of my book (using Elmer Wachtel's
painting from the story's period), which I love and I think has been
a great ambassador for the book. Rebecca Coffey, the other
co-founder and guiding spirit, is the author of the novel
"Hysterical," which I'm constantly urging on people -- a great book.
The "lost memoirs" of Anna Freud.

I kind of figured early on that "The Current Fantasy" would be
published someplace small if at all, and I surveyed the scene by
ordering a lot of books from presses in Poets and Writers' list of
small outfits. Boy, there's some good work being published by small
presses! Coffee House Press, Two Dollar Radio (motto: "We make more
noise than a two dollar radio"), Outpost 19, Dzanc, and the many
university presses... Literature may be becoming a niche, but it's
an amazingly fertile and resilient one. 

My feeling, after my experience with these two books, is that
there's not going to be significant money, so one is in it for the
writing process and the bright moments (to borrow a phrase from
Rahsaan Roland Kirk) that come with bringing it out, whether one
publishes it oneself or with a big house or someplace in between.

About the writing process, Thomas Mann supposedly said that a writer
is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people.
I'd add that a writer is someone who's stuck with writing as the way
to process her or his experiences, emotions, and opinions. And it's
a transformative process.

About the bright moments, I've had just as many with the small co-op
press as with the big place. Hearing from people for whom the book
resonated. Giving a reading at Bird and Beckett in SF before the
jazz guys went on. Leading workshops at a writers' conference. This
Q & A.
  

    
That is fascinating, thank you for it. I'm so glad you found an
outlet.
  

    
Charlie, welcome (back) to the Well. My interest in your book (and
its fabulous title, evoking so much) has to do with the universality
of "striking out" making what one wants of life and community. And,
also, the German-ness of it. I moved in 2018 and currently live in
Munich, having travelled here every year for 20 years beforehand.
One of the striking stories I seemed to hear, incredibly often, were
the number of people my age, a child of the sixties, and the numbers
who followed one guru after another, particularly Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh with several having gone to Oregon for some time. Of these
friends and acquaintances was a descendant of one of the families
that went to Haifa, Israel, to found a community there, the German
Colony in an area of Haifa in 1868 during Ottoman rule as a
Christian German Templer Colony in Palestine. 

Anyway. Goodness. THE CURRENT FANTASY. smile. I really just wonder
if one hears as many stories like this particular one (and common
one, seemingly) for the Germans as with the Italians or French, for
example. And, if not, why the Germans?
  

    
What Tom asked! And an obvious follow-on: how common were these
communes in Germany and elsewhere in Europe? Would a group electing
to migrate to the States have been common among them, or unusual?
  

    
I also really appreciate the portrait of southern California in the early
20th century. I was born in LA and we traveled around the region a lot in the
'50s and early '60s. I enjoyed your descriptions of these places in those
times.
  

    
One solution to making money on books: thanks to the pandemic, I started an
online store. The royalties pile up a few pennies at a time, but the retail
margin is good.
  

    
Tom, thank you for the remarkable facts about the Haifa colony and
serial guru followers. Holy cow. This is as fascinating as anything
in Martin Burgess Green's books... which brings us to your question,
"why the Germans?"

Green wrote a whole stack of histories of countercultural movements
-- "Children of the Sun," "Mountain of Truth," "Prophets of a New
Age," and biographies of Otto Gross (the renegade psychoanalyst at
the center of the naturmenschen community) and the von Richtofen
sisters. Some of his books trace the history of counterculture way
back before the German naturmenschen. The cyclical and pan-European
nature of that yearning is fascinating to read about.

Gordon Kennedy's book "Children of the Sun: A Pictorial Anthology,
from Germany to California 1883-1949" is full of pertinent photos
and facts. 

For my purposes, Green's "Mountain of Truth" was the sweet spot --
the true story of a movement that foreshadowed the 60s and
influenced American culture, particularly in California. The people
in that book populated the arty districts of Munich and Berlin, and
sometimes lived with Otto Gross and Gusto Graser at Lake Ascona in
Switzerland. That's why Germany was a starting point for my story.
But Green's other books show that Germany had no monopoly on the
impulse to take to the woods and start fresh.

People who spent time at Ascona included Hermann Hesse (no surprise
there), Franz Kafka, Isadora Duncan, D.H. Lawrence and his wife
Frieda von Richtofen Lawrence, and a lot of German Expressionist
artists, writers, dancers, and theater people. The movement's
influence spread widely, and people like Bill Pester carried it to
California. 

Ari, I don't know how common the communes were apart from Ascona. My
reading did give me a sense of how rich the artistic scenes in
Munich and Berlin were at that time. Frank Wedekind's theatricals,
wild cafe life, people like Grosz and Kirchner painting up a storm
-- it was as vital a bohemia as you can read about. (And Otto Gross
really did psychoanalyze people at their cafe tables as
entertainment, as Richard is said to have done in my book.)

About a group coming to the U.S. en masse, that's my fictional
invention -- I wanted the Lanzes to have a sort of ready-made group
to join up with. My impression is that in reality it was more a
matter of people like Bill Pester or Gypsy Boots's parents finding
their way to California on their own... and then American-born
people like eden ahbez coming out and meeting these guys in the
canyons. Gordon Kennedy's book has great photos of Pester, Boots and
ahbez living out there in loincloths, eating fruit off the trees,
lifting rocks for exercise... like Manfred and Rolf in my book. Talk
about paleo!