A Counterculture Figure Invokes the Spirit of Days Long Gonzo

MURDER AT THE CONSPIRACY CONVENTION AND OTHER AMERICAN ABSURDITIES

By Paul Krassner

Barricade Books

332 pages, $17.95

Yippie, prankster, left-leaning realist, Paul Krassner is at it again. The man who had lunch with John and Yoko, pulled gonzo tricks with Ken Kesey, published the journal the Realist for decades and was seen among more famous people of the 1950s and ‘60s than Forrest Gump has put together a collection of more than 40 of his outrageous and ribald essays in “Murder at the Conspiracy Convention and Other American Absurdities.” At a time when political correctness seems to have drained humor from political discourse, his timing couldn’t be more perfect.

But be forewarned: Krassner is an acquired taste. But how could it be otherwise? This is the man who dropped a tab of LSD before going on “The Tonight Show” in 1969. (Orson Bean was guest host that night.) Perhaps it was this episode that inspired Johnny’s catch phrase, “That is weird schtuff.”

“Murder at the Conspiracy Convention” is no different, and delightfully so. Clearly his years of hanging out with Lenny Bruce, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman have influenced him, and certainly contributed to the rampant paranoia that is strung through his writing. Erma Bom- beck is not spoken here.

But what goes around comes around. In the section “Defying Conventions,” Krassner describes how he became the recipient of other people’s paranoia. In 1981, knucklehead reactionary (and perpetual presidential hopeful) Lyndon LaRouche published a dossier claiming that Krassner, Burroughs, Bruce and Norman Mailer were recruited by British intelligence’s chief brainwashing facility, the Tavistock Institute. Their alleged mission was to deride laws, morality and decency with smut peddled in the name of humor and creative expression. This would make Krassner a card-carrying member of the vast left-wing conspiracy. (If you’re a member of the vast right- wing conspiracy, feel free to stop reading right now and alert John Ashcroft.)

While the book has a number of wacky (and whacked out) recollections, there are some sweet ones, too.

In the essay “Jerry Garcia and His Magic Shield,” Krassner recalls that in the late 1960s, Garcia brought him along to pay a call on a friend who’d been in an extended funk. Garcia insisted the guy join a side project he was starting. The fellow was David Nelson; the band was New Riders of the Purple Sage, a Grateful Dead country-rock offshoot that stayed together for more than a decade. Krassner notes that when Garcia’s health was failing, Nelson returned the favor by visiting his mentor and encouraging him to play music to improve his damaged body and spirit.

When former Chicago Seven member Jerry Rubin became a Yuppie businessman, he didn’t always appreciate his radical days being mentioned. This led Krass- ner to devise this cheeky headline: “Former Yippie Leader Asks Not to Be Called Former Yippie Leader.”

Krassner is a wisecracker but also smart. In one essay, “Charlie Manson’s Image,” he offers a novel dismissal of the view that Charles Manson (who was his pen pal for a while) reflected badly on the counterculture. Krassner observes that Manson was at heart just a career criminal and that the real Manson family was the con artists, pimps, drug dealers, thieves, muggers, rapists and murderers he met during a youth spent behind bars. In many ways, Krassner was ahead of his time. His career as a stand-up was “alternative comedy” before it had a name.

After the most famous Beat poet’s picture appeared in an “Allen Ginsberg Wore Khakis” ad, Krassner unsuccessfully lobbied the Gap to use him as well. He reflected on this attempt by wondering, “Would I be selling out, or would they be buying in?” That question, in a nutshell, reveals the Paul Krassner wit and legacy which “Murder at the Conspiracy Convention” captures so nicely.

In “Allen Ginsberg’s Last Laugh,” he also recalls attending a Yippie demonstration in Chicago in 1968 where Ginsberg inspired a crowd of protesters being attacked by police to chant together. It’s a hallucinogenic tableau that perfectly sums up the decade’s leitmotifs of violence versus nirvana.

Krassner provides an insider’s view of those daring, dreamy, druggy days. But they’re over and--even if you wanted to--you can’t go om again.