In depression year 1986 (with the collapse of Yuppie Reign #1 in sight and smell -- you could smell the impending doom) delirium and heat, lack of my success blamed on ingrown shyness and compensation via feminine attentions, I co-founded (not consciously, mind you) the Unbearable Beatniks of Lite (of Life, of Light, etc.), which was eventually shortened to the Unbearables. I did not know, and Matty did not know, and Ron did not know, and Mike did not know, and Max did not know, and Peter did not know, that this was to spawn one group that would rival the Beats as a group to turn to when you wanted a parody of urban lit, of buffoonery, of enlightened inebriation, of iconoclasm protoplasm, of nonsense and beyond sense (and a few poignant words nonetheless now and then). We were to be reckoned with and totally ignored nonetheless. Precisely because in publicly denying our importance, we became despised as a group who thought too much of itself (and now I realize that any cabal of any level of innocence of woe-is-me-ism is the instant guttersnipe target of all those not in it, despising being the motor to much of what passes for sassiness and character in NYC) and yet we had so little material evidence to prove they were right or, for that matter, that we were.
We swelled into a group of some 40 strong/weak and devolved/melted down into a headline about a flop, a mere coincidence, a joke not laughed at, a sparsely attended reading series, intramural squabbling, a core group of some inspired writing that rather than become noticed because of the group’s high (inebriated) profile and dynamic got buried in the hype. Writings that were noticed only in how unnoticed and ignored they all were. If hype is a lot of meaningless words about nothing -- as the Dutch say, “baked air” -- then we were it or at least its victims although we perceived it as triumph. Our photo session in the Shandon Star for a profile in the Daily News garnered a larger turnout than most of our readings. Self-serious, self-denigrating, self-reflexive, self-delusional, self-publishing -- we went at it like a drunken masticator stuck in a paper bag. And what emerged was a messy random pattern scatter-shot of genius works all but forgotten -- this is in part because we believed that good writing and inspiration were destined to find their just rewards (by being ignored for having the haughtiness of actually sometimes being good), and we remained eternally naive about the other part of the equation (with handwriting everywhere on every wall), that talent and production don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got the sting (backing/money) to make it sing. We had no INSIDERS who whispered in the ears of editors and decision makers and thus... This is not regret, however. This is truth. Or at least some vague semblance of an inkling about something we once read about truth. We did not have a Ginsberg of some obstreperous renown who could convince editors to publish us the way he had convinced editors to publish Kerouac (after 25 rejections of On The Road). I long carried my rejection slips in a box, counted them once or twice, the way old soldiers might count ribbons and scars.
Anyway, along the way some productions happened -- readings, zines, scenes, hanging out, pontificating, in-fighting, in-breeding, and some anthologies including Semiotext[e] SF (peripherally), Unbearables (a sprawling anthology of downtown Unbear-related scriveners) and Crimes of the Beats, which addresses precisely that: the crimes the Beats committed. This was mostly about their allowing themselves to become commodified (how do you stop it?), Ginsberg becoming the CEO of Gins.com, Beatnik chic, Beatnik ads, as reconsumable resistance culture, as flavor of the month... Anyway, we weren’t so much blaming them as people or poets but critiquing society and their part in its construction for converting everything into consumable cliché. The anthology, a good and lively one, is still available from Autonomedia and it features some acerbic writing by Unbearables like Jill Rapoport, Alfred Vitale, Mike Golden, Ron Kolm, and all of the rest of the criminals.
In that mid-1990s period when poetry became front page Newsweek news, when poets were asked to don berets they had never worn or owned so that the straight glossies -- wasn’t Edwin Torres on the cover of New York magazine, requested to play a parody of himself? -- so that the glossies could sell the beret-bongo thing as something charming enough for the straights to despise and domesticate so that they could go on with their senseless lives without disturbance. It was a craze to rival cigars and micro-brewery beer, and stripper-feminist dissertations. We protested (in a post-modern way so that we were mocking the very parody of who we knew we were going to be profiled as) not only in front of New Yorker HQ on 42nd Street, demanding that they stop publishing such meaningless “swimming pool poesy” and that they “free verse now.”
Meanwhile, there we were in front of a major Beatnik event that took place at reputable Town Hall, a bunch of still-alive Beats pontificating or playing the part of ur-savages for a tie and gown crowd at $20 or more (I think) per seat. This was in their eyes probably their legitimization in all its domesticated forms -- protest as consumable spectacle. The Beats could now rant and be taken seriously and thus not at all... Our message: in the package, regardless of vacuum seal, you rot. Anyway, there we were in Mid-Manhattan with our chants and signs when suddenly, the epiphany, the moment we were all waiting for once in a lifetime happened -- Gregory Corso (the most real of the originals) joined our picket line as his disgruntlement with proceedings indoors had transformed into bemused frustration outdoors. He joined the picket line, chanting louder than any of us “Down with the Beats!”
