Paperback 6" x 9" 251pp ISBN 978-1-326-16964-0
published April 2015
This sixth selection of essays and reviews looks at a
whole list of writers, poets, political activists and others who can be
claimed to be rebels in their various ways. The strange communist Joseph
Pogany or John Pepper, as he was known in America, is here, as is B. Traven,
author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in his earlier role as
Ret Marut, a German revolutionary. There are essays about communism in
Hollywood and about Henry Miller and the writing of The Tropic of Cancer.
Beat novelists, bohemians in Paris and elsewhere, jazz musicians like Lester
Young and Charlie Parker, surrealism in Prague, and the underground in
Amsterdam, all take their place in this wide-ranging survey.
Comments on previous collections:
“This collection of reviews and essays is an
entertaining homage to bohemia by one of its own. Jim Burns – a veteran
fringe poet recently celebrated in these pages as ‘an offbeat prowler’ –
takes a ‘personal’ look at various post-Second World War writers, artists,
musicians and patrons whose talents and innovations have been obscured by
the glare of their more famous contemporaries.”
Times Literary Supplement
“The vast majority of these essays are as fresh and
original today as they were when first written a few decades ago and many
are a sheer joy to read. Partly this is due to Jim Burns’s encyclopaedic
knowledge, though equally enjoyable is the clear, thoughtful style and
boundless enthusiasm for the subjects he brings to the book.”
Morning Star
“What Jim Burns seems to do very well is dust off the
years from forgotten figures, the neglected, the overlooked, even those who
never truly reached any level of recognition. Burns sees in many of them
qualities that have been missed.”
Beat Scene
“Jim Burns’ fourth collections, Bohemians, Beats and
Blues People, illuminates neglected twentieth century bohemians through
wide-ranging highly informative and entertaining essays.”
Tears
in the Fence
Jim Burns’s earlier collections of essays were
Beats, Bohemians and Intellectuals (Trent Books, 2000); Radicals,
Beats and Beboppers (Penniless Press, 2011); Brits, Beats & Outsiders
(Penniless Press, 2012); Bohemians, Beats and Blues People
(Penniless Press, 2013); Artists, Beats & Cool Cats (Penniless Press,
2014). His poetry collections were Laying Something Down (Shoestring
Press, 2007) and Streetsinger (Shoestring Press, 2010).
CONTENTS
WHO WERE THE WOBBLIES?
THE ROAD TO SPAIN
TRAVEN BEFORE MEXICO
HENRY MILLER
A COMMUNIST ODYSSEY
SURREALIST PRAGUE
THE GARDEN OF EROS
INTERNATIONAL BOHEMIA
GROVE PRESS
PARIS-AMSTERDAM UNDERGROUND
MAKING MODERNISM SOVIET
J. EDGAR HOOVER AT THE MOVIES
JOHN CLELLON HOLMES
SEYMOUR KRIM
THE BLOWTOP
R.V. CASSILL
FRED McDARRAH
GEORGE MANDEL
ALAN HARRINGTON
WILLIAM BURROUGHS
JABBERWOCK/SIDEWALK
DAVID GASCOYNE
POETRY IN LOS ANGELES
EDWARD DORN/LEROI JONES
KENNETH REXROTH
DAVID TIPTON
WHAT WILL YOU READ TOMORROW/
JAZZ ON THE ROAD
YES, BUT IS IT ART?
EDDIE FINCKEL
GEORGE HANDY
LESTER YOUNG
MODERN JAZZ IN MANCHESTER
CHARLIE PARKER
THE FIVE SENSES
THE NIGHT OF THE POET
McCARTHY
INTERVIEW
