Book review by John Pietaro
BOHEMIANS A Graphic
History
Edited by Paul Buhle and David Berger
with Luisa Cetti
Introduction by Paul Buhle
When this
book arrived in the mail I thought I would skim it over, reading closely in a
few areas and then bang out the review. But it wasn’t possible as these largely
chronologically placed tales of radical intellectuals (don’t you just hate that
term??) beckoned me to investigate further each time I tried to put the book
down. This history is graphically told via the work of underground comic book
artists and writers including the late Spain Rodriguez (whom BOHEMIANS is
dedicated to), Sabrina Jones, Peter Kuper, Sharon Rudahl and many others,
though Buhle makes appearances as scripter in many spots, offers a rock-solid
intro and weighs in on the intros to each chapter too. But he’d be the first to
point to the actual bohemian input of some of his comic brethren as most salient;
Buhle is fascinated by the lives of radical artists though he regularly states
that he remains apart from the lot, an observer who chronicles the movements.
BOHEMIANS
opens, befittingly, with utopianism, militant uprisings and every pronounced
fight-back to reactionary thinking the artists of the day could come up with,
from free love, spiritualism, feminism, multi-culturalism and more. What is
most compelling, though, is the almost constant connection between the bohemian
artists and the concept of modernism. Enlightenment. Gay and Lesbian lifestyles
were accepted and the openness of inter-racial relationships a matter of
course. Theirs was a world in which one’s politics were as revolutionary as
their creativity and all of this was ignited by the vision of a new day. The
cultural expanse of communism, socialism and anarchism are widely and deeply
felt in these pages. Stand-out chapters include the entirety of ‘Village Days’,
a wide-eyed view into Greenwich Village in the 1910s. See John Reed carousing
with Mabel Dodge, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman and Arturo Giovannitti, dip into the
pages of “The Masses” and “Il Fuoco” and embark on a journey into the Lawrence
Strike. And while this chapter informs the reader of the Patterson Pageant, the
benefit musical extravaganza Reed wrote with Dodge and performed on stage with actual
strikers from Patterson, it somehow doesn’t take us there (note to self: push Buhle to include a section on this when the book
goes into a second printing!).
But
BOHEMIANS doesn’t stop with the death of Reed. In fact it dips back into the
modern art movement in Manhattan in the earliest 20th century,
giving an incredible vision into the time and the intensity of the struggle to
break through the art establishment. Here you will find yourself walking the
precipice of modern art and dadaism, including specific galleries and journals,
both homegrown and European in origin, plus Duchamp, Man Ray, photography,
cubism and of course nudes descending staircases. From there, its Claude McKay’s
prideful, angry journey into life as a writer, in and apart from the Harlem
Renaissance, as well as the turbulence of Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Parisian
salons and the tortured celebrity of Josephine Baker. But modern dance is
offered thick, detailed segments with much focus also on theatre, folk music,
and jazz. Pay special attention to the piece on Billie Holiday: it’s a walk
through her pained life with an ongoing experiences of Abel Meeropol, the
communist composer-lyricist of “Strange Fruit”, in comparative view. But along
the path that BOHEMIANS takes us on, we discover painters, poets, singers,
actors, musicians, dancers and thinkers largely lost to the passage of time though
they shaped the art of the here and now. Where would today’s youth of
Williamsburg Brooklyn be without them?
Chronologically,
the book brings us into the 1940s—the era of be-bop, modern jazz--with a close
look at both Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. I must admit, I could have
used a lot more Thelonious Monk, in fact this brilliant composer and classic
bohemian archetype deserved his own chapter. The closing piece is the development of
underground cartoonist Robert Crumb and the writer who worked so closely with
him for years, Harvey Pekar. In later life, the very working-class yet quite
bohemian Pekar partnered with Buhle on several books including The Beats
and SDS: A Graphic History. To allow for the full breadth of
bohemianism, one might have to fully absorb those two volumes while reading
through this current one, and spend some time listening to the expansive, free
jazz of John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler as well as early punk and
no wave. Such a radical creative vision cannot rest.
The road of
bohemianism is jagged and cuts through every revolutionary social movement. What
could ever stop it?
-John Pietaro is a musician, writer
and cultural organizer from Brooklyn NY – www.DissidentArts.com
