The Last Bohemians

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The writer Harriet Sohmers Zwerling and her old lover, the playwright Irene Fornes, in Paris in the early 1950s. Harriet is at work editing her diaries from that period for future publication. The diaries will also include her tumultuous affair with writer and social critic Susan Sontag, that went on for a decade.

Click on the photobooth shots to go to excerpts from Harriet's diaries. 

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My friend Tobias Schneebaum, the ex-cannibal and sexual anthropologist. Tobias went around the world, sleeping with men of different cultures and writing about it. He died in 2005.

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Here is a photo of the late Barton Benes’ apartment in Westbeth, in Greenwich Village, New York City. Barton died last year, and had made plans to donate his entire apartment to a museum in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Here is my interview with Barton:

http://lastbohemians.blogspot.com/2011/10/barton-benes-on-lethal-weapons-and.html

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Portrait of the Writer and Artist as a Young Woman. These pictures are of Harriet Sohmers Zwerling in Paris in the 1950's.

Read Harriet's torrid diary entries of her affair with Susan Sontag in Paris during that period.

http://lastbohemians.blogspot.com/2011/10/harriet-sohmers-zwerlings-1950s-paris.html

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The poet Edward Field discusses his close personal friend, the late writer and sexual anthropologist Tobias Schneebaum. Tobias achieved fame and infamy for living with a cannibal tribe in Peru in the mid-1950's. This story was chronicled in Tobias' memoir, "Keep the River on Your Right." Edward Field spoke with Dylan Foley on January, 11, 2013, at his apartment in Greenwich Village.

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The acclaimed poet Edward Field discusses his mid-1950's affair with the poet Frank O'Hara. This affair taught Edward that it was possible to be an emotionally healthy gay man. This interview took place on January 11, 2013, in Edward's apartment at the Westbeth artists' residence in the West Village.

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Dylan Thomas' Fatal Tour Through Greenwich Village, 1953.

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Patti Bown, jazz singer and Westbeth resident, died in 2008 at 76.

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Saul Lishinsky was a painter who had his heyday in the 1940s and 1950s. Thinking the prices offered for his work was too low, he sold virtually no work. He lived in a crammed studio at Westbeth with 60 years worth of work. I met him in 2005. In 2006, his nephew moved him to assisted living. All his work was junked, but much of it was sold at the Chelsea Flea Market, giving Lishinsky a second life as a artist. He died in a Manhattan nursing home in 2011.

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The late Barton Benes on his "Lethal Weapons" project and his plans to be cremated and put in a pillow in his apartment.

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Rosetta Reitz, 1940s Greenwich Village Bookstore Owner, Sexual Libertine

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Edward Field's poem "The Last Bohemians"

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Malachy McCourt on Bar Running and Gold Smuggling in 1950s New York

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William S. Burroughs Jr.

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The Short, Horrible Life of William S. Burroughs, Jr.

     Reading the blog Sioux Division, I found an 8-minute film clip that included interviews with William Burroughs Sr., the junkie and Beat writer, and his son Billy Burroughs, who died of liver cirrhosis at the age of 33 in 1981.

   Billy Burroughs was born to Joan Vollmer Burroughs in 1947, when his mother was addicted to benzedrine inhalers. Joan was killed in Mexico by William Sr. in 1951 when he shot her in the head, acting out a bit from William Tell.

   Billy Burroughs' body of work included two published novels, "Speed" and "Kentucky Ham," and a posthumoius compilation of journal entries and novel fragments. In his short, tortured life, he was a speed addict and an alcoholic, and spent some time in jail. Befre he died, he wrote an article for Esquire, attacking his father, leading to a final rift.

   Here is the original Sioux Division link:

http://siouxdivision.livejournal.com/406643.html

   The author of the blog excoriates William Sr. for the dreadful treatment of his son. He also notes that Allen Ginsberg and other writer friends of William Sr. tried to molest William Jr. when he was a 13-year-old living with his father in Tangiers.

   The video segment comes from the documentary Burroughs, about William Burroughs Sr. With a father like William Sr., Billy Burroughs didn't have a chance.

   Here is William Burroughs Jr.'s Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs,_Jr.

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Maxwell Bodenheim and his wife Ruth Fegan were murdered in 1954. Hit photo to read the story of his combat with Joe Gould.