American Vulgarity, from Lenny Bruce to Kanye West

Even in 1964, Bruce had allies. An open letter defending him was signed by a who s who of 20th-century cultural and literary legends, including Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Gore Vidal, and Norman Mailer.

Bruce was prosecuted for his act in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. He was banned from the United Kingdom. Twice. Over time, he became obsessed with his persecution. The legal fees bankrupted him. He did his own research on First Amendment law. He fired his lawyers. And he dug deeper and deeper into heroin and morphine.

Unsurprisingly, his act, like his personal life, unraveled. He began spending his time onstage reading angrily from court proceedings of his trial. He was becoming a stand-up polemicist. As a result of the bull s-eye on Bruce s back and the increasingly bitter tone of his shows, he was no longer a hot ticket. Clubs wouldn t book him. He was in debt. Everything was going wrong.

On August 3, 1966 Lenny died at age 40 of an overdose of morphine in his bathroom. Sitting in his typewriter was a page bearing the words of the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens from unlawful search and seizure. When the police arrived, they allowed the media to photograph his lifeless body, the spike still in his arm. Phil Spector remarked at the time that Lenny Bruce died of an overdose of police.

Nine days later, the Judson Memorial Church held a funeral service in New York City. Allen Ginsberg read his poem; Tony Scott s quartet performed free-form blues; and Reverend Howard Moody gave a eulogy, which cast Lenny as Socrates a man driven to his death by a society that resented his pursuit of truth.

There is something to that. But at the same time, Bruce could be quite vulgar.

One of his most offensive jokes goes like this: A kid looks up at his father and he says, What s a degenerate? The father says, Shut up, kid, and keep sucking!

via www.thefp.com

Eli Lake

Interesting stuff. Seems like it’s a report from a lost world.

I met Alec Ginsburg back in the day when I was an undergraduate at Cornell. He was a uniquely disreputable character and made a pass at an (tbh an equally disreputable) undergraduate. This was before #metoo. My mother met Woody Allen at a tennis tournament at Sun Valley. He was engaged in amorous activity with his then girlfriend, a teenager with a famous last name. He was what in his fifties then? Damn fine director, if a complete degenerate, as film makers oddly enough often are. Well, back to my dog videos!