Under Exmouth skies (Part 53)

 UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 53)

Italian cruise liners and cargo ships taking shelter from the Covid storm off the East Devon coast.

Ghost ships...

9 -11 - Noam Chomsky

 9-11 - NOAM CHOMSKY

Remember 9/11? It's a bit after the fact now but what was all that about then? Actually, it's a bit like in twenty years time us peering out upon the smouldering wreckage of civilization from our candle-lit caves on the Mendips and asking 'Covid-19? What was all that about then?' And just as now with Covid-19 you can seek the opinion of an expert such as a virologist who's spent their whole adult life studying viruses or you can ask some bloke who once watched a video on YouTube. Or you can ask someone like Michael Gove who's told us before that we're all a bit fed up of experts and their opinions so as an elected representative of the general public here's his opinion instead. It's a democratic society, however, and apparently there's still such a thing as free choice so I know where I'd go. But as I can't find the link right now to Michael Gove being interviewed by Piers Morgan on GMTV let's have a read of Noam Chomsky instead, shall we?

I remember watching on the news the live footage of the first fire on the morning of 9/11 and the unconfirmed reports of it having been caused by an aeroplane flying into the tower. The assumption was that it was some mad accident but when the second plane flew into the second tower incomprehension took hold. Was this a series of incredible accidents or was America under attack? Nowadays there has only to be an explosion at a waste recycling plant on the outskirts of Bristol and an announcement is made to say 'the incident is not thought to be terrorist related' because the immediate assumption is that it might be. That's how far we've come since 9/11. An immediate knock-on effect of that day.

I remember going to the Anarchist Bookfair in London that year and a meeting being held, hosted by Chumbawamba's Alice Nutter, to discuss the meaning of 9/11. The conclusion was that 'my enemy's enemy is not my friend', which seems kind of obvious now but at the time it genuinely needed to be thrashed out. All of this was at the time we should not forget of mass worldwide protests against corporate globalization. For the first time in decades the term 'capitalism' and more specifically 'anti-capitalism' was back on the agenda. In London there had been the J18 riot in the heart of The City, followed by Seattle. The G8 were being hounded and everywhere they met there were huge riots. The stakes were ever-rising and in Genoa the first death was recorded with the murder of Carlo Guiliani by the Italian Carabinieri.

On the morning of 9/11 itself, a protest was being held in London Docklands against the DSEI World Arms Trade Fair and on being informed of the attacks upon America and the Twin Towers, the protesters packed-up and went home. The decision to do so was a signifier of what was to follow - a near complete collapse of the burgeoning anti-capitalist/anti-neoliberalism movement.

In the book 9-11 (which is to all intent and purpose another collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky culled from various sources) Chomsky is asked: 'What consequences do you foresee for the Seattle movement? Do you think it will suffer as a result of 9/11, or is it possible that it will gain momentum?' to which Chomsky replies 'It is certainly a setback for the worldwide protests against corporate globalization which - again - did not begin in Seattle. Such terrorist atrocities are a gift to the harshest and most repressive elements on all sides, and are sure to be exploited to accelerate the agenda of militarization, regimentation, reversal of social democratic programs, transfer of wealth to narrow sectors, and undermining democracy in any meaningful form. But that will not happen without resistance, and I doubt that it will succeed, except in the short term.'

Chomsky, however, was wrong. The fall-out from 9/11 dealt a near death blow to the 'Seattle movement' as the interviewer calls it. When protest finally started to pick up again almost ten years later the focus had shifted almost exclusively upon environmental issues and identity politics, seeded by the Occupy Movement leading subsequently to Extinction Rebellion. 

According to Chomsky, one of the most noticeable and startling things regarding 9/11 was the way in which the mainstream media and the intellectual classes in general lined up in support of power and mobilized whole populations for the same cause. Dissenting voices were stifled or even when broadcast were accused of 'siding with the terrorists'. Tony Blair made his famous speech about the kaleidoscope having been shaken whilst in America the presiding chant drowning out everything else was 'USA! USA!'

According to Chomsky, the major explanation for the attacks upon the Twin Towers put forward by the media was that the perpetrators acted out of hatred for the values cherished in the West such as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage. As well as being at variance with everything that was known this also further stacked up the uncritical support for power.

From the mouths of the likes of Osama bin Laden himself, it was indeed a Holy War that was being fought but not against globalization or cultural hegemony but against corrupt, repressive and 'un-Islamist' regions of the Middle East and their supporters.

'Bin Laden himself has probably never even heard of 'globalization,' says Chomsky 'Those who have interviewed him in depth, like Robert Fisk, report that he knows virtually nothing of the world and doesn't care to. We can choose to ignore all the facts and wallow in self-indulgent fantasies if we like, but at considerable risk to ourselves, among others.'

The attacks on 9/11 were unquestionably acts of terrorism but so too terrorism is - according to official definitions and as evidenced by the innumerable examples Chomsky is able to give - official doctrine and not just that of the USA. Terrorism most definitely is not, as is often claimed, 'the weapon of the weak'.

It's interesting when Chomsky is asked 'Should we call what is happening now a war?' to which he replies (and let it not be forgotten that Chomsky is a professor of linguistics): 'There is no precise definition of 'war'. People speak of the 'war on poverty', the 'drug war', etc. What is taking shape is not a conflict among states.' This is very true. There is, however, a perception of the meaning of the word 'war' that cannot be denied, just as there are also very real wars that are never named as such and thus forever denied or even acknowledged.

At one point Chomsky is asked 'Can we talk of the clash between two civilizations?' meaning between the West and Islam to which Chomsky replies 'Of course not, you silly arse'. Or not in so many words but words to that effect: 'This is fashionable talk,' he says 'but it makes little sense' before reeling off a precise explanation as to why, before finishing off with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: 'Western civilization? That might be a good idea?'

Chomsky's main focus of attention these days seems to be upon environmental concerns, declaring that if mankind doesn't do something quickly about global warming then we are heading for destruction.

The world turns.

The sun rises and the sun sets.

Al Qaeda is no longer on the agenda. The ISIS death cult has apparently been smashed with only rogue elements these days making intermittent appearances. Trump has blown hot and cold with his only real legacy (apart from Covid deaths) being entrenched division on both sides of the political spectrum with a lumpen, grey mass in between wanting only a return to 'normal', whatever that means? Where the world goes from here is anyone's guess and is, of course, the eternal question. 

It should be remembered that before 9/11 occurred the global anti-capitalist movement of which this book gives mention was developing into a major force to be reckoned with, growing steadily into a many-headed Hydra that was proving ever more difficult to bring to heel. It took something as massive as 9/11 to knock it off course and though dealt a near-fatal body blow it still didn't altogether slay the dragon. In the scheme of things it's important to apply unforgiving pressure upon the leaders and their representatives of the industrial nations wherever they might meet but so too it's important to be a catalyst for revolution within your own life and within your own sphere of existence. To quote Gandhi again: 'Be the change that you wish to see in the world.'

John Serpico

In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan

 IN WATERMELON SUGAR - RICHARD BRAUTIGAN

Back to Idiosyncrasy Central with Richard Brautigan and his third novel, In Watermelon Sugar, written in 1964 and published four years later in 1968. Firstly, is there any point in even trying to understand what it's about? The answer is 'no' because it's either far too complicated or it's not actually about anything at all. What should be said about it, however, is that it's set in a place called iDEATH which may or may not be some kind of idyllic hippy commune.

The significance of the name iDEATH is that it pre-dates the use of the letter 'i' as a prefix for Apple products such as the iPod, the iMac and the iPhone, etc. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once famously stated that taking LSD was one of the most important things he did in his life. Raised in California, Jobs was very much involved with the counterculture of the early 1970s and without any doubt would have been aware of Richard Brautigan. So might this be the germ of the seed of the idea for the name of your favourite product?

Would smoking a copious amount of hashish whilst reading In Watermelon Sugar make it easier to understand, I wonder? Probably. Smoking hash certainly helps to decipher a lot of other things that don't make sense such as David Bowie song lyrics, for example. And therein lies the clue as to what In Watermelon Sugar is actually about. It's a hashish pipe dream. A reverie. It's a float down the river. It's a daydream where your mind wanders and for a moment you're suspended eight miles high above the earth and you don't even know it.

It's that moment when you step out in front of an approaching car because you're not thinking. It's that moment when you're looking out the train window and suddenly you're at your station without realising it. It's that moment when time has gone and you're suddenly late. It's where - according to Richard Brautigan - the sun is a different colour every day, where tigers can talk, where rivers are two inches wide, and where girls float across summer lawns at midnight.

Does anybody know why at the age of forty-nine Richard Brautigan took a .44 Magnum and blew his brains out? Does In Watermelon Sugar hold any clues? Again, it probably does. Particularly in regard to a character in the book by the name of inBOIL who taunts the inhabitants of iDEATH by accusing them of not knowing what iDEATH is really about.

'You people think you know about iDEATH. You don't know anything about iDEATH.' he says 'Not a damn thing. You're all at a masquerade party.'

The inhabitants take up his challenge. 'Come, then' they say 'Tell us. We're curious about what you've been saying for years about us not knowing about iDEATH, about you knowing all the answers. Let's hear some of those answers.' Whereupon inBOIL and his gang begin lopping off bits of their own bodies with jack-knives so that they literally bleed to death in front of the inhabitants.

Does it make any sense? Probably not. It must have all made sense to at least one person though, even if that was only Richard Brautigan himself. And tragically so.

John Serpico

Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor

 WISE BLOOD - FLANNERY O'CONNOR

My excuse is that I've never really considered it before but I never realised that Flannery O'Connor was a woman. I say 'was' not in the sense of her once being a woman but is now a man but in the sense of her now being dead, having passed away in 1964 from Lupus at the age of thirty-nine. Too young. 

Have you seen the film Wise Blood, made in 1979, directed by John Huston, and if so did you think it any good? It starred Brad Dourif in the main role, who also played the stuttering patient Billy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; the guy who Jack Nicholson said should be 'out in a Convertible, bird-dogging chicks and banging beaver'. Right? Right. It's a strange, idiosyncratic film, the kind that could only have been made in the Seventies when Hollywood was a lot more experimental than it is these days.

Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor - the book on which the film is based - was written in 1949 and first published in 1952. Have you seen a picture of Flannery O'Connor? Have you seen what she looked like? You should never, of course, judge a person by their appearance (nor a book by its cover) but to look at Flannery O'Connor you might never imagine such a book as Wise Blood could have been written by her, particularly knowing she was born into a Roman Catholic family in Georgia, USA, in what would have been a very ultra-conservative era. But so it goes. 

The story centres upon a character by the name of Haze Motes who on returning home from active service in the Second World War, sets himself up as a preacher in the evangelical Deep South of America. His is no ordinary religious doctrine, however, but instead is his own personal religion given the name Church Without Christ. Under his new religion there is no such thing as sin or judgement, the blind don't see, the lame don't walk and what is dead stays that way. In particular there is no such thing as Redemption because there is no Fall because there is nothing to fall from. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar.

Interestingly, the term 'wise blood' is never really explained and when it is mentioned it's in regard to a young zookeeper who tries to befriend Motes only to be met by rejection. 'You act like you think you got wiser blood than anybody else,' the zookeeper says to Motes 'but you ain't! I'm the one has it. Not you. Me.' This accusation highlights the question of authenticity of religious conviction and suddenly throws into doubt who the main character in the book should be - the street preacher Motes, or the lonely zookeeper? As the story unfolds their lives entwine though in the end their fates head off in completely opposite directions with the zookeeper's (involving dressing in a gorilla costume and scaring people in the woods) probably a lot better than Motes'.

Flannery O'Connor's story is embedded in a comically macabre world of religious fundamentalism, ignorance, sex, violence, and twisted, near-gothic dialogue. You can see where Nick Cave would have got some of his influences from. On an even more sub-cultural level, it's the kind of book that Nick Blinko (of Rudimentary Peni) should have written rather than his Primal Screamer novel.

The Motes character would nowadays probably be diagnosed as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder though of course back then the term wouldn't have existed. And curiously, even though the Motes character preaches a kind of anti-religion the book is in no way anti-religious or a case for atheism. Instead it raises the question as to whether once the idea of Jesus is introduced to a person (or in regards to Motes, as a child born into a deeply religious family) can that person ever be free of Jesus? Even when Jesus is viewed as 'a wild ragged figure moving from tree to tree in the back of your mind, motioning you to go off into the dark where you're not sure of your footing, where you might be walking on water and not know it but then suddenly know it and drown'? And if you were ever able to free yourself of Jesus then what might you gain from it? If anything, what might you lose? Of what benefit would it be? Where would it leave you? Adopting the guise of the very animals you guard in their cages as in the case of the zookeeper heading off into the woods in a gorilla costume? Or blind from self-inflicted lime to the eyes and dead in a ditch as in the case of Motes?

Wise Blood - as it says in the blurb on the cover - is a work of very strange beauty and totally original.

John Serpico

Get Carter - Ted Lewis

 GET CARTER - TED LEWIS

It's a classic film but is it a classic book? First published in 1970 as Jack's Return Home but then republished in 1992 as Get Carter, it's the book on which the film is based and what is apparent from the start is that it's impossible to read it without envisioning Michael Caine as the main character. The dialogue spoken can only be imagined as being spoken in Caine's unique manner and tone of voice. Caine owns the role. He made it his own. 

Though it's a fast-paced and easy read, written in a very clipped and to the point style, you still need to pay attention to it as it's always one step (or one chapter, even) ahead of itself. For example, in one chapter the Michael Caine character (Jack Carter) talks to someone on the phone (though it's unclear who it is) and asks 'Is Doreen at the house?' It's only until the next chapter that we find out that Doreen is the daughter of his dead brother and the house is where his body is laying in state before being buried the next day. It makes sense in the end.

What is also apparent is an underlying sense of violence, made manifest by the Jack Carter character who exudes a supreme confidence and sense of purpose. Up from London and back in his hometown of Scunthorpe in the north of England for his brother's funeral, he's armed not only with a shotgun but a calm demeanour, a steady eye and the obvious ability to wield extreme violence if necessary. It's almost like a game of poker being played out between northern small town mafia and London gangland mafia. Jack Carter's a good poker player and the Scunthorpe gangsters are no amateurs either, so it all makes for a good game where the stakes are constantly being raised.

The plot is actually very simple. Jack Carter's brother has been found dead in a crashed car at the bottom of an old quarry, having apparently been drinking whisky beforehand. Jack has returned home from London for the funeral but he also wants some answers because he knows full well that his brother's death was no accident. Which means if it was no accident and wasn't suicide then it could only mean one other thing: He was murdered - and Jack intends to find out by whom and for what reason?

It all makes for a very good book but so it should do seeing as the book is the source material for the very good film. A lot of it has been translated from the book to the film verbatim although there are also some very significant changes, particularly with the ending. One noticeable change is in the scene where Jack gives one of the northern gangsters a slap (Alf Roberts, from Coronation Street, actually) and in the film famously says 'You're a big man but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full-time job. Now behave yourself'. In the book he says 'You're a big bloke - you're in good shape. But I know more than you'. The film's version is obviously better. The book is also missing the other famous quote from the film about eyes like 'pissholes in the snow'. Unlike the film, however, the book unexpectedly contains a very liberal amount of swearing which at the time of being first published must have been quite shocking, especially with the use of the 'C' word as we call it nowadays.

In hindsight, the influence of Get Carter is easy to see, particularly within cinema. There are a large number of films that spring to mind that are obviously in its shadow and classic films at that: The Long Good Friday, The Sweeney television series, Villain, Dead Man's Shoes, and so on. In fact any British gangster film you could care to mention. In hindsight, it's also easy to see where Ted Lewis' book was coming from and that's the British 'kitchen sink' genre that included Kes, Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, A Taste O Honey, etc, etc. All books that realistically depicted northern, working class life. 

So, it's a classic film but is it a classic book? The answer is 'yes', absolutely.

John Serpico

Hammer Of The Gods - Stephen Davis

 HAMMER OF THE GODS - STEPHEN DAVIS

There are some books whose reputation goes before them and arguably one of those could well be Hammer Of The Gods by Stephen Davis, the unauthorised biography of Led Zeppelin. The section it's most infamous for, of course, is The Shark Episode where it describes a groupie being tied down on a bed and sexually assaulted with the nose-part of a still-live shark. Each to one's own, whatever floats your boat, consenting adults and all that but there's something about this particular anecdote that doesn't sit right, confirmed by further tales of backstage excess strewn liberally throughout the whole book.

There's also The Dog Act to contend with, involving a groupie and a Great Dane. Then there's The Dog Act again but with added baked beans. And then there's Cynthia Plaster Caster being gang-banged in a tub of baked beans. Then there's the near-rape of Life magazine reporter Ellen Sander whom the band had at first placed bets on as to who would have her first? Nobody won, so on the last night of her being on tour with Led Zeppelin she was set upon and had her clothes torn off, only to be saved at the last minute by manager Peter Grant intervening and pulling people away from her.

Over time, these tales took on a life of their own to the point at which the shark became a dead octopus and that Ellen Sander was actually raped and murdered. These embellishments had originally started with Jimmy Page's interest in the occult and the rumour that Led Zeppelin had early on in their career made a pact with the Devil. Page's enthusiasm for Alistair Crowley has been well documented so it's not hard to see where such 'pact with the Devil' rumours came from. I suspect, however, Crowley's influence upon Page was far more earthly and more along the lines of influencing his moral compass and retuning his judgement, particularly in regards to Crowley's dictum 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law'.

'Crowley didn't have a very high opinion of women and I don't think he was wrong,' Page is quoted as saying. Which might go some way in explaining Led Zeppelin's quickly acquired taste for abusing groupies. If Page was the leader of Led Zeppelin then Crowley's philosophy sounds like it was being used as a way of justifying some extremely dubious antics and that's without even getting started on Page's taste for 'tumescent girls on the young side'.

I've said it before but when it comes to pop stars and pop bands I don't want them to be whitewashed bland or circus vaudeville - I want them to be out there. I want them to be fat and bloated Elvis Presley style, shooting at the television with a golden pistol whilst overdosing on Quaaludes. I want them locked in permanent childhood Michael Jackson style, riding their own private rollercoaster at midnight and having sex with their pet monkey. I want them in full-blown fucked-up mode a la Sid Vicious, heroin tracks down their arms, on stage with a bloody nose and 'gimme-a-fix' carved into their chest. I want my pop bands to be ideological puritans, strict of vision like Crass. I want them to be council estate loop-the-loop like Tricky, or feral slum city squatters like Disorder. Etc, etc, etc. For all that, is there at some point a line in the sand that is drawn where you say 'Enough'? Well, yes there is. Which brings us to Jimmy Page's 14-year old girlfriend, Lori Maddox.

Peter Grant and everyone else within the Zeppelin entourage knew the relationship was wrong and subsequently tried to keep Maddox hidden. They all knew that if the authorities found out Page was seeing a minor that he'd be deported from America immediately which wouldn't be good for business for a start, so they kept her locked away in hotel rooms where Page would visit her. 'He was the most gentlest lover' Maddox said of Page 'He even met my mom. She knew I was doing it anyway, so she figured if I'm gonna be doing it, then who better with? He had money.' 

To Page's consternation, while Mick Jagger was able to parade his wife around before the world's media, Page had to hide his 14-year old concubine from the law. Though at least Page wasn't beating on women unlike fellow band member John Bonham who at one point in the book is said to have lurched up to a woman in a night club and roared 'What the fuck did you say?' All she had done was to smile at him but for this he punched her in the face, sending her sprawling to the floor. 'Don't ever look at me that way again' Bonham said as he headed back to the bar to continue his drunken binge.

What possible excuse could there be for this kind of behaviour? That Bonham was drunk? No. Oh but he was a brilliant drummer. No. There simply is no excuse. Bonham was a monster. Not 24-hours a day 7-days a week but like a Jekyll and Hyde character he would turn and subsequently become very dangerous - towards women. In comparison, Led Zeppelin's gun-toting manager Peter Grant and their London gangster security chief John Bindon were practically angels.

It's all here in Stephen Davis' book but it does make you wonder who his sources were? I'd wager he's taken a lot of artistic license but I'd also wager that Richard Cole, Led Zeppelin's tour manager is a major source, particularly of some of the more lascivious tales. The whole book in many ways is one long stag do, so does that mean so too was Led Zeppelin's career? Rather than living fast, dying young and leaving behind a good looking corpse, however, Led Zeppelin grew old. So much so, in fact, that by 1976 they were veritable dinosaurs not helped in any way by the advent of punk rock.

Interestingly, Davis first identifies punk rock upon the horizon through the desolate cityscape of slum housing and tower blocks as depicted on the cover of the Led Zeppelin IV album 'where no doubt the future Clash fans were growing up'. Led Zeppelin were suddenly deemed to be boring old farts, 'reviled for their success, their wealth, their outmoded vulgarity, and for pandering to America. Worst of all, they were called junkies, drugged-out millionaires who had no relationship or rapport with the kids they were playing for'. The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, however, and punk soon became a burned-out memory of what it might have been. Bought-up, cleaned-up, souped-up, just another cheap product for the consumer's head.

'You've always been my idol', Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones is quoted as saying to Jimmy Page and from thereon the nails being hammered into Led Zeppelin's coffin were prised loose and their paedophilia and violence against women forgiven. To such an extent, even, that they would years later be invited to play at Live Aid and also be inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. But such is life it seems because after all and by all the evidence - it's only rock'n'roll...

John Serpico

Under Exmouth Skies (Part 53)

 UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 53)

Plain sailing through to dusk...

In A Dark Time - Edited by Nicholas Humphrey and Robert Jay Lifton

 IN A DARK TIME -
EDITED BY NICHOLAS HUMPHREYAND ROBERT JAY LIFTON

So, let's just stop and pause for a moment, shall we? The official number of Covid-19 related deaths in the UK is around 43,000 at the moment though rising all the time. The atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki killed an estimated 45,000 people on impact which means the number of Covid deaths within the UK is the near-equivalent of an atomic bomb being dropped on it, though killing disparately and in slow motion. It took two atomic bombs being dropped (the first, of course, being on Hiroshima) for Japan to throw up its arms (and to lay down its arms) and surrender. This proud nation whose credo could once said to have been 'death before dishonour' knew that it was beat and could not tolerate any more death and destruction from such devastating and fearsome fire power.

When it comes to Covid-19, surrender is not an option though the idea of herd immunity could be construed as a form of it. There is, however, no actual immunity from Covid-19 not even - as the likes of Boris Johnson once presumed - an Eton education, which puts the ruling elite in a bit of a quandary: What to do? Evidently, they have no answer so they flounder and act like headless chickens. Life and destruction (of the economy)? Or death and no destruction (of the economy)?

In A Dark Time is a collection of writings about 'the psychological and imaginative confusion which surrounds popular ideas of war, of valour, of victory over enemies and death', composed by a couple of eminent psychiatrists and psychologists. Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist who has made a close study of human reactions to disaster and loss of identity; and Nicholas Humphrey is an experimental psychologist who has worked on the evolution of intelligence and human social consciousness.

First published in 1984, the book's main focus is the spectre of nuclear war that was all-prevailing back then but if you squint your eyes and focus solely on present times, parts of it can very easily be translated into Covid-19, global pandemic terms. It's a brutal and depressing read but in the same way the songs of Leonard Cohen or Lou Reed's Berlin album can be viewed as 'songs to slit your wrists to', it is also at the same time curiously uplifting. Hope springs eternal, as they say. In the midst of life we are in death and vice versa. 

Interestingly, among all the various quotes from philosophers, military leaders, pundits and poets, some of the most insightful observations come from the two least famous names in the whole book - the actual editors themselves. For example, how many times have we heard people say about Covid-19 'if you're going to catch it you're going to catch it and there's nothing to be done about it'? As though fully resigned to the idea? Nicholas Humphrey writes of the same fatalism but in regard to nuclear war: 'The continuing nuclear weapons cycle in any country depends on the collusion, or at least compliance, of most of the people. But we can now identify a certain psychological combination taking shape: Fear and a sense of threat break through the prior stage of numbing; these uncomfortable feelings in turn raise the personal question of whether one should take some form of action to counter the danger; that question becomes an additional source of conflict, associated as it is with feelings of helplessness and doubts about efficacy; and one seeks a psychological safe haven of resignation ('Well, if it happens, it happens - and it will happen to all of us') and cynicism ('They'll drop it all right and it will be the end of all of us - that's the way people are, and that will be that'). That stance prevents one from feeling too fearful, and, equally important, it protects one from conflict and anxiety about doing something about the situation. If the situation is hopeless, one need do nothing. There is a particularly sophisticated version of resignation-cynicism that one encounters these days mainly at universities, which goes something like this: 'Well, what is so special about man? Other species have come and gone, so perhaps this is our turn to become extinct?' This is perhaps the ultimate above-the-battle position. Again nothing is to be done, one is philosophically detached from it all. All of these add up to a stance of waiting for the bomb and contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy of universal doom.' See? This could easily be about Covid-19.

The paradox here, however, is that amidst the doom and gloom of our current Covid situation there also lies absolute and total opportunity for something that in the past we could only dream: The chance for change. The chance of a new and better world. I mean, what is all this rubbish about wanting a return to normal, to how things used to be pre-Covid? A return to normal is a return to a world heading for a precipice. A world of deep inequality and suffering where above it hangs a suicide wish.  We need to understand that the way the world was and to all intent and purpose still is, is not the only world possible. It is not the high-point and end-point of human existence. In the grand scheme of things it is a mere blip. An aberration, even. A wrong turn.

For sure, a lot of people have done very well from how the world is but at what cost and to whom? Of course those who have had it comfortable wish to return to that same comfort. Why wouldn't they? But what about all the others? Those whose lives are squandered for the benefit of those in comfort? Those who are born into ruins and are held there to enable others to live in veritable mansions in comparison? Is Covid-19 making their lives even harder? Hardly. It's a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. It's a relatively simple exchange of one life of hardship for another. But it's still hardship.

Right now the way the world is has taken a Covid-19 body blow and it is on the ropes. The question then is do we help it back up onto its feet and then resume our seats and let the show go on as it was? Or do we help it back up but on condition it changes its ways? Do we seize the moment and deliver a knock-out blow?  The ruling elite might be floundering and acting like headless chickens but at least they know where they want to go - and that's straight back to their lives of comfort and consequently full steam ahead toward the precipice again. We, however (and by 'we' I mean those who seek a change in the way the world is run), are also floundering but unlike the elite we're not sure where we want to go. But that's also the beauty of it. Our time is now. This is the morning of our lives. As Buenaventura Durruti once declared: "We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth, there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin their own world before they leave the stage of history but we carry a new world in our hearts. And that world is growing this minute."

John Serpico

Still Life With Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER –

TOM ROBBINS

 

I remember having a copy of Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins given to me by a friend  now long gone and on reading it finding it very clever. Published in 1980, there was something about it as though it was a weird hang-over from the 1960s. A kind of last hurrah from West Coast Americana Hippydom. On reading it again years later I find it's lost none of its charm and that it's still an enjoyable and clever romp through a world as seen through rose-tinted, hashish-rinsed glasses.

 

It's funny how memories become distorted. I recalled Robins’ book as being about the hidden and subliminal messages contained within the design of a packet of Camel cigarettes and at the time it making me go out and buy a packet so that I could see for myself. And sure enough, everything it said about a packet of Camels was true. On re-reading the book, I'm again led to checking out the design of a Camels' cigarette packet but this time I use Google images and yes, those same subliminal messages are still there. From the naked woman and the lion drawn into the lines of the camel's body, to the pyramids (as copied from a dollar bill) to the word 'choice' that when held upside down and reflected in a mirror remains exactly the same. The difference being that I now dismiss as bunkum the meaning of the messages as explained by Tom Robbins, though that's not to deny that if you look, they're all still there.

There's a line in the book also that on first reading struck a chord and that has remained with me ever since. That line being 'A bomb is not an answer but a question'. On re-reading it, I see now it actually says 'Dynamite is a question not an answer'. A small difference, I know, but a difference all the same.

 

As it says on the cover, Still Life With Woodpecker is 'a sort of love story' regarding a princess and an outlaw bomber, and that's all you really need to know because what story there is, is essentially a vehicle to weave ideas in and out of. Those ideas, however, seem now to be eclipsed by the humour and a plethora of witty one-liners.

As an example of the kind of humour we're talking about, here's just one where the outlaw bomber is telling the princess about the time he and his fellow jail inmates were lined-up for a rectal probe after three kitchen knives and a seventeen-inch in diameter meat-slicing blade went missing from the jail kitchen: 'Of course, they didn't find the missing cutlery in any of us. But they did find four bars of soap, a Playboy centrefold, three ice cubes, five feathers, Atlantis, the Greek delegate to Boys' Nation, a cake with a file in it, a white Christmas,  a blue Christmas, Pablo Picasso and his brother Elmer, one baloney sandwich with mustard, two Japanese infantrymen who didn't realise that World War II was over, Prince Buster of Cleveland, a glass-bottom boat, Howard Hughes's will, a set of false teeth, Amelia Earhart, the first four measures of 'The Impossible Dream' sung by the Black Mountain College choir, Howard Hughes's will (another version), the widow of the Unknown Soldier, six passenger pigeons, middle class morality, the Great American Novel, and a banana.'

In the way that he goes off on these full-scale rants, the outlaw bomber character is like the Johnny character as played by David Thewlis in Mike Leigh's film Naked but a lot less fatalistic and world weary.

 

Ideas-wise, Tom Robbins lays out his table after the first few pages and writes 'Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. There is, however, only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?' And yes, that is a very valid question to ask.

He also tells us of a word that though little known has apparently dominated human evolution, that word being 'neoteny' which means 'remaining young'. 'Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced,' Robbins writes 'not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature'. It's a good word, even if it might be made up?

 

Still Life With Woodpecker is a sprawling, hashish-fuelled day dream in miniature, dripping with wry humour and wider-eyed innocence. It's the kind of book that could only have been written in the last quarter of the twentieth century after the hippy Sixties dream has somewhat soured. It also includes a bunch of homemade bomb recipes that wouldn't go amiss in The Anarchists Cookbook, that I suspect if highlighted to the FBI, for example, would lead to its immediate banning. It just goes to show that under a cloak of humour you can still get away with an awful lot of things that might otherwise get you a jail sentence.

John Serpico

Mr Love And Justice - Colin MacInnes

MR LOVE AND JUSTICE – COLIN MACINNES

The third of Colin MacInnes' three great London Novels and again as with City Of Spades I'm struck by the thought as to why it's always Absolute Beginners that is touted as being the best of them and why it was made into a film (albeit a very bad one) and not the others?

Mr Love And Justice centres upon two characters, a seaman turned pimp called Frankie Love and Police Constable Edward Justice, newly promoted to Detective Constable in the Vice Squad. Being both in the same line of business as it were, their paths inevitably cross.

As with Absolute Beginners, the plot is neither here nor there and of little consequence, and as also with his previous books it's a bit long-winded and nothing really happens until half way into it. The difference between Mr Love And Justice and MacInnes' two previous books, however, is that whereas Absolute Beginners accent was on the emerging new youth cultures of that time, and City Of Spades dealt with the new immigrant culture in London, Mr Love And Justice is solely about prostitution.

From the start, it's very apparent that MacInnes has done his research into the subject and has obviously spoken to and interviewed prostitutes, pimps and police officers alike. It's all in the detail. Noticeably, there is also a more liberal use of the word 'fuck' than there was in the first two books, both in the narrative and in the dialogue.

The book's strength lies in the way MacInnes has managed to enter the relatively secret and twilight worlds of both prostitution (particularly the pimping or 'poncing' aspect of it) and the police and how he reports back on what he has observed. Essentially, he offers an insight into what drives these two worlds both morally and ethically. From these insights he then slips into the text a fair few of his own thoughts and deductions regarding the police and the law they uphold.

For example, at one point he writes 'For the true copper's dominant characteristic, if the truth be known, is neither those daring nor vicious qualities that are sometimes attributed to him by friend or enemy, but an ingrained conservatism, an almost desperate love of the conventional. It is untidiness, disorder, the unusual, that a copper disapproves of most of all: far more, even, than of crime, which is merely a professional matter.' And isn't that the truth?

'I think we can do without them,' says Frankie Love, referring to the police 'They're the only profession, the coppers, who've never had a hero – ever thought of that? They've put up statues to Nell Gwynne and Lady Godiva, but never so far as I know to a copper.'

And then in a discussion between Frankie Love and Edward Justice there's this: 'If you hear a scream in the night these days you say, “Oh, the law will take care of it”. A hundred years ago or even fifty, our grandfathers would have grabbed hold of the poker and gone out and taken a look themselves. They'd have done something: not just dialled 999.'

'I guess that's the age we live in,' Edward said.

'Yes, but I don't like it. Because you cops – well, you'll switch to any boss: any boss whatever. Whoever's got a grip then you'll obey him however good or bad his acts and his ideas may be.'

And again, isn't that the truth?

At another point in the book, MacInnes describes the audience at a wrestling match: 'Surrounding them was a cross-section of that part of the London populace which is rarely to be seen elsewhere (except at race meetings, certain East and South London pubs, and courts and jails), and whose chief characteristics are their uninhibited violence, their heartless bonhomie, and their total rejection alike of the left-ish Welfare State and the right-ish Property-owning democracy: a sort of Jacobean underground movement in the age of planned respectability from grave to cradle.' This being a very good description of a working class strata that is probably more common than MacInnes suggests, though hardly ever spoken of or written about.

All these things are almost obviously and exclusively the thoughts of MacInnes himself put into the mouths of his characters or slipped into various paragraphs along the way that interestingly reveal an almost anarchist bent to MacInnes. Having now read all three of his London books, though it might grate with some of his fans of his work, I would say that MacInnes himself is actually more interesting as a person and as a writer than the books themselves, and that perhaps it's not the books that should be highlighted, celebrated and held in such high esteem but the actual man himself?

John Serpico

The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN – RAY BRADBURY

It's a disturbing idea in itself that your tattoos might come alive and start moving and crawling about over your skin, talking in tongues and acting out stories. Can you imagine? To an extent, the kind of stories enacted would be dictated by the kind of tattoos you have but even the most incongruous of tattoos can be folded and twisted into something other depending on how feverish your imagination is. Which leads us to The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, whose imagination seems not only to have been feverish but near-tripping into delirium.

In the film of the book, the illustrated man is played by Rod Steiger and it's perfect casting. He's the itinerant worker whose body is covered head-to-toe in tattoos that take on a life of their own when looked at for too long. It's a simple device that Bradbury uses to connect 16 short stories but it works brilliantly. Each story being precise, economical and inspired. Each of them unique and innovative with a dark, adult undertow.

The Void almost predicts the Internet and virtual gaming, and how children will become the masters of it to the detriment of their parents.

Kaleidoscope describes a crew of astronauts falling through space after their rocket ship has been destroyed. Falling away from each other in different directions as tiny meteorites slice through them, cutting off hands and feet like a silent butcher. As one of them plummets towards Earth he knows that when he hits the atmosphere he'll burn like a match and he wonders if anyone will see him? On a country road in Illinois a small boy looks up and screams “Look, Mom, look! A falling star!”. “Make a wish,” says his mother “Make a wish.”

The Long Rain depicts a planet where the rain falls ceaselessly like Japanese water torture, sending the astronauts trudging through the jungle landscape insane.

Usher II is a precursor to Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 but depicting a world where all art has been banned and burnt, not just books.

The Rocket is the wonderful story of a future world where holiday trips in rockets to the stars are for rich people only and how a poor man treats his children to his own specially made trip in his own specially made rocket. It's a joy to read.

No Particular Night Or Morning is about the madness-inducing madness of space.

The Fox And The Forest has similarities with the films The Matrix and Terminator but written years ahead of both. The main characters have fled into the past from a future world of constant war involving the use of 'leprosy bombs'. Can you imagine the sheer terror of such a thing as a leprosy bomb?

The City also concerns itself with war but with a twist. A group of astronauts land on a planet in a far flung galaxy but little do they know that the planet has been waiting for them and is in fact a trap laid by the long gone former inhabitants of that planet for the descendants of the race that destroyed them whom they knew would one day return.

And then, in what is probably the most interesting and most disturbing of the stories there is The Playground that also depicts a world of endless war, terror and violence but this time that world is the world of childhood.

I met this guy once back in the 1980s who had spent years travelling around the world, doing the Hippy Trail thing. He told me of how in India he'd had a knife thrust into his guts and had come face-to-face with death. He was returning to England and was going to write about his experiences and in doing so essentially write about life and its meaning. He believed Science Fiction was the perfect medium for such things as not only can it fire the imagination and entertain but can also if required convey messages of sorts or at least some words of wisdom to make the reader wonder. I'm no Science Fiction aficionado but on reading Ray Bradbury I can see now what he meant.

The blurb on the back cover of The Illustrated Man describes the book as a collection of 'visionary tales' and that, I must say, is exactly what they are and this book is: Visionary.

John Serpico

The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin

THE STEPFORD WIVES – IRA LEVIN

Well, who'd have thought? Certainly not me. Who'd have thought that The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin would come so loaded? Starting with a quote from Simone de Beauvoir then giving mention to the Women's Liberation movement by the second page? Of course, it's possible to read into the story what you wish just as it's possible to read it as a straightforward thriller without any meaning or depth to it at all but then where's the fun in that? I see Ira Levin was also responsible for Rosemary's Baby and The Boys From Brazil so this in itself should have told me The Stepford Wives was going to be a little bit more than a Mills and Boone wielding a knife.

The plot doesn't really matter and in a way, mention of the Women's Liberation movement is merely a trope on which to hang the main theme of the story upon, that main theme being the issue of 'conformity'. It's been done before, of course – Invasion Of The Body Snatchers springs immediately to mind – but post World War Two it was always about the fear of a communist plot where the Great American Hero would be battling to preserve justice, freedom and mom's apple pie against the Red menace. The Stepford Wives is the complete opposite of this where the Liberated Woman fights against the American (male) Dream and its desire and design for the perfect hausfrau.

A woman's place, according to the good men of the town of Stepford is in the home, apparently. A lady in the parlour, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in bed. A strong woman is a weak woman and any hint of creativity is deemed frivolous. Resistance is futile, the allure and satisfaction gained from serving a husband too important to deny.

When Joanna, the main character in the book, begins to suspect there is something very wrong going on in the town in the way that one-by-one all the women succumb to the will of their husband's vision of the perfect wife, she is gaslit and made to think that actually she's the one who is wrong. Interestingly, Levin in the end leaves it open to interpretation as to whether Joanna was right all along or just being hysterical but either way she still ends up being assimilated.

And so, how might The Stepford Wives be translated so as to be of relevance to the modern-day world? Well, let's think about this for a moment, shall we? 2020 and it's the year of the pandemic virus. Populations groan beneath the weight of mass Right-wing propaganda. News is once-removed from reality and presented as a virtual reality where bodies of drowned child refugees are washed upon the shore but fail to register as flesh and blood but simply as an idea. A symbol of something other. Mono culture is all and if you don't buy into it then you're stranded and at best thought of as being weird. The term 'snowflake' is delivered as mockery but actually meant as a smack in the mouth. Money is the measure of life's worth. Privilege is sacrosanct, religion is an opiate and poverty, along with hunger and disease is a given.

Like lemmings humankind has been swarming towards the precipice, rushing head-on to hurl itself over the cliff and into the gaping jaws of global ecological disaster. It's been almost frenzied in its haste, near delirious in the sheer fun of it all. With not a care in the world or for the world literally. Jammed-up together in a mutual fuck fest of self-idolatry, self-satisfaction and self-flagellation and to hell in a handcart for those who can't keep up. This has been our normality. Our consensus. The great, fat, feverish mindset to which we conform to.

But then out of the blue a coronavirus has popped up. A less than microscopic life-form that unlike most other life-forms on earth doesn't fear us but instead rather actually likes us. We don't, however, like it. So much so that we stopped the world for it.

And suddenly there was silence. A suspended, hanging-in-the-air stillness. Nobody moved. Only our eyes darting from one to the other like in a grand, final duel in a cowboy film, waiting to see who would go for their gun first and ultimately who would be quickest on the draw.

“We need to get back to normality!” shout the spoilsports, the sadists and the overt masochists amongst us. But hang on, weren't we heading for a precipice? “Snowflake!” comes the reply. A smack in the mouth. Along with the most massive, unprecedented gaslighting ever.

As I said, though she realises something is very wrong, Joanna in The Stepford Wives is in the end assimilated. She tries to escape but is gaslit into thinking she's the one who is wrong so she hesitates and eventually conforms to the town of Stepford's normalcy. So can Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives be translated so as to be of relevance to the modern-day world? Unfortunately, the answer is 'yes' and very much so.

John Serpico

Sartre - Iris Murdoch

SARTRE – IRIS MURDOCH

Iris Murdoch on Sartre, and is that really so strange? Me being so shallow, however, I just buy it for the interesting cover featuring Mr Happy puffing on his pipe. According to Ray Lowry, NME cartoonist and front-line punk rock war correspondent featured on The Clash's London Calling album sleeve notes, it was actually double-glazing windows salesman supremo Ted Moult who was Britain's leading existentialist thinker though he may have been joking? In France, of course, it was Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sartre by Iris Murdoch is literacy criticism. It's an essay that chews over Sartre's philosophy, politics and body of work as he grapples tooth and nail with the absurd. Should there be a warning sign that comes with this book, I wonder? Like Dante's 'Abandon all hope ye who enter here'? Or like the message planted over sections of ancient world maps declaring 'Here monsters doth dwell'? As it's only words, then no, not really but it certainly helps if you're familiar with Sartre's Nausea and his Roads To Freedom trilogy. Which I guess we all are? Not that words and language don't come with inherent problems as well, though that's a whole other philosophical conundrum.

Murdoch does a kind of bee dance with Sartre and instead of just going for the jugular she teases, prods and pokes at aspects of his work. A lot of these prods and pokes are actually very accurate, eliciting recognition and agreement. Others, however, end up going nowhere. 'Recognition' is indeed a key word that Murdoch uses, as in less the feeling of meeting with something new than that of recognising something for which you've been waiting. This feeling of recognition, Murdoch says, attends for many people the reading of Sartre, herself included.

What is the 'truth' to which Sartre aspires, Murdoch asks? The answer, she tells us, is freedom. Freedom being 'the mobility of the consciousness', meaning we are potentially free so long as we are conscious – even within prison cell walls. To the hardened, revolutionary realist this might be a problem but we're talking philosophy here not political treatises.

When one is caught between the intolerable and the impossible nothing is justified except a state of rebellion, Murdoch deduces, however vain. And that's very true. After all, what else is there? The quandary being, what does it actually mean to be free? What does it entail? Is a yearning for freedom a means to an end or an end unto itself?

Large parts of the Roads To Freedom trilogy are composed of lengthy passages of introspective musing and internal monologues in particular from Mathieu, the main protagonist over the three books. In The Reprieve, Mathieu is alone upon a bridge and is contemplating suicide. He feels alone in the world and at that moment there is no-one who can tell him what to do. To jump or not to jump, that is the question? His life and his destiny are in his hands and no-one else’s. He is at that moment a free man but to what avail? 'I am free for nothing', he concludes. Likewise, at the end of The Age Of Reason after breaking up with his pregnant girlfriend, Mathieu feels nothing but an anger without an object. Mathieu has stolen, and now has abandoned his girlfriend when she is pregnant, all for nothing.

'If you want to understand something' Murdoch quotes Sartre as saying 'you must face it naked'. This is interpreted as doing practically the complete opposite of what is expected as when Mathieu opens his mouth to say 'I love you' to his girlfriend but says 'I don't love you' instead. Or when he tells his comrade in arms that resistance is senseless but then picks up a rifle. It's in the casting off of all allusions, delusions and illusions. In such moments, Mathieu is free but for what? That is the question. Did Sartre ever adequately answer it? Well, yes he did but Albert Camus probably answered it better and there's the nub of Murdoch's book. It's too late now, of course, but perhaps it would have been better for her (and for us) to have written about Camus rather than Sartre and it makes me wonder why she didn't? It makes me wonder if she would have danced the same kind of bee dance with Camus as she does with Sartre? It makes me wonder.

John Serpico

Exile And The Kingdom - Albert Camus

EXILE AND THE KINGDOM – ALBERT CAMUS

Exile And The Kingdom is a collection of six short stories written by Albert Camus and first published in 1957. So to cut to the quick: what have we got? Well, Camus was a brilliant mind and a brilliant writer and indeed is one of my firm favourites but for some reason reading this particular book of his was somewhat of a chore. On finishing it I did something I hardly ever do when it comes to books and that's to look at Wikipedia to see what it had to say about it there and curiously it's a completely different interpretation to mine. So much so, in fact, that I couldn't tell if it was me reading too much into the stories or actually too little?

The Adulterous Woman centres on a woman on a business trip with her husband and her not wishing to be there. At one point she looks at him and thinks to herself how love, even when filled with hate, doesn't have such a sullen face as his. During the middle of the night whilst staying at some crotchety old hotel at the edge of the desert, she steals herself away from their bed to take in the view from a balcony. It is here that she becomes conscious of the empty void in her life and for a moment wishes for nothing other than to throw herself into that void. This is the adultery she commits to which Camus alludes.

The Renegade is a depiction of the supremacy of evil and how evil begets evil even when challenged by an act of supposed goodness - that in itself can even be taken as an act of evil. There is no surpassing or undermining of it. Evil, it would seem, can be challenged but cannot be overthrown so the only solution to evil is to destroy it utterly. It's only weakness – it's Achilles Heel – is in the fact that evil knows it can be destroyed. Evil is not indestructible and it's aware of this. As Hitler once said: “Only one thing could have stopped us – if our adversaries had understood and from the first day had smashed, with the most extreme brutality, the nucleus of our new movement”. For some reason, The Renegade reminds me of Behold The Man, by Michael Moorcock, where the time traveller goes back in time to confirm the existence of Jesus only to end up enacting the role of Jesus and being himself crucified.

The Silent Men is about how the boss of a small business not doing the right thing for his staff leads to his staff not doing the right thing for him when tragedy strikes. The lesson being: an eye for any eye leaves the whole world blind. The Guest, on the other hand, is almost the complete opposite when a man trying to do the right thing ends up in fear of himself being murdered. The Artist At Work is almost a reiteration of Camus' famous line 'in the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer'. Or even possibly a description of Camus' own life? Whilst The Growing Stone is like a cross between Camus' The Fall and The Myth Of Sisyphus.

Context is all, of course, which means the date of publication of Exile And The Kingdom – 1957 – needs to be taken into consideration, it coming fifteen years after the publication of The Outsider and The Myth Of Sisyphus, one year after the publication of The Fall, and three years before his untimely death in 1960. It needs to be asked, what was Camus trying to do with these stories? What was the thought behind them? Is the reading of these stories effected by the day and age in which they are read, as in 2020 when the world is going through a pandemic-led existential crisis? As I said, am I trying to read too much into them or not enough? Whatever, I'm left with the feeling that Exile And The Kingdom is for Camus completists only.

John Serpico

Lenny - The Real Story of Lenny Bruce - Valerie Kohler-Smith

LENNY – VALERIE KOHLER-SMITH

It needs to be asked: If Lenny Bruce was to appear today how would he be received? Particularly in America. Would the Alt-Right try to claim him as one of their own and declare him to be an avenging angel of the First Amendment? Or would they see him as the complete opposite of all they hold dear and as an example of cultural Marxism in action, and therefore unleash the hounds of ultra-conservatism upon him in much the same way as they did in the Sixties? You might hope the latter but in this day and age you never can tell.

Lenny Bruce was a pioneer of modern-day, observational stand-up comedy and effectively paved the way so that others might follow. And of course, they did. Without Lenny Bruce we would have no Richard Prior, no Bill Hicks, no Jerry Seinfeld, Stewart Lee or even probably no Ted Chippington. It was Lenny Bruce who suffered the slings and arrows of the self-appointed moral guardians of American society so that others after him might be allowed to be funny. Lenny Bruce suffered so that we might one day laugh.

Lenny, written by Valerie Kohler-Smith is the novelization of the film based on Lenny Bruce's life starring Dustin Hoffman as the much-beleaguered comic. Written in 1974 it's a book very much of its time, written in a New York vernacular very specific to the Seventies. It doesn't pertain to be anything other than what it is, it simply fulfils its role and does its job. As such, it doesn't take anything away from the Lenny Bruce story but neither does it add anything. The best bits, in fact, are when it quotes directly from some of his spiels. For example:

'You know who I'd love to get in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee? Daddy Warbucks.' (Daddy Warbucks being a fictional character from the comic strip Little Orphan Annie).

'Senator: Now Daddy, will you tell this Committee what's really going on at your place with you and that little Orphan Annie and the weird little dog that keeps going 'Arf'? Are you really her Daddy? Uh huh, that's what I thought. OK, you've been having sex parties, isn't that it? Well tell me Warbucks, how come she has no eyes? Her eyes are always rolled back in her head. That's ecstacy, right? “Oh Daddy – oh, Daddy, Daddy,” and the dog keeps going “arf”. 'Arf' means 'next', right?'

Or when he talks about President Eisenhower and how the button to let off The Bomb is on the fly of a Boy Scout, or about how it's just as well Jesus wasn't killed in the last fifty years as we would have had to contend with a generation of parochial school kids running around with little gold electric chairs around their necks. Or when he's being self-depreciating: 'You know it's really weird. Everything that strikes me as being funny is based on all this destruction – this despair and all. But, you know, if the whole world were well, tranquil and all, without the violence? I mean come on - where would I be? I'd be standing on an unemployment line somewhere. Like I say, I'm a hustler. As long as they give, I'll grab.'

As with everything in life, if you're a comedian you need to find your own special trait, your own style. You need to find your own voice. Your shtick. For years, Lenny Bruce performed in clubs to an ever decreasing audience who had come primarily to watch the strippers, and not to hear a collection of old jokes they'd already heard a hundred times before. He'd finally reached rock bottom where he knew he could say anything to an audience – anything that came into his head – because he knew that nobody was listening anyway. Until, that is, he suddenly began attracting a new kind of audience – the beatniks.

Word was getting around that here was one of their own, a comedian who this new generation could actually identify with. The clubs he was playing were soon wall-to-wall with them and with their eyes on a good return on their investment, other much larger club owners were soon bidding large sums of money for him to play for them. Lenny Bruce was suddenly 'in'.

With his new found fame and his new found audience there came the kind of attention from a section of the audience from which there was to be no benefit, neither guffaws and laughs or even financially from them paying to come and see him. Lenny Bruce had come to the attention of the police. At almost every performance they started to show up, standing at the back in uniform or out of uniform at a table, sipping an orange juice whilst scribbling copious notes down into their police notebooks. At the end of a show they would sidle up to him, take him by the arm and say “You can't say that word in a public place, Lenny.”

“What word, Officer?” Lenny would reply “I said a lot of words.”

“You know what word,” the Officer would tell him “You said a lot of crap, smart boy. You think you can go around saying that any place you want? It's against the law.”

“But I didn't do it or anything,” Lenny would tell them “I just said it.”

The word was 'cocksucker'.

During his lifetime, Lenny Bruce gained a lot of famous friends and supporters – Frank Zappa, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Paul Newman, Gore Vidal, Hugh Hefner and so on but also a lot of enemies in high places. By the moral guardians of America he was hounded, harassed, arrested, jailed and banned. He was even barred from entering Australia and the UK as an 'undesirable alien'. So much so that in the end no club could afford to put him on as it would almost certainly put them at risk of losing their license. In the end, destitute from the endless legal fees and being unable to perform anywhere, Lenny overdosed on heroin and died alone at the age of 40.

Valerie Kohler-Smith's novelization is a good enough place to start with Lenny Bruce but perhaps it might be just as well to watch the actual film? Even better, there's a lot of recorded material and live clips of Lenny Bruce available now on YouTube and there – getting it straight from the horse's mouth – is the best place to investigate him. Bearing in mind how old all this stuff is, a huge amount of his spiels, routines and monologues are still standing the test of time and are still extremely funny.

Pioneer. Godfather. Legend. Lenny Bruce.

John Serpico