Fried Shoes

MANNERS & MORALS

The cocktail party was buzzing as only Chicago cocktail parties can buzz. In the richly appointed Lake Shore Drive apartment of Chicago Financier Albert Newman, the guests chatted animatedly, gazed at the original Picasso on the wall, and the Monet, the Jackson Pollock. On tables and shelves stood Peruvian fertility symbols, jade bracelets, sculptures that looked like the superstructure of a Japanese battleship. The heavy air clinked with philosophy, culture and sensitivity:

Do you realize we're sitting right in front of an original Jackson Pollock? It makes me want to cry. Why did he have to die? . . .

America is a gaudy place. It gives you a chance to do anything or to not do anything . . .

Spinoza understood because of all that suffering he went through in--where was it?--Rotterdam? . . .

You can sell, Jim. Sure you can sell. Anybody can sell . . .

Yes, but Bartok scores the gaps. That's the difference . . .

Tears from a Hydrant. This chatter was only a way of passing the time, for the guests had come for something more important than Scotch and Spinoza. They had come to meet 32-year-old Allen Ginsberg of Paterson, N.J., author of a celebrated, chock-full catalogue called Howl (I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked), recognized leader of the pack of oddballs (TIME, June 9) who celebrate booze, dope, sex and despair and who go by the name of Beatniks.

At length Poet Ginsberg arrived, wearing blue jeans and a checked black-and-red lumberjacking shirt with black patches at the elbows. With him were two other shabbily dressed Beatniks. One was Ginsberg's intimate friend, a mental-hospital attendant named Peter Orlovsky, 25, who writes poetry (I talk to the fire hydrant, asking: "Do you have bigger tears than I do?"); the other was Gregory Corso, 28, a shaggy, dark little man who boasts that he has never combed his hair--and never gets an argument. Corso, also a poet, will be remembered for his lines:

But nothing would rid me of Dandruff.

Vitalis, Lucky Tiger, Wildroot, Brilliantine, nothing.

Hollyhocks & Daisies. The trio was an instant hit with the literary upper crust. There was in fact only one unbeliever in the crowd, one William Haskins, instructor in English at Northwestern University. Demanded Corso: "Man, why are you knocking the way I talk? I don't knock the way you talk. You don't know about the hollyhocks." Replied Haskins: "If you're going to be irrelevant, you might as well be irrelevant about hollyhocks." Countered Corso: "Man, this is a drag. You're nothing but a creep--a creep! But I don't care. I can still laugh and I can still cry. That's the way to be."

"The hell it is," snorted Haskins. "What kind of expression is that?" shouted Corso. "Don't you know that hell is passe?"

Then, as the formalities began, somebody shoved a microphone in view.

"I'm Peter Orlovsky." said Peter Orlovsky. "I'm very fine and happy and crazy as a wild flower."

"I'm Allen Ginsberg," said Allen Ginsberg, "and I'm crazy like a daisy."

"I'm Gregory Corso, said Gregory Corso, "and I'm not crazy at all."

Would they like to make any comment? 'Yes," said Corso. "Fried shoes. Like it means nothing. It's all a big laughing bowl and we're caught in it. A scary laughing bowl." Added Gregory Corso, with the enigmatic quality of a true Beatnik: "Don't shoot the wart hog." Chimed in Allen Ginsberg: "My mystical shears snip snip snip."

Shaw & Mother. With the crashing madness of a Marx Brothers scene run in reverse, the Beatniks read their poetry, made their pitch for money for a new Beatnik magazine. The Big Table, and then stalked out. After a late night on the town, they made a mystical pilgrimage to Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo (which has no wart hog and no laughing bowl), turned up next evening at the Sherman Hotel, read more poetry for a curious crowd of 700 (who paid $1 and up), this session sponsored by Chicago's Shaw Society.

By evening's end Peter Orlovsky was in tears because his chum Ginsberg was getting so much attention. Gently, Ginsberg and Corso took Orlovsky back to their borrowed apartment, put him to sleep--or more properly, down on his pad. Then Ginsberg and a bearded friend hit the streets, walked till 6 a.m., talking about their mothers. It was all fried shoes. Like it means nothing. And this week they will do it all over again, by popular demand, at Columbia University in Manhattan.

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