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three

Paris Days – Winter to Spring

Our counterculture bookshop group in general had been thinking more and more about a cultural critique, about the synthesis of anthropology, Freud, and Marxism that for us centered around surrealism. Herbert Marcuse’s work Eros and Civilization and its discussion of Freud was important to us, especially his concept of surplus repression. There has been a concerted attack on Freud, an attempt to discredit Freud and especially discredit the idea of the repressiveness of civilization. The Right sees this not altogether incorrectly as the basis of the ’60s radicalism. After all aren’t we the freest people imaginable? We have the freedom to buy anything we want. What else is freedom? The entire concept of the repressiveness of society has been dismissed. A mistake.

By December 1965, Franklin and I thought IWW efforts were slowing down and were eager to go to Paris. Robert Green and Lester Doré were already traveling there and sending back reports. Lester sent Provo and Revo literature from Amsterdam and wrote that there was a tremendous youth scene. Maurice Nadeau’s History of Surrealism had just come out in English and we read with enthusiasm, “the surrealist state of mind or, better still surrealist activity is eternal. Understood as a certain tendency, not to transcend but to penetrate reality, to ‘arrive at an ever more precise and at the same time ever more passionate apprehension of the tangible world.’” I read Nadja: a mysterious and sensuous tribute to a free-spirited woman. “Who am I? . . . perhaps everything amounts to knowing who or what I ‘haunt,’” Breton had written. Fascinated by the idea of wandering the streets of Paris directed by chance alone. What would André Breton be like, I wondered?

First, we planned to go to London and visit the anarchist Freedom Press there. We expected to be gone six months or more, spending most of the time in London, maybe a week in Paris. Only a week in Paris because we didn’t know anyone in Paris that we could stay with and felt our French needed a lot of work. Further, we were shy about meeting André Breton. We were just kids; we hadn’t really done anything we considered significant yet. But drawn to surrealism, we wanted to go and see for ourselves what was happening. What would the surrealists be doing, thinking, would we be able to meet them? Would we be able to meet Breton? He was nearly seventy, but still living at 42 rue Fontaine where he had lived when he wrote Nadja. We wondered, would we be able to see the famous 42 rue Fontaine?

When we left it was indeed dismal days for the bookshop; Solidarity Bookshop was in storage, driven out of 713 Armitage by irate neighbors, the school board, police, red squad, etc. Our tolerant landlord, Jerry the hairdresser, was visited by the FBI and he worried his beauty shop business would suffer. We were determined, however, not to give up. Tor Faegre and Bernard Marszalek were going to search for a new storefront. Larry and Dotty DeCoster would soon arrive on the scene. At Union Station we boarded the train for New York. From there our plane left for London.

New York, December 1965

During our brief stop in New York we met Nicolas Calas at his apartment. Probably the tallest surrealist, Calas was close to seven feet. From his coffee table I picked up a copy of the surrealist journal La Brèche; in it I found the names Franklin Rosemont and Larry DeCoster. Their friend Claude Tarnaud had sent a letter to Robert Benayoun in Paris, describing his meeting with them. The letter had been published two years ago, in 1963. What a surprise, we were astonished, it seemed a remarkable sign.

We left and strolled randomly through the streets of New York unmindful of the raging blizzard about us. We came upon a man standing on a corner in the snow near Rockefeller Center, but standing there so rigid and so tall, I thought he was a statue, wearing a long cape that flowed in the wind, a Viking helmet, shoulders and beard frosted over with snow. Even up close I couldn’t tell if he was alive. So I said, “Who are you?”

“I am God!” came a deep, booming voice with long pauses between words. I had to smile; I was not expecting to run into a god standing on a street corner in a Manhattan snowstorm, “but people call me Moondog.”

“What’s that you’re carrying?” said I.

“Music, music that I wrote. Do you want to buy some?” Well, it turns out this was Moondog, a remnant of the old beat scene gone practically catatonic on a street corner.

Then to the airport and on to our BOAC plane; this was our first flight, first time up in the air, but I wasn’t frightened, I was elated because of my desire to see the Earth from the air, because of my excitement of going, going across the ocean, going to England, going to France, going on a great adventure, doing it together with my lover.

Leaving just before Christmas, the plane was not crowded. It was a long flight, perhaps eight hours; the plane was so empty we stretched out, lying down over three seats, and slept a bit. Mostly we enjoyed being in cloudland and staring down at the gray endless ocean and dreaming of what could be awaiting us on the other side of the vast wilderness of water.

Our Adventures at Heathrow Airport

At Heathrow Airport in London, we got in line, we were dressed in simple beatnik style, black turtleneck shirts and jeans. Franklin was wearing his black leather jacket; I was wearing a fringed black tweed shawl Franklin’s mother made for me; it made me look spectacularly countercultural. We waited in line impatiently to get through customs. Finally, it was our turn; the agent asked us, “How long are you planning to stay?”

“Three to six months.”

“How much luggage have you got?”

“Four pieces.”

“Rather a lot of luggage, don’t you think?” he commented and asked, “How much money have you got?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“What are your occupations?”

Franklin answered, “Musician.”

“Mmm,” said the agent, our first clear indication of hostility. “We’ve rather enough musicians here already! What about the draft?”

Franklin answered, “I’ve got a student deferment.”

Agent, “Well, you can’t very well be a student and be here at the same time, can you? You can’t do it in this country at least. I think you are trying to avoid the draft, trying to emigrate to our country.”

We insisted this was not the case. It didn’t work.

“We’re going to send you back on the next plane.”

“Wait,” I interrupted, “I want to appeal, I want to see someone else about this.”

“Well, there’s no one else to see tonight, we’re going to keep you in detention overnight and then back you go.”

Very dejected, we were shunted off to overnight detention in some cement-block rooms that looked like motel rooms but with no windows, and were locked in for the night. We weren’t the only ones; there were quite a few people from Pakistan who were likewise enjoying the hospitality of Heathrow.

In the morning, however, we were ready with our arguments; these would probably have fallen on deaf ears except we had purchased only a one-way ticket and had come on BOAC, the British state-owned airline. Therefore, because of international agreements, they would have to return us at their own expense. We were escorted around the airport from bureaucrat to bureaucrat accompanied by an entourage of two guards (so we wouldn’t escape) and two luggage carriers. This situation attracted plenty of attention from other travelers who thought we must be bank robbers or at least rock stars. In retrospect it has provided us with a lot of amusement.

After arguing with three different sets of officials I finally said, “How about if we purchase a ticket to Paris; you can ship us on to Paris and you’ll be rid of us!” This definitely appealed to them, passing this bureaucratic problem on to the French; we put out the cash and bought the tickets and they made arrangements for us to be on the very next plane to Paris, and I do mean the very next.

Most humorous of all was our departure. In fact, they called over to the airfield and held a plane, then piled us and all our luggage and all our guards into a large, black limousine and drove us out onto the airfield right up to the plane. The boarding ramp had already been removed and had to be brought back for us; I could see faces gawking out the plane’s windows; planes wait for no one; we were hurried up the stairs accompanied by our guards and escorted to our seats in the crowded plane. The last words from the chief guard to the stewardess were: “Here is their passport, don’t give it to them until you are off the ground!” (This was so we didn’t bolt and jump off the plane in a daring last second escape, I suppose?) It made us seem really desperate and dangerous; heads turned, everyone had to get a look at us, but no one said anything. International spies, jewel thieves at least! And I thought it only happened in movies.

This short flight was fraught with anxieties; would we get into France? There was a large black X on our passport and a message: “refused entrance to U.K.” After landing, we got in line with all the other tourists; there were lots; French Customs was just waving people through as they held up their passports. We walked by but just didn’t believe it for a while, didn’t believe we had actually gotten through customs and were in France. Then we were jubilant, elated . . . but, what next? Somehow we had to figure out what to do now.

Christmas in Paris!

Our trip began with an amazing demonstration of objective chance. We started for London but here we were in Paris. Little did we realize how fortunate this was. The Surrealist Group had several special events going on.

When we arrived in France at Le Bourget Airport on December 22, we had no plans, no place to stay, and no one had been informed of our arrival; suddenly we were just there, disoriented but ecstatic! All our careful plans demolished. Our relatives back in the U.S. didn’t have a clue as to where we were. At last report, the day before, I had called my mother and told her we were being held in detention in London; the relatives wouldn’t know where we were for days.

As soon as we could find a phone at Le Bourget, we tried to call Robert Benayoun, the member of the Surrealist Group with whom we’d been corresponding. We looked up his number in the Paris phone directory and dialed anxiously; a woman answered, she didn’t speak English. Then she informed us that M. Benayoun was very ill. Too ill, in fact, to come to the phone. What to do? I explained we were friends of his from Chicago. She was astonished; she didn’t know that M. Benayoun had any friends in Chicago. When Franklin said, “Is this the home of Robert Benayoun, Surréaliste?” She hung up.

We just couldn’t stand airports or their atmosphere for one more minute. We moved our luggage to a locker and, equipped with Europe on $5.00 A Day, caught a bus for Paris.

Outside the window a curious world passed by, new and modern buildings were rising next door to tiny one-room cottages hardly large enough for a bed and chair, and barely high enough to stand up in, but surrounded by neatly kept tiny gardens.

We arrived at Les Invalides air terminal somewhere in central Paris. We didn’t have a map yet, so we had no idea where we were, but left and wandered instinctively down toward the Seine and across a bridge, just soaking in wonderful new sensations on all sides. Not believing it, everything seemed so different, we just wandered and looked at the people, the buildings, the traffic. Finally, we woke up to the fact that we had to find a place to stay and much of the day had already passed. I’m not sure if Hôtel des Acacias was in Europe on $5.00 A Day, but I think it was. It was already towards evening then, the day after the shortest day of the year, and around 4:00 p.m. when we wandered there. It was snowing lightly and beautifully against the dark Paris stones. The rue des Acacias bent gracefully. We went into the hotel and I practiced my phrase-book French, “Avez-vous un chambre pour deux? Combien?”

The room was about $5.00 and that seemed exceedingly expensive to us, but we were just exhausted; I was too exhausted to walk another step, so we agreed on it. It was quite a lovely hotel and room; I remember going to the casement window, opening it wide and looking out over the chimneys and rooftops with Paris all lit up and glowing and beautiful snow falling, somehow not really still believing it: we were actually in Paris. The view out the window was so beautiful, I would have been satisfied if we had done nothing else for our trip.

For a moment we thought about going out for food, but we were exhausted and just lay down, fell asleep, and didn’t awaken until late the next morning.

Amazingly, when we awoke, we discovered we were still in Paris; it hadn’t been a dream, so here we were, two kids in our early twenties having grown up with the corn of the vast Midwest. Franklin had at least been to Mexico; I had never really been anywhere outside the country except to Canada for a day. But suddenly the boring sameness of everyday life had vanished; everything seemed different, unexpected, sensuous, new, its routine peeled away. Just being there standing on the street was an adventure.

Well, according to our infallible guide, Europe on $5.00 A Day, we could find a cheaper hotel on the Left Bank so we headed for St. Germain des Pres near the Sorbonne, and thus a student center in Paris. We walked down the steps into the Metro, after first admiring and running our hands over the beautiful turn-of-the-century art nouveau entrances designed by Hector Guimard, purchased two second-class tickets, and consulted the Metro machine for finding our route. You pressed a button indicating where you wanted to go, and the entire route with transfer points lit up on a glass map of the whole system in red, yellow, or green lights. The Metro had a substantial tunnel system for getting passengers to their trains, and iron gates near the boarding platform closed automatically as the train pulled out of the station to keep frantic riders from mobbing the train and not letting it leave the station. Metro riders were usually frantic.

The first hotel we checked out on the Left Bank was awful, a closet with a bed in it that slanted severely downhill. But, then, at 52 rue Dauphine we found Le Hôtel du Grand Balcon. This time, more cautious, we asked to see the room, it was a beautiful light room with French windows that looking down on rue Dauphine from the fourth floor, by U.S. ideas of floors, at $2.22 per day.

In our room was a sink and bidet, down the hall was the toilet, the halls and stairs were lit by a lumière (a timed light), which we never timed correctly; consequently we were always running down the stairs in the dark. There was not a lot of heat, so we spent much of our time in bed, reading with all of our clothes on, including extra sweaters. We had to wear all of our clothes outside, also, so instead of presenting a fashionable lean Parisian appearance, we looked more like Russian bears.

People asked us if we were from Marseilles, a more working class, tougher place than Paris. When they found we spoke English, they asked if we were from Canada; we thought about this, why Canada, and decided they were hoping against hope they hadn’t run into more awful American tourists. We replied we were from Chicago; that was all right. They would laugh and do a machine gun imitation, “Rat-tat-tat! Capone!” Being from Chicago made us okay; it made us human. Often people would ask, “Why are you in Vietnam?” and, of course, we would explain we opposed the war. The walls in Paris had “U.S. out of Vietnam” graffiti all over the place.

Our room was a long walk up; only one other floor above us; all the rooms on this top floor were already rented by students. That first day, we parked our bags in our room, paid up, and rushed back outside, hungry to experience Paris, by this time, actually very hungry for food. The last time we had eaten was when BOAC had fed us on the plane crossing the Atlantic close to two days ago. We went to a very small French bistro down a couple of stairs, with three tables, and ordered bread and cheese and wolfed it down. We felt better with each bite.

Our hotel was located at the remarkable intersection of rue Mazarine, rue Dauphine, rue Buci, rue St.-André-des-Arts, and rue de l’Ancienne-Comedie. This last was a very short street, but the name was such a wonder, evoking for me a whole array of images.

There was still a slight touch of snow on the ground. Parisians didn’t seem equipped to deal with it; no shovels were used, only brooms, but it melted quickly. It stayed cold, though, and damp; colder than we had anticipated. It proved to be the coldest winter in France in fifteen years.

We were not dressed very warmly as we had expected it to be milder than Chicago. Franklin had only his black leather jacket, purchased from Sears, Roebuck & Co., and a white silk scarf with a letter “H” embroidered on it; it was his brother Hank’s; I had only the fringed wool shawl Franklin’s mother had made for me, not very warm, but very elegant and bohemian; we had to walk very fast to keep warm.

Incredibly eager to see everything in Paris after a total life experience of American Midwestern sameness; a processed and canned version of daily existence that somehow presented itself as the only real possibility of life in the ’50s and ’60s. Our desire for something more had already caused us to be fascinated with anthropology and surrealism, the idea of the reinvention of daily life. In Paris, we felt suddenly wide awake and alert in a newly discovered world.

The smell was different, a crazy brew of onion soup, crêpes, and diesel fuel; the sounds were new, a delirious French language, often stripped of its meaning because it was too fast for us and appreciated for its pure sound and music, combined with horns of frantic French drivers seemingly engaged in honking competitions, tires on cobblestones. And the darkness: Paris is actually farther north than Chicago and thus has less winter daytime.

To compensate, there are lights and mirrors everywhere, highly polished. Plenty of things to do. Commenting on the Left Bank, I wrote in a letter home, “There are more than two bookstores per block.” They all had Le Surréalisme et la peinture by André Breton prominently displayed in the center of their windows. It had just come out in a new edition. Posters announced there was being held, at this very moment, the 11th International Surrealist Exhibition, right here on the Left Bank at the Galerie l’Oeil at 3 rue Séguier, just a few blocks from our hotel. We couldn’t believe our good fortune and immediately walked over. This was December 24, Christmas Eve.

Absolute Divergence

The exhibition was called L’Écart absolu, absolute divergence; its poster and the cover of the catalog featured a portrait of Charles Fourier, the French utopian socialist; but the portrait was redone in the spirit of absolute divergence in a harmonic variation, creating an unusual pattern and compelling image; the face became a geometric form in its infinite variations, refracted as is light by a prism. Several other of these harmonic portraits invented by Pierre Faucheux were in the exhibition and catalog.

Inside, near the entrance, was a shimmering bead work by Max Walter Svanberg and an intensely dark ink drawing by Adrien Dax; standing nearby, a glass case that contained a small army of amusing bread dough figures by Reinhoud. Along the wall was the control panel of a machine, a collective object of the Surrealist Group called the “Disordinator,” perhaps the opposite of coordinator. When one pressed a button or two on the panel, special glass windows would light up containing surrealist objects; it bore a humorous analogical resemblance to the ingenious Metro machine meant to give passengers their coordinates and get them from one place to another. It was made up of ten windows or cases; some of the captions were “Critique of the Machine,” “The Conquest of Space,” “Disordination of Work,” “Disordination of Leisure.”

The exhibition contained many classic works of surrealism, Marcel Duchamp’s Why Not Sneeze? a ready-made from 1921, a small white cage filled with white marble cubes and a cuttlebone, a Max Ernst frottage from 1926, L’Jole, a Man Ray work, L’Impossibilité from 1920, even a precursor of surrealism, Gustave Moreau, with Le Sphinx vainqueur. I laughed merrily at Wolfgang Paalen’s Nuage articulé, an umbrella made of sponges.

An object by André Breton from 1931 consisted of found objects arranged in a manner that indeed fulfilled its name, Objet à fonctionnement symbolique, an exotic fetish of erotism.

The antipatriotic object, the Arc of Defeat, the famous Arc de Triomph redone with a wooden leg suggested by Mimi Parent and assembled so it filled the center of the room and stood perhaps eight feet tall.

Then in the next room, we found a huge pink robot sprouting police sirens, while the walls around it lit up with little white lights, BIP!-BIP!-BIP!, this monster, a collective surrealist object called The Consumer! Its body consisted of a pink overstuffed mattress with upholstered arms and square head encircled by cone-shaped police sirens; its one staring eye, a TV set; its stomach was a washing machine filled with daily newspapers; its back contained a refrigerator that opened revealing a bridal gown and veil, truly a fine piece, wonderful; so savagely accurate in its humorous appraisal of the “modern human,” reduced to the role of “consumer.”

In the same room was a large Alechinsky called Central Park done in 1965; years later I came across it in a book I was reading at Northwestern University and said to myself, “What a wonderful thing!” Then, I remembered where I had first seen it; it was like recognizing an old friend.

Standing motionlessly in a quiet room, looking at first glance like a suit of armor, stood The Necrophile, a work by Jean Benoît, a man’s form clothed in light gray from head to foot; its cloak and suit were gray blocks of stone, its face half mask, its mouth opened to reveal a flame-red tongue, its collar a field of tombstones. At its waist a chain hung with hammer, knife, and other tools, in its right hand was held a staff, on top of which a gray devil held a white angel, from the crotch hung a long, gray, segmented penis-tail that looped, nearly touching the floor. On its face an odd expression, ready to laugh.

Leonora Carrington was represented by a painting, El Ravarok, filled with marvelous people and animals, a carriage drawn by a woman-horse with prominent female breasts.

A painting by Toyen glowed from its dark canvas, a shell, a dark flying bat, a purse with glowing red tongue, luminous white evening gloves, a dark phantom woman’s face with golden eyelids. A work done in wood burning technique by Mimi Parent, En Veilleuse, a proud woman glowed with surrealist passion.

On a dark wall hung a cabinet by Jorge Camacho La Souriceir d’amour (1965), a cutout painting by Jean-Claude Silbermann, Au plaises des demoiselles (1964), a Konrad Klapheck sensuous machine painting, Le Visage de La Terreur, a wonderful Robert Legarde object box, Maison close sur la cour, en visite le jardin (1965).

The surrealists in the show were from all over the world; surrealism had always attracted an international following, people from everywhere joined together by their “passional attraction” for the surrealist project. “Passional attraction” was a concept of Charles Fourier, through which human society would be linked together by its desires, loves, and interests rather than the chains of nationality and religion, ghosts of a blood-soaked past.

After we went through the exhibition twice very thoroughly, we talked with the gallery managers, telling them we had come to Paris in hopes of meeting the surrealists, but that our correspondent, Robert Benayoun, seemed to be very ill when we phoned. No, they insisted, Benayoun was not ill, he had been seen very recently. They gave us Benayoun’s correct phone number.

When we got back to our hotel, we called him, rather our hotelkeeper called him, and then we talked (French phones remained difficult); he invited us over to his place at 179 rue de la Pompe.

We went over as soon as we could. My first impression was that he had a lot of books; Benayoun’s large apartment had books stacked up everywhere, on the floor, between the furniture, behind the drapes, very appealing to us book lovers; we had to suppress the desire to browse. Fortunately for us, Benayoun spoke a flawless English. Initially we talked about Positif, the film journal he was editing, and he gave us the names of several bookstores. I liked him at once. He was delightful company, we had a very fine time. A Surrealist New Year’s Eve party was being planned for December 31 at the Théâtre Ranelagh; he invited us and gave us the address. About our phone call to the Robert Benayoun who was ill, he said, “I’ll have to call and see how I’m doing.”

For us Paris was an absolute divergence, l’écart absolu from our lives up to that point. Sometimes I think about the amazing chance of it; the certainty that if we hadn’t been rejected from England, we would not have seen this international surrealist exhibition, or visited 42 rue Fontaine, and would have missed entirely so many of our other experiences in Paris. We might not have met André Breton and the Surrealist Group. But circumstance or desire or fate or all combined together into objective chance conspired to get us to Paris to see this exhibition, the last that André Breton himself inspired and organized.

New Year’s Eve, 1965

The Surrealist New Year’s Eve party was held at the Théâtre Ranelagh near the Bois de Boulogne across Paris from our hotel. This was the first time we would meet the surrealists. I wore my light-gray wool dress with a red paisley pattern and suede boots, felt hopelessly out of fashion by Paris standards, where every woman working in every shop looked like a fashion model; I felt rather nervous and anxious.

We arrived around nine or ten at the Ranelagh, a very romantic-looking place, even more so, as the outside was entirely dark. Benayoun told us the antique theater was one of the oldest in Paris and, indeed, guidebooks tell of Marie Antoinette’s masked balls there. It was now owned by a friend of the surrealists, Henri Ginet, who was thus our host for the evening and who had contributed a work to the L’Ecart absolu exhibition.

We met no one as we entered and followed the lights downward into the theater. I was impressed by the tiers of broad stairs carpeted in red, with huge crystal chandeliers on every landing; after the darkness outside, the effect of these blazing chandeliers was dazzling; the carpeted stairs and chandeliers seemed endless as we walked down from level to level, lower and lower into the depths of the building, certainly a dramatic setting for a grand entrance. (Were we off to see the Wizard?)

Then the huge dark theater, we walked down a long, long center aisle, me wanting to turn back and perhaps reconsider all this; Franklin nervous, too, we held hands to encourage each other. From the stage we heard Jean-Claude Silbermann say, “Chicago!” Benayoun had told everyone to expect us.

On the stage, a buffet dinner was set on a long table. We came up, all eyes on us, nervous as could be but then we were given a marvelous welcome by all in the surrealist tradition: kissed twice, once on each cheek, and greeted warmly. I felt incredibly awkward at all of this, but it made me feel so good, so welcome; I bumped noses with Jean Benoît while trying to get my kisses exchanged.

Benoît bounded up with some champagne and gave me a couple more kisses. He said to Franklin, “I like you, Chicago!” and grabbed a chunk of Franklin’s face, announcing to all, “I like him. Yes, I like him, he is trés sympatique. Yes, I like you, Chicago, but I like your wife better.” Mimi Parent, his companion, laughed. “Just ignore him,” she said. Not easy, as he was good sized, stocky, wearing a short pink dress with puffy sleeves and using two balloons as false breasts which he kept shifting around “to see where they looked best.” Big legs with heavy black hair glared out from under the short pink skirt. Further, Benoît had the habit of grabbing me by the arm and dragging me off to say hello to someone on the other side of the stage.

Several years earlier Benoît, I knew, had branded himself using a hot iron with the letter S for Sade during a ritual in celebration of the Marquis de Sade. He had performed this ritual at the time of the last surrealist exhibition; I asked if I could see the scar. Obligingly, he pulled down the front of his pink dress and showed a now faint S among the hairs on his chest. Then he related the great tale of how he prepared for a long, long time, preparing both his costume and his mind, spending days and nights obsessed with the idea, working himself into a frenzy of anticipation and desire. Those in the group who witnessed his ritual found it profoundly hypnotic and symbolic. After the dramatic moment in which Benoît burned the S into his chest, a much-inspired Matta jumped up to join him, seized the hot iron, and pressed it against his naked chest also, Mimi added. But Matta hadn’t prepared for it, was badly burned, let out a horrible scream, and fainted.

Benoît told us he and Mimi had come to Paris from Canada to meet André Breton and join the Surrealist Group, but while they stayed in Paris for ten years, he was too shy to contact Breton and the group. Finally he met André through his daughter Aube. I certainly understood this suffering. Now, however, Benoît was madly overthrowing his inhibitions. He arranged one balloon in back, one in front, and sat down in Mimi’s lap. Bang, One of the balloons exploded.

There were perhaps forty people present, surrealists and their close friends. We did our best to meet and greet everyone. Radovan Ivsic was there with a camera, taking pictures all evening, tall, extremely thin, pale, and quiet, with a disconcerting way of standing absolutely still and motionless, Radovan had come from Yugoslavia. We met Alain Joubert, Nicole Espagnol, and Giovanna and Jean-Michael Goutier who had done a mysterious dance performance together at the opening of the surrealist exhibition. Benayoun arrived quite late and Breton did not come at all; Benayoun said André wasn’t well and didn’t care for parties.

Franklin and I both gave the impression that we were shy and retiring types in part because we had not yet realized that the normal speaking distance in France is much closer than in the U.S., so as people stepped toward us to speak, we stepped back. I remember being disconcerted at finding myself backed up against the table or in a corner by various French surrealists talking animatedly about group plans, not really intending to be particularly forward; they danced their conversations more beautifully and animatedly than we in the English-speaking world dance ours, with a wealth of gesture, using hands and head and generally more of the body.

The great Czech painter Toyen was there, with her wonderful warm but quiet ways, not dressed up at all, but wearing a white shirt and dark slacks, the same simple, practical outfit she wore to group meetings and everywhere. José Pierre and Jean-Claude Silbermann held glasses of champagne and talked animatedly.

Franklin and I had more champagne, not much, as we weren’t used to the taste, and ate some food, or tried to. It was a cold buffet, with rye bread spread with cream cheese and caviar. I distinctly remember the caviar because I recall trying to very discreetly scrape it off onto the neighboring piece with a huge knife, the only one I could find. We were both quite hungry and had to repeat this performance several times so our subtlety was observed to the amusement of all.

There was a grand piano and Franklin played boogie-woogie and rhythm and blues tunes that echoed through the hall, spicing up the end of dinner.

At midnight, everyone kissed one another again with excitement and enthusiasm and wished each other Bonne Année, 1966 had begun. What a year it was to be! After that, the table was removed, and the stage readied for the entertainment that had been planned and rehearsed. It proved to be both lavish and funny. Various surrealists from the group got up and did skits, charades, or told stories; there was plenty of riotous laughter. We, of course, were in trouble; humor and songs of another language are something that really need to be pondered by anyone who is not a native speaker. But it was enjoyable just to watch, seeing the expressions and gestures, bold and flamboyant. Jean Schuster did a charade performance based on the Communicating Vessels, a work of Breton’s; it was the “non-communicating vessels.”

A particularly lively chorus-line dance was performed by some of the women of the Surrealist Group, five of them dressed in black tuxedo chorus-girl costumes, legs in black fishnet stockings, long tuxedo tails in back, high silk hats, white dickeys with bow ties and slim black canes. The tall, slim Mimi Parent was at the center, with her long, spectacular legs. It was funny and extremely well done.

Then more skits and songs. At one point, an inspired woman in the audience, slim, tiny, and blonde, who had not been part of any of the performances, got up on the grand piano and began a charming and provocative striptease. Gracefully she removed her garments one by one, down to her bikini panties; by this time, she had everyone’s attention. Suddenly, she became self-conscious and refused to go on, resulting in moans and loud protests. “What a silly time to become shy. Take the rest off!” someone in her audience called out. It was her husband.

More skits and performances were coming up, but we were tired out, hadn’t realized the party was planned to go on until dawn; also we were exhausted from trying so very hard to follow the French, not used to saturation levels at all. It was also difficult to remain because, in some ways, we suffered from a puritanism of youth and thought of ourselves as very serious revolutionaries; it was hard to just relax, have fun, and be deliriously silly. A year of frustrating jobs had made me grim. I felt a heavy burden of desperation; I was much older and more serious then than I am now, having realized at last that one can’t be desperately serious every moment, one must be desperately happy now and then. A favorite line of Spinoza comes to mind, “Pleasure in itself is always good.” Because of remnants of my healthy beatnik hedonism, I was able to enjoy the spirit of the evening without analyzing it to death. So it is with pleasure. Sometimes I had to remind myself that revolution must not be grim but a liberation, an increase of pleasure. Otherwise what is the point of it?

That night was not particularly cold, and it was especially pleasant to be so excited and walking through the calm night after the intense experience of the surrealists’ New Year’s Eve party; a relief to have the time to think about it, talk about it with each other, piece things together, go over the skits, the jokes in the French language, and to understand and laugh. We walked and walked, and Paris seemed to be there for us alone; we didn’t meet another soul and soon discovered that the Metro was closed and buses weren’t running. One reason the party went all night.

As we walked through the dark streets, we turned a corner, and there lit up in a blaze of light stood the Eiffel Tower. We laughed and laughed; it had taken us by surprise. At around 5:30 a.m., we noticed people beginning to queue up at the entrances of the Metro, mostly working-class Algerians. Soon it was dawn and we were climbing the stairs to our room just as Paris was beginning to stretch and wake up, and I fell asleep dreaming mad dreams of surrealist skits that became more and more fantastic.

Jean Benoît strode onto the stage in his Necrophile outfit, his tail-penis beating softly on the stage as it coiled and uncoiled, looked around the Ranelagh, and laughed a low, evil laugh; slowly he raised his arms, and his costume peeled off like a lizard’s skin. He was left wearing the little pink dress with the short skirt and puffed sleeves; he did a little dance in imitation of a child ballerina. Then, gradually, his skin turned gray, became transparent, brittle. Suddenly, he writhed in horrible pain; his face grew a bony mask; his nails lengthened; breathing heavily, he ripped away the dress, his penis-tail springing out and beginning to slither, cobra fashion. He roared, a deep echoing boom, “The Necrophile lives again!” But then, in this moment of mad triumph, he raised his arms; his costume, his very skin, peeled off, and the transformation repeated itself, again and again and again. Agony!

Then Mimi gracefully strolled onto stage; she was ten feet tall, dressed in a skintight costume of glittering red that changed from moment to moment like flowing blood. The Necrophile took a deep breath, screaming with joy as he grew tall, to the same size. They danced together Javanese-style, with many complex postures and hand movements. Benayoun entered on roller skates, carrying a book which he opened and began reading: Maldoror. The words formed in the air, “Je te salute . . . ” then one by one the letters dropped to the floor and became cartoon characters.

A huge, beautiful blue fox carrying long evening gloves in its teeth and wearing golden eye shadow came on stage—I recognized at once that it was Toyen. Alain was a trumpet; Nicole, a silver harp. Mimi and the Necrophile laughed, stamped their feet; the old Ranelagh theater shook.

There was a distant rumbling, then very close, a grinding and rumbling, the giant Consumer monster from the exhibition had arrived, with its pink mattress-stuffed body; it rolled on stage, bursting in with its voice of blaring sirens and its TV eye projecting a glaring red beam; it was two feet taller than Mimi and much more powerful than the Necrophile. I worried. But they cast powerful enchantments at it in the form of poems; the most glorious words I had ever heard flowed from them, words that could create new universes.

Suddenly the Consumer began to shrink; it shrunk until it was only a foot and a half tall, became gentle as a puppy, and frolicked around them in circles spinning like a delighted dervish. Round-faced Benayoun was now doing disappearing tricks like the Cheshire cat, always smiling; often only his smile was left. The stage was becoming more and more crowded with surrealists performing wonderful feats of magic and poetry. I realized the Necrophile and Mimi were still growing; the others too were growing, the old theater would soon burst at its seams! Any moment giant surrealists armed with the magic of their imaginations and the powerful laser of their humor would be loosed on the streets of Paris. I woke up with a start. Laughing!

During our first weeks in Paris, we were visited in our room at Le Hôtel du Grand Balcon by Jacques Brunius; it was a tiny room; we all sat on the bed, but this didn’t prevent us from having a good conversation. Brunius, who was living in London and had just married, was happy and full of enthusiasm; he didn’t have the manner of someone who was in his sixties. Although he didn’t look young, he had an engaging and vital spirit. In Paris to do a radio program on Alice in Wonderland, on which he was an expert, he had to leave the next day for London.

We were also visited by Andrew Leake who pounded on our door demanding, “Any anarchists here?” He was in Paris with his mother who we ran into in front of The Necrophile, Jean Benoît’s piece at the exhibition. Late one night at 2 a.m., the police came by and asked us and everyone else in the hotel to see their papers (passports). I have no idea whether this was routine or not.

The neighborhood where we lived was very old, the most ancient stones of Paris. Right around the corner from rue Dauphine on rue Buci was a wonderful Parisian market; the shopkeepers would open their doors, rolling them up like garage doors; their shops would be open to the air and heavy foot traffic of the area. All sorts of fruits and vegetables and meats were displayed, hawked, and sold.

My efforts to shop were humorous; I was not prepared for an entire shop full of bread, bread alone, smelling like heaven. I went in and lined up with all the smartly dressed Parisian women. There were stacks of beautiful breads behind the counter everywhere, long breads standing on end, round breads facing out. I realized with a sinking feeling that my textbook French, “Un pain,” was not going to get me far with this large a variety. Listening with careful attention to the person in front of me who confidently said, “Un baguette.” I pronounced the same words and was handed a beautiful, long bread, no bag. Magic. I handed over my money and was given change. I was thrilled, both with getting the bread and not having made a spectacle of myself, and ran up the four flights of stairs to our room, where we enjoyed the bread while it was still soft and warm. This became our usual breakfast-lunch, but we later added butter, milk which came in a triangular container, and oranges from Algeria, the best-tasting in the entire world and flecked with red spots inside like glittering tiny drops of blood.

Since no bags were given, one of my first purchases was a net bag of the sort that people there carried in their pockets, blue with tiny pearls.

The market was closed for a few hours in the middle of every day, seemingly disappearing often just before I got there and then, surprisingly, back in full force an hour later. It seemed very mysterious to me, expecting stores open nine to six. But all of Paris still lived a very sociable life, taking a two-hour break for lunch, two hours for everyone to have coffee, eat lunch, make love, talk, walk around, and then return to work until 6:30.

Our neighborhood also had a charcuterie, a boulangerie, and a pâtisserie. I mistook the pâtisserie for a jewelry store at first, it was so deluxe. Each fancy little cake sat on a mirror in front of a mirrored wall. Ah, and when you purchased one of those little cakes, and they weren’t cheap, they would be packed very carefully in a little box tied with string with true Parisian precision. One felt as if one had just purchased a diamond necklace. I remember my mother making these cakes occasionally at home and the hours she lavished on them.

On rue Dauphine, on the way to Pont Neuf, there was a wonderful antique toy shop with gaily colored paper theaters and marionettes, most made of printed colored paper. Punch and Judy, harlequins, fine ladies in ball gowns, chevaliers, all quaint and old. The owner would always demonstrate these wonderful things for us with perfect skill and drama. He kept up his demonstrations and performances long after it became obvious we were not buyers and were just in for a visit. It was plain that he loved these things. Perhaps, like the reluctant bookseller, he would not have been entirely pleased to part with them. It seemed that in matters large and small, and in careful attention to detail, Parisians had long ago discovered the necessity of luxury.

On the corner of rue Le Buci and Dauphine, right next to our hotel, was the Café Buci where I occasionally had a café au lait. Later I learned it was quite the center for drug traffic on the Left Bank. Out front one day, we ran into Lester Doré, our friend from the Beatnik Café in Chicago; Lester was selling the New York Times on the street. He said it was just about the only job Americans could get in Paris. He added that Green had been through Paris not long before, but hadn’t liked the cold weather and headed down to Tangiers where he had found a good place, a house, and lots of good, cheap hashish. Lester was trying to get together enough money to go and join him. We talked with Lester about the Provos and their activity in Amsterdam. Lester had lived with them for a while and thought they had a fine community going, building an alternative culture and society with great success. We didn’t see Lester again; he was gone, off to Tangiers. We didn’t hear from either him or Green until we got back to Chicago. By then, Green had been deported from Lebanon to the U.S., madly carrying hash while handcuffed to his guard. Apparently, since he was already under arrest, they didn’t search him.

The Surrealist Café, Le Promenade de Vénus

At this time, the Surrealist Group met at Le Promenade de Vénus, just outside the Les Halles district at the corner of rue de Louvre and rue de Coquillière. Surrealists began to arrive about 5:30 and went to the rear of the café, partitioned off from the front by a booth that wrapped around the outside wall.

It was a great walk. To get there Franklin and I passed the ever-busy Les Halles market. Once we walked to Les Halles at 4:00 a.m. and found an incredible beehive of activity. Huge floodlights converted the darkness into daytime, men carrying sides of beef across their backs and rolling huge round cheeses down the street on little carts. You really had to take care and watch your step or be run down by one of hundreds of people pushing, pulling, or carrying the stubborn produce to the huge market called the belly of Paris.

The Promenade itself stood out with a certain élan and the smell of onion soup gratinée that pervaded the entire neighborhood. With its many paneled mirrors and booths, the café looked as if it had survived from the turn of the century untouched.

Surrealists arrived individually and in groups as they finished work for the day. Everyone shook hands with everyone present while exchanging greetings. This worked well early on when those present were small in number, but as the group built up to 15 to 20 people, new arrivals caused incredible commotion and completely disrupted conversations being carried on. This, however, didn’t seem to trouble anyone. We came and met all of the surrealists in Paris at that time who attended meetings. Among them, those most prominently active were Jean Schuster, Gérard Legrand, Vincent Bounoure, Jean Benoît, Mimi Parent, Robert Benayoun, Claude Courtot, Konrad Klapheck, and Joyce Mansour. Younger members were Nicole Espagnol and Alain Joubert, who was a poet and champion kickboxer. Joubert put together the best book on those days Le Mouvement des surréalists ou le fin de l’histoire. Georges Sebbag, now a noted scholar, was our age.

Among other members were Michel Zimbacca, Jehan Mayoux, Toyen, and Elisa Breton. The group was largely made up of people in their thirties or forties, most of whom had been in the group for seven to ten years and had been active in writing for La Brèche, painting, and doing surrealist research. They were diverse in their interests and opinions but held together by their love of surrealism and enormous respect for the genius of André Breton.

They were full to overflowing with poetry, beauty, humor, excitement, and life. All enthusiasts for the surrealist adventure, they would all talk at once, reminding me of home and my unrestrainable relatives. This unstoppable enthusiasm, however, gave my college French a fatal attack. I went through several degrees of panic as I realized I probably never would be able to keep up with what was being said. My French endured only one person speaking slowly and distinctly. Occasionally Benayoun would translate for us, but he often came late. Then Mimi Parent, a French Canadian who realized our dilemma, came to our rescue and very sympathetically took the time to let us know what was being said in that hubbub of conversation. Benayoun reminded us not to miss seeing Breton’s studio before we left Paris. He said the place was “full of wonderful treasures.” Also, he told us about the Théâtre Universel which was entirely devoted to animated cartoons. We went there whenever the program changed, saw lots of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tom and Jerry. This theater was wonderful; every city should have one.

Schuster and Legrand often talked about their projects. Plans for publications, correspondence, and articles were regularly brought in and read and discussed. They wondered about how surrealism was viewed in the U.S. and what was happening there in terms of surrealism. “Was Rosenquist a surrealist?” Konrad Klapheck asked. A few of the surrealists thought he was, but Franklin and I argued fairly convincingly that he was not.

We discussed pop art and surrealism, especially, since Nicolas Calas, who identified with surrealism, had come out with a book, Pop Art, and was now one of its promoters. We couldn’t see anything revolutionary or even imaginative in copying commercial art and further glorifying the almost deified commodities. Was there humor in the confrontation with an enlarged soup can?

For me, there was hardly any humor and no confrontation. Everyone was able to experience a painting of a large can of soup quite comfortably while preserving, without challenge, their bourgeois ideas. To me, pop art seemed a pasteurized and commercialized art, a justification and glorification of a reprehensible system, the commodity economy.

The surrealists we met in Paris in 1965–66 proved to be close and lasting friends and correspondents as well as enthusiastic supporters of the Chicago Surrealist Group. André Breton’s warm encouragement, his friendly questions, and his evident interest and hopes for the beginnings of a new surrealist group in the New World were very important to Franklin and me.

It showed that despite our youth and our difficulty with French, we were accepted into the surrealist movement that meant so much to us. Several of the younger surrealists, as well as Breton’s wife Elisa, were fluent in English, and helped us understand and participate in the discussions at the group’s daily meetings. I think that André also understood English a little but did not wish to speak it. Either that or he was a good mind reader.

Only a few of the new surrealist generation in Paris were well known outside of France at that time, but most of them had already made major contributions to surrealism. Individually and collectively they were recognized for their originality and innovation, and increasingly were regarded as equals of the surrealists of earlier years.

Gérard Legrand, for example, often called Breton’s “right-hand man,” had distinguished himself as a significant surrealist theorist. In addition to collaborating with Breton on the very large and comprehensive book, L’Art magique (1957; revised/expanded 1991), he also published Puissances du jazz (The Powers of Jazz, 1955) and an important philosophical treatise, Preface au système de l’eternité (1971), as well as many articles in surrealist journals.

Other surrealist theorists in those years included Vincent Bounoure, later co-author of La Civilisation surréaliste with the Czech Vratislav Effenberger. And the old-timers, Jehan Mayoux, and his wife, also well known for their long involvement in French anarcho-syndicalism. In the realms of humor and popular culture, Robert Benayoun published numerous excellent studies of cinema, nonsense literature and animated cartoons (especially the work of Tex Avery).

Painters: Toyen, Mimi Parent, Jean Benoît, Pierre Alechinsky, Jorge Camacho, Konrad Klapheck, Marianne van Hirtum, and Jean-Claude Silbermann were all very active.

Joyce Mansour was not only an outstanding poet in the group, but also, according to Benayoun, a champion runner. Later, in the Bulletin de liaison surréaliste, Mansour made it a point to celebrate the Chicago surrealists’ activities and publications. Annie Le Brun became a noted writer (her Castles of Subversion is a classic study of Gothic novels) and effective spokesperson for surrealism.

Georges Sebbag, one of the few in the group close to our own age, was quiet at meetings, but clearly had a lively intelligence and a good sense of humor. Some years later he published a whole series of large and important books on André Breton and Jacques Vaché—a friend of Breton’s during WWI who was extreme in his hatred for the war and the civilization that created it.

André and Elisa Breton

Franklin and I met André Breton on Monday, January 10, 1966. He already knew we were in town from Benayoun and perhaps Jean Schuster. I was sitting on the left when he came in and began greeting the friends. I was about to shake hands when, with a very elegant gesture, he lifted my hand and kissed it. “Ah, anarchiste!” he smiled at the political button I was wearing which read, “I am an Enemy of the State” and asked if we had been to the surrealist exhibition. We replied we had already been there several times. He smiled, pleased. He asked if we had come from the U.S. to see the exhibition, but we replied that we had not yet heard about it in the U.S., that we had come by chance—the surrealist method.

Elisa Breton was with him. She spoke excellent English and was graceful and gracious, with sparkling eyes that laughed beneath her bangs as she greeted us. Breton didn’t come to the café very often, especially since the arrival of snow and cold weather, as he was bothered by asthma. At this time, Breton was “a magnificent old lion” as Benayoun had called him. He looked like the photos I had seen, but was even more grand and inspiring. We went over and sat near him so we could hear what he was saying. There was plenty of room, as most of the surrealists hadn’t arrived yet. In fact, Benayoun, who had hoped to introduce us and help translate, arrived late that day and sat at the far end of the room, occasionally smiling with amusement at our predicament.

That day, Breton had come to go over the plans with surrealist friends for making a movie of the L’Écart absolu exhibition. We were able to follow his elegant and careful French and listened with pleasure to the animated discussion.

When Benayoun had arrived, he had handed us a letter from Chicago. It was from Franklin’s mother. She enclosed a review of the L’Écart absolu Exhibition from the New York Times. No one in the group had seen it yet, but they were all very interested, and so we were glad to be able to pass it around and talk about it.

Elisa often asked us how we were and what we were doing. When we mentioned we visited the zoo, she said it was the first place she and André usually visited in every city. Once she asked us, “Are there surrealists in the U.S.?” “Well,” Franklin replied, “there’s the two of us and several of our friends. We plan to form a group when we get back.”

I asked if she had ever been to Chicago. She said she and André had been in Chicago on their way to Reno to get married and they had stayed at a hotel that had doors like a bank vault, six inches thick of steel, from the “gangster period.” For all that, they had forgotten to lock the door, and someone employed by the hotel came by in the evening and admonished them. (I concluded it was Al Capone’s old hotel near Roosevelt Road.) They stayed for a couple of days and told us they found Chicago much more interesting than New York.

They saw the Field Museum and especially admired its fine New Guinea and Oceania art works, particularly two masks from the Sepik River, for decades hidden in a corner of the basement. They were still there in the same place when we got back to Chicago. I must admit I liked the old Field Museum the way it was. There was something good about being able to find the objects that I loved as old friends, year after year in their same place. The new concept of museum as “sideshow” is a failure as far as I’m concerned.

Elisa gave me their phone number and said we should get together. As we had no phone I would call her a couple of times a week, to talk, to tell her about what we were doing and to see if it was a good time to get together.

One day, we came into the café when André was already seated precisely with his back to the door. Astonishingly, he got up just at the right instant to turn and greet us! We were both surprised, a bit confused. Wondering how he did it; it was only later we realized he had seen us enter in the mirror he faced.

Another time, perhaps a month later, Breton was at the café. The group was discussing the new magazine they were planning. They still hadn’t completely settled on a name for the journal that would be L’Archibras. I managed to get so excited by the discussion, I pitched in my suggestion. I said in modest French, “How about Tamanoir (Great Anteater)? It would be good to have a journal named after an animal.” Well, of course, I thought no one had heard me. The discussion went on as full high-speed French. But André had heard me, so he quieted everyone and said, “What did you say? What was your suggestion?” I repeated it, probably blushing at the sudden quiet. André smiled and said, “Yes, it’s a good suggestion. It’s one of the ones we will consider.” The group finally settled on L’Archibras, a wonderful word image that I, of course, had never heard of; they had to explain it. That was a very funny discussion. It was very hard to explain. It was a Fourierist term, an eye on a prehensile tail, or a prehensile eye.

Issue two (October 1967) of the Paris Surrealist Group’s magazine L’Archibras, in which Penelope and Franklin Rosemont’s essay “The Situation of Surrealism in the U.S.” appeared.

Franklin recalls my commenting after meeting Breton, “You almost never get to meet the people who write the books you love!” Things like that are truly a life-changing experience. And besides this André had warmly welcomed us into his circle of friends, a circle like Freud’s, one that included some of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. A circle that had transformed modern concepts of beauty and freedom forever, expanding them, overthrowing them, seeking to discover the true nature of creativity and freedom. A circle of friends that could truly be called magical. So you see magic circles do exist. And their effects are lasting.

I’m not quite sure where I acquired my obsession with the mystery of the printed word, but I am a worshipper of its delights, fascinated by books, bookstores, and the ability to put thoughts, feelings, and scenes into words that will be meaningful to oneself and remarkably, even to others. As a child, it seemed an impossible dream to meet someone who had actually mastered the arcane science of making poems and books, an idea that seemed as remote as taking a journey to Uranus. No one I knew had known anyone who had done such a thing. Not only do you meet the great minds of history when you read their words, but you carry on a dialogue with them and their thinking.

Even now I’m amazed at the ability of the word to conjure up images, images leading to thoughts, to ideas, to states of mind, to a whole psychic chain of perception that, in fact, is capable of renewing the world. Thoughts that were created and written down 7,000 years ago can enter our minds today and we can experience their meaning. Perhaps in a way that is historically bound, but this exists actually as a window in time, a time machine. Words spin webs of connections that persist, create anger and joy, set worlds into motion, conjure futures, waterfalls of words cascade around us, we exist in a whirlpool of words. The vortex becomes a vertigo, a vast luminous ocean of words.

The next time we saw Benayoun after the New Year’s Eve party, he asked how we got home. We described our walk through Paris and of seeing working people queuing up at the Metro entrances before dawn. He said it was not very long ago when the paramilitary groups would go to those Metro entrances, pull the Algerians out of line, take them away, beat them, shoot them, and throw their bodies in the Seine; there many were found floating. I had read about the Algerian war, its horrors and tortures, but hadn’t realized the extent of this fascist activity in Paris.

Benayoun, who was Moroccan himself, told us at length about the “Declaration of the 121,” an important document signed by the leading French intellectuals denouncing the war and the government’s fascist policies. The Surrealist Group, he explained, had a leading role in initiating, proposing, writing, and gathering signatures for this document. The role of the surrealists was certainly not well known in the U.S., although the declaration did appear in Evergreen Review, and was noted in the Industrial Worker. Oddly in the U.S. this document became associated with Sartre and the Existentialists.

Benayoun told us that André Breton liked to be called André, not Monsieur Breton, and that he didn’t like to autograph books, that his asthma was bothering him very much, and that he generally was moody around the time of his birthday on February 18 and rarely came to meetings at that time. We wondered what he must think of us; but what could he possibly think? We were so young, had so few accomplishments, and barely spoke French.

I talked with Elisa often but the cold weather kept them in. It didn’t seem the best time to visit. There was cold and rain and flu everywhere.

Our communication problems affected almost the entire group; they all must have wondered about us. Why had we come? Why had we continued to attend meetings? What did we want to do? There was no way to explain it. Even to those who spoke English it was hard to express our deeply felt commitment to surrealism.

One day, after we had been in Paris perhaps two and a half months, depressed, thinking my French would never be adequate, I suggested to Franklin that we must write something and have it translated into French to be read at a meeting. Then our friends would understand and comment. We must do it. Jean-Claude Silbermann, Benayoun and others agreed.

I celebrated my 24th birthday in Paris on January 22. It was a gray but bright day; we spent the morning at the St. Ouen flea market in Montmartre. The market stalls were built permanently into a row of small garages; people were stamping and moving about in a lively way because of the cold; there was furniture, silver, bizarre stuff, and very few books. We went largely for the experience, not to purchase anything, but to enjoy the bizarre juxtaposition of stuff, to imagine Fanny Beznos at her stand, dressed warmly against the damp cold, the days of surrealism before World War II sandwiched into an odd period of history, the less than twenty years between the two great wars, a time of vast transformations. And now, 1965, was just twenty years after World War II ended.

Back in the Latin Quarter, Franklin purchased a book for me on the Jardin des Plants with many engravings. In the evening, we went to the “Échaudé,” a restaurant downstairs in the rue de l’Échaudé; it served the finest onion soup gratinée imaginable. The restaurant was always packed with young people, the tables so close together it was a miracle the waiter could get through; then the rest of the evening we walked through the nearby streets glistening in the darkness.

One morning, through our forwarded mail, Franklin received a letter from his draft board; he replied that he was on his way to Tangiers for his health and could be reached there care of American Express. For more humor, the state of Illinois wrote suspending my driver’s license for six months and Peoples Gas sent a bill for $600.00, then a fabulous amount of money for a gas bill.

Bernard wrote they had found a new location for Solidarity Bookshop at 1941 North Larabee for $30 per month and he added that Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, was now putting out a newspaper called New Left Notes. He commented, “I’ve seen a copy and, my god, it is notes!” Further, he thought all the names in the paper looked like a roster of the ruling class. A few friends had an anarchist group meeting; John White had suggested they call themselves the “Anarchist Horde.”

Maureen wrote from Lake Forest College that Mayor Daley and Dick Gregory had apparently been invited to the college on the same day at the same time, but confrontation was avoided when the college asked Daley to cancel. Later she wrote to mention that she had been propositioned by a multimillionaire catalog heir, when she called about her loan for the semester’s tuition. Maureen, sick of being pushed around, became assertive and raised a storm of protest.

Meanwhile, in quest of more and warmer clothes, I purchased a brown turtleneck sweater at a classy nearby boutique called Gudule on St.-André-des-Arts for the incredible price of $35. Also, turquoise velour slacks, a fabulous luxury. The new clothes were a huge improvement.

Franklin came down with a bad case of la grippe in January. He spent weeks sick, getting better, and then sick again. A neighborhood doctor, Dr. Robert-Henri Polge, who had his office on rue Mazarine, came and gave Franklin a going-over in a charming Sherlock Holmes manner. He spoke excellent English, prescribed some medicine, and recommended that Franklin might try to stay in bed long enough to get well. While Franklin was ill, I got Vietnamese food to go on an oval china plate with a metal cover, this place was the Hanoi, decorated with metal sculpture made from wrecked airplanes, across the street was the Saigon. We were aware that Paris was not a “to go” city. Although the phrase book plainly said “à porté,” when we tried to get a Coke “à porté,” we were ignored. Finally, the exasperated bartender said in perfect English, “How are you going to carry it, in your hands? This isn’t the U.S., we don’t have paper cups.”

The Situation of Surrealism in the U.S.

Franklin sat scribbling in his bed, as Marat had in his tub, and we began the task of getting together our document for the Surrealist Group. We now had plenty to think about and talk about. What should we say? The document, finished only a week or so before we left Paris, was called “The Situation of Surrealism in the U.S.” It began: “The splendid Watts Insurrection of 1965 should be seen not as an isolated fragment of revolt but as part of a deeper, more complex pattern woven on the other side of the ‘American dream,’” and it pointed out that “as Herbert Marcuse has shown in his important work Eros and Civilization, the material conditions in the world today are historically ready for a revolution greater in scope than ever conceived by parties and groups of the traditional Left, a revolution aiming at the total liberation of man or, in Marcuse’s words, ‘a non-repressive civilization.’”

“Everywhere one sees the formation of associations of resistance and combat (by American Indians, by gypsies, by Mexican Americans, by individuals opposing war, etc.).”

Meanwhile, capitalism was “tending toward the manipulation and control not only of the means of production, the machinery of the state, the military, the press, the trade unions and organized religion, but also of the sciences, of art, of every aspect of everyday life, state and ruling-class power . . . becoming more and more totalitarian.”

Revolution was necessary; “all true art, all poetry, every human action worthy of the name must be directed . . . toward the earliest possible realization of this revolution. . . . We recognize in Surrealism . . . a potent weapon of offense and a means of research, invention and discovery which can admirably serve to discredit, deface, dismantle and ultimately destroy the limitations imposed on man by immediate reality, expose the extreme precariousness of the human condition, and thus lend invaluable assistance to the realization of the fundamental tasks of the entire revolutionary movement.”

We recognized that the situation of surrealism in the U.S. was in many ways different from that in France, that we were involved in a new period of “une vague des rêves” and “pure psychic automatism.”

We planned to do a journal, a surrealist exhibition, an international bulletin, and vowed “we shall disturb ceaselessly and without pity the complacency of the American people.” We concluded: “Elements of a new mythology are everywhere around us. It is up to us to give them a reality. More than ever, we can say with certainty: Surrealism is what will be.”

We gave our text to Jean-Claude, and he undertook the task of getting it translated and passing it around the group. A slightly abridged version appeared in October 1967 in the second issue of the new surrealist journal, L’Archibras.

It was a delight to realize that we had been there when L’Archibras was still a dream, when it was being named. I like to think that perhaps the students of the Sorbonne read our statement in L’Archibras and found there a confirmation of their own aspirations, ideas that expressed themselves in the uprising of May ’68. In Chicago, we printed the “The Situation of Surrealism in the U.S.” in our wall-poster Surrealist Insurrection in January 1968 and in the first Black Swan book, The Morning of a Machine Gun that came running off the press by chance in May ’68 as we heard and followed breathlessly the events of May in Paris, hoping that our friends in France would have the pleasure of being part of a successful revolution.

The threads of choice and chance flew back and forth across time and space, making these exhilarating days and delirious nights.

On our tiny radio we listened to Radio Luxembourg and an illegal station from England that was broadcasting from a ship in the middle of the English Channel. In every café, we heard the Rolling Stones on the radio or jukebox, “I can’t get no satisfaction!” Sometimes they played it when we walked in, a comment on our long hair and Franklin’s leather jacket. There was no doubt, however, that the Stones were popular. A kid working in the Italian restaurant downstairs asked us what “Hey, hey, hey, that’s what I say” meant in French. I translated. Something was definitely lost in translation. He walked out looking bewildered, convinced that English was indeed a strange language.

In turn, we felt the same about French. Reading French Bugs Bunny comics, Sylvester Pussycat was always saying “Saperlipopette!” We asked quite a few people what “Saperlipopette” meant and were told sort of “smash the doll,” hardly funny in English, but certainly not the “sufferin’ succotash” that Sylvester was famous for in English. In this we didn’t “get no satisfaction.”

In Paris I first saw homeless people; I didn’t believe it. Late one night walking home, light, fluffy snow in the air, we saw an old man and an old woman stretched out in the middle of the sidewalk. Were they victims of some bizarre crime, murdered and laid out neatly next to one another, the woman’s arm around the man? But it seemed impossible that any killer would be so careful. From closer, it was clear that their gentle faces and gray heads showed no sign of agony or violence. I stared down and noticed a tin cup near them with a franc in it; they were lying on a warm subway grate, sleeping. Sleeping an exhausted sleep on the winter streets, being murdered slowly. This had to be one of the worst crimes I could imagine, that the French state would abandon these helpless old people who looked like lost grandparents. We left all the money we had, not much, and went on, feeling torn apart by rage and guilt: rage that we couldn’t do anything and guilt that we had a warm room to go to.

Later I saw others, some young people sleeping in doorways now and then. Never did I even consider that in a few years this tremendous shame would be found here in the U.S., too, with its vast riches. A society that forces people into homelessness violates the very premise upon which society is founded, mutual aid. A society that abandons its own people has lost its reason for existence. So-called “primitive society” has no homelessness, the people themselves with the help of their neighbors build homes out of what is available. Homelessness is an invention of “modern” society.

Enjoying the Riviera

Toward the end of January, we decided to go to the French Riviera in hopes of shaking the flu and maybe catching a glimpse of the sun and feeling warm for a while. In fact, it was not warm there, just a little less cold and just a little more sunny. We hitchhiked down, starting in Paris at Autoroute du Sud, and got a ride all the way to Avignon, where we were dropped off in the middle of the night in the cold pouring rain. The worst possible situation. I really thought we were in trouble, sure we would both have pneumonia by the next morning and would next be checking into a French hospital. But as luck would have it, we were standing there in confusion for less than five minutes when a large van driven by a woman stopped and picked us up. She had us sit all the way in the back. Then she called to us in several languages, in German, Spanish, French; she wasn’t getting through.

I said to Franklin, “I’m not sure what she’s saying . . . ,” when she interrupted with a charming British “You speak English!” We all laughed. She invited us to have some peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Middle-aged, she was off adventuring on her own; we enjoyed talking with her. She drove us almost to Nice, where we got out of her van early in the morning and were soon picked up by a Frenchman, who spoke only French, driving a truck full of vegetables to market. We squeezed in front with him and enjoyed the sights as the high, old truck rattled along. Then we took a city bus and arrived in downtown Nice, exhausted but amused by the adventure. We checked into a hotel and slept.

I was charmed to touch the Mediterranean Sea at last, the sea of the Odyssey, the sea around which great civilizations had developed and decayed, but the sea was asleep. Winter lethargy. We enjoyed Nice’s old town, the flower market, the hills, climbing up to the ruined chateau, but in no time, we were lonesome for Paris and on our way back.

On February 2, we were in Marseilles. One of the first things we saw was a Chuck Berry poster, ten feet tall. We got a distant view of Château d’If where Dumas had set the first part of his Count of Monte Cristo, the world’s greatest novel of revenge, dearly loved by both Franklin and me. We visited the hilltop zoo; there we first heard the noon sirens tick off a concert of wolves, hyenas, siamangs, monkeys, etc., in one grand howl! The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Hitchhiking

We arrived in Marseilles by hitchhiking and later we got a ride with a maniac Frenchman whose job was selling religious junk. His classy sports car was full to overflowing with plastic Madonnas, St. Christophers, and crucified Christs on the seats and floor and in the back window; I pushed a pile over and climbed in back. He drove his car at top speed over the curving roads, taking them as straight as possible by ignoring the center line, which he crossed and recrossed as if he were the only driver in the world. Perhaps he thought the 800 white plastic statues of St. Christopher would protect him. He couldn’t seem to understand why we were only too happy to get out once he finally pulled to a stop.

We were stranded for hours holding our “Paris” sign in Aix at a star-shaped intersection that had probably been there since the days of ancient Rome. Just couldn’t get a ride in any direction, so we walked to the train station and took the next train leaving for Paris. So much for “the cure;” when we arrived, Franklin was sicker than when we left.

We got a different room at our same hotel, Le Grand Balcon, when we came back from Nice. The romance between the hotel keeper’s son and a beautiful young woman was still hot, and we often found them sitting holding hands dreamily behind the counter. (There is a photo of two lovers on the Paris barricades that reminds me of them.) He welcomed us and added, “We have a different rate for long-term guests. You can pay by the week. It’s cheaper.” He talked us into taking a room on the second floor; the first floor of the hotel began a floor above street level. It was a nice, large room at the same rate we had paid for a tiny one.

I think they were probably quite tired of the noise we made bounding up and down the stairs 25 times per day. In a letter, I wrote, “Much nicer than our last mainly because it is larger with two windows framed by red drapes. The room itself is gray with a large bed, a good-sized round table with three chairs, a chest of drawers which doesn’t open, a bookshelf/cabinet with doors that fall off when you open them, an extra bed covered by a black-and-white shawl, and a closet closed with a drape of the same pattern.