Posted on 09/14/2023 6:13:34 PM PDT by Rummyfan
Bonfire was great. The movie was a butchered mess. The Hollywood creeps were unable to comprehend what the book was actually about.
I can still remember the visuals that some of the scenes in that book conjured in my mind. Just very vivid writing. Something about the “lava” from the ejection seat boost motor remnant which was tangled in the test pilot’s parachute lines melting through the faceshield of his helmet and burning into his eye socket. He’s just sort of coolly dealing with this series of unbelievable problems starting with his plane losing control and then parachuting down to the desert.
We hero worshipped the Mercury 7 astronauts and even listened to Sheppard's, Grissom's and Glenn's flights on radio in the classroom in elementary school.
Wolfe's book captured those times perfectly.
Life was more free back then. There were characters all over but Wolfe was smart enough and talented enough to write it all down
I interviewed keasey, right after Jim Jones happened. Asked if he saw any correlations between his acid-spiked Kool-Aid on unsuspecting people, and Jone’s cyanide punch to followers.
He didn’t answer, but his look was toxic.
“The Movie was a disaster...”
Yeah, never saw it but have the impression it’s one of the biggest fails in movie hsitory.
It may remain surprising, but people with the yarbles can easily get away with telling the truth. It’s the Info Age, for crissakes; masticating spectators are a doomed species. ABSOLUTELY ALL the data you need to create a cognitive revolution is a mouse click away. The Nazi Deep State’s supply lines, influence channels, hidden assets, personnel lists, banking data...it’s all an open book. Raid the archives, do the research, put it together, show others how to put it together. There is a Wikipedia page called “Hitler’s Philosophers”. Start there
Loved his master of the universe characterization who could not walk a dog.
“It’s weird how the 50’s beat poets were the pioneers for the ‘60s.”
Yes, that was something that was promoted in the press. But to get some real flavor of that - there is on the YT, a Firing Line episode where Jack Kerouac and Ed Sanders and Lewis Yablonsky. Buckley starts the discussion. “Tonight we talk about” (pregnant pause) “the hippies”, as if it is a word one not ought to say in public. LOL. It’s especially funny because Buckley has that stick-up-his-ass affected accent.
Anyway, Ed Sanders starts talking about all the hippy-dippy free love shit and all that other nonsenss. Kerouac isn’t having any of it. He hated hippies!
Watch: https://youtu.be/oaBnIzY3R00?si=zjjDmzvjNE_PmVXL
Sanders was an early pioneer in leftist projection. Of all the disasters of 1968, one I’d forgotten about was the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Or was Czechoslavakia? Anyway, a brutal putdown. Buckley queries about this, doesn’t sound like Love to me, and Sanders tries to conflate it to Mayor Daley cracking heads at the ‘68 DNC in Chicago.
Sanders did write a definitive account of the Manson family, but the “Beats” didn’t care for what the Hippies were about. Yablonski was a strange cat, seems like a good guy.
Rd later.
Gee, sounds a lot like - Rush.
His last book is wonderful and fun, especially if you are a rational person who questions Darwinism. The Kingdom of Speech.
Very entertaining. Not dry at all. Wolfe reviews the issue of speech as it bears on the question of evolution, and to my mind definitively refutes Darwinism. In the meanwhile, he humorously makes Darwin, Chomsky and assorted others look like the jerks they are.
Yes I really enjoyed that one too. There is also a collection of essays Hooking Up which is very good.
I think he went by “Tom” because there was an earlier American novelist named Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938).
“Kerouac isn’t having any of it. He hated hippies!”
He was a complex character. I’ve read some great stories about him. A pot smoking fan of Richard Nixon and law and order. A French Canadian raised in the Catholic Church whose character was shaped by it, which would shock both fans of the Beats and the Catholic church.
“Of all the disasters of 1968, one I’d forgotten about was the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Or was Czechoslavakia? Anyway, a brutal putdown.”
I think Hungary was 1954 and the Czechs 1968. I guess I could google it but what fun is that.
A generation before the Beats were the Nature Boys:
https://topanganewtimes.com/2022/12/02/the-nature-boystopangas-original-hippies/
The movie was such a disaster that a book as written about the making of it, a kind of how-to-not-make-a-flop.
Hungarian Revolution 1956….. the Prague Spring and subsequent put/down by the Soviets 1968….
Thanks!
Kerouac was (obviously) famously drunk at that Firing Line interview. He didn’t live too much longer after that. I did get a sense of that vibe, a working class catholic guy not happy with Those People. He’d have been perfect as Archie’s pool hall bar buddy on All In The Family, right out of central casting.
The Freaks were different, the Hippies were different, these were all manufactured phenomena designed and intended to “shock the squares”, this was the whole point after all. That the young kids putting flowers in their hair hitching a ride to San Francisco knew none of this is beside the point. Even the locals in California were astonished. “Where’d all these people come from?”
I just took a brief look at it, I’ll definitely want to watch it later. One of The Fugs is on it too, lol, a band famous for Boobsalot.
I used to watch Buckley’s Firing Line whenever I could. Buckley always had some liberal weasel like Michael Kinsley serve as moderator. There’s just nothing today that compares with that program. Or maybe there is and I just don’t know about it.
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