Brits, Beats and Outsiders

BRITS, BEATS AND OUTSIDERS

JIM BURNS

PENNILESS PRESS PUBLICATIONS

www.pennilesspress.co.uk

Published by

Penniless Press Publications 2012

© Jim Burns

The author asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of the work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

ISBN 978-0-244-97663-7

Cover: Demoliton, Warrington 1964 – photo Ken Clay

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The essays and reviews first appeared in the following publications:

Purely by Chance: Tom Hanlin's Forgotten Novel, London Magazine, London, October/November, 1992

George Garrett, Prop 8, Bolton, Spring, 2000

From the Forties, Tears in the Fence 26, Blandford Forum, Summer, 2000

Blackburn Beats, The Guardian, London, 22nd February, 1964

Poetmeat, Poetry Information 12/13, London, Spring, 1975

Move & Palantir, Global Tapestry 15, Blackburn, 1984

Underground Revolution, Tribune London, 6th December, 1968

The Liverpool Scene, Tribune, London, 17th March, 1967

English-English Poetry, Akros 12, Preston, January, 1970

Notes Towards a History of British Bop, Jazz & Blues, London, December, 1971

Bryan Wynter, Northern Review of Books (on-line), 2010

Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Beats, Beat Scene 30, Coventry, 1998

Big Table, Beat Scene 41, Coventry, 2001

The Beat Hotel, The Kerouac Rag 3, Torquay, Spring, 2005

Stuart Perkoff: The Forgotten Beat, Beat Scene 33, Coventry, 1999

Ray Bremser: A Beat Angel, Beat Scene 32, Coventry, 1999

Philip Lamantia, Beat Scene 31, Coventry, 1998

Venice West, The Kerouac Connection 23, Glasgow, Summer, 1992

The San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, The Kerouac Connection 22, Glasgow, Autumn,1991

Allen Ginsberg and Paris, Beat Scene 28, Coventry, 1997

Leroi Jones and the Beat Years, Beat Scene 35, Coventry, 2000

Open Door at the Red Drum, Beat Scene 38, Coventry, 2001

Swank Goes Beat, Beat Scene 39, Coventry, 2001

Jivin' with Jack the Bellboy, Palantir 3, Preston, May, 1976, and Moody Street Irregulars 3, New York, Winter, 1979

Ezra Pound and The Exile, London Magazine, London, June/July, 1999

Ernest Haycox, Prop 8, Bolton, Spring, 2000

The Pity of It: Hubert Crackanthorpe, London Magazine, London, December/January, 1998

Weldon Kees:Mid-Century Man, Beat Scene 27, Coventry, 1997

The Strange Case of Martha Dodd, The Penniless Press 13, Preston, January,2001

Henry Murger and Bohemia, The Penniless Press 12, Preston, September, 2000

Jon Edgar Webb and The Outsider, Beat Scene 42, Coventry, 2003

David Markson, The Penniless Press 15, Preston, 2002

Republic of Dreams, Tears in the Fence 34, Blandford Forum, Spring, 2003

Edward Field, Tears in the Fence 44, Blandford Forum, 2006

What is Remembered, The Penniless Press 21, Preston, Spring, 2003

Artists on the Edge: The Rise of Coastal Artists' Colonies,1880-1920, Northern Review of Books (on-line), 2011

Confessions of an Unrepentant Bebopper, Jazz Monthly, St Austell, August,1969

My thanks to all the editors concerned and to Ken Clay and Joan Mottram.

INTRODUCTION

This third collection of essays and reviews is somewhat different in content to Beats, Bohemians and Intellectuals and Radicals, Beats and Beboppers. Those books were primarily concerned with American writers, whereas this one has a dozen or so pieces looking at aspects of British writing (and art and music) from the 1930s to the 1960s. Some forgotten writers and magazines of the 30s and 40s are dealt with, and several items focus on the 60s, a period often derided as producing a lot of bad poetry. It probably did, but I suspect that's true of any period and the 60s also produced some interesting work and it was a lively time for little magazines and small presses.

As the titles of the previous collections indicated, the Beats occupy what might be called a central role, and so it is here. I've included essays on leading lights of the movement, such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, but have also written about lesser-known poets like Ray Bremser and Stuart Perkoff. There are surveys, too, of Venice West and San Francisco, where numerous minor writers congregated. They may not have been all that talented, and are probably forgotten now, but they deserve a place in any history of the Beat movement.

The outsiders I've chosen are mostly poets and novelists who don't seem to slot neatly into any group. Ezra Pound is a major figure but the period I'm concerned with, when he edited the short-lived little magazine The Exile, shows him standing outside conventional categories.

It may seem a long jump from Pound to Ernest Haycox but I don't see it that way. I look for interesting writing in all kinds of places and Haycox always seemed to me a much better storyteller than many of those being praised in the review sections of daily and weekly papers. There is a long review of a book about the artists' colonies that were popular towards the end of the 19th Century and into the 20th. The final essay, Confessions of an Unrepentant Bebopper, does, I agree, cover some of the same ground as Jivin’ with Jack the Bellboy and Bird Lives! (in Radicals, Beats and Beboppers) but I think it has sufficient differences of interpretation of the basic material to make it relevant.

Finally, it's time for a confession. I've sometimes used different names when writing articles or reviewing, the most common ones being John Dunton and Jay Burnett. John Dunton was a name I found in Pope's The Dunciad, and I first used it in Jazz & Blues in 1972 when writing a tongue-in-cheek article about Screaming Jay Hawkins, an oddball rock'n'roll performer. Jay Burnett was born when the editor of Mayfair wanted a short story but because I'd already written a couple of humorous articles for the magazine he thought that the story, a slightly sleazy tale with a jazz background, needed a slicker name attached to it. I carried on using both names over the years.

Because the essays and reviews were written for a variety of publications over a number of years there are variations in formats. I have not attempted to standardise them in any way. Likewise I have not updated them in terms of references to individuals, publications, etc. I have in a few cases added some notes (pages 250 to 252) which may provide additional information

PURELY BY CHANCE - TOM HANLIN’S FORGOTTEN NOVEL

On a recent visit to a shop in south Manchester I pulled what appeared to be a copy of Modern Reading from a stack of old Pelicans and similar books, and looked to see which issue it was. Only it wasn't. Instead of Modern Reading it was Once In Every Lifetime, and where Reginald Moore's name should have been it said Tom Hanlin. The Big Ben was still there in its usual place, and the paper looked and felt the same, but I had a novel in my hands. A note on the cover indicated that it was a competition prize winner and on the rear cover it said that Tom Hanlin was 'a miner from the West Coast of Scotland.' The competition was held in 1944 and the novel published in 1945. A dedication inside, 'To the memory of Private John Hanlin, H.L.I. Killed in Action, Normandy, June 1944,' further located the book in its period.

The brief notes on the rear cover also mentioned that when Hanlin submitted his novel he claimed that 'once we had started reading it, we should not be able to put it down.' Well, authors frequently assume we'll be carried away by their work so I didn't pay too much attention to that statement. After all, a glance at the rear inside pages of the book had uncovered a list of other Big Ben pub­lications, and with titles like Riders of the Rimrock Trail by Jackson Cole, Hot Lead by J. E. Grinstead, and Death for a Holiday by C. P. le Huray, I wasn't expecting too much. I paid my 40p, tucked it in my pocket, and went home.

I started to read Once In Every Life­time one day when I wasn't working and realised that Tom Hanlin was right, I couldn't put it down. From its opening sentence, 'I said I knew his wife and where she stayed and they all picked on me,' until the final page, I was gripped by a story which wound its relentless way through the ups and downs of a working-class life of the 20s and 30s. When the book opens a miner has been killed and the narrator is nominated to inform the man's wife. There's nothing fancy about the procedure - he simply gets on a bus and goes to where she lives. But as he does he begins to reminisce about the woman concerned and growing up with her in a Scottish pit village. And we're immediately told what the story concerns: 'This is a story about first love. About a boy and girl who wanted to get married and be with each other all their lives.'

The boy and girl, Frank and Jenny, grow up together and everyone assumes that they will marry. But times are hard and Jenny goes into domestic service away from the village. Frank stays put, waiting for an opening in the mines, and in the meantime working at a job de­scaling boilers. It's hard, dirty work and is described with a raw attention to detail. Jenny occasionally comes home, but the pressures of the close com­munity, with its expectations about how people ought to act, affect the relation­ship. Frank, not wanting to seem 'soft' in front of the other males, treats Jenny in an offhand manner and she responds in kind. When he loses his job as the recession deepens he starts to drift around, working where and when he can. Interestingly enough, there is little outright political sentiment expressed in the book. It's accepted as a fact of life that, when there is work, the company will get as much as it can out of the men for as little pay as possible, and in this the writing rang true to my own experiences of growing up in a working-class community. I can't recall that anyone ever came out with extreme political opinions, but bosses were in­variably seen as bastards and not to be trusted.

What the book does communicate is the completely debilitating effect of hard, monotonous work. Frank keeps telling himself that he'll go back and contact Jenny, 'but it got to me, too. The work and the poverty and the hopelessness ... At the end of the shift you could wring all your clothes and you were good for nothing but lying down.' He stays away, though picking up bits of news about the village. Two of his brothers join the army to escape un­employment, his parents are rehoused in a 'new scheme,' and Jenny has asked about him. But he puts off writing to her, by now on the tramp and even en­joying the freedom it gives him: 'Still, it wasn't so bad. I was young, clean look­ing, and my face was innocent. There was never much money on the go, but I was never hungry. I could always get food and no bother. At the latter end I cadged everything I ate, keeping the dole money for beer and beds.'

An eventual confrontation with Jenny, when she points out that his aimless way of life isn't likely to lead to the security she wants, inclines Frank to settle down, though circumstances determine that it's with another girl, a rebuff that drives away Jenny for good. She marries someone else and later Frank sees her, 'standing outside the Whitevale parish office, with a baby in a shawl, in a queue of destitutes and cripples,' and he speaks to her on another occasion when he attends a medical board and Jenny is working as a cleaner at the office. Both have aged with the years, though neither is particularly old. Frank describes himself as a 'thin, scoured man with his arm in a sling,' and Jenny as having to face up to 'toil and endless poverty; the pressure of one room day after day, of having nothing to wear and the cheapest to eat; telling your life story to a hard face in a parish office; of seeking timidly in heavy boots and poke apron for stairs to scrub and clothes to wash.' The writing, economical and angry, builds up a picture of stunted lives and the stultify­ing effects of always being on the brink of abject poverty, but it also stresses that Frank knows that he'll never stop loving Jenny. When his wife dies he says he 'wept for her because she was good to me and because she was mine, and maybe I never cared for her the way she cared for me.'

Following his wife's death, Frank is homeless again, but 'with a big difference this time. I wasn't young any more and had nothing to look forward to any more.' He lives in cheap lodgings, works in the pit, and finally comes to Jenny to tell her that her husband is dead. But there isn't a happy ending. Jenny herself dies shortly after, from consumption, and Frank is left with his memories and regrets. And he says of Jenny: 'There's no more stairs to scrub, there's no more washings to wash, there's no more parish queues to wait in, there's no more back roads to take to avoid those who knew Jenny Dewar when Jenny Dewar was nineteen. There's no more room, no more damp, no more hunger, no more rags, no more toil and no more misery. No more heartbreaks, no more betrayals, no more consumption.'

It's writing that perhaps wouldn't be looked on too kindly now, with neither its subject matter nor its emotional fervour suiting current fashions, but it is powerful, and marvellously readable, nonetheless. And it reminded me of other 30s and 40s writing, when people didn't seem afraid of this kind of approach. Coincidentally, about the time I found Tom Hanlin's little book I also read of the death of Pietro di Donato, author of Christ in Concrete, and it struck me that the same concern for ordinary lives and for the capacity of human beings of all kinds to laugh and love and cry came through in both writers. But who reads Pietro di Donato now?

Some basic research hasn't uncovered any information about Tom Hanlin and it could be that Once In Every Lifetime was the only thing he wrote, or at least published. Much of it has an autobiographical touch and perhaps, like many working-class writers, he didn't feel the need to continue once he'd told his main story. Or maybe he did write and couldn't find a publisher as interest in working-class writing declined in the post-war years? But it's a pity that his novel has been forgotten, because it isn't just about the bleakness of life between the wars. It's a love story, too, and one which revolves around themes (betrayal, guilt, remorse) of a perennial kind. Frank's anger is directed at himself as much as it is against an unjust social system.

It's almost fifty years since Hanlin's book was published and it was pure chance that I came across it. Those Big Ben paperbacks soon disintegrate or slide out of sight behind larger things. But perhaps it is the way one ought to discover a writer, purely by chance? I also like to think that Tom Hanlin, who I somehow can't imagine is still alive, would be pleased that all these years later someone found his book, read it, and was moved.

THE COLLECTED GEORGE GARRETT

Working-class writers have often suffered from neglect, es­pecially when compared to their middle-class contemporaries. And, though the struggle to get some writing done can be difficult for mid­dle-class authors, working-class writers have had to battle not only against indifference but also the practical problems of finding time and space to put words on paper. Anyone who has lived in a small house with several other people will know that privacy is something you dream about and quiet a luxury that is never available. Agreed, some good work has been produced in such circumstances but with a price to pay in terms of family friction. This work has found its way into print when society has wanted to be aware of the working-class, but the writers have mostly been forgotten. Literary histories are written by middle-class academics on the whole, and working-class writing is, if it is mentioned at all, dismissed in a footnote or two.

That was the fate of George Garrett, a writer from Liverpool who, in the 1930s, made an impression with some vivid short stories and other pieces and then drifted into obscu­rity. Born in 1896, Garrett went to work on the Liverpool docks in 1911, just in time to experience the wave of strikes that hit Merseyside and brought troops onto the streets. He later stowed away on a ship sailing to South America and wandered around Argentina with some like-minded drifters. By 1914 he was back in Britain and aboard a mer­chant ship which took him to the United States, Canada, Egypt, In­dia, and elsewhere. He was at sea throughout the First World War but 1918 brought unemployment and he decided to go to America in search of work.

His visit to the United States was to prove important. Garrett joined the I.W.W. (the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies as they were called) and was influenced by the organisation's ideas about syn­dicalism. The Wobblies also had a tradition of poetry and song that was used to highlight their aims and publicise their activities. Wobbly lit­erature was not given to introspec­tive searchings (as a later proponent of the movement put it, dump the bosses off your back was a likelier subject than how many miles must the white dove fly before it can rest in the sand?) and dealt with strikes, free-speech fights, working conditions, and similar matters. It was frequently satirical about the bosses and those workers who be­lieved the capitalist system provided an opportunity for advance­ment. Garrett took all this in and additionally had some theatrical experience, and on his return to Liv­erpool he applied the lessons he had learned to the local situation. Long spells of unemployment, occasional jobs, and involvements which even­tually led him to the Communist Party, were to be Garrett's lot for much of the 1920s and 1930s. His political activities made him a marked man around Liverpool and he was blacklisted by employers.

In the 1930s, Garrett started to pub­lish short stories in magazines like The Adelphi, Left Review, and New Writing. George Orwell noticed his work and Orwell, in fact, met Garrett when he went north to gather material for The Road to Wigan Pier. He observed how any literary work that Garrett produced was bound to be short: I urged him to write his autobiography, but, as usual, living in about two rooms on the dole with a wife (who I gather objects to his writing) and a number of kids, he finds it impossible to set­tle to any long work and can do only short stories. Most of Garrett's pub­lished work appeared between 1934 and 1937 after which he disappeared from the literary scene. He was at sea and on the docks during the Second World War, and worked as a night watchman in the 1950s. By that time, of course, interest in working-class writing had waned and people like Garrett were out-of-fashion and forgotten.

Garrett's stories were largely auto­biographical and dealt with life at sea and on the streets, the injustices of the dole, and the deadening ef­fect of routine work. But they were not just flat accounts of these mat­ters, nor were they written in a matter-of-fact manner. Garrett was not sentimental about his charac­ters and he didn't try to portray the working-class as noble and heroic in the way that some so-called pro­letarian writers did. Garrett knew that prejudices of a racial and reli­gious nature were to be found in mean streets, that families were not all happy, and that human sexuality played its part in how people interacted with each other. But this didn't stop him pointing out how poverty and unemployment affected their behaviour and stopped them developing as individuals. His sto­ries were of their time but could extend to wider areas and broader themes. They make one wonder if Garrett could have achieved more had he been given the opportunity to write at length.

Some straightforward accounts of organising the unemployed in Liv­erpool and of a hunger march on London round out this collection, and Michael Murphy has provided an informative introduction and some useful notes. It seems to me important that writers like George Garrett should be remembered and Trent Editions are to be praised for making his work available again.

The Collected George Garrett ed .Michael Murphy, Trent Editions

FROM THE FORTIES

Between 1943 and 1949, Denys Val Baker edited five anthologies of work taken from little magazines of the period. Looking at them now makes one realise what a particularly strong time it was for little magazines and for the writers appearing in them. Some people may wonder why this was so, and others may find it strange that, when paper was in short supply and the war effort was eating up everyone's energies, there should have been this outburst of activity, an outburst that affected both writers and editors. People seemed to want to write and other people seemed to want to publish them.

That little magazines should have flourished isn't all that surprising. They were, after all, handy vehicles for short stories, poetry, memoirs, and other odds and ends which largely constituted the kind of writing likely to get done in between fighting, training, guard duties, factory work, firewatching, home guard commitments, and all the other demands that war brought. It was easier to write a story than a novel. A poem could be started on a scrap of paper in an interval between activities and completed later. A short article, or a memoir, might be written during a weekend leave or a day off work. And a readership existed for such material because the readers, like the writers, had to fit in what they could when they could. Novels were still written and read, of course, but the point I'm making is that the general situation lent itself to the production and consumption of shorter works. It also helped widen the audience for what the writers were turning out. I don't think there's any doubt that people read more, and though they didn't all turn to literary work there was a sufficiently large number of readers available to support a variety of little magazines. The most popular, which appeared in a paperback, pocketsize format, were Penguin New Writing and Modern Reading, both of which sold between 75,000 and 100,000 copies per issue. And copies were often passed from hand to hand, so the actual readership would be much higher. Even the lesser-known publications, and those specialising in poetry, had circulations most little magazines these days would envy. Baker's first anthology, published in 1943 (and reprinted in 1944) tried to present a selection of work from magazines published since the outbreak of war in 1939.The magazines were varied, ranging from the well-known Horizon and New Writing to the anarchist-pacifist Now and forgotten publications like Opus and Seven. As for the writers, Laurie Lee, Norman Nicholson, Roy Fuller, Dylan Thomas, and George Orwell still mean something, but what of Honor Arundel, Dion Byngham, Lawrence Little, and Lawrence Olson? The interesting thing is that some of the obscure poets catch the mood of the times in a quietly moving manner. Lawrence Olson’s 'Private Poem' lists a series of tragedies affecting friends and blends them with memories of happier days:

How Brussels lay beneath the snow,

How Paris sang and in the Rue

Monsieur-le-Prince, how quiet the slow

And trivial drenching of the dew.

These I remember in the dark,

Voices, a touch of hands, a cry,

The Sunday concert in the park,

And how we live and how we die.

One of the regular contributors to little magazines in the 1940s was Julian Maclaren Ross, noted for his memoirs of 'life in Fitzrovia' but also author of a number of amusing stories of army life. His 'Y List', which originally appeared in New Writing, had the colloquial tone that was typical of his work:

It started with a pain in my side. I didn't know I had pneumonia; nobody told me. We were out on the square, first period, 06.55 hours. Arms drill. The C.S.M. himself was taking us. He looked browned off: I don't believe he liked it any more than we did. Drilling before breakfast's a bugger, believe me.

By the time Baker edited his second anthology in 1945 his range of magazines had widened to include Bell, Wales, Convoy, New Saxon, and Poetry Quarterly, the latter edited by Wrey Gardiner and described as one of the best outlets for the work of new and younger poets. Gardiner's own books, The Dark Thorn and The Flowering Moment, are wonderful evocations of bohemian life in Britain in the 1940s and are written in a highly emotional style that would find little favour today. But I'm digressing, and Baker's selection of poets included John Singer, Randall Swingler, John Manifold, and Miles Carpenter, all of them linked to the Left in one way or another. I recall meeting Carpenter many years ago and being told how he'd worked in a factory during the war. His poem, 'Machine Shop: Night Shift,' reflected that experience.

The Left was riding high in the 1940s, of course, but an essay by Arthur Koestler, reprinted from Horizon, pointed out what happened to intellectuals when they got mixed up with communism. Some became 'fanatical sectarians and Party hacks,' and others met tragic ends. Koestler referred to the fate of various German communists:

Liebknecht and Luxembourg were murdered in '18, Paul Levy committed suicide after his expulsion from the C.P., Ruth Fischer, also expelled, vanished into obscurity, Toller hanged himself in New York, Muehsam committed suicide in a Nazi concentration camp, Max Hoelz was drowned under dubious circumstances in Russia, Heinz Neumann, the last surviving C.P. leader who came from the intelligensia was liquidated.

The 1946 anthology had an introduction which listed, and only partly at that, a large number of little magazines which had appeared towards the end of the war and in its immediate aftermath. Baker thought that the removal of paper restrictions, and the high hopes as victory was achieved, were responsible for the boom, though many of the publications were to be short lived. Who now remembers Our Time, Manuscript, Bristol Packet, Fulcrum, Gangrel, and Kite? There is one survivor, Outposts, and from its early days Baker used a poem by J.D.C. Pellow which, looked at today, appears over-written and stiff. Much better was A.S.J. Tessimond's 'The British,' from Penguin New Writing:

We are a people living in shells and moving

Crablike; reticent, awkward, deeply suspicious;

Watching the world from a corner of halfclosed eyelids,

Afraid lest someone show that he hates or loves us,

Afraid lest someone weep in the railway train.

New names were creeping in (James Kirkup, Norman MacCaig) and some