Jubilee Hitchhiker

by William Hjortsberg

  Ron Loewinsohn and Dick Brautigan started trooping on Sundays through the Broadway Tunnel under Russian Hill to the Dunns’ dimly lit apartment where the ninety-cent jug wine circulated in jelly jars. Ron remembered the positive response to Richard’s work right from the first. “I thought it was extremely worthwhile. People got very excited about his stuff. It was unique. None of us had ever seen anything like it before. Part of what made him so bizarre was because he was coming from a direction that really wasn’t hip. It was for us totally unexplored.”

  Spicer soared at a creative peak that summer, writing the poems that formed his book After Lorca. Donald Allen, in town for a couple months, remembered Jack showing him a new poem every day at Vesuvio or The Place. Spicer had come to believe “there is no single poem.” Poems were serial. They belonged in groups, lived in books. “Poems should echo and re-echo against each other,” Spicer wrote to Robin Blaser. “They should create resonances. They cannot live alone any more than we can.”

  Everyone read to the group, including Duncan and Spicer, with Jack often reading a new poem three times before allowing any comment. When the younger poets presented their work, “Duncan and Spicer were the judges.” George Stanley remembered Spicer as the harder of the two. “Duncan was much more willing to allow the possibility of there being something there, and Spicer was much more willing to allow the possibility of there being nothing there, just ‘shit!’” Duncan rarely disagreed with Spicer, and the mood stayed genial in spite of the severity of the criticism. “There weren’t any grudges,” Stanley recalled. “If Spicer thought your poem was shit, that didn’t mean he thought you were shit.”

  David Meltzer called Duncan and Spicer “mentor gurus” and found them an “interesting combination because Robert was this very expansive poet, and Jack was this very reductive poet.” Duncan had praised and admired Howl, but Spicer had only scorn for the Beats. Ron Loewinsohn said, “Jack would have nothing to do with Ferlinghetti, would not allow his [Spicer’s] books to be sold in the store, did not take Kerouac or Ginsberg seriously, dealt with all of the Beat Generation people with a kind of contempt.”

  Loewinsohn recalled an afternoon when Brautigan read “The Nature Poem” at the Dunns’. Later published in The Octopus Frontier and reprinted in The Pill, the poem began, “The moon / is Hamlet / on a motorcycle / coming down / a dark road.” According to Ron, “Spicer’s reaction was to laugh—the deliberate ‘ha-ha-ha-ha. That’s not funny, that was stupid.’ It was pretty intense.” Somehow Brautigan, wary and sensitive by nature, took it all in stride. David Meltzer thought this was because Richard “was very much an unacknowledged disciple of Jack.” He also remembered how deeply Brautigan craved his mentor’s approval. “Richard was very self-conscious, like a lot of writers and artists, even performers, essentially very introverted and shy.”

  Meltzer recalled the “rigor around the right word” that Richard had reinforced through his contact with Spicer. “I remember we had this long drunken discussion at Vesuvio about James Jones’s recent book, Some Came Running, his big pulpy thing, which I enjoyed. I was comfortable with both the kind of Whitmanesque expansiveness American style and the reductive.” Although he “gruesomely loathed to talk critically,” Brautigan thought the Jones book was “terrible. ‘Everything is in there,’ he just kept on saying. ‘Nothing is left out.’”

  Early in June of 1957, following a reading by the members of Spicer’s Magic Workshop, Jack suggested to Joe Dunn that he was just the man to start a new press and publish the work of his fellow poets. Spicer was certainly aware that his own growing book-length manuscript would soon need to find a publisher. Dunn got a job in the Print Department of the Greyhound Bus Company on Seventh Street. Jack Sutherland, the head of the department, had studied at the Art Institute with Jess and John Allen Ryan. Joe asked if he could come in nights and on Saturdays and use the equipment for his own projects. Sutherland gave his OK, introducing Dunn to the paper salesmen (he had to buy his own stock), and White Rabbit Press was born.

  In many ways, the press became a community operation. Robert Duncan drew the original colophon. Jess designed many of the covers. Workshop members sewed the signatures of smaller print runs and assembled the sheaves for After Lorca in the Dunns’ apartment during their weekly Sunday meetings. Joe Dunn’s frenzied methedrine-fueled energy drove the project. He published ten chapbooks under the White Rabbit imprint between November 1957 to September 1958. All were uniform in format, a compact five and a half by eight and a half inches. The first was Love, the Poem, the Sea and Other Pieces Examined, by Steve Jonas, a black friend from Boston. The edition of two hundred sold for twenty-five cents a copy.

  Richard Brautigan published several new poems in 1957. The “Special San Francisco Issue” (Summer–Autumn, vol. 2, no. 2) of Mainstream, out of Palatine, Illinois, featured poetry by Robert Stock, Daniel J. Langton, and other Frisco bards, along with Richard’s poem “The Final Ride.” The Berkeley Review (vol. 1, no. 3) ran two Brautigan poems, “The Return of the Rivers” and “The Horse That Had a Flat Tire.” He was also featured in the September–October issue (no. 7) of Existaria, “a journal of existant [sic] hysteria,” published in Hermosa Beach, California. Charles Bukowski, Clarence Major, and Judson Crews were among the other contributors. “The Daring Little Guy on the Burma Shave Sign” and “The World Will Never End” were never collected in Richard’s later works.

  Jack Kerouac’s On the Road came out on September 5 and got a rave review in the New York Times. It jumped to number 7 on the best seller list. The fall of 1957 also saw Richard Brautigan’s work appear in book form, although under more modest circumstances. Four New Poets, the little anthology published by Inferno Press, contained four pieces by Brautigan. A slim paperback priced at $1, it featured white wrappers decorated with black handprints.

  Along with Brautigan, the other poets were Martin Hoberman, Carl Larsen (editor of Existaria), and James M. Singer, all under twenty-five. (“Here are poets representing an articulate segment of a sometime-called ‘silent generation.’”) Richard’s bio identified him as “a young poet born January 30, 1935, in Tacoma, Washington. He now lives in San Francisco, where he is working on a book of poems, The Horse That Had a Flat Tire.” Fond of this title, Brautigan used it many times since it first came to him in the mental hospital.

  By the fall of 1957, a little over a year after first arriving in the city, Dick Brautigan had become a distinctive member of the Frisco literary scene. In September (his broadside folio “book” for sale in local stores and the Inferno Press anthology about to be published), he was invited to participate in the weeklong 11th Annual Arts Festival in North Beach. As part of the festivities, the Poetry Center sponsored a number of readings at Fugazi Hall on Green Street. (This theater later became the permanent home of Beach Blanket Babylon, a hit of such long-running duration the city renamed the street outside in its honor.) Saturday night was devoted to a “reading from recent works and poems written for the ‘Poetry as Magic’ Workshop, conducted by Jack Spicer.” The daytime hours featured readings by younger poets, most of them Spicer’s gang. Richard Brautigan, Ron Loewinsohn, and Ebbe Borregaard all read that same afternoon.

  Life looked good for Dick Brautigan. The year after leaving his home base for the uncertainties of life in a distant unfamiliar city found him happily married, published, and an active member of the North Beach community, invited to read his poetry at their annual arts festival. What did it matter if he was mostly unemployed and sold his blood for bar money? His wife had a job, and the rent got paid. Ginny also typed his manuscripts and correspondence. She remembered her new husband pacing in the other room, endlessly muttering, “Oh, the irony. Oh, the pity,” dreaming his Hemingway dreams and ironically quoting The Sun Also Rises like a stuck record.

  One day, Jack Spicer came by Dick and Ginny’s place when Virginia was frantic at having misplaced some money she’d set aside for the rent. She’d already looked everywhere without success. Jack said, “
Look in all the places you think you’ve put it.”

  “I did. I did. I did. I did,” Ginny replied.

  Spicer’s uncanny ability to incorporate elements of magic into the simple details of everyday life fascinated Brautigan. “No. Look in the places where you’ve already looked,” Jack said. He was adamant and kept repeating this instruction. Ginny pulled out her leather wallet. She’d thoroughly searched it before, going through the many compartments and coming up empty-handed. This time, she dug her finger into a “secret” area and there was the folded money. Richard was flabbergasted. He talked about the episode for years. Ginny thought it not so much “magic,” but more in keeping with Spicer’s views on poetics. Magic for Spicer “was a matter of disturbance, entrance, and passion, rather than abracadabra.” Jack once remarked to Robin Blaser “that there was no good source from which to learn magic; it was something we did among ourselves.”

  Richard Brautigan celebrated his first San Francisco Christmas in a flophouse. The second yule was decidedly more festive. After all his miserable childhood holidays, it was a true joy to have a happy home and a wife he loved. Not even Virginia’s illness that season (she had bronchitis) spoiled their happiness. When she felt well enough to go out, Ginny and Dick ran into Ron Loewinsohn on Filbert Street in front of the Saints Peter and Paul Church. He said he had gotten them something for Christmas but had it locked in his car parked nearby. The Brautigans walked back with him, and Ron gave them a parchment leaf from an illuminated medieval manuscript. Dick marveled at the gilded Latin uncials. It was a rare treasure for someone not accustomed to receiving gifts. Richard Brautigan proudly hung it on the wall of his Washington Street apartment.

  fifteen: the general

  PRICE DUNN WAS born in Alabama in 1934 and “grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt.” His father worked construction for the Tennessee Valley Authority, a job requiring him to move so often that Price attended forty-two different schools before dropping out of high school at eighteen. A two-year period of drifting followed, during which he hitchhiked up and down the East Coast with a sleeping bag and a duffle. Price found his way to Chicago and out through the Dakotas to Seattle and L.A. It was easy back then for a sober man to find work, “cleaning brick or pearl diving [washing dishes].”

  In December 1955, Price Dunn headed north for San Francisco. He got as far as Big Sur. When he became stranded along the highway near Monterey, a long fascination with the writing of Henry Miller compelled Price to backtrack down the coastal route. He soon found the Anderson Creek studio of Emil White and went to work for him, doing odd jobs in return for room and board, not realizing White was a longtime friend of Miller’s.

  Heavy rains saturated Big Sur that winter. Mud slides after one big storm slammed over the hot springs owned by the Murphy family. Home today of the Esalen Institute, in 1956 the hot springs comprised little more than three rows of motel cabins, open tubs with wooden platforms covered by cedar shake roofs, and a handsome lodge fronted by a broad green lawn running right to the cliff edge. Closed to the public when mud filled most of the tubs, the hot springs looked like it might never open again for another season. The new manager stopped by Emil’s one morning soon after the slide and, needing help with the clean-up, hired Price on the spot.

  There was more work than a bulldozer could handle and no electricity to boot. The hot springs manager handed Price a shovel. The job paid no wages. Dunn dug out just one of the tubs, discovered the wine cellar, and invaded a pantry rich with fancy hams and smoked oysters. Price had “a wonderful winter,” soaking his weary bones while sipping bottle after bottle of excellent cabernet. One fine spring day, a carload of poets drove in for the weekend. When Larry Ferlinghetti, Mike McClure (and his wife, Joanna), Ronnie Bladen, and Jim and Beverly Harmon asked about renting rooms, Price told them the place was closed but they were free to camp. He moved them into an empty cabin. The poets arrived well provisioned with good food and wine. The hot springs remained without electricity, so Price lit some candles and built a fire. He also opened up the main lodge.

  Later, down at the baths, Price uncorked the last of the cellar’s vintage treasures. When the manager discovered the nonpaying guests, he fired Dunn. “You can’t fire me,” Price taunted. “I quit last week.” The gathered poets were much amused by the heated exchange. “Relax,” they told the enraged manager. “Just relax. We’ll take him out of here. He can have a ride with us.” The poets asked Price if he wanted to head up to San Francisco. “Hell, yeah, sure,” he replied. “Why not?”

  They bundled into the dilapidated car, keeping the spirit of the weekend joyously alive by driving straight to Berkeley and a scheduled re-creation of the previous fall’s Six Gallery reading. Michael McClure was one of the evening’s participants. Like most sequels, this repeat performance opted for a grander setting and more-elaborate trappings. Staged in a Berkeley theater where the auditorium was decorated with large Robert LaVigne pen drawings of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky making love, the reading featured all six of the original poets. Kenneth Rexroth again served as master of ceremonies.

  Price Dunn had the time of his life. He’d never heard of Allen Ginsberg or the others but was immediately swept up into the emotional atmosphere. “It was like a prayer meeting,” Price recalled. The stage was set with six wooden throne-sized chairs (one for each poet) left over from a previous theatrical production. Having hitchhiked from North Carolina, Jack Kerouac passed the hat for wine, kept the jug circulating, and led the chanting response when Ginsberg intoned “Howl.”

  Price went to live in a large house on Scott Street in San Francisco, a block away from Rexroth’s place. It was an enclave of poets, shared by Michael and Joanna McClure, Jim and Beverly Harmon, filmmaker Larry Jordan, and Ronald Bladen. Jordan and Bladen had moved a printing press into the basement. “It was a center for things to happen,” Joanna McClure recalled. “What you’d call a commune, except they didn’t have communes then.” Bladen, Harmon, and McClure edited and published Ark II–Moby I in the Scott Street house. Price slept in the basement with the press.

  Joanna remembered Price as always cheerful and “good-spirited,” talking to himself and the cats. She thought of him as the “ultimate primitive.” Joanna also recalled the evening Price Dunn headed for the Golden Gate Bridge with suicide on his mind and his weary return the following morning. “Said he spent the whole night sitting out on one of the girders and it was really cold.” Less than a month later, after Shig Murao broke his leg in a motorcycle accident, Lawrence Ferlinghetti hired Price to work as a clerk in City Lights.

  In August of 1956, when Richard Brautigan first showed up in the bookstore, perusing poetry titles and scanning the bulletin board, Price manned the cash register behind the counter. He thought the taciturn blond stranger “was like a spider man, because he was so tall and stooped.” Price never spoke with Richard in the shop but remembered Ferlinghetti “making a remark about that weird poet.” On another occasion, after a Brautigan visit to City Lights, Ferlinghetti said, “There’s a guy who really hates his mother.”

  “How in the hell do you know that?” Price demanded. His boss changed the subject without ever answering his question. Before the tall blond poet returned and Price could investigate the matter further, he was astonished to see the hot springs’ manager stroll into City Lights. After they exchanged a few good-natured insults, he asked Price if he’d like to return to Big Sur and go back to work for him.

  For Price, it was business as usual. One morning a week after returning, he sat in the kitchen of the lodge enjoying a cup of coffee when Dennis Murphy wandered in. He and Price were about the same age and “liked each other immediately.” Dennis was writing a novel (The Sergeant, published in 1958 and made into a movie starring Rod Steiger, with a screenplay by Murphy), which received the first Joseph Henry Jackson Award while still a work in progress. Price was fascinated by hearing about the process, as he also had literary aspirations. “I need my place over there fixed up,” Mu
rphy said. “I need a handyman. Why don’t you come to work for me?”

  Dennis lived on the other side of Hot Springs Creek on an adjacent plateau along the north rim where his grandfather, Dr. Murphy, had built a huge gabled house back when he bought the springs, hoping to turn the place into a health spa. To Price, it was “like a fantasy movie, a rich guy’s castle.” Just opposite stood a little six-room cottage. Price moved in and dubbed it “the slave quarters.” He went to work for the Murphys, landscaping a new lawn for the big house while Dennis toiled inside on his novel.

  The two young men soon became “great friends.” Dennis was a “holy terror,” a federated boxer who “could fight like bloody hell.” Price was also a fighter. He had lost his front teeth long before and now got a new plate (hors de combat) about two or three times a year. Price and Dennis “terrorized the coast,” brawling in bars, taking no shit from anyone, eventually getting eighty-sixed from Nepenthy, a restaurant and bar on Highway 1, for being too handy with their dukes. All along, an eventual showdown between them felt inevitable. As Price recalled, “it was going to be who’s the fastest gun in the West.”

  Their OK Corral moment occurred one night in the main lodge. Dennis Murphy came over for dinner, the primary attraction being the bar. At the time, a group of construction workers, hired to rebuild the cabins, had moved in, and Dennis began gambling with them after eating. Price was in the kitchen enjoying a postdinner drink when, bam, the door crashed open and Dennis’s girlfriend, her face bloody from a solid punch, staggered in. Dennis, drunk and raging, charged after her, sweeping a pile of dishes off a table, intent on mayhem.