Tired of sitting in the dark listening to the hum from your air conditioner because you can't even turn on a 60 watt bulb to read by or the fuse will blow -- then head to the beach where there is plenty of light. Several new works that capture the charm of bohemia are available to take along.
CAPTURED, an oral history of indie filmmaking on the lower east side. The New York Press reports ... "In a way, the massive new anthology Captured is reminiscent of the Lower East Side itself—or at least of what the Lower East Side once represented. The hundreds of voices contained here range from the cultured intellectual to the foulmouthed junkie hipster to the sincere True Believer in the Transcendent Power of Art. In that it can at times be contradictory, frustrating—even annoying. But it can also be inspiring, lively, funny and full of unexpected little touches and absolutely unique New York characters, like Taylor Mead, M. M. Serra and the late Rockets Redglare...In many ways, the cast of characters—from Ginsberg to Steve Buscemi—reads like a who's-who of Village hipsterdom over the past half-century.
A respectable crew of former Chelseaites are featured. Notably, Harry Smith, who made his home at the Chelsea during the final years of his life. Jonas Mekas and the reigning queen of bohemia, Penny Arcade are also represented.
The Village Voice reviews Richard Hell's new novel, Godlike. "...a moving, scathing novel about the "love" of two male poets, the married 27-year-old Paul Vaughn and 16-year-old Kentucky prodigy Randall Terence Wode a/k/a "T."
The two inhabit '70s downtown NYC dives (memorably, T. pisses in a champagne glass at Max's Kansas City), crash collating parties, haunt readings, and sit alone in T.'s dinky apartment collaborating on poems and chewing scenery as self-professed flaneurs, "godlike philosopher poets" of the L.E.S. "languorously sipping their fer mented grain as they spun ideas and mental- sensual constructions of life-language in the air for the pleasure of their own delectation."
Hell's earlier work of poetry "Across the Years," includes a cd that was recorded at the Chelsea Hotel.
A Ballad for Gone America with Charles Bukowski, a CD by Tom Russell is a sonic montage of songs, voiceover narration, background instrumentals, interview excerpts and field recordings about the bohemian California of the '50s and '60s, when Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Lenny Bruce, Edward Abbey, Harry Partch, Buck Owens and Ramblin' Jack Elliott roamed. The album resembles a Ken Burns PBS documentary without the visuals. From the Houston Chronicle.
Bukowski, of course, stayed at the Chelsea, in Janis Joplin's room, when he came to read at St. Mark's Poetry Project. You can read about his Chelsea experience in his book Women.
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