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4.0 out of 5 stars
Haight Ashbury Sketches, January 22, 2004
By A Customer
My friend and San Francisco State colleague Morris Bassan has
written a fascinating collection of Haight Ashbury Sketches (Xlibris, 108pp, 2003)--portraits, reminiscences, satirical commentaries, caricatures, all loosely centered around a neighborhood that since the Sixties has been famous nationally and internationally.
Even before the Sixties, things were astir here. When the bookseller and publisher Jake Wolf sponsored a reading of Lenore Kay's collection of poems, The Love Book, all hell broke loose: "Her face was serene as she read," writes Bassan. "There might have been two dozen folks there. Suddenly there were more. A siren announced the arrival of a police car outside, and three officers stormed into the bookshop."
The ensuing obscenity trial was lost: The D.A. won the day, Jake went to jail for two years. But Lenore's obscure book got many readers. Afterwards, such trials were not lost. Remember Allen Ginsberg's Howl? The mood was shifting. Poetry readings had arrived. So had the Haight Ashbury.
And yet despite what later would be called good vibes, Bassan rightly stresses a Dickensian side to the neighborhood. His rapid-fire sketches of violence, riots, dealers, runaways, down-and-outers and derelicts have an almost nineteenth century urban feel to them. Really Dickensian is the portrait of Pete Grimes, a sadist and murderer who ultimately blames his blameless father for his life of crime.
Nineteenth century London and New York haunt this book, as they may the neighborhood. Is it Bassan's own interest, or a resemblance other writers have not seen? Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman make their appearance here, but it is the UNfamous who resemble their famous counterparts from those bygone days. There is Donna di Scalotta, devotee of Tennyson, reenacting Miss
Havisham, in her hopeless unrequited love for a musician who unwittingly dedicates his songs to her. Bassan is at his best when he describes these wonderful storybook characters, some touching and sweet, most horrifying.
No one more so than the above-mentioned Pete Grimes, who when beating some helpless, dependent lad is said to be "at his exercise" -- "Chained, beaten, threatened, and abused; cold and half starved; soon aroused from sleep only to suffer torments while awake; struck if he wept, yet compelled to weep -- the trembling nameless boy knelt and strove to pray, only to receive a new blow."
These portraits are everywhere effective, the product of a keen observer at work. Less effective for my taste is the observer observing himself. The differences between the author's alter egos Morris, Maurice, Moe, Maury and Moishe elude me -- or are insufficiently worked out. If anything, this is my only objection to the book. Its pieces are too short. It does not work
out its material patiently enough. At times, Bassan sounds like Sherwood Anderson, tentative, quizzical, personal, marvelously evocative, but he lacks Anderson's patience and endless ability to puzzle things out.
In other words, I wanted more, a longer book.
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