Live poetry 1967 (Pete Roche)

Found - a 1967 Corgi paperback Love, love, love: the new love poetry. It was edited by Pete Roche the subject of a recent jot where he wrote disparagingly of the Cavern Club (1964). Three years later in the height of the Hippie era we find him editing this attractive book with psychedelic
covers by Haphash and the Coloured Coat. His introduction celebrates the revival of 'live' poetry - which is still going strong. There follows a poem by him, other contributors included Adrian Henri, Adrian Mitchell, Roger McGough, Carlyle Reedy, Libby Houston, Spike Hawkins, Brian Patten...

… the recent increase in the popularity of poetry readings, particularly among younger people. The success in this respect of the Liverpool poets (all of whom are included here) and of what has been called The Great Liverpool Experiment have already been well documented.

Son of the Sixties

Found - in Axle, a short lived magazine, from June 1963 this amusing and intriguing portrait of a sixties type (or archetype.) It was written  by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley the editors of the magazine. These 2 men, 23 at the time, went on to become successful pop music composers - hits included Dave Dee's Xanadu..In 1970 they even wrote a song for Elvis ('I've lost you'.)The reference to 'Dexadrin' is obscure- can find no trace of such a magazine, possibly ingested rather than read...

Son of the Sixties

Build: Tall; slim; muscular without exercise. Complexion: clear; permanently bronzed without sun or Man-tan; never sweats...Seldom laughs (but rare smiles are planned and dazzling - he was born in natural fluoride area). Hair: Black; well-combed, no dressing; styling suggests but never quite descends to more obvious fashions of the day (Frost, Como, etc.) Clothes: by John Michael and Marks and Spencer. Can wear white shirt for whole week. General appearance: Air of masculine competence cunningly offset by one or two ambiguous touches (name-bracelet, St. Christopher chain, pastel denim shirt); usual expression, mixture of Come-Hither and Come-Off-It; can appear alternately boyish and authoritative, a trump combination

Francine Saigon parodist of Francoise Sagan

Found  - a Keystone file photo from March 9th 1963 of 16 year old  novelist Felicity Moxton. Her book Bonsoir Maitresse: a novel (Pavilion Publications, London 1963) was a parody of Francoise Sagan's bestselling 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse. It is quite rare but looks like this (the design very much like Francoise Sagan's French paperbacks):-

The back of the press photo reads:

Only 16 years old… is the young English writer Felicity Moxton and in a short time her first book will be to get in all book-shops. Felicity is the daughter of a writer in London. Her first book has the title 'Bonsoir Maitresse' and her pseudonym is 'Francine Saigon'.

Bailey, Keeler, Faithfull in 1969

Recently found - this 1969 press photo. The byline reads:

 

1/10/69 London. Christine Keeler (left), whose name figured prominently a few years back in a scandal that rocked the British  government attends a party in Chelsea 11/9 to launch a new book on the "Swingin' Sixties".  With her is photographer David Bailey actress Penelope Tree and singer Marianne Faithfull (right).

The book was Goodbye Baby & Amen. A Saraband for the Sixties. The text was by Peter Evans and photos by Bailey.

The sitters included Brigitte Bardot, Cecil Beaton, Marisa Berenson, Jane Birkin, Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Ossie Clark, Joan Collins, Catherine Deneuve, Mia Farrow, Albert Finney, Jean-Luc Godard, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Dudley Moore, Rudolf Nureyev, Oliver Reed, Keith Richard, Peter Sellers, Jean Shrimpton

Mr. Presley Sheds Some Mannerisms

Found in an old book, a press-cutting from November 10th 1960 about Elvis. The style and look is of The Times but it is not stated.They regard the movie G.I.Blues as 'nothing' but seem (in a very stiff manner) to have fallen under Elvis's spell..
On the back is stuck another cutting, tabloid in style, stating that Sandra Dee does not like Elvis ('he acts a little undignified when he wiggles…') and  noting Hollywood's Louella Parsons remarks about the King - 'I'm  glad I put my money on Elvis Presley in those early days when so many people were ridiculing him -in GI Blues he sings well without wiggling and acts in a perfectly natural way...'

Mr. Presley Sheds Some Mannerisms

Style of his own in 'G. I. Blues'.

The young popular entertainer, especially if he is singer, is apt to be judged less by reason than by prejudice - and prejudice derives its impulse largely from the accident of age. A large and enthusiastic tick will be placed opposite his name by the vast majority of those who have yet to experience the joy of being 21; crabbed middle-age, and all on the wrong side of it, will draw through it a thick line, eloquent of disgust and disapproval.

Mr. Elvis Presley had had considerable experience of both kinds of treatment, but even those most determined to condemn must, it they are at all fair-minded, have second thoughts after seeing 'G. I. Blues', directed by Mr. Norman Taurog and now to be seen at the Plaza Cinema. The film itself, one of those American service comedies which so painfully stress the licentiousness of the soldiery, is nothing, and serious criticism would soon lose itself in the vast wastes of vulgarity that are its natural home, but Mr. Presley himself is a different matter.

As Tulsa, a tank gunner serving in western Germany, he is an acceptable person. Gone are the "side-boards" that were such an offence to the conservative, and gone, too, are those convulsive jerks of the body, making him resemble a jelly in a high wind, which used to accompany his singing. He has in this film a considerable number of songs, some of them above the average in tunefulness, to sing, and he sings them pleasantly. He has an unmistakable style of his own, yet there are moment when the ghostly image of the youthful Bing Crosby flickers across the screen.

Another Idler

Most literary people when they think of past magazines called The Idler would cite Samuel Johnson’s famous miscellany and Jerome K Jerome’s humorous organ of the1890s. Today’s Idler is edited by the anti-corporatist and ukelele enthusiast Tom Hodgkinson, author of How to be Free. But there was another Idler, which is, as yet, unknown to Wikipedia, and indeed has a very, very low online profile.

This Idler, a tabloid format miscellany printed on newsprint, edited by Sci-Fi writer James Parkhill-Rathbone, and published by ‘Editorial Associates’, existed for a short time around 1966 and then folded. Published quarterly from the editor’s home, the Old Crown, Wheatley, a former coaching inn, it called itself an ‘entertainment’, which is about right,

The return of the Italian Restaurants 1961

From 'Minder' circa 1982 - Arthur Dailey leaving Otello's

Found in The Good Food Guide 1961-1962, this review of an Italian restaurant in Soho. It shows  how restaurants reflect London's recent history, and although this was the beginning of the swinging 60s it was written only 15 years after WW2 ('war wounds are healing.'). Otello Scipioni died recently aged 91 and the restaurant is now called Zilli. He also owned the grander Italian restaurant Villa dei Cesari near the Tate Gallery.  As the 60s progressed the Italians came to dominate the catering scene - Italian trattorias being a great hangout for the beautiful, the rich and the famous. Fortunes were made. Note the GFG's feedback system -- the names at bottom being unpaid food enthusiasts who had written in - the bit about singing waiters is probably a quote from one of them them. Longo Intervallo = long gap.

TRATTORIA DA OTELLO
41 Dean Street, London W.1. 
REGent 3924

The gastronomic map of Britain or at any rate of London, reflects longo intervallo – after a decade or so to be more definite – the political history of our country, and even its campaigns. Before the war, there were a number of French restaurants in London, but Italians dominated; after Mussolini had shown what Italian Fascism thought of us, the Greek restaurateurs drove the Italians from Soho street by street. Cypriots, those unquestionably Empire citizens, reaped the richest harvest. Now, it may be because of Eoka, or just because war wounds are healing, but for whatever reason, authentic Italian trattorie are springing up, and among the best is this, run by Otello Scipioni, who spearheaded the return of the legionaries. 

It has none of the nonsense of 'special uniforms' and so on ('though sometimes a waiter may burst into song') and it does pay attention to the cooking.

All prices are à la carte. Order these dishes: Lasagne Reale (4/6), fritto mist della mare, risotto allaoVastese (3/6), osso buco or kidneys, and consider also the mozzarella in carozza and the scaloppini Don Camillo. Full license: 11/6 carafes of red, white and pink wine from Signor Otello's family vineyard (2/6 a glass) and 24 other Italian wines from 15/6 to 23/-; other countries' wine treated with explicable disdain. Open every day except Christmas and Boxing Day lunch, 12-3 and 6 - 11.30. (App. Dudley Collard; Oswald Gill; V.Gordon;Maurice Elvey; Margit Owen; M.D.P. Webb)

Recommendations cannot be accepted from anyone connected with the hotels concerned.

I once met….Sir Felix Dennis

The sad recent death of amateur poet, multimillionaire media mogul, and manic tree planter reminds me of the day I interviewed him back in 2008. Preparation is everything and knowing that this most eligible bachelor was rather fond of attractive young ladies, my magazine sent me to meet him with a pretty Dutch photographer in her twenties whose dress of choice was a very clinging all-leather cat suit. I can’t for the world think why she chose this particular outfit, but there you are.

In the Forest of Dennis

With Oz defendants Neville and Dexter

Anyway, we arrived for the interview at the office below his penthouse flat off Carnaby Street, which he still rented after four or more decades. While I sat on a huge couch next to an aquarium, which seemed to take up most of one side of the large but rather dingy room, the photographer was shown upstairs to take pictures of Dennis’s superb  library of mainly modern firsts. When the great man arrived late from a generous lunch he was clearly in a good mood, as you might say. This was confirmed when, after adjourning to his office, I prepared for the interview by dropping my tape recorder and allowing all the batteries to fall out. ‘Hah! Hah! Hah! he gleefully exclaimed, ‘Another technophobe’ . I wasn’t, of course, but I knew that he was. I’d been warned that despite the fact that he owned several high-tech magazines, he wasn’t online and had no mobile phone. Nor, despite publishing for car-mad young men, did he drive. I also suspected that he had health problems when he soon after reached for several small bottles in his desk and swallowed a handful of pills.

The interview went remarkably well. There was to be a lot more raucous laughing from his direction and eye-popping amazement from me. We were there principally to discuss his latest book, How to Become Rich, but, of course, I was much more interested in his early hedonistic lifestyle and book collection. On the latter topics he did not disappoint. It appeared that long before the OZ trial one of his principal ambitions had been to defy the mores of his middle class childhood in Kingston on Thames. He dropped out

Early Days of T.M. in London

Found, a leaflet from the early 1960s issued by the London HQ of Transcendental Meditation or 'The Spiritual Regeneration Movement Foundation of Great Britain' as it was known then. The alphabetical phone number HYD 6296 puts it before 1966, before the movement, under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, became a major force with the involvement of The Beatles and other celebs in 1967...

THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN TODAY'S WORLD SITUATION

The question of what can be done to reduce international tension and avoid the disaster of war is one that weighs upon the hearts and minds of us all. But few of us ask "What can I do?" Because it seems impossible for an individual to do anything; we are coming to regard ourselves as no more than helpless passengers on a vast liner that is about to sink.

Are we?

For the forest tobe green, the trees  must  be green. War can-and will-break out in a World that is prepared for it -prepared by the presence everywhere of an atmosphere of anger, lies, and hostility based upon fear. On the other hand, war could not and would not happen in a world peopled by individuals  at peace with themselves.

When we let fear provoke us into argument and hostility - even if only over our "rights," vanities and prejudices-it does not occur to us that our quarrels could have anything remotely to do with the peace of the world. And yet it is the sum, the mass, of these infinitely small conflicts which, put together, help to make up a total atmosphere of tension and hostility. 

'Today's Sound' - learning from rock music (1970)

From Tony Jasper's Today's Sound (Galliard, Great Yarmouth, England 1970) a Christian teaching book. The teacher is encouraged to use rock songs and their lyrics to discuss contemporary morals, behaviour and ways of being. Thus we get some of the lyrics of  Martha and the Vandella's Dancing in the Street, transcribed thus, and followed with topics for discussion:

Cryin out in the world,
Are you ready for a brand new beat?
Summer's here and the time is right
For dancin' in the street.
They'e dancin' in Chicago, down in New Orleans
In New York City
All we need is music, sweet music,
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swinging and swaying and records playing
Dancing in the street

Oh -- it doesn't matter what you wear,
Just as long as you are there.
So come on every guy, grab a girl,
Everywhere, around the world

Dancing in the street….

Describe the aspects of the present youth culture bought out in this song. Live out the song through movement, reduce the world, sing to it, love it, touch it, it's yours.

Take out a tape recorder, a camera, film camera and capture life as it's happening now. Think of ways and communicating the spirit of this song, your experiencings to the Other  generation.

For Eleanor Rigby the class is encouraged to draw pictures of  Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie and ask if our society is hard on those who never marry - "Do you find labels such as 'Old Maid' offensive?"

With Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence he suggests reading Waiting for Godot and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner for a greater depth of understanding . The Doors Light my Fire prompts a discussion of today's clothes 'do we wear them just for colour or so-called fashion or do we feel different in certain types of gear and find our personalities revealed through them? Are young people less inhibited than those of yesterday regarding sex?'

The Delaney and Bonnie Song (We've Got to) Get Ourselves Together leads to a discussion of the Christian religion. 'Has the Christian religion with its Universalist gospel a big part to play in a growing awareness by all people of their part in one big family called mankind? How can we ourselves take positive steps to enable all people to get together?' With The Beatles You've Got to Hide Your Love Away he suggests 'through mime and sketch act out situations which to the group seem likely to lead to misunderstanding and isolation...'

An interesting and slightly rare book - well meaning and very open to new ideas.  44 years ago - a vanished world.

Bolan in Cyclops

From the first issue of the Norwich based literary magazine Cyclops (Wild Pigeon Press 1968). Other contributors included Jeff Nuttall, Snoo Wilson and Bill Butler. There is a full page portrait of Marc by Harriet Franklin, the wife of the magazine's editor Dan Franklin. Cyclops says of Marc: 'Sings with Tyrannosaurus Rex. First book of poems is appearing soon.' Indeed this poem appeared soon after in his Warlock of Love. Untitled (as it is titled) is  a prose poem so abstract it might turn into mist and float out to sea. It seems probable that rare and exotic herbs were consumed during its creation...Take it away Marc:

Tall as the truth the creature coughed in the clouds, 
feeding on mountain tips and the rare winged eagle lords 
that journeyed higher than the memory of man. Its claw, caked in mist and wishes, ripped at a pillar of fear 
masoned long ago by terrible forgotten Titans, to
 prevent the dreams of man from floating in the valleys 
of the diamond.
 Its eyes, like women and sand, shifted ever searching 
for the perilous horn of plenty. A foolish colossus 
it looked, ragged and unworshipped. Solitary on the 
roof of the world, a remaining nightmare in a plateau 
of fair thought.
It moaned and clumsily spewed spells of fear on the 
storm stallions grazing in the temple of pearls. And 
the years danced on. And all that moves returns to 
stone, eventually.

London's first boutique

From Gear Guide (Hip Pocket Guide to London's Swinging Fashion Scene) published in London in May 1967.


Bill 'Vince' Green was a stage portrait photographer who specialised in taking shots of body-builders. One of  his problems  was finding briefs that were brief enough and close fitting to show off the body beautiful to the best effect. There seemed to be no solution to his problem until Vince started making the briefs himself. He tried using stretch material intended for women's roll -ons and other unlikely cloths.  it was really only a part time activity for Vince, but his name spread -  people started turning up and asking for briefs to order in unusual materials. Even visiting royalty  sought him out and were fitted with swimwear.  In 1954 he visited Paris  and was struck by the clothes of the beat Left Bank student fraternity  and cafe society - young people who lived it up through the night in the cafes wearing dark glasses and a lot of denim.  

Denim took Vince Green's fancy. He discovered that  people  were actually bleaching their denims and sitting in baths to shrink them to body-hugging shapes. It seemed a great idea and Vince  decided to sell denim made like this. In October 1954 he opened up a boutique selling pre-shrunk pre-bleached clothes. At the beginning the trade was highly amused and though it a quickly passing gimmick. But soon he was supplying his denim wholesale to big stores like Harrods. Today over a decade later, this particular gear style is still very popular in many different forms. Is not surprising  and new as Vince probably thought. In the days of the great army of the Russian Czar's the officers were known to sit in  the hot baths to soak their sealskin trousers before a big parade or ball.

Bouncing boutiques.

Vince's  was probably the first boutique. It was quickly known to the new money earning young who where prepared to spend plenty of their earnings on looking good. Enough of them went to his place to ensure the success of his new venture.

But it was the next move the probably had the greatest effect on really getting the gear seen moving. An assistant to Vince – John Stephen – moved away and worked in a number of other small clothes shops specialising in new clothes in the Notting Hill and Baker Street district of London. These new little shops, bright, gay and intimate (unlike the traditional big clothes store or specialised shirt or men's shop) proved to be very successful. Stephen decided to set up on his own. He came back to Soho, the area where Vince had started, and opened a one room boutique on a second floor in Beak Street [after a disastrous fire at this shop his sympathetic landlord offered him a store round the corner in Carnaby Street, until then a row of dowdy shops,-- the rest is history…]

More info at A Dandy in Aspic (thanks for pic)

Teenage Testament 1960

Found among some papers bought from the late John Rolph, a memorable man, publisher with the Scorpion Press and latterly a bookseller in his rambling shop at Pakefield, Lowestoft. He had published several Royston Ellis poetry pamphlets including the great-looking Rave (1960). Ellis's statement, written when he was 18 is a cri de coeur from teenland--the teenager at the time had only just been invented, before that in what is now known as 'the age of deference' you went uncomplainingly from boy to man, from girl to woman, wore sensible clothes, plastered down your hair and behaved yourself. The document  is a carbon copy with a note by JR 'given to me by Royston 1960.' It appears to be unpublished.

                                 Teenage Testament 

With the on-coming Spring the teenage has burst into bud once again. But this year there is no getting rid of it with weed killer. Teenagers look like being the prize blooms featured in every newspaper, magazine, television programme and family discussion.

Throughout the country youngsters are being interviewed for their views on life, love, manners, religion....In fact, everything that will give the outsider an idea of what makes teenagers tick. A so-called typical teenager romps into the public eye and is immediately condemned and criticised by earnest religious bodies as being 'not a fair representative'. A learned youngster states his views and straightaway teenagers accuse him of being out of touch.

Eel Pie Island 1960

One thing that all these probes have proved is that there is no such thing as the typical teenager....We, and I speak now as a teenager, have healthy defiance for conventionally-held beliefs. We will not take "no' or "you mustn't" for an answer. We aim to keep hypocrisy from our outlook. The world of the tut-tut brigade is swiftly crumbling. In two generations time the tut-tuts will be dead.

This is suddenly a teenage world, and we're sick of the state it is in. We teenagers have never had inhibitions, smug delusions. That is why we are going all out for life in away that we feel is right.

Slang glossary 1962

From a cult novel by old Etonian Robin Cook who later changed his name to Derek Raymond to avoid being confused with schlock novelist Robin 'Coma' Cook. As Raymond his books became very dark and gory but persisted with varieties of slang for which his first book The Crust on Its Uppers (1962) was known. A rich source book of slang, some unique, some well worn and some highly ephemeral. Here is a small selection:

Angst = trouble 

Archbishop = Archbishop Laud = fraud

Baize, the = Bayswater Road

Binns= spectacles (dark binns- dark glasses)

Blag= a bluff, a tall story (Fr. 'blague?) Also as verb

Bubble=bubble-and-squeek= Greek (thus Archbubble= ArchGreek or Greek-in-chief)

Cat's-meat gaff= hospital

Charver= to have sex with

Deviator= a crook (devious= crooked; deviation= a crime)

Michael Henshaw 'the cool accountant'

Licenced….to save you money.

For someone who a few years later was swanning around in a flashy sports car, Austin Powers- like, with mini-skirted 'chicks', Michael Noel Henshaw,  started modestly in 1960, as the accompanying driving licence shows,  with a 1942 black Austin saloon. Henshaw was the former tax inspector and show business wannabe who became the ‘cool accountant’ to so many media luvvies in the swinging sixties and seventies, including  the Fab Four, the Pythons, playwrights like David Mercer, David Hare and Simon Gray and writers that included  Alan Sillitoe, Ted Hughes and Basil Bunting. He even sorted out the tax problems of William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg.


Born in Derby in 1930, Henshaw attended the local Bemrose school, where his  appearance in a Shakespeare production (he is third from the left in photo ) at the age of 16, hints at an early taste for showbiz. After National Service he took the civil service exams and joined the Revenue at Shepherd’s Bush as a tax inspector, while at the same time taking a part-time course in law at London University. His big break came when his childhood friend John Dexter, who had come to London as a theatre director, introduced him to the playwright Arnold Wesker at the Partisan Coffee Bar in Soho.

Smoker's Progress

Publicity booklet from the tobacconist Bewlay's issued in 1967. Mostly drawings of historical types smoking pipes and taking snuff. They claim that Britain's first smoker was seen in Bristol in 1556 'he did walk in the streets emitting smoke from his nostrils…' He was chased through the town by an angry populace. This spirit is now returning. The 1967 image shows every single person smoking - even the women ('the fair sex have shown they are no longer willing to be excluded from one of the most exquisite pleasures of life.') 

Margaret Thatcher "What's Wrong with Politics?"

Conservative Political Centre pamphlet from 1968. A cultured speech quoting from Shakespeare and Sheridan and even the now slightly forgotten French writer Anatole France (who is quoted as saying 'I am not so devoid of all talents as to occupy myself with politics.')

Among the wrongs Margaret Thatcher identifies are too much government; government and its agencies had become too big and the mere man no longer counted. People had lost interest in politics, there was too much reliance on statistics and 'too little judgement…' 

One significant line in her speech is 'Bribery and corruption, which have now gone, used to be rampant.' She mentions the case of a Lord Ashley who spent £12000 on 'refreshments' in order to win Dorset in 1831. Probably more than a million…

Based on a speech given 10/10/68 at the party conference in Blackpool. From the collection of Ian Gilmour (Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar 1926 – 2007) with his marginal linings. The owner of The Spectator in the late 1950s and a distinguished historian. Later he was an anti-Thatcherite Tory Cabinet minister (i.e. what Maggie called a 'wet.') Margaret Thatcher became P.M. 11 years later in 1979.

Goddesses Never Die (1969)

Goddesses Never Die by George B. Mair. (Jarrolds U.K. 1969) Dust wrapper by Michael Johnson. An espionage thriller with a lot of 1960s references. Rather rare - none listed on web book malls and this copy with a signed presentation from the author...

The dust wrapper blurb reads:

Set in the Himalayas, this seventh David Grant thriller has all the narrative power and exotic colour for which the George Mair has been acclaimed in five continents.

Hashish and LSD are the weapons chosen by the Mafia and Cosa Nostra to corrupt western society on a global scale and to promote a world take-over by permissive politicians assisted by hippies, beatniks and flower people. A remote Himalayan village controlled by a woman who was once a living goddess in Kathmandu's Kumari Devi Temple becomes a headquarters for organised world revolt – and David Grant, on leave from his duties as NATO's special intelligence agent, is drawn into one of the most dramatic episodes of his career.

A casual meeting with Harmony Dove – socialite, mystery woman and man-hunter – involves Grant in a fantastic battle of wits in which civilisation itself is at stake.

[Backflap, with pic of the writer aged about 50] George Mair specialises in creating drama from existing situations, and his intimate knowledge of over 70 countries enables him to write with authority – whether his  setting is the West Indies or Chile, the Soviet Union or the Sahara.

His scientific training also enables him to see the potential in weapons ranging from drugs to nerve gases while his instincts as a newsman guide him in choice of plot.

His fantasy is always close to 'what may happen tomorrow' and he is an expert in blending fact with fiction.

Christopher Logue / Ralph Steadman - Talitha Getty

Short poem by Christopher Logue For Talitha 1941 - 1971
with illustration by Ralph Steadman. Issued in 50 signed copies. 'Talitha' was the wife of Paul Getty and daughter of the artist Willem Pol. One of the more beautiful of the beautiful people, she died young and rich in Rome. She can be seen in very small parts in a series of British 1960s movies like The System an Oliver Reed film where she plays a foreign student and briefly in Barbarella.  Logue, a London friend, writes:

Endlessly moving clouds
But no sign of you. 

For three nights running
I have dreamt of you.

Thank you for coming.

Each time we split we said
tomorrow, love. Next day

something had been arranged,
that made us say: 

tomorrow is the blind man's holiday.

Rain wets the town. 
Skids end and drivers die.

I scratch my head.
I tidy up my room.

Living for ever is a kindly lie.
We will not quarrel in posterity.

I Was a Beatnik

From a Christian book We Found our Way Out by James R. Adair and Ted Miller (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids Michigan 1965.) People tell their stories 'of how God led them from the confusion of false religions and philosophies to a life of peace in Jesus...a first hand glimpse into many heresies.' The Beatnik chapter gives an insight into a vanished world. Others escaped from communism, Armstrongism, Satan and Theosophism...many other contemporary portrayals of Beatniks have them as followers of Eastern religions.

I Was a Beatnik

  The day I turned twenty I thought I knew all there was to know about life. Yet the kind of life I was wrapped up in was filled with idle conversation, liquor, and pep pills.
  I was living piecemeal by doing commercial art off and on. Most of the time I sat around in the back booth of a dark little tavern and played things "cool," beatnik-style.
  I was fairly proud of that title "beatnik." I read a lot of philosophy, looking desperately for something on which to hang the threads of my life. Nights I wandered aimlessly to my noisy beat retreat and sat. There I would stay with my little clan of beatniks until the wee hours of the morning, locking hornrims over some discussion subject and working it to death.
  I was getting fed up with life, which seemed so cheap. And I was sick of trying to look "way-out." I felt I had gone to "Nowheresville," that I was too tired and too old and oh, so weary. I hated myself.
  One night after I got back to my room from the tavern, I stretched on the floor and looked over my books to find one I thought would be light reading. I decided on Early Will I Seek Thee, by Eugenia Price.
  At first the book's literary style captivated my attention. It was sheer simplicity. I turned on one of my very, very blue jazz records and began to read the style–not the message.

  After I had scanned the book, the record ended and the needle was scratching its way back and forth. I picked up the needle, turned off the machine and sat foggy-eyed and unthinking for quite some time. Then I started the book again on the first page. This time I read the message.