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PRESENTS
Our Featured Author
Paul Krassner
The author of Sex, Drugs and the Twinkie Murders has been labeled “one of the comic geniuses of the 20th century.” On the other hand, after Life Magazine published a favorable profile of him, the FBI sent a poison pen letter to the editor, complaining: “To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute. He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.” George Carlin agreed, saying “This man is dangerous – and funny; and necessary.” We think so too!
Krassner’s style of journalism constantly blurs the line between observer and participant. He covered the antiwar movement, then co-founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. He published material on the psychedelic revolution, then took LSD with Tim Leary, Ram Dass and Ken Kesey, later accompanying Groucho Marx on his first acid trip.
After Krassner edited Lenny Bruce’s autobiography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, Lenny encouraged him to become a stand up comedian himself. He opened at Art D’Lugoff’s Village Gate in 1961. He rarely works the comedy-club circuit now, preferring to perform on campuses and theaters and in art galleries, even at the Brentwood Bakery in Los Angeles where each person in his audience was given a free pastry of their choice. Over the years, he has built up a cult following that has been edging into mainstream awareness.
LU – Were you raised in a politically active family – one that supported your anti-establishment leanings?
PK – It was important to my parents to vote, and my father was active in his union, but that was it. Although they were Democrats, they were culturally conservative. They were embarrassed by – even ashamed of – my publishing The Realist, but remained totally supportive of my right to do it. After my father died, my mother told me that he had secretly admired my work.
LU – What did inspire or lead you to a lifetime of satirical writing on current events and/or underground journalism? Was it by design or chance?
PK – Even in my childhood, I perceived reality through a filter of absurdity.
LU – This must have manifested in some tangible way when you were a youngster. How?
PK – I was a child prodigy violinist and at the age of 6 became the youngest concert artist ever to perform at Carnegie Hall. People asked me for my autograph, and although I didn't know the meaning of the word, absurd, I was living the experience. In high school, I wrote the senior play.
LU – What would a teen aged Paul Krassner write in a senior play? Would you give us a synopsis?
PK – It was about a teacher named Mr. Schnook and his students. Really just various jokes strung together, sort of like a Woody Allen Movie.
LU – What about college?
PK – I was majoring in Journalism and performing stand-up under the name of Paul Maul. While in college, I started working for an anti-censorship paper, The Independent. After I left college I started working there full time. So, I never had a normal job where I had to be interviewed and wear a suit and tie. I became their managing editor and also did free-lance stuff for Mad magazine. But Mad was aimed at a teenage audience, and there was no satirical magazine for adults. So it was a kind of organic evolution toward The Realist, which was essentially a combination of satire and alternative journalism.
LU – What do you feel your writing accomplishes?
PK – It makes people laugh, or gives them information, or provides insights, or inspires them, or bores them.
LU – Who do you think are the people you are writing for?
PK – They are my equals, it's just that I'm the one with a public forum, and in effect I articulate their consciousness. They transcend age or gender; what they have in common is an awareness of bullshit and an appreciation of its exposure.
LU – Why did you write Sex, Drugs and the Twinkie Murders?
PK – I wanted to provide young people with an understanding that they don't get in history classes. For example, they've heard of the Patty Hearst trial and the Twinkie murders, but my accounts of them are unique because of my underground connections.
LU – Why should people be interested in the background from news items from over the past 20 or 30 years.
PK – Not only to give them an awareness of their own countercultural roots, but also to see the way things have changed, such as condoms, which pharmacists were once arrested for selling, and now they're given out free in schools. Abortion is legal now, but I describe a time during the '60s when it was illegal and I became an underground abortion referral service.
LU – You describe running an abortion referral service in your book, Sex, Drugs and the Twinkie Murders. Did you have any fear that you might get caught and arrested for your referral service? Your description of having been detained and questioned for this seems to portray a fairly savvy individual. Were you willing to get imprisoned to help the women who contacted you for referrals?
PK – I was prepared to go to prison if necessary, but planned to use a first Amendment defense. I got subpoenaed by District Attorneys in New York, but refused to testify before the grand jury. The D.A. bluffed and said that they had the doctor's financial records showing the payoff's I got, but since I had never taken a penny I knew he was bluffing and called him a liar. He threatened to charge me with being in a criminal conspiracy, but at this point Attorney Gerald Lefcourt filed a suit on my behalf challenging the constitutionality of the abortion law, pointing out that the D.A. had no power to investigate the violation of an unconstitutional law and therefore could not force me to testify before the grand jury. I became the only plaintiff in the first lawsuit to declare the abortion laws unconstitutional in New York. Later, various women's groups joined the suit and ultimately the New York legislature repealed the criminal sanctions against abortion — prior to the Supreme Court decision in Roe VS. Wade. Maybe now I can be a courier for doctors who are afraid to give their patients RU486.
LU – Describe interesting experiences you had relating to the researching and writing of this book.
PK – Well, since much of it is about my own experiences, I can't complain about the research. Having a magazine gave me the opportunity to do interviews. In the process, I was fortunate to meet icons like Terence McKenna, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, Ken Kesey, Tim Leary, Lenny Bruce, Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg – all of whom I became friends with – and then to write about those encounters. This was participatory journalism at its best.
LU – What other books or CDs are currently in print and available that you have authored?
PK – Pot Stories For the Soul (with a foreword by Harlan Ellison). The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race: The Satirical Writings of Paul Krassner (with a foreword by Kurt Vonnegut). Impolite Interviews. And my latest CD, about the presidential campaign, is titled Campaign in the Ass.
LU – What awards or public recognition (good and bad) have you received as a writer/journalist?
PK – I'm the only person in the world ever to receive awards from both Playboy (for satire) and the Feminist Party Media Workshop (for journalism). I had written a fable for Playboy titled Thomas Eagleton Seagull, about a Vice-Presidential candidate who was investigated by his opponent's staff and was discovered to have been a seagull. The Feminist Party award was for the Realist in general and conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell's articles specifically. She revealed the plot behind the Watergate break-in while the mainstream media were still calling it a third-rate burglary and a caper.
LU – How has the field of political satirical reporting changed since you started doing this and do you feel that that today's writers are taking the same kinds of risks that you did?
PK – They're not risks now. The taboos have pretty much eroded. At least the taboos have disappeared on the internet and cable TV and the alternative press. But, what I mean by a taboo eroding is that it's now an accepted reality that we have government by bribery when it was always a dirty secret. However, judging by the presidential debates – plus the way they're reported – you have no idea of the dangers of corporate globalization or that there is a war on some people who use some medicines and its relation to the prison industrial system.
LU – Do you feel the torch that you, in a sense carried with Lenny Bruce and then carried on alone after his death will continue?
PK – If it had to depend on just Lenny and me, there would be no hope in that area. There was a metaphorical torch we carried representing the tradition that we were part of, and the burning of which (because of incredible technology and fierce competition), is accelerating. That tradition goes all the way back to Tom Paine during the American Revolution, and Brann's Iconoclast during the 1890's and in the mid 1900's, was George Selde's In Fact and I.F. Stone's Weekly. Satirically speaking, there was mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, among others. But, I didn't start publishing in order to become part of a tradition, I just wanted to provide an outlet for free expression, to communicate without compromise, and when I launched the Realist in 1958, I was indeed a lone voice.
LU – You were a mover during times of great change in our country. Your colleagues are having movies made about their lives. Do you sometimes get the feeling that you are on the outside watching events unfold?
PK – Even when I'm in the middle of those events, I'm still outside 'em. But I love being a participant and observer simultaneously. That's why, for the frontespiece quote in Sex, Drugs and the Twinkie Murders, I used a piece of advice Ken Kesey once gave me: "Always stay in your own movie."
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