The Venice Beat Poets –The Great River Outside the Mainstream
– LAWRENCE LIPTON
By Jim
Smith
Lawrence Lipton was something of
a father figure to the Beat poets of Venice. He was reviled by many of the poets
for his manipulations and commercialism. Yet, they gravitated to his home at 20
Park Avenue, which became the center of the “scene” in Venice.
In contrast to the Beats in San Francisco
and New York, many of those in Venice just wanted to be left alone to grasp the
nature of reality, to paint and write
poetry.
Lipton, on the other hand,
wanted the whole world to know about this new way of living that was developing
in Venice. Fifty years later, it is still a fair question to ask if Lipton
invented the Venice Beat scene, or if the scene invented
Lipton.
His book, The Holy Barbarians,
told the world about Venice, and in the summer of 1959, much of it seemed to be
descending on the community to gawk at the scruffy characters who inhabited the
beachfront.
Lipton’s success
meant the demise of the “slum by the sea,” as he called Venice. But
it also meant that our poets achieved lasting recognition, something they
didn’t care about, but ensured that their artistic gift would be a model
for generations to come. Without Lipton, many great poems could have been tossed
in the trash. As John Arthur Maynard observed in his book, Venice West: The Beat
Generation In Southern California: “No one had done more than Lipton to
turn an obscure and sincere doctrine of poverty and art into a recognized
alternative to conventional
life.”
Lipton was considered a
charlatan and a huckster by some – and his friendship with Clifford
Irving, who wrote a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes, didn’t help
– but others, including poets Kenneth Rexroth and Allen Ginsburg accepted
him as a peer. Stuart Perkoff reportedly commented that Lipton’s book
would have been better named, Holy Horshshit. Irvine moved into 20 Park Avenue
when Lipton, for financial reasons, in his declining years was forced to move to
Burrell Street in the Oxford Triangle.
Even so, The Holy Barbarians, remains the definite book about Venice and about
an artistic peak in the Beat Generation.
In addition, Lipton wrote a number of
mystery novels in the 1930-40s, and later, wrote Brother the Laugh is Bitter, In
Secret Battle, and The Erotic Revolution. His poetry books include, Rainbow at
Midnight and Bruno In Venice West.
In
his later years, Lipton became editor of an arts supplement in the Los Angeles
Free Press and wrote a column, Radio Free America for the paper. He reported on
the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago for the Free Press. While attempting
to join Allen Ginsburg at a demonstration, he was badly beaten by Chicago
police. He never fully recovered from the injuries and they likely hastened his
death a few years later.
Lipton was
born in Poland, Oct. 10, 1898, and died in Venice on July 9, 1975. His third
wife, Nettie Esther Brooks, shared his Venice years, and died in 1986. At the
time of her death, Nettie Lipton was in the process of selling her
husband’s writings to the University of Southern California. She wanted to
establish an endowment for young poets in Venice. Unfortunately, she died before
the fund could be established.
Lawrence
Lipton is survived by his son, James Lipton, who since 1994 has been the host of
Bravo TV’s Inside the Actors
Studio.
More information about Lawrence
Lipton can be found in Maynard’s history of the Beats, Venice West, and by
visiting the two Lipton archives at UCLA and
USC.
************
“What
shall I say?
Between two
worlds
we hang. Between the
agony
of dying and the fear of
birth...”
–Lawrence
Lipton
************
From
The Holy Barbarians:
The luxury hotels
along the beach front promenade, too costly to tear down at present-day wrecking
prices and not profitable enough to warrant proper upkeep and repair, stand like
old derelicts, their plush and finery faded and patched. In their dim lobbies
sit the pensioned-aged playing cards and waiting for the mailman to bring the
next little brown envelope. Pension Row. Slum by the sea. Two, even three,
one-story houses on a narrow lot, airless and lightless in a paradise of air and
light. Night-blooming jasmine amidst the garbage
cans.
–Lawrence
Lipton
Posted: Thu - May 1, 2008 at 06:57 PM
