from Jim's Introduction
This book can be seen as a companion volume to a previous
collection of essays, Beats, Bohemians and Intellectuals, published by
Trent Books in 2000. It covers some of the same ground in that it looks
primarily at American writers active from around 1930 to 1960 and a little
beyond. Many of them had radical connections of one kind or another. Some people
may wonder why I choose to focus mainly on less well-known writers, and the
reason is simple - they are rarely written about and it seems relevant to
establish a record of their existence. A couple of the essays deal with very
minor figures who got into print during the heyday of the Beat movement, roughly
1957 to 1962, and while they may not appear important enough to warrant such
attention they sometimes had something to say and they could be lively and
entertaining.
The same can be said about two little-known jazzmen I've
included. There is also a piece about Charlie Parker, but
so many other critics have written articles and books about him that I've always
thought it more interesting to draw attention to rank-and-file musicians who,
like the writers referred to above, are often neglected. My spirits sink these
days when I open a jazz magazine and see yet another article about Miles Davis or John Coltrane or someone similar to them.
I gather that the article I wrote about Anatole Broyard some years ago is quite popular, though I've been asked why it doesn't refer to
his “passing for white,” which I suspect intrigues certain readers. It doesn't,
it's true, and the reason is that I wanted to survey his literary work. I do
mention the racial element in his life in another essay, “Behind the Scenes,”
which discusses Chandler Brossard's Who Walk in Darkness, with its fictional portrait of Broyard. I also refer to the fact that a few of
his fellow-writers accused him of what R.V. Cassill described as
“competent malice” when he reviewed books by his more-successful contemporaries.
My original essay played down that side of his work because I thought there was
sufficient evidence to show that, at his best, he was a decent reviewer.
One essay, “Bird Lives!” is a personal memoir of my early and
continuing love of jazz, and particularly the aspect of it known as bebop. My
justification for it being here can be summed up by quoting the words of the
American writer, Gilbert Sorrentino: “Bop, for me, was the entrance into the
general world of culture, although at the time, I wouldn't have believed it.”
Paperback 6" x 9" 237pp ISBN 978-1-4476-3072-2
published May 2011
From
Times Literary
Supplement No 5652
July 29 2011 NB back page
Among the more agreeable
features of the literary world is the proximity of the ivory tower to the
dusty side street. The critical sage, whether he likes it or not, is
neighbour to the offbeat prowler. Jim Burns is such a one. For half a
century, he has inhabited the zone of small press and little magazine,
tracking rebel writers and syncopated songsters. The title of a collection
of essays, Beats, Bohemians and Intellectuals (2001), sums him up.
Now Mr Burns, who lives in the unlikely setting of Cheadle, Cheshire, has
issued Radicals, Beats and Beboppers. Its thirty items appeared
originally in publications many readers of this journal will not have heard
of: Beat Scene, Prop 3, Penniless Press. Many of its characters are
likewise tributarial: Maxwell Bodenheim, Walter Lowenfels, Anatole Broyard.
Mr Burns can tell you
what Jack Kerouac was reading in 1941 - the novels of Albert Halper, whoever
he was - how the screenplay of The Sweet Smell of Success by Clifford
Odets differs from the novella by Ernest Lehman, on which it is based; what
sort of music Jackson Pollock listened to while painting. Burns dismisses
the suggestion that Pollock found in the "speed and jarring harmony" of
bebop "an apt analogue to his own work". Sometimes he listened to classical
music.
An essay on Robert
McAlmon, owner of Contact Editions which issued Hemingway's first book,
Three Stories & Ten Poems, begins with the unarguable assertion, "Few
people today read McAlmon's poetry". Mr Burns shows how McAlmon moved from
"poetic language" to "ideas" to a sort of sub-Waste Land verse. By
the time he reaches McAlmon's toilet-paper poem ("Inferior goods make scabs
/ that turn the best people to crabs"), you might think forgetting is the
kindest treatment; but you remain grateful to Mr Burns for having done the
legwork. Radicals, Beats & Boppers is available from Penniless Press
Publications.
CONTENTS
JACK CONROY: WORKER WRITER IN
AMERICA
RADICALS AND MODERNISTS
WHO WAS ALBERT HALPER?
WILLIAM HERRICK AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
BEN MADDOW
REBEL VOICES
JOHN HERRMANN: WRITER AND SPY
LEFT IN LOS ANGELES
WALTER LOWENFELS
WAS KEROUAC A COMMUNIST?
LAWRENCE LIPTON AND THE BEAT GENERATION
CARL SOLOMON
COOL KEROUAC
JACK MICHELINE: POET OF PROTEST
JOHN CLELLON HOLMES
WILLIAM BURROUGHS: HIP NOT BEAT
BEATITUDE
WHAT BECAME OF CLINT NICHOLS?
ANATOLE BROYARD
BEHIND THE SCENES
HOW BRAVE WE LIVE
THE AMERICAN CONNECTION
MAXWELL BODENHEIM
CLIFFORD ODETS: SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM: THE BEBOP MYTH
ROBERT MCALMON'S POETRY
BIRD BREAKS DOWN
HARRY BISS
BUDDY WISE
BIRD LIVES!
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