[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's another one of them (typed), from when I lived just off Little River Church Road in Hurdle Mills, North Carolina. He was residing at 17D Valley Terrace Apartments, 2836 Chapel Hill Road, Durham, North Carolina. This is Part III of the October 24, 1987 epistle. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]
In 1982, I traveled with my sister [L] around the U.S., to San Francisco and New Orleans; in '83, I convinced [W] to try Mardi Gras; in May '83, I drove with [X] to Boulder, Colorado.
That summer I was quickly persuaded to travel to Europe -- on impulse [cherchez la femme = "D"]. I knew that if I didn't go then, I would despise myself forever.
During the course of that journey, I wandered around freely, exploring Paris and Rome, Munich, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London & Zurich.
In Paris I met an entertaining German named Heinz who talked about Morrison over the latter's grave for hours until he bummed a Métro ticket from another visitor for destination unknown. This time Morrison's grave had a bust to mark the spot, along with a whole new set of graffiti inscriptions.
[Y] & I . . . paid Jim a visit on May 1st, 1986, during communist, socialist & anarchist demonstrations in and around Père Lachaise. A knot of strange people sat around smoking, drinking and talking and looking at the latest inscriptions until gendarmes with rifles cleared us out. This time the bust was missing part of Jim's nose.
The Doors seem to haunt everywhere I go. I remember hitch-hiking in Bavaria in '83 & being picked up by Germans who didn't say a word, just blasted "Riders on the Storm" and "When the Music's Over."
And in Toulouse, in May 1986, [Y] and I were put, at first, in the basement of a jazz club restaurant where speakers played, in eerie reverberation, the Doors. Upstairs only jazz played.
One final thing I wanted to mention. I was reading, a few weeks ago, Breton's Nadja. On one page I noted the photo of an unexplained manuscript in which is mentioned a Monsieur St. Bonnet. In a book full of subjective coincidence & mystical fates, I was struck by the fact that this is the surname of my mother's mother (Catherine St. Bonnet [1914-2009]); that only the week before, while reading Breton's poems in The Poetry of Surrealism, I lost a poem I wrote under the name of Alexander St. Bonnet!
Very Sincerely Yours,
Erik D. France
[Today, I received an email letting me know that my grandmother's brother Richard Nicholas St. Bonnet's (1910-1991) 1940 draft card had turned up in the historical record, and that his wife's middle name was the same as "Y's" first name. Catherine and Richard's father, Warren Nicholas St. Bonnet (1885-1918), died one hundred years ago this year in the Great Influenza Pandemic.]
[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's another one of them (typed), from when I lived just off Little River Church Road in Hurdle Mills, North Carolina. He was residing at 17D Valley Terrace Apartments, 2836 Chapel Hill Road, Durham, North Carolina. This is Part II of the October 24, 1987 epistle. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). Extra paragraph breaks added for easier reading. For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]
I wanted to tell you, as well, [h]ow the Doors really did act as doors of perception for me from age seventeen . . .
I believe in the strange quirkiness of coincidence and chance, beginning with the proximity of my birthday to Morrison's . . . That John Lennon was shot and killed on the 8th . . .
I spent my sixth birthday in Justice, Illinois, south of Chicago; my eighth in St. Paul, Minnesota; ninth in Durham; and eighteenth in Lexington, Virginia, at the Virginia Military Institute as a Rat.
One of my roommates, a guy from Connecticut [Carl], turned me on completely to Morrison & the Doors. My elder sister, Vickie, had a couple of their albums from the late sixties, and I had loved, for as long as I could remember, "Light My Fire" and "Riders on the Storm," but VMI provided the right atmosphere for me to be completely won over by Morrison.
"No one can scream like Jim Morrison" was my roommate's boast.
I hated VMI and left after a semester. . . I transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill . . . growing beards and shaving them every few months, wearing dashikis, etc. -- until making a decision to head for Europe with a history class.
I made a new friend on the trip and dragged him [W] along with me to see Père Lachaise and especially "Jim."
There it was, a modest site stuck between elevated stone markers, graffiti on all the neighbors' tombs.
I read No One Here Gets Out Alive and was struck by the fact that there was no marker whatsoever, just unmistakable signs ("JIM---") & drunken, bizarre visitors.
By the time we got back to the USA, I was reading more voraciously and wildly.
Another friend of mine [K] had also been tuned into Morrison & the Doors simultaneously.
Vickie sparked my interest in Jack Kerouac & the Beat Generation and also, since she had majored in French Literature at NC State University, French lit.
I have been scrambling ever since, reading in translation Balzac, Gide, Camus, Sartre, Céline, Jarry, some of Proust, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and recently, Lautréamont, Apollinaire, Arp, Breton, and Russians (Dostoevsky especially), your Age of Surrealism (which was highly recommended by Judy Hogan), and your study of Lautréamont.
I remember . . . working at Pizza Transit Authority, reading Baudelaire & Rimbaud aloud with [K] & hooting with laughter . . . laughing about gnawing the ends of rifle butts and centers radiating universal stupidity, which is how we looked at our absurd jobs at the time delivering pizzas.
[End Part II. Conclusion in next post.]
[Though earlier I'd donated to Duke letters from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) to me, more recently, in sorting through my files, I came across photocopies of at least some of the letters I wrote to him. Here's another one of them (typed), from when I lived just off Little River Church Road in Hurdle Mills, North Carolina. He was residing at 17D Valley Terrace Apartments, 2836 Chapel Hill Road, Durham, North Carolina. Ellipses indicate slight editing (deletion of a few personal details). For his other letters, please see Wallace Fowlie Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Here's a link to the collection guide.]
October 24th 1987
Little River Church Rd.
Dear Professor Fowlie,
After hearing you speak about the artworks from your collection in the North Gallery, and particularly after chatting with you briefly a few days later at the Durham County Library with Judy Hogan, I felt compelled to communicate with you on a more personal level. Since I work during the day in Public Documents and have no opportunity to sit in on your Dante class, I thought the next best thing would be to write you a letter.
The influence of Rimbaud on rock music provides a fascinating and well-grounded thesis which I urge you to expand upon. In the Rimbaud lecture you mentioned an interview of Bob Dylan by Allan Ginsberg; so I though you might also be interested in a song by the now-defunct musical group "The Clash," which actually includes recitation of poetry by Ginsberg.
At the risk of saying things you already know, a couple of prefatory sentences are in order. The Clash, an English group, released their first album at the height of the Punk Rock movement in Britain (1977), made a total of six albums (The Clash, Give 'Em Enough Rope, London Calling, Sandinista!, Combat Rock and Cut the Crap) before disintegrating about a year ago. They were considered by many rock critics an important voice of "youth in rebellion."
The song "Ghetto Defendant" is on side two of Combat Rock (1982). Joe Strummer and Mick Jones sing one part of the song while Ginsberg speaks the other, to music. Ginsberg opens with: [quoted lyrics follow in the original.]
Can it be that "graphed in a jiffy" refers to the Picasso sketch on the cover of your Rimbaud: Complete Works?
What is unclear is how much influence Ginsberg himself had on the lyrics to "Ghetto Defendant." The exclusive credits are given to The Clash on the record sleeve. As you mentioned in the lecture, Ginsberg is an admirer of Rimbaud. (As was his friend Jack Kerouac, whose 1960 poem "Rimbaud" I discovered in Scattered Poems about five years ago -- I had never seen it before). Perhaps this may be of some use to you.
[End Part I. Continued in next post.]
[Judy Hogan (1937-) = founder of Carolina Wren Press. If I recall correctly, she gave writing/poetry workshops at the Public Library.
Public Documents = one of my places of employment, situated in the basement of Perkins Library, Duke University West Campus. I was a library clerk, library assistant and professional intern there before moving on. One of my last projects was overseeing the preservation of League of Nations documents and making a display on the Great War and the 1920s.]
Letter from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, June 30, 1990:
Dear Erik,
I have just been rereading your first letter of October 24, 1987. What you say in it about Ginsberg and The Clash and many other things is helping me at this moment.
You are probably far away on vacation, but if by chance you are home, I would greatly enjoy a visit from you and a chance to ask your advice.
Danny Sugarman and the three Doors are preparing a big book to be published December 1991 (20th anniversary of Jim's death): all the music and lyrics. To be called The Doors Complete. It will include all the pictures of Jim. They have asked me to write the preface. They have seen my memoir books and know about my Rimbaud translations. When the contract came, the terms seemed unfair to me. I hesitated to sign. Telephone messages from Danny reassured me. I signed and have begun writing the piece. It will take me most of July. Then from another address (Santa Barbara[)], Frank Lisciandro writes. He has published one volume of Jim's poems, and is preparing another. He urges me not to write for The Doors Complete.
You came to the reading and to the last Proust class. how about Carol Woods -- sometimes when you are in town and free?
Yours sincerely,
Wallace
Notes on Wallace Fowlie lecture, Durham, North Carolina: regarding Arthur Rimbaud and Jim Morrison in context. October 1987. Part two.
Notes on Wallace Fowlie lecture, Durham, North Carolina: regarding Arthur Rimbaud and Jim Morrison in context. October 1987.
