From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- New Jack City Blues, Circa 1950s

New York City, 1950s New Jack City for the jack-worthy, not big enough for million worded jacks (or jills), not in the end, but for a while you could hear that old caged bird sing, sing some Billie Holliday swing low, swing misty, swing along nod sway song, maybe a little boy-juiced, but swaying, some Dizzy dizzy salt peanuts tune, maybe a little tea-time dizzy, some high white note stuff every once in a while just to keep things interesting, some, well just name your cool as a cucumber jazzman Lester blowing that big sexy sax at the end, Gerry, Dave Brubeck, Charlie Gabriel trumpet blowing early, some more experimental guys, Monk, mad monk riff piano riffing monk , on top of the heap, sweaty in a hundred cool as a cucumber midnight cafes, The Swan, The Gaslight, Benny’s, The Hi Hat, and the beloved Red Fez (red to make you sunset dream, sunset tea dream, fez to make you think Africa calling, calling home her children), drawing, drawing can you believe this, the Mayfair swells like in old Duke Cotton Club high Harlem night Scott Fitzgerald bathtub gin jazz age time.

Maybe Time Square, flamed never-ending lights of hell-lit up, neon- lit, gas-lit, 24/7/365-lit, lit to the gills, lit against the jack-rolling crime night back alley big city simplicity itself just some chain, or an off-hand pipe, behind the knees, crumple easy to the ground, grab the dough, up and out to some whore blow, dope blow, whisky blow in the flamed, never ending lights of hell-lit up, lit against the gang night, Central Park mainly and some off streets down in Little Italy and up in high Harlem, 125^thStreet anyway, lit against the rough trade Genet night sailor boys fresh from the wharves, Hudson wharves, East River wharves, flush with pay-off cash, looking for chain-whip kicks, some diva delight, some fresh leather boy too, lit against the sad sin sexless sex night, some anonymous Lansing, Muncie, Omaha corn-fed young thing, shapely, good legs, working hips, tired of light-less farms and farm fields headed to the big city, headed up 42^nd street instead of Broadway or the Village and wound up with big faded dreams calling out “hey mister, want a good time,” or maybe stoned to the gills just nods, stoop nods, symbolically showing a good time just by her uniform, that split pea dress, those long nylon stockings, and that kewpie doll smile, all yours for the price of a needle, a room, and some pimp’s damn cut or, hell, when the spiral goes down some quickie back alley head and a quick napkin spit wipe, jesus, watch out for the jack-rollers though, thinking to herself if farm boy love Roy could see me now, later turned over to some Jersey whorehouse and work by the bell. Go home sister go home, now. New Jack was just too big for you.

Wall Street, pass, this is not about coupon-clipping, okay. Madison Avenue, pass, this is not about subliminal desires and tricks. Park Avenue, pass, well, maybe half-pass, for those looking for jack night thrills to fill up, fill up like some gas tank, their beat souls, or maybe some Genet boys rough stuff. Columbia, the university, of course, ivy-covered, respectable for a minute (before the 1960s heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), a minute when some buzz came in breezing in through the portals. And Jack and Allen and kindred teased the city dry, and created some flash beat to be listened to elsewhere.

The Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), the clubs and nooks already mentioned, jazz, folk rearing its head, more jazz, some poetry on an off night, the beat poets reading their beat poems to a famished world (or slender slice of it), the streets of dreams not mentioned, Bleecker, McDougall on up to Canal, the safe harbor, hell, sanctuary for those blown away by the cold war red scare night, not just reds, and pinks, and maybe white pinks, but all mother nature’s odd and damaged, the beat poem listen hangers for sure, the morphine kickers looking for sure connections and some walking daddy to be-bop with when the crash came, the rough trade boys, reading Genet in some back room in translation, tired of hell angels beating up on them without style, plainsong fags tired of dating someone’s sister as a favor and ready to face the cops’ bull if only to have a few nights of boy love without being run out of a Podunk town on a rail, same, same for those weary of those boston marriages and tired of wearing men’s clothing in private Beacon Street Boston rooms, art guys by the biz-illion, Jackson this, Larry that, Motherwell this and that, enough art to paint the world, all abstract and symbolic, all death to sweet Madonna slash dabbed in the night.

Movie houses, movie theaters, all sweet black and white stark, all New Jack city eight million stories stark, and, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking of urine or Thunderbird wines, of drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggers and minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car -beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42^nd Street hurts.

And Howard Johnson’s frankfurts, mustard, relish, onions, go ahead the works, eaten by the half dozen to curb hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, not sex but fame, fresh off the Port Authority bus, of Joe and Nemo’s two o’clock fatty griddle hamburgers, the works again, please, of fags (bothering guys in public toilets, jesus), and fairies, all dressed up and rouged ready for some gentleman caller, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell, and can write too, write one million words on order, and perform, on cue, stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro crosstown, not to speak of Soho or the Bronx . And of junkies of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules face down in some dusty Sonora town failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand forgotten murders. Jesus suffering humanity. New Jack City.

When Beat Was Neat-A Film Clip From The 1950s B-Film Classic “High School Confidential”

I ain’t saying that this B-film (although A on the rock and roll intro with Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano in back of a flat-bed truck flailing, yes, flailing away on his classic rock and roll song teen angst, teen alienation song High School Confidential  heralding the hint, just the hint, of a possibility that we of the generation of ’68 might be getting ready for that big jail break we were sitting under some atomic bomb air raid desk looking for guidance on) “beat” poetess will make you throw away your personally autographed first edition City Lights copy of mad monk om man Allen Ginsberg’s Howl  or even some torn-up paperback copy of Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues or even some shotgun version of street gunsel mad poet Gregory’s Corso’s machine gun sonnets but she was a sister, a sister in the struggle to break out of the square, the big box that they had waiting for us as portrayed by Hollywood. Be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.        

I ain’t saying that everything the sister had to say had its head on straight or that if we, we meaning those fledgling ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teen age night club,  a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,  sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,  against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, that we would have understood half, hell, a quarter of what she said but like some mad dash shaman, oops, shaman-ess, it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…Be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop. 

And I definitely ain’t saying that even if  all she said did have its head on straight that we, we meaning those fledgling ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teen age night club,  a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,  sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,  against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, would have dug exactly what she had to say any more than when our time did come that we more than echo listened to om-antic mad monk Allen Ginsberg howl against that evil night, or Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac sit in some hell-hole mere florida trailer park sweating whiskey and hubris against his children, or Gregory Corso playing the lone ranger against the death night, but it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…Be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.   

 

***Writer’s Corner- “The King Of The Beats”-Jack Kerouac- On The Road To “On The Road”-“Maggie Cassidy”

Click on title to link to a site that gives a thumbnail sketch of the biography of the be-bop writer Jack Kerouac

Markin comment:

Every year, in October, in Jack Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts a Jack Kerouac Festival is presented to keep his be-bop working class fellaheen memory alive. The link is http://www.lowellcelebrateskerouac.org/lck-2010
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Book Review

Maggie Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, Penguin Books, New York, 1993

As I have explained in another entry in this space in reviewing the DVD,The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg, recently I have been in a “beat” generation literary frame of mind. I mentioned there, as well, and I think it helps to set the mood for commenting on one of Jack Kerouac’s lesser works under review here, Maggie Cassidy, where the action takes place in his hometown, that this fade back to be-bop-ness all started last summer when I happened to be in Lowell, Massachusetts on some personal business. Although I have more than a few old-time connections with that now worn out mill town I had not been there for some time. While walking in the downtown area I found myself crossing a small park adjacent to the site of a well-known mill museum and restored textile factory space. Needless to say, at least for any reader with a sense of literary history, at that park I found some very interesting granitic memorial stones inscribed with excerpts from a number of Jack Kerouac's better known works dedicated to Lowell’s ‘bad boy’, the “king of the 1950s beat writers”.

And, just as naturally, when one thinks of Kerouac then, On The Road, his classic modern physical and literary "search" for the meaning of America for his generation, the generation which came of age in the post-World War II period, readily comes to mind. No so well known is the fact that that famous youthful Kerouac novel was merely part of a much grander project, an essentially autobiographical exposition in many volumes, starting from his birth in 1922, to chart and vividly describe his relationship to the events, great and small, of his times.

Maggie Cassidy focuses on the trials and tribulations of growing up absurd in the 1930s, the inevitable schoolboy quests and missteps of sorting out what love is, teen love, Jack's desire to excel at sports which has driven young men for ages, and, off-handedly, the “meaning of the universe” of his high school days in Lowell and a little about his prep school days down in New York City in the late 1930s in the series that bears the general title The Legend Of Duluoz. So that is why we today, in the year of the forty-second anniversary of Kerouac’s death, are under the sign, no the spell, of Maggie Cassidy.

I have mentioned in a note to a review of On The Road after a recent re-reading of that master work that Kerouac's worldview, not unexpectedly for a novelist of the immediate post- World War II generation, was dominated by what today would be regarded as deeply, if not consciously, sexist impulses. Moreover, the whole “beat” experience of which he was “king” was, with a few exceptions, a man’s trip, hetero and/or homosexual. All of the books that I have read of his have that flavor. They may be, some of them, great literature but they are certainly men’s books.

Also, not unexpectedly, for a shy, sly, French-Canadian (with a little Native-American thrown in) working-class athletic youth from Lowell, Kerouac’s escapades center in this book on his high school male-bonding experiences with his “corner” boys. And being, from all reports and a quick glance at his youthful photographs, a handsome-looking man his exploits with young women. And here enters the sultry Maggie Cassidy, to the lace curtain born, the Irish colleen dream of every heterosexual young man. Although the dramatic tension of this book is not exactly gripping, after all despite some very grand, descriptive narration about Lowell, about the neighborhood, about the beauties of the Merrimack River, and above all, about young women, the episodes here clearly fall under the category of high school hi-jinks which have already had a long and honored literary exposition. Still, this is a nice little trip down memory lane and I can visualize some of the same streets around the "Acre and Pawtucketville, and some of those frosty mill-driven buildings that he refers in this book from those long ago connections that I mentioned above.

Note to Jack Kerouac wherever you are: Damn, you should have ‘talked’ to me about Maggie before you got involved with that vixen. I grew up in a part of a town in Massachusetts that while not “Little Dublin” was close enough to bear that title here in America. I knew a million Maggies (and Moe Coles too) and I could have warned you that chandelier, lace curtain, or shanty these nice Irish Catholic girls will break your heart, or something else, every time. Now that I think about it though I never listened to any well-intentioned advise on the subject either. Farewell grand working-class fellaheen.