One Busy Fug

Last fall, I let my 14-year-old son skip school for a couple of days so we could drive to the city to see a reunion of the Fugs, the proto-folk-punk band formed in 1964 by Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, at the Knitting Factory. The musicians were in fine form, cranking out two sets of updated oldies and new material; Kupferberg, now in his 80s and the leading candidate for Oldest Living Rock Star, was spry as all get-out. My most vivid memory, though, is of the band's live debut of Sanders' song "Impeach George Bush" ("Drive him from power/Just like we drove the malevolent Nixon back to San Clemente/Whoa-oh ?"). At one point, Sanders muffed the words a bit, but at my side I could hear an adolescent voice singing them straight through. My son had downloaded Sanders' solo recording from Thurston Moore's Protest Records website, and had the lyrics down cold. So much for dinosaurdom.

Read anything about Sanders, and you'll likely be treated to a hyphenated appellation along the lines of "poet-journalist-inventor-publisher-novelist" or some such, by way of introduction. But as Robert Creeley once noted, "It would be altogether pointless to divide Edward Sanders into categories: poetry, fiction, music," and that attempts to pigeonhole his work into separate genres "seem now useless echoes of an isolating taxonomy of a century ago." Whether noodling on his Talking Tie, writing a verse biography of Chekhov, or publishing a small-town newspaper, there is always a distinctive Sanders stamp on the work, and a natural continuity from one form to another.

That work's latest manifestation is the newly completed and vastly enlarged Tales of Beatnik Glory (Thunder's Mouth Press, $16.95), a 784-page slab of fictive Beat/Hip-era revelry, drawn on the author's own experiences in the 1960s, when a friendly new world disorder seemed possible, and the Lower East Side provided a mixing bowl for whipping up impromptu festivals of life. Sanders' first 17 Tales came out in 1975, and an expanded edition, with a second volume added, was published in 1990. The new complete tome adds on the final two volumes, almost doubling the size, and expands the action into Midwest hippie communes and the psychedelic bastions of California.

But the crux of the interwoven lives of the characters is embedded in the area east of 5th between Delancey and 14th Sts., where Sanders himself stomped throughout the 60s. Much of the action takes place in Lower East Side hotspots-some real, like Stanley's Bar and Sanders' own Peace Eye Bookstore, and in others, like the House of Nothingness Café and the Luminous Animal Theater, that Sanders says "should have existed, but didn't." In much the same way, the characters drift, drive or are driven through real-world events of the 60s-the assassinations, the Freedom Rides, the Cuban missile crisis-as well as playing key roles in some that weren't, but should have been. (Oh, to have been present at the Great Tompkins Park Beatnik-to-Hippie Conversion Ceremony?.)

I caught up with Sanders to talk about the book, by phone, at his home up in Woodstock.

Congratulations on the finished product.Yeah, I'm glad it's out, after such a long period of creation. It took 30 years, because I thought initially that there'd only be one volume, and then as I indicated in the final story in the book-

Where the characters all get together and try to talk you into writing more? They come around and tell me, "What is this, Sanders? Let's go-We have longer lives, more stuff to do-why don't you write about us?" That's sort of the way it was. When you create characters as vivid as Uncle Thrills or Sam Thomas or John Barrett or Louise Adams or Claudia Pred or any of these archetypal denizens of the civil rights/peace/underground/mimeograph revolution/filmmaker generation, they have a vitality of soul that made them the sort that wanted to live on and on. Other books intervened, but I always kept ideas and notes for stories. And all my other researches were of use. My researches for the book on Chekhov helped provide insight into these characters in Tales of Beatnik Glory; the same thing with my long poem "Yiddish-Speaking Socialists of the Lower East Side," which sort of led to the story "Farbrente Rose" in Volume Two.

I kept getting invited to Kerouac events over the years, so I started studying his life, which led to the story "The Ghost on 20th" in Volume Four. My work with the Fugs in touring California and playing the psychedelic light shows-the Kaleidoscope in L.A., the Avalon Ballroom in S.F., playing for the hippies outdoors in Golden Gate Park, experiencing Topanga Canyon in the 60s, Malibu, Hollywood-led to some of the stories in Volume Four, the one about Johnny Ray Slage, the story about Debbie Harnigan?

Well, it's a group of people you obviously enjoyed hanging out with. I knew them. I knew them in my soul, so I could easily write about them. I realized Debbie had a fatal flaw and a death wish, that this charismatic, wonderful singer should have a hunger for oblivion at the same time. So I have her dying of an overdose as her helicopter takes off out of Giants Stadium with the people still on their feet applauding. It's a long way from hanging out on Avenue B.

You must have seen people live that rags-to-riches-to-ruin story. Janis [Joplin] was a good friend. I saw her not long before she died.

And you must have known older leftists who were a lot like the character Rose Snyder. When I came to Woodstock, there was some mild muckraking and reform after Nixon fell, so in the late 70s there was a resurgence of activism. And the leaders were older, in their 60s and 70s. There was a guy up here running the consumer movement who had once chained himself to the Statue of Liberty in protest against the House Un-American Activities Committee. There were a number of older women, especially, who had been socialist activists in the 30s. Rose is modeled on some of these women I met up here, but also some women in the early Southern Tenants Farm Workers Union and in the early needle trades unions, especially after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911. Clara Lemlich is one of them-she was one of the farbrente maydlach, the "burning young women," and Rose Schneiderman.

I didn't get Rose Snyder from Rose Schneiderman, though there's a similarity in the name. Rose Snyder has a little bit of the very young Dorothy Day before she became saint-like. And there are nonviolent activists like Barbara Deming and Marjorie Swann, many women with fierce personalities who are sort of melted together into the character of Rose, who exists throughout the book as a leitmotif of "Never give up on the beliefs of your youth"-they're just as valid when you have a walker and are half-blind as when you're young and can run 15 miles a day.

You quote from the preamble to the IWW constitution, about building a "society in which it is easier to be good," and that seems to be a through-line. Yeah. A peaceful society without war, where nations get along, there are no border disputes, where there's cradle-to-grave health care and everybody has a six-week paid vacation, and people can change careers without worrying about their future. That's the biggest thing now-people get these jobs and they're trapped forever. It's the same way with the downside of rent control. You get these apartments, and where are you going to move? You're trapped in the same house your whole life and the same career. People in America, even in the professions, don't take more than a week's vacation-there's no downtime, there's no goof-time. We need a society where it's not only easier to be good, but easier to take time off and goof around, study things and engage in strange research.

There are a couple of verse sections, like "Sappho on East Seventh." I was experimenting with the mixing of verse and text-which is right out of William Carlos Williams' Spring and All. That's where the poem ("so much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens") is, so I realized you could embed poetry inside of a prose text pretty easily. I'm supposed to be part of an international avant-garde, so I figured, well, this is part of it.

I'm going to read one sentence from Volume Three: "In Apollinaire's Vie Anecdotique, anecdotes crowd the life-track like layers of feathers on a hawk's wings and one anecdote is barely under way when the next one begins." Did you find that that was true for the whole book? That a bit of one story would lead into another one? That's kind of the way it is with life situations. My first conscious encounter with that phenomenon came when I became close with Charles Olson, who was my mentor beginning in '62 till death in '69. He would be in the middle of an anecdote, and then all of a sudden another one would sprout out, so they were like layered anecdotes. Very interesting. I guess he could only do it with people that he felt could follow it-you had to have your wits about you to follow that kind of thing. And is an anecdote ever fully told? There are always aspects that you can't include in the anecdote for whatever reason. So they do layer together. And the book is a big system-people may like it or not like it, but it is a metaphysical system. It was constructed with care. Some people are not going to be able to leap into it to the depth they could, but it is right there, waiting.

When we were setting this interview up, you mentioned you were getting involved in the Ohio count-the-vote effort. I've joined a group of investigators called Crisis in Voting, and we've opened up a website. Information on the two other investigators is on the website, crisisinvoting.org. One of them is my friend Larry Larsen, with whom I worked investigating the Manson family and who has for years been a very prominent private investigator in Los Angeles. This whole election thing is going to die down, and everybody's going to say-not everybody, but many people will say, including the liberal establishment-that it was fairly won. But our group is going to do a much deeper investigation into this than what's going on. It may take years. I'm going to devote significant time to it during the next year or two, to interview people and to really take a look at electronic voting, the issue of long-distance hacking of computer systems.

Well, maybe you'll get help from Senator Boxer. She was brave. But the liberals and the Democrats are going to be so occupied saving Social Security and preventing a gutting of social programs and stopping, say, the next invasion, the imposition of the draft so they can do more invasions. We have to stop the imposition of the draft so they won't be able to do so many new wars-you know: "Four more wars, four more years?" So the right wing is very cunning. They know the whole Democratic apparatus will have to swing into action. I mean, their fight is still against FDR. It's very Middle Eastern-these right-wingers have kept these grudges for 80 years now.

On the other hand, if there has been enough massive high-tech vote fraud, it won't matter who the Democrats run. They could run the reincarnation of John Kennedy, and he'd lose because they'd steal it. So we're going to take a look at that. We're keeping an open mind and not jumping to any conclusions, and we'll see where it stands. But we're going to do a severely serious investigation of the current voting situation. Here in New York state, the state's under mandate-they've gotten a year's extension, to 2006-under the Help Americans Vote Act, to institute an electronic system. New York state, since 1896, has had a very accessible, very viable, very accurate, very useful and very honest system of mechanical voting. It works. We know the results almost as quickly as with an electronic system, maybe quicker. So what's the deal? Why should New York state have to go on some thing where they can be hacked by right-wing nuts? Anyway, I'm raving on. But that's what I'm involved in.

I'm [also] tooling up my life now for Volume Four of America: A History in Verse, which will cover the fall of Nixon up through the rise of Reagan. So I'm working on that, and this Crisis in Voting project.

I have to ask you about another Ohio controversy. The Fugs still aren't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. What's up with that? It's a disgrace. I see to my horror that Jackson Browne-is Jackson Browne in there?-the Eagles are in there, Bruce Springsteen's in there. Hey, we're waiting for the phone call. Is it still Ahmet Ertegun that's the controlling factor, or Jann Wenner? Come on Jann! Come on Ahmet! They could give Tuli and I those honorary things that they give to pioneers. We helped pave the road for HBO. It's true! The producers of Gone With the Wind paid a $5,000 fine, as I talk about in Volume One of America: A History in Verse, for Clark Gable saying "damn" in 1939. Speed forward to Lenny Bruce in '64 getting arrested at the Cafe Au Go-Go. And then the Fugs broke in on the scene and helped to change it so that Tony Soprano could utter his foul-mouthed expletives to millions of people. I mean, Tony Soprano would've been there in jail with Lenny Bruce. It's a shame.

It's a crying shame, Ed. It's a Johnny Ray shame. It's a "Mood Indigo" shame. It's a "Tears on My Pillow" shame. It's a "Cry Baby Cry" shame. It's a "Heartbreak Hotel" shame. It's a ? it's a ? waiting-for-the-call-from-Cleveland ? (sounds of sobbing) ?

Ed, you OK? You have some tissues there? ? waiting for ? a vindication of my youth ? (sniffles) ?

Are you doing any appearances down in New York related to the book? I have Rapidograph, will sign. I've told them I'm willing. But you know, the thing about when a book like this comes out is, it's a 30-year book-it's going to take a while for it to settle in, given the circumstances. It is a universe of itself, and it requires study and getting into it. So anytime in the next five years is pub date.