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SUKENICK
RONALD
FPT ISBN D-bfla-DbSflT-T
down
and
in
Life in the Underground
RONALD SUKENICK
Down andIn is Ronald Sukenick'sstoryofthe
undergroundcultureinAmericaasitgrewout
of the old Greenwich Village Bohemia—the
storyofHipstersandBeatniks, Rock'n' Rollers
and Punks, has-beens and artists, intellectuals
and outrageous characters, all those who felt
freeto livelife withoutinhibitions.
Down andIn is historybut itis also theleg-
end of a counterculture that opposed official
culture and yet in an astonishingly short time
came to dictate tastes in arts and letters.
Ronald Sukenick tells the story of the ambig-
uous triumph and subsequent burn-out,
sell-out, andwipe-outofthe counterculture—
while the underground went underground
again—through taped interviews, newspaper
articles, memoirs, and influential creative
works from the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack
Kerouac, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, and
many others. And from all the talk and writ-
ing, experienceand creativechaos,webegin to
seejust howwegot from the fifties and sixties
to the heavily mannered and slick culture of
theeighties.
Sukenickdeepens this history with his own
life in the underground, experiences that have
shaped him irrevocably. Down and In's story
is not simply documented in libraries, muse-
ums, and old underground newspapers, but is
tracked through the bars and cafes, joints and
hang-outs, as well as the electric and frenzied
lives that inhabited them—through the San
Remo, which linked the old Bohemians with
(continuedon backflap)
yf- 1-
DOWN
AND
IN
BOOKS BY RONALD SUKENICK
Down andIn: Life in the Underground
BlownAway
The Endless Short Story
In Form: Digressions on theArt ofFiction
Long TalkingBad ConditionsBlues
98.6
Out
The Death oftheNovelandother Stories
Up
Wallace Stevens: Musing the Obscure
DOWN
UNDERGROUND
THE
LIFE IN
RONALD SUKENICK
BE
BEECH TREE BOOKS
WILLIAM MORROW
New York
—
Copyright © 1987 by Ronald Sukenick
Briefsections ofthis book have appeared in TheNew York TimesBookReview.
I would like to acknowledgegratefully the University ofColorado, Boulder
Council on Research and Creative Work, forits support for research on this book.
All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced or utilized in any
form orby any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, Beech Tree
Books, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y.
10016.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sukenick, Ronald.
Down and in. — —
—1. Sukenick, Ronald Homes and haunts New York (State)
Greenwich Village (N.Y.) 2. Greenwich Village (New
York, N.Y.)—Soci—al life and customs. 3. Bohemianism
New York (State) Greenwich Village (N.Y.) 4. Bohemianism
— —
United States. 5. New York—(N.Y.) Social—life and
customs. 6. Authors,—American 20th ce—ntury Biography.
7.Authors, American New York (State) Greenwich
Village (N.Y.)—Biography. 1. Title.
PS3569.U33Z465 1987 974.7'1043 87-11412
ISBN 0-688-06589-9
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
First Edition
123456789
10
BOOK DESIGN BY RICHARD ORIOLO
BIB
Theword"book"issaidtoderivefromboka.otbeech.
Thebeechtreehasbeenthepatrontreeofwriterssinceancient timesand
representsthefloweringolliteratureandknowledge.
PREFACE
Souls ofpoets deadandgone,
WhatElysium haveye known,
Happyfieldor mossy cavern,
Choicer than theMermaid Tavern?
I he tradition of Bohemia has been traced back to France in the
1830's, where it began as a by-product of the Industrial Revolution,
bourgeois society, and the Romantic movement. The story that fol-
lows begins 120 years later in a different country. Although I have a
part in the story, it is mostly a collective narrative about the rise, de-
cline, and future prospects ofa phase in that tradition. The bourgeoi-
sie has been replaced by the middle class, the Industrial Revolution
by the Cybernetic Revolution, and Romanticism by Postmodernism.
The subterraneans, as Jack Kerouac called inhabitants of the under-
ground who started turning up around 1950, are not the same as the
older Greenwich Village Bohemians inspired by Freud, Marx, and
Modernism. But the tradition endures its changes precisely because it
is not the result of a willed strategy, but responds to an unchanging
PREFACE
antagonism between the way of life imposed by our pragmatic busi-
ness society and the humanistic values by which our culture has taught
us to experience and judge the quality of our individual and collec-
tive lives.
For me, sneaking over to Greenwich Village from high school or
living in the East Village in the sixties, the descent into the under-
ground was a matter not of tradition but of an absolute need. The
possibility of better worlds was suggested to me as a kid when I
came across a small number of other kids who, like myself, were
dissatisfied with the upper-middle-class milieu of Brooklyn's Mid-
—
wood High. I was not alone there were others whose values were
not those of Dun and Bradstreet. Once discovered, the underground
—
became an education in survival emotional, creative, and intellectual
—
survival that schools did not offer. And it provided a supporting
community of like-minded hold-outs from an imposed way of life
that I knew was not mine.
Much ofthe attraction ofthe underground derives from the circum-
stance that it pursues the tiger of pleasure instead of yoking itself to
the oxen of duty. Before hurling the usual charge of irresponsible
hedonism, it is a good idea to reflect that the sign of free people is
that they are able to do things because they like to. Bohemians do
what they feel like. Desire becomes a positive force rather than one
to struggle with. For all of its negations of the status quo, the un-
derground is finally based on affirmation. A few years ago a mass-
media journal not only accused Jack Kerouac ofbeing an anti-Semite,
which he was, but also charged Allen Ginsberg with being one, which
he isn't. I called Ginsberg and urged him to write a denial, but he
said that negation leads only to further negation. Several months later
I happened to be sitting in a Polish restaurant in the East Village on
Yom Kippur eve when Ginsberg, a dedicated Buddhist, came in wear-
ing a dark suit, tie, and yarmulke, urgently wanting to know where
he could find a temple. The meaning I take from this coincidental
parable is that the positive force of desire is more compelling than
the negativity ofdenial.
I question the very possibility of moral power without this affir-
mative emotional dimension. Ought is not a positive number. Ought
