Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
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| Letter: January 15, 1963 |
TUES. NITE, 1/15/63
Tamara—
Nickle-do
Nickle-don’t
Erghy perghy
pugerwhfizzle
Damniman
Can-Can!
antidisestablishmentarianism
funky blues
Charlie Parker[1]
Liberace[2]
Jack Kerouac[3]
Grace Metalious[4]
E.E.Cummings[5]
Ogden Crash[6]
Rah, Colgate!
Up Ithaka!
We want the Kingston Trio[7]!
Mickey knocker somma lacha somectitti, azuki kabuki fryin’ pan grand stand Han Stan, Man!
Tesqualla! Tillergutch, scragglemont, alabastard!
(Quotation mark) (unprintable word) (question mark) (Quotation mark) said the spider to the fly on the sly with a stye in his eye. Said the bug to the mug so they chugged up the rug, “Whosunt ficklequinney Thomas de Hoosier hot-shots, and furthermore, ersatz is lustin’ stout balls clover!”
This morning, after eating my daily morning paper and reading my toast and bacon and dissolving my question mark with a tranquilizer, picked up my breifcase [sic], put on my hat, kissed my wife goodbye, and went back to bed.
Where I shot myself in the head
in a dream
or so it seemed
and woke up smiling
because they were piling
the earth above my seminary
in the cemetery.
Next, because I was an artist, I took a canvas, flung multicolored gobs of paint at it from 20 feet back, layed [sic] it on the floor, pissed on it, and forced my faithful dog to lick up the pisspotpaint until I had finished masterpiece, complete, with canine saliva and an oder [sic] which is unbearable. This great painting, titled “Paint Piss, and Tears,” and mailed it to the metropolitan museum of art.
Then I turned on the three AM and one FM radios, the phonograph, the TV, the garbage disposal, and the washing machine, to flood the house all day with beautiful electronic music.
Feeling rather scuzzy, I buried my body in the eliaspelish* gasping for a breath of amonia [sic] and a drink of sperm.
Elsicuted my felistande, rigrobing my stintel, I knew it was luseyess.[8] F**kkkle fingles never did get hot lips page, who, in case you don’t know it, is the greatest known player Lawrence Welk ever heard. Walking in darkness, I was blinded by a flash of cosmic phillsae.
Malorca, felasididdle expunt juzmel singstan. Gleary beery (Wallace).[9] But as I said, I was blinded. “Good night!,” I cried, “that light! Such a blight, not right, Devil fight, that light my kite
well alright
from you kite
never”
And: “Out of sight!
Oh, fight
tonight
no light
no bright
all dark
all stark
for sharks
to come and park,
hark!
Whail, Whale.
Thelonius [sic] made a Monk-ey out of me.[10] And you how well jazz pays off when Stan Getz [11] Buddy Rich.[12] Maxim Gorky,[13] had no doorkey, so his fair lady, a cat-fraidy, would not let him in. Boys, the best place to get pussy is, naturally, a cat house.
If at first you don’t succeed, find a new girl. Blastelphalpembottenheigen, My God, Mon dieu,…[truncated]
[1] Parker, Charlie, Jr. (a.k.a. “Yardbird” and “Bird”) b. 1920. Highly influential American jazz sax soloist and composer iconic to the hipster Beat generations and responsible for personifying jazz musicians as intellectual, philosophical, and artistically uncompromising.
[2] Liberace (Władziu Valentino Liberace). b. 1919. American pianist and singer remembered for his flamboyant lifestyle and his showmanship.
[3] Kerouac, Jack. b. 1922. American poet and novelist considered one of the major pioneers of the Beat movement and immortalized by his 1957 autobiographical novel, On the Road.
[4] Metalious, Grace. b. 1924. American author renowned for her scandalous 1956 novel, Peyton Place.
[5] cummings, e.e. (a.k.a. Edward Estlin Cummings) b. 1894. American poet, novelist and playwright considered one of the major American literary voices of the 20th century and standard reading for high school English classes.
[6] Nash, Ogden. b. 1902), American poet and humorist known for his droll, light verse.
[7] The Kingston Trio: San Francisco pop-folk music group started by musicians Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds, remembered for their 1958 hit, "Tom Dooley,” and many others.
[8] Bangs is very likely parodying Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, the author of Ulysses. The sophisticated linguistic and semiotic wordplay of Joyce's modernist masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, is considered by most to be challenging reading. Besides the obvious parallels between the writing style of Finnegans Wake and bebop-jazz, Bangs might have also been interested by the eccentric and brilliant author, who exiled himself from Ireland in 1904. The 1922 publication of Joyce's novel, Ulysses, not only riled censors in Europe and North America, who charged the book with pornography, but also lead to a significant 1933 ruling by enlightened U.S. Supreme Court Justice John M. Woolsey, who vindicated Ulysses and helped to lift the ban on subsequent works of literature whose vulgar language and sexual content would have otherwise deemed them unfit for publication.
[9] Beery, Wallace Fitzgerald. b. 1885. American film actor renowned as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his Academy Award-winning lead role in The Champ.
[10] Monk, Thelonious Sphere. b. 1917. American jazz pianist and composer known for his improvisational style; the second most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington.
[11] Getz, Stan. b. 1927. American jazz tenor saxophonist who performed bebop and cool jazz but is best remembered for popularizing bossa nova.
[12] Rich, Buddy. b. 1917. American bandleader virtuoso drummer who performed with Tommy Dorsey, Count Bassie, and Harry James, among others.
[13] Gorky, Maxim (Alexei Maximovich Peshkov). b. 1868. Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist associated with Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov.
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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