Note: This review was written as two separate posts on the Jim Carroll email list.
The Paris Review shindig was held at the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage–a catacomb-like space underneath the bridge, on the Brooklyn side. (Jim, whose endless store of trivia never ceases to amaze me, told me that the anchorage was originally designed to hold a US mint or treasury . . . alternate plan: wine cellar.) I was surprised to find so many people lined up outside–the event obviously had a much greater turnout than the Paris Review folks had expected. I was on the guest list but got in line anyway . . . I like the anticipation, and the view of Manhattan was spectacular. After I got my “VIP” wristband, I stopped to say hello to Tom Moffett, one of the organizers, whom I’d previously met after Jim’s Xreading at the Cooler; he introduced me to the illustrious George Plimpton, editor of Paris Review. Yeah, that was cool. I entered the Anchorage through a black curtain, just as if I were entering a “house of horrors” at Coney Island or any other carnival in the USA. I wandered through the maze-like entrance and found myself “inside” the Anchorage, in a vault I can only compare to the catacombs I picture when I read Poe.
Although the temperature outside was sticky hot, inside it was cool and damp, with a dank, musty odor. There were light displays everywhere: distorted, superimposed videos, repeating videos, neon. And at least one of these displays had a soundtrack running, which echoed through the vaults and . . . well, I was thinking Disneyland, either Haunted House or Pirates of the Caribbean. People everywhere. Whattascene.
There were four consecutive “main” chambers: the first one with light displays, the “center” one containing the stage and seating (including couches), a third one with more light displays (including an interesting little dead end that had a LAWN in it), and the VIP lounge. The atmosphere was absolutely beyond description. Think crypt.
I grabbed an aisle seat in the “center” area and, asking the guy sitting behind me to guard my seat, made a few forays into to VIP lounge in hopes of getting a beverage, but it was hopeless. There were actually a few obnoxious drunks later on, but how they got that way was is a mystery to me because it took about half an hour standing in line to get even the smallest libation. In any case, I opted to stay put in my seat. The seating area was far too small to hold the crowd, so by the time the readings started, the vault was packed and there were hundreds more people in the surrounding vaults, who chattered away . . . it was very noisy!
Four readers were scheduled to appear. Two read before Jim: Helen Schulman was first (nothing like a really boring monotone reading to really get things rolling), then Rick Moody (he was okay). Jim went on third, followed by Denis Johnson (who was quite enjoyable to hear). George Plimpton served as MC, opening and closing the show, introducing each reader, and remaining onstage throughout the readings, sitting on a straightback chair behind the readers. His presence was interesting in itself.
Okay, let’s step back for an editorial moment before I continue. This was not a full-length reading; each reader was allowed about ten minutes and was required to read works published in Paris Review. Jim does these things pretty often at the Poetry Project, but I have to point out that I usually do not give him rave reviews for such performances. Jim Carroll is at his best in “LP” format, in a full-length reading, although he also does beautifully in the “single” category, with the one poem barrage. But he doesn’t always fare well in the “EP” or short reading category. I think of his reading at St. Mark’s where Darius James opened and . . . well, read my review X(http://www.catholicboy.com/stmarks.asp#cassie). All that said, with a ten-minute limit, material restricted to early Paris Review publications, and his all-time biggest allergy attack, Jim Carroll stole the show under the Brooklyn Bridge. Yes, Denis Johnson was great (and a nice wrap up for the readings), but Jim Carroll was fantastic.
George Plimpton did the introduction, pointing out that Jim published his first poem in 1968, when he was 18 years old. Jim climbed onto the stage, did his usual setup routine with his book bag and water (it’s like he’s moving in–St. Mark’s is the only place he does not do this), and re-introduced his first Paris Review poem, “Blue Poles” (originally published as “Poem”).
What struck me as he read was what always strikes me: his voice (which was, in this reading, REALLY stuffed up) and the world’s most distinctive New York accent. I made a note of a couple pronunciations at the end: “another’s dockness” (another’s darkness–I love this pronunciation of darkness, too, in “City Drops (into the Night)”) and “lovely guriiinnnd” (lovely grind). More on this momentarily . . .
Next was definitely my favorite moment of the evening, when Jim read “Prell,” which was published in Paris Review in 1970. I debate whether I should explain why first . . . what the heck. I have ALWAYS wondered about the title of this poem. Whenever I see it, I think of the shampoo, Prell, and I’ve never gotten around to doing the research to find out if Prell shampoo was around then, or if “prell” is a slang term I don’t know. But the thing is, because I’ve always been so hung up on the title, I don’t think I’d ever had a clue what the poem was about until this reading. When Jim introduced it, he said he titled it “Prell” “because I always thought the color of the shampoo Prell was so beautiful, and I have a lot of green in [the poem].” When he said that, I literally said aloud, “ohhhhhhh!” As soon as he said it, I saw it. And then he read. Green, green, green, green, green. Yessss.
Jim then read a couple of entries from The Basketball Diaries, which he NEVER reads. He introduced them by saying, “I haven’t read these in 20 years, so it’s difficult to get back the voice, but I’ll give it a shot.” The best part was that he expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the Paris Review for publishing the Basketball Diaries entries. He said, “I’m indebted to George and the Paris Review forever for that.” You ain’t gonna see THAT very often!
He started to read the “Mrs. McNulty” entry, but he stopped after the first few words, saying, “Nah, I’m sorry, I don’t want to read that. It’s too vulgar.” That got a good laugh. He opted to move on to a “more light-hearted one”: his first day at Trinity. What I liked most about this piece were his ad lib asides. During the “first day at Trinity” entry, he says: “I . . . thought how funny it was all those Jewish kids singing away those old Christian tunes like that at the chapel service in the morning. Some teacher in back of me kept poking on my shoulder to get me to sing but I just sat there with a bored look on my face.” Jim said, aside, “I thought I was gonna go to hell if I sang an Episcopalian hymn.” This was another eye-opening experience for me. I’d always focused on the hypocrisy and class issues in this entry; I never would have thought of THAT. Fortunately he threw me a bone when he read the part about Eggie Blaumgarden having “a few Renoirs over at my place.” Jim commented, “I was used to velvet Elvis paintings.”
Jim wrapped up by reading the last entry of The Basketball Diaries. It was interesting, to me, how he introduced it in relation to the context. Remember, he was there as an “established writer” revisiting his roots at a party celebrating the “New Writers” issue of Paris Review. It was almost like he was embarrassed to explain the context of the last entry of The Basketball Diaries. He mumbled, ‘this is the first remnants of . . . er . . . “I was doing a LOT of drugs.”‘ Then he read it. Another interesting moment was at the end of the entry, where his previous self comments that it’s a “nice June day out” and the present Jim Carroll looked up at the crowd and said, “it is.”
What’s interesting to me is that Jim does not consciously think of his spoken-word performances as as art form, but the conversation I had with him the next day completely solidified my theory that spoken-word is as much an art form for him as is writing poetry.
The catalyst of the conversation was the fact that his allergies were so severe that night. I mean, they were really bad, and I told him when I talked to him after his reading that night that he was the most stuffed up I’d ever heard him (which was the truth). If you get a chance to hear the reading on NPR or on Salon.com, and if you have anything to compare it to, you’ll see what I mean. Jim has terrible allergies, and the worst attacks are triggered by the adrenaline of a performance. He’ll be perfectly fine before a show, and BAM, right in the middle it will hit him. So he was fine immediately before his Paris Review reading (I talked to him), but geez, when he went onstage . . . it was a severe attack. In any case . . .
Jim was speaking entirely off-the-cuff, querying me about whether or not his reading was “clear.” What interested me was that he was not so much that he was conscious of his stuffed-up-ness, but his concern about clarity. He started talking about details. In particular, he was worried about the last line of “Blue Poles.” Earlier in this review I noted how Jim said “lovely guriiinnnd.” That was consciously crafted. Overall, Jim explained to me, he compensated for the allergy attack by reading more slowly, even though the diaries should have been read more quickly (he said) to capture the youthful voice. He took special care with the last line of “Blue Poles,” making sure to draw out the word “grind” to make it sensual, because, read quickly, it could be “grime” or something else. My point in sharing this is that Jim Carroll is such a great spoken-word artist because he sculpts each reading as meticulously as he does in when he is writing.
I want to develop the analogy. With a poem, Jim is concerned with the words on the page–how the images come alive, how the words play together, how the words look, how the lines scan, how it all comes together. He will obsess over a poem, while writing it, for years, getting it just perfect. A spoken-word performance develops over years too, and he selects poems for reading based on similar criteria, but the works that make it into a spoken-word performance have to work well spoken. Some JC poems work better than others. Probably the best ever are some of his most recent: “Dance Floor,” “Nightclubbing,” “Jukebox,” “8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain.” Gee . . . notice a theme here? All of these poems are “about” music, and they are possessed by music of their own; they have a distinct beat. He will not choose to read pieces that aren’t musical to read in spoken-word. But he can do it even with unlikely pieces . . . the Diaries . . . have you listened to the Audio Literature version of The Basketball Diaries? He can turn anything into music, and it’s amazing to me because I have seen him do it so many times. The Paris Review reading was an ideal example, because he was constrained to read what he’d published in the magazine.
Because Jim sort of poo-poos the idea that his spoken-word performances are “art” (please read “Tiny Tortures” in Forced Entries for context), I would expect his spoken-word performances to be totally off-the-cuff, you know, whatever, just-reading-kinda-things. But they aren’t. Jim Carroll is a perfectionist in everything he does, including his spoken-word performances. I have commented before on the performative aspects of his readings, but what I see now is much more complex and interesting that what I have guessed at before. What is truly intimidating to me now, given the exacting standards he applies to his spoken-word performances that he doesn’t see as art, is that he applies much more rigorous standards to his writing.
I have to say that the context is important in this situation (the Paris Review event). I’ve written before about Jim and the New York audience (most recently, XThe Cooler 5/1201 and The Bottom Line 9/9/00). New York is Jim Carroll’s home town audience, and if you can picture yourself onstage in front of your hometown peers, you’ll have some idea of what this means. After all, New York City is the world’s biggest small town, and I mean it! What comes to mind immediately is St. Mark’s, where he is an earthbound deity. It’s funny because at any Poetry Project event, he is one of the star attractions. People come specifically to see him. (There’s always a mass exodus of devotees after him and Patti Smith.) He worries obsessively about these events, not because of the fans but because of the hometown audience, his peers and superiors/mentors. These are the people who MADE him, the people he admires, and the people who look at him as just a hometown boy with a pen. Yeah, picture your first solo recital (or the equivalent) in high school. That’s the audience he addresses whenever he performs in New York City. Now think about doing that solo recital today for the folks who gave you your college scholarship and magnify the expectation. . . . At the Paris Review reading, Jim Carroll was reading for one of the forces that MADE him. Yes, you have to throw in the Poetry Project, and Poetry, and I might single out Ted Berrigan and maybe Anne Waldman. But Paris Review was the big one, especially for the Diaries. So there he was under the Brooklyn Bridge, onstage, with George Plimpton seated behind him.
I wanted to explain all of that to clarify what I said about Jim’s introduction of his Basketball Diaries entries and his expression of sincere gratitude to Paris Review. I don’t know how many there felt it, but I did. I have studied every inch of his publishing career, and I know what he said was for real. When the Paris Review published entries from the Diaries, it validated a teenager’s journals as art and something to be taken seriously. Jim said, “I’m indebted to George and the Paris Review forever for that.” So I am, folks. Thank you very much to the Paris Review. Thank you for making my favorite book possible.
I am now finding it a little difficult to go on with this tale because I worry that I’m having a private conversation with myself. I have been studying Jim Carroll for so long that minute details of his early career are like my own family history to me. But I anyone reading this must have touchpoints they can relate to . . . and I am assuming, of course, that my audience has read The Basketball Diaries. Well, I’m hoping that’s the case, and I’m hoping some of the spectators at the Paris Review reading had read the Diaries, because otherwise much would have been lost on the audience. (I pretty much assume the worst at any JC reading, actually, but in a full-length reading it’s okay.)
If people in the audience didn’t grasp Jim’s gratitude to the Paris Review in his intro, then at least 50% would have understood when he read the diary describing his first day at Trinity School. (Of course he didn’t name the school.) Jim was a working class kid suddenly in an upper class school, as the lesson in table manners at the start of the entry should make clear (see BD pgs 65-67). Since Jim was reading this out of context, he made the context more clear. When Eggie Blaumgarden says, “Got a few Renoirs over at my place . . . come over for dinner some time and check ’em out,” Jim ad libbed, “I was used to velvet Elvis paintings.” He also ad libbed the explanation of why he wouldn’t sing hymns with the other kids: “I thought I was gonna go to hell if I sang an Episcopalian hymn.” The kid in Basketball Diaries was a fish out of water in terms of class and religion. Think about it. And his next prose book was Forced Entries. This is a guy always on the outside, breaking in like a criminal and always managing to stay outside to comment. You gotta love it. Especially when you see this character standing in front of a packed room . . . with the people who made it all possible standing behind him.
When I talked to Jim about the reading, I told him how much I loved the reference to velvet Elvis paintings. Actually, what I said was that, overall, in the reading, I especially appreciated the ad libs, and I named the Elvis paintings as an example. Pay attention here, gang. Jim jumped in, saying he should have referred to his mother’s paint-by-numbers works. Oh man, this conjured up such images for me. I said to him, the velvet Elvis image was simple and direct; it conveyed the point perfectly. Which was true. With that audience, I think he had to take the most direct route available to convey the point, especially reading the Diaries out of context. But I could see his point. We seriously talked about paint-by-numbers for fifteen minutes or more. My grandfather did paint-by-numbers. My grandmother had a paint-by-numbers Last Supper over her piano for as long as I can remember. Oh, the joys of being lower-middle-class! So that’s what we talked about. Hard to detail . . . more like, geez, I have more in common with this guy than I thought!
I also wanted to say a bit more about “Prell.” I already confessed that this poem baffled me until I saw Jim read it at the Paris Review event. Afterwards, when I was talking to Jim a few days later, I confessed that the whole “green” thing had eluded me until that night. When I told Jim, I said, “I know I shouldn’t tell you this because you will know how stupid I am, but . . .” and I told him what I’ve already told you: that I’d read the poem a hundred times and had been so tangled up wondering what “prell” meant that I never saw all the GREEN until that night. He said, “You’re kidding” and started to lecture me (we do this sometimes). I stopped him and said, you know, sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to see. (This is, actually, the biggest truth I have found in my 15-year study of Jim Carroll.) After this, we had an interesting conversation about “Prell,” which I will have to report some other time because I have lost the references to the names. Damn. (The same artist who did the drawing for “A Window in Cherry Valley”/”Cheered and Greeted,” I’m pretty sure, also did an assemblage titled “Prell” at the same time as JC’s “Prell,” but there was no connection between the two . . . someone please remind me! Was it George Schneemann?) Well . . . for now, the main thing I recall is that, once Jim got over his shock concerning my total ignorance about the green, he told me a great story about that assemblage and about his own mental associations with Prell shampoo and really enjoyed telling it. Damn, I remembered this when I started writing tonight. I’ll work on remembering. Please encourage me. See, that’s why I find myself writing this stuff out at 4am — because I know I will forget it. Damn, damn, damn. CRS disease. (Can’t Remember Shit.)
Before I close, I want to highlight again the interesting moment when Jim was reading the final entry of the Diaries, where his previous self comments that it’s a “nice June day out” and the present Jim Carroll looks up at the crowd and says, “it is.” I can’t possibly go into the implications of that moment here . . . as much as I’d love to. Check out the paper I wrote concerning the same basic concept in “Tiny Tortures” . My essay deals with the multiple “identities” of Jim Carroll in any autobiographical narrative. It’s sort of a sci-fi temporal shift kinda postmodern thing. I especially hope those of you who followed the “is JC hot” thread and read my response will appreciate this essay.