heard from Greg who got the bundle of Earth Rose I slipped past the F.B.I.—Richmond busted for these—and now Dan is walking around hanging them in public places, like Spellman’s crapper, so forth. a very energetic fellow. I always picture him with knife in bloody teeth, working upon the Fall and Decline of Empire, which ain’t a bad idea. only I am lazy and mixed up with spondees and beer and bad health. all revolutionaries should be 6 feet 5, weight 380 pounds, look like young Gregory Peck with Heidelberg scars, and never be bothered with constipation, insomnia or the search for employment in the capitalistik nestegg. by the way, I hear that the Heidelberg scars are coming back. saw a perfectly bloody set in a mag, I mean photos of the faces directly afterwards, the faces of the lucky boy who collected his scar, and the hogfaces, the cementfaces, the lustfaces of the onlooking club members. you live in a hot town, old man. ACTION. the reason I am reading this mag which is a kind of sex-sadist outlay is that somebody sends it to me, regards an article, portion of which reads: “It’s possible that the New Bohemia stands on wobbly legs so far as terminology is concerned. It’s possible that the New Bohemia is not avant-garde at all, but merely an appendage of beatism at best, and perhaps even the ‘rear guard’ of that social phenomena. Take a look at the heroes of the beatniks of the sexy Sixties have chosen. They include Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, LeRoi Jones, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Dylan, Bertolt Brecht, John Cage, Eugene Ionesco, W. H. Auden, Anais Nin, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski, to name a few.” so there I am put in my place, but of the names mentioned I am only partially in tune with a few. (now they are going to give me Bruckner’s 9th. and a bit of Hindemith.) Genet in portions when he doesn’t creampuff out in love with his writing, Brecht in portions, and the very early Auden. and I doubt very much if I am any man’s hero. as the mass goes down to a generalized and easy death there seem to be at the same time more and more individual people springing out of rosebushes with lushlife fire to make me wonder—3 or 4 months ago I had not heard of either you or D[an] G[eorgakas], now my mailbox is on fire with loveletters from hell. not as an act of writing a letter—but as information from the center of the sky to keep me from cutting my throat. [* * *]