Welcome to the launch of a new (ad)venture, the Abomunistic Review of Books, a holy-owned and completely emancipated subsidiary of Deep South Samizdat Books, providing quality subversive literature to the Greater New Orleans community at various street markets and festivals, and to the world through the magick of the internet.
ABOUMISTS BELIEVE WHAT THEY DREAM ONLY
AFTER IT COMES TRUE.
I am Michael Parker, underpaid and overeducated writer, editor and carnival barker of this intellectual funhouse. I agonized over an appropriate title, with which I hope to accomplish several objectives: 1), crass self-promotion of my bookselling business (accessible online at amazon.com/shops/deepsouthsamizdatbooks), which is not exactly drowning me in filthy lucre just yet; 2) exploration of the local, regional and global literary scene, through reviews, commentary, interviews, announcements and promotion of events, on-the-spot reporting from the barricades of the never-ending struggle against the bland conformity and emotional numbness of the larger reality-tv-show, manufactured-consent Moloch society, and 3) an ongoing outlet for my personal passions and preoccupations, so I don't have to inflict them on my daughter during our homeschooling lessons ("Don't you see, Zora, the Federal Reserve has no formal connection to the U.S. government, much less a constitutional mandate! There's absolutely no accountability!" "Daddy, you're scaring me again. Can we do math instead?" "This is your math lesson!"
ABOMUNIST CHILDREN MUST BE REARED ABOMUNIBLY.
Given all of those considerations, and my desire to ground the review firmly in the shifting soil of New Orleans without resorting to obvious literary cliches (no references to confederacies of dunces, kindness of strangers, interviewing of vampires, confederacies of vampires, kindness of dunces, etc.), I decided to reference the brilliant, eccentric African-American surrealist Bob Kaufman. Born in New Orleans, one of thirteen children of a teacher and a Pullman porter. Lived most of his adult life in San Francisco after a stint in the Merchant Marine. A very underrated poet of the Beat Generation/Black Mountain/San Francisco Poetry Renaissance Axis of Enlightenment the revolutionized post-World War II literature. Like many of those writers, Kaufman wrote quite self-consciously about the life and role of the poet within society, in his case a society and a counterculture forged from the fires of Depression and War, Jim Crow and Civil Rights, political radicalism (notably as an activist with the militantly leftist Seaman's International Union) and McCarthyism, Abstract Expressionism and Bebop (I was serendipitously reminded while researching Kaufman that his son was named Parker, after sax sorcerer Charlie).
IN TIMES OF NATIONAL PERIL, ABOMUNISTS, AS REALITY
AMERICANS, STAND READY TO DRINK THEMSELVES
TO DEATH FOR THEIR COUNTRY.
Like the European Dadaists and Surrealists, many of the Beats and their peers were drawn to the manifesto as a form, and I would argue that Kaufman's "Abomunist Manifesto" is one of the best, its imagery and rhythm seeming to emanate from some utopian after-hours jam session populated by Tristan Tzara, Charles Mingus and Lenny Bruce. It can be found in Kaufman's first book, Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (1965), long out of print, or in the outstanding anthology The Outlaw Bible of american poetry. That book contains a biographical essay by Maria Damun, from which I have gleaned some of the details I share with you. Basically, Kaufman's work and life represent a synthesis that has done so much to energize American culture over the last 65 years or so: New Orleans, west coast, mysticism, radical politics, African America, surrealism, jazz... His spirit inspires these posts, and I will try to live up to that inspiration.
ABOMUNIST POETS, CONFIDENT THAT THE NEW LITERARY
FORM "FOOT-PRINTISM" HAS FREED THE ARTIST
OF OUTMODED RESTRICTIONS, SUCH AS: THE ABILITY TO
READ AND WRITE, OR THE DESIRE TO COMMUNICATE,
MUST BE PREPARED TO READ THEIR WORK AT DENTAL
COLLEGES, EMBALMING SCHOOLS, HOMES FOR UNWED
MOTHERS, HOMES FOR WED MOTHERS, INSANE ASYLUMS,
USO CANTEENS, KINDERGARTENS, AND COUNTY JAILS.
ABOMUNISTS NEVER COMPROMISE THEIR REJECTIONARY
PHILOSOPHY.
Thanks for coming aboard. Hope you can stay a while.
