And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (William Burroughs)

By Jack Kerouac & William S. Burroughs

Publisher: Grove Press (2008)

Hardcover 224 pages

          “Just at the alcove to the right of the balcony, there is usually a group of fags hanging around, looking half of the time at the picture and the rest of the time along the balcony seats for any good prospects. They were standing there giving us the side glance as we came up the stairs, when Phillip ran up to the sand jar and began holding the macaroni to his fly and shaking it in the sand, so that it looked like he was pissing diffusely into the sand jar. The fags glided away like crayfish.”

William S. Burroughs

          The long lost collaboration novel of the two fathers of the Beat literary movement, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, finally in print since it was first written in 1945. This is the Gospel of Judas equivalent for beat readers, and is just as disappointing.

          Essentially this is a first draft of Kerouac’s first published book, The Town and the City, containing many similar elements and focusing on the real life murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr (who went on to become an important editor for UPI). This seems to be a trope that Kerouac returns to over and over again in his writing. His personal involvement in the case (he was held as a material witness for several weeks), may be why it clung so heavily to his mind.

          The title apparently refers a news report that the pair had overheard while in a bar one night, about a circus that had caught on fire. The line that caught Burroughs’s ear was the reporter saying “And the hippos were boiled in their tanks.”  This possibly may have been the Ringling Brothers, Barnum, & Bailey circus fire in Hartford, Connecticut in 1944, known colloquially as “the day the clowns cried” where the main tent caught fire and close to 165 people died.

Jack Kerouac

          There is a reason why the book wasn’t published until 2008. It is by far the blandest writing I have read from either of these two authors. Each take turns writing a chapter from a different character’s first person’s perspective and they both feel like the same character. Neither of the protagonists are distinguishable, all of the characters are flat, none of them are interesting. You simply do not care at all about anything that is happening and the action isn’t outrageous enough to keep the reader interested. Everything that is going on is dull, unless I guess you were one of the people mention in the text. By the time the murder happens, when it finally happens, it is almost a non-event. The narrators seem to feel nothing and  you are left with a shrug.

          It isn’t badly written, but it is below par for most literature. There is no trace of the future literary masterpieces that would pour from their pens. It is a dull flat affair. If you were to tell someone back in 1945 that these two writers would define a literary genre, no one would have believed you.  This book is for Burroughs or Kerouac completionists only.

           For more readings, try my collection of books. 

Naked Scientology/ Ali's Smile (William Burroughs)

By William S. Burroughs

Publisher: Expanded Media (1991) Contains material original published in L.A. Free Press (1970); East Village Other (1970); and Rolling Stone Magazine (1972).

Paperback 106 pages.

“When the Founder, Controller, and Guardian of “the road to total freedom” starts spouting John Birch talk, his road is called into question and we have every right to ask what his ‘method of solution’ is. If Mr. Hubbard were content to be a technician who has made some important discoveries we could afford to ignore his personal opinions. When he sets himself up as the savior of all possible universes then we cannot. The shoddy presentation, the reactionary opinions, the atrocious writing are so immediately repellent that few intelligent people can be persuaded that Scientology is worth a second glance.”

William S. Burroughs

This is a collection of articles and responses to articles by William Burroughs on the matter of Scientology. He was involved in the cult in 1968, this was back before it was so obviously known to be a cult and had a quasi-scientific reputation among the uninitiated. This is Burroughs at his most scathing. The book is half in German, with only about 50 in English, so it will take a reader long to get through it.

It should be noted that Burroughs, while an American genius of a poet, is not that swift when it comes to scientific matters, often his comprehension is addled by years of drug abuse to the point where reality and fantasy blurred. He was a lifelong proponent of the syphilitic ramblings of Wilhelm Reich and his Orgone chamber- a device which caused the death of many cancer patients, whom Reich had convinced that it would cure them. His problem with Scientology is not the techniques, which he states that “10 minutes of Scientology did more than 10 years of psychotherapy”, but the organization surrounding it.

He does not come straight out and call it a cult, perhaps he did not even consider it one, but the descriptions of the inner workings of the group, the paranoia, the necessity of adhering to groupthink on pain of excommunication, all bear the known hallmarks of such an organization.

L. Ron Hubbard

It also collects the short story Ali’s Smile where the main character, one of the main characters, is a door-to-door Scientologist- sort of. As with most of Burrough’s prose plot, when there is any, tends to be secondary to the flow of the language and the emotions stirring. Fans of Naked Lunch will probably enjoy it.

          For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.  

Five Years in a Warsaw Ghetto: The Stars Bear Witness (Autobiography) (War)

Author: Bernard Goldstein

Publisher: AK Press (2004) (Originally published 1952).

Paperback 256 pages




          “It was impossible to describe the hellish scenes which took place in Warsaw’s streets during those two terrible weeks. Everywhere there was wild panic, unashamed hysterical terror. People ran frantically through the streets, a deathly fear unmistakable in their grim, weary eyes... The multitude filled the streets, a nation on the march. Long, long rows of little carts and all sorts of makeshift vehicles heaped with household possessions, wailing children, the old, the sick, the half-dead, moved from all directions toward the ghetto, pulled or led by the stronger and the healthier, who plodded along, tearful despairing, bewildered.”

Waiting for deportation

          A man who survived five years in the Warsaw Ghetto after the Nazi invasion of Poland and the clustering of all Jews in the country into a very small area, for obvious easy deportation. The author managed to escape the concentration camps, but that did not make his trials any easier. The author was a well-known figure in pre-WWII Warsaw labor struggles and when the time came to make the ghetto at least semi-livable he worked tirelessly to do so. It is a fascinating read in their attempts to organize and struggle against the Nazi regime.

Captured members of the Jewish resistance

          Now it should be pointed out that the author was a socialist, not a communist. We have a tendency to confuse the two nowadays, but history has shown us (also mentioned in Out of the Night) the socialists do the heavy lifting in organizing and fighting for labor rights, then the communist elements come in and subvert them, eventually changing the organization into a different direction to suit their purposes (as we have seen recently in the atheist organizations), thereby latching on to a popular cause to sneakily promote their own. Goldstein, mentions several of his fellow organizers being shot by communist agents, and several more disappearing into the Lubyanka, after the Russians drove the Nazis out of Poland.

          The author describes the actions with a strange distance, keeping all emotions out of it (the quote above being one of the rare exceptions). In fact we learn almost nothing about him, his beliefs, or his background, except where it becomes important to reference it in his recounting. This is the Warsaw Ghetto’s story, as he saw it, not his own. As such it is more technical, and not emotional, as one might expect. This conversely demonstrates the author’s deep depression and anger over the events. He must divorce himself emotionally from the events in order to discuss them.

          Strange as this may sound, one of the great stumbling blocks that the resistance found was hope. People clung to the hope that things could not get worse, the propaganda about extermination of the Jews was just bluster. First they came for the weak and infirm, then the unemployed, then whoever they could grab. It wasn’t until the population of 500,000 was whittled down to 40,000 that real resistance popped up.

          This resulted in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the fall 1943. This was on the eve of the final attempt by the Nazi’s to clear out the Ghetto for good. There were heavy losses on both sides, but it ultimately ended with the Ghetto destruction and its survivors scattering about the city. This did set the stage for the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, which was a general revolt by the remaining inhabitants of the city. The uprising was urged on by the nearby Russian army, who promised to support them, but ultimately failed to do so. This was probably a calculated move on the Soviet’s part, as it had two potential resistors wear themselves down battling each other: The Nazi’s whom they wanted to push out, and the Poles whom they wanted to oppress.

          The truly crushing blow comes right at the end of the book. After all the devastation, the author is filthy, dressed in rags, covered in lice, afflicted with dysentery, malnourished and yet must flee. Not due to Nazis, but because of the incoming Russian Communist army and its puppet Polish government. The Communists begin rounding up the Jews again, including anyone with a hand in the previous labor struggle before WWII. He discovers that there is an old death sentence against him by the Polish Communist Party and thus has to flee to save his life.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Who Goes There? (The Thing) (Science Fiction)

Author: John W. Campbell (includes an introduction and the original screen treatment by William F. Nolan)

Published: Rocket Ride Books (2009) (originally published 1938 in Astounding Science Fiction)

Paperback 168 pages 




 

          "The room stiffened abruptly. It was face up there on the plain, greasy planks of the table. The broken half of the bronze ice-axe   was still buried in the queer skull. Three mad, hate-filled eyes blazed up with a living fire, bright as fresh-filled blood from a face ringed with a writhing, loathsome nest of worms, blue, mobile worms that crawled where hair should grow-"

          This classic novella about a shape-shifting alien monster discovered by an isolated outpost in Antarctica, who comes back to life and begins to wreak havoc among the crew. It was the basis for 1951 Howard Hawk film The Thing From Another World, as well as John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing and its prequel from 2011 of the same name.

          It is an incredibly readable novella, even close to 80 years after its initial publication, it effectively brings out the fear, claustrophobia, and paranoia of a group of men being stalked by a monster with abilities they can barely comprehend. Even though I knew the ending, I was on the edge of seat rereading this story. It grips you in a very personal and real way.

          Included with the story is the original screenplay by William F. Nolan, the author of another classic sci-fi novel Logan’s Run (Yes, it was a book first). In the late 70s he was approached to create a treatment that adhered closer to the original text. The main aspect the producers wanted added was to reintroduce the monster’s shapeshifting ability, which was not included in the 50’s version, probably due to budgetary considerations. It was eventually shelved.

          The screenplay is an interesting read, essentially a third adaptation of the story. However I’m not sure that it would have made a better story than John Carpenter’s 1982 version. In fact I doubt it would have. It would have been perhaps the most faithful version of the three.

       For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.  

Farewell to the Master (Science Fiction)

Author: Harry Bates


Publisher: Spastic Cats (2013) (Originally Published 1940 in Astounding Science Fiction magazine)

Paperback 82 pages.

“At last, after exactly two days, in full view of tens of thousands of persons assembled and standing well back, and under the muzzles of scores of the army’s most powerful guns and ray projectors, an opening appeared in the walls of the ship, and a ramp slid down, and out stepped man, godlike in appearance and human in form, closely followed by a giant robot” 

The classic science fiction story remembered mainly because the film The Day the Earth Stood Still was adapted from the tale. For those who are fans of the 1951 film, starring Micheal Rennie and Patricia Neal (or even its 2008 remake), you may be surprised that its main focus is not Klaatu, but his silent counterpart Gort (called Gnut in the story). Klaatu is killed three pages in.

The protagonist is a photojournalist named Cliff Sutherland who notices something strange. Gnut becomes inert after Kaatu is killed by a religious maniac, but Sutherland after comparing some photographs he took of the robot discovers that it is in a slightly different position. He stalks out the interplanetary wing of the Smithsonian in Washington to unravel the mystery.

What I found most amusing was the lack of technological advancement in this story set in our future. For while the movie was set in 1950’s America, the setting of the story is way past that, after man has landed on other planets. Still for all this, the main character stalks the inert robot Gnut with an infrared camera (state of the art when it was written), rather than a recording on his cell phone. And while there are robots, there are no computers. Newspapers are still the front line for news. The protagonist states only two spaceships were ever built. The first was sucked into the sun, while the other had colonized Mars. I am aware that much of what we have was well beyond the ideas of the time, but it is still fun reflecting on our “old future” as envisioned from the past.

        For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha (Drama)

Author: Dr. Ben Reitman

Publisher: AK Press; New edition edition (May 1, 2002) (originally published in 1937).

Paperback 207 pages

          This is in fact a work of fiction, presented as an autobiography. The main character is an amalgamation of several hobo women that the author had met and interviewed over the years. The main character is an unconvincing personality who takes to the hobo lifestyle to experience everything she can of the world. Being raised by her mother to believe in free love and communism (though that word is not actually used), she has an odyssey through America as a tramp.

          While the story of female hobos was not often discussed in the literature of the time, the impact of the realities of life for them (prostitution, the possibilities of rape, etc.) is minimalized by the obvious fact that the author is pushing an agenda. He was a devout communist/anarchist and if you had only read his account you could easily believe that the whole of the hobo community was made up entirely of freewheeling labor union communists, struggling against religion and society, trying desperately to redefine dignity in existence. That every woman on the road had chosen to be there, was revolted by marriage, and an advocate of “free love”. That they were all one happy family, going to lectures at the International Workers of the World clubs, swinging their legs off of edge of speeding trains, and singing protest songs.

The author Dr. Ben Reitman

But, as we have seen in the autobiographies of Jim Tully and Carl Panzram, this was not the case. While it is true that a leftist agenda had been infused in the poorer sections of the United States populace in the 1930s, a natural result of the Great Depression, it was not as uniform as the author represents. Also it must be noted that once the depression was over and many of those people gained jobs, they felt their need for communism slip away.

He does offer us many case histories of the actual women hobos at the time and gives us snippets of their background. He collected these working in the public sector for relief agencies and the Chicago Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease. And several historical figures from the underbelly of American life and the labor struggle may have been forgotten had they not been included in the text.

It is interesting that many of the things the author advocates for have come into being. The most obvious one is abortion. Reitman himself was an abortionist and perform many of the then illegal operations (according to him) as he offered free services to the poor, hobos, and prostitutes. The other is birth control and the distribution of methods of it, which also was outlawed at that time (except for the rhythm method). The author had previously served six months in prison for advocating and distributing pamphlets on birth control. In fact his life story is much more interesting that the book he wrote.

However the author constantly returns to the subject of free love and the idea that marriage was slavery for women. One of the characters stating that, “If I had a baby, I would feel free to dash its brains out.”  He goes into so much detail in fact that it seems like fantasy wish fulfillment. The main character swaps lovers easily, sharing one with her sister and mother, happily works as a prostitute giving most of her money to a pimp (she just wanted “the experience”), contracts syphilis and gonorrhea, but it “doesn’t bother her too much”, and so on.  While the ideas and descriptions of women working as prostitutes might have been shocking in 1937, it is almost mundane nowadays. Fifty Shades of Grey having inured us to many of these ideas. I often reflect how people back in the day would react to that text.

Amazingly this book was made into a feature film in 1972, starring David Carridine and Barbara Hershey, and directed by Martin Scorsese.  Called Boxcar Bertha, it is only loosely based on the book as there is no real narrative to speak of in it. In it she is a labor-organizer who fights against corrupt railroad companies then gets sucked into a life of crime. This is nowhere in the text. Most reviews give it a solid “ehhh”.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Panzram: A Journal of Murder (Crime, Autobiography) (True Crime)

Author: Thomas E. Gaddis & James O. Long (with additional  material written by Carl Panzram)

Publisher: Amok Books (November 1, 2002) (original published as Killer 1970 by Macmillan Company)

Paperback 312 pages.

         

“In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons, and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than a thousand male human beings. For all these things I am not the least bit sorry. I have no conscience so that does not worry me. I don’t believe in man, God nor Devil. I hate the whole damned human race including myself.”- Carl Panzram

Mass Murderer Carl Panzram

          An incredibly brutal, partial autobiography of Carl Panzram, amass murderer and serial sodomist. His confession was written in prison and given to a guard, Henry Lesser, that he had befriended. Due to its very shocking content and roaringly immoral tenor (even more appalling in 1930 when Panzram was executed) it was not published for 40 years.

          The author’s back up Panzram’s account with official files and information as available, occasionally making corrections in the chronology or adding details that he was not aware of. Included is also much of the correspondence (written independently of his confessional autobiography) between Lesser and Panzram, which gives a much rounder view of the killer’s character. The letters show intelligence and a jaundiced affection towards the only person Panzram “didn’t wish ill upon.”

          Gaddis and Long do a very detailed and interesting background account of the various prison’s Panzram is interred within. From Dannemora to Levenworth, the display the commonplace brutality and punishments, the inedible food, and the overcrowding of a system bent completely towards punishment, rather than rehabilitation.

Cover of the original edition

          Panzram’s case story takes a strange turn during his murder trial, he crushed a foreman’s head in with an iron bar while imprisoned at Levenworth. He decided to represent himself and plead not guilty, but openly stated his intent was to gain the death penalty and be executed. Similar to Gary Gilmore in the 1970’s this caused quite a stir at the time and questions of sanity were brought into play.

          The popular perception is that state executions happened every other day back in the old times and were almost a routine matter. Kansas, where the prison was located, had abolished capital punishment as had seven other states. Even then implementing a death sentence was much rarer than it is today.  Panzram had killed a federal employee however so his trail went before a federal judge. As such he is eventually executed in a state that had no death penalty.

          Several attempts are made by various anti-death penalty groups to appeal to the president to have Panzram’s sentence commuted to life imprisonment. These attempts angered the inmate and he wrote several letters threatening them, claiming his motto was, “Rob ‘em all, rape ‘em all, and kill ‘em all.” He even sent a letter to then President Hoover informing him that he would reject any amnesty or commutation of sentence, stating that it was his constitutional right to be executed.

          Also of interest is the large number of historical individuals that Panzram seems to have run across over his life. Beginning with him burglarizing the apartment of former president William Howard Taft. He also indirectly crosses paths with Henry F. Sinclair, the richest man in American history to go to prison. He was given one year for contempt of Congress due to his refusal to answer questions about the Teapot Dome Scandal. Lesser was his guard and mentions Panzram to him. Apparently he worked for Sinclair's company, Sinclair Oil, in Guatemala and when fired, burned the rig down. Finally, Panzram was also locked up in Levenworth with Robert F. Stroud, the famous Birdman of Alcatraz. Stroud mentions Panzram in his book and unsuccessfully tried to get him a razor so Panzram could commit suicide, rather than be hanged by the state.

         While the material is fascinating, Panzram often follows into patterns of self-aggrandizement typical of many prison and criminal memoirs. He hates all of society, blames it for being who he is, blames his upbringing (which is believable), and in the end hates himself most of all. He yearns for his death because he could never not be who he is.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.