22..
PARTISAN REVIEW
the dark recesses of the city, howling for their leader. The advance
warnings turned out to be exaggerated; it was nevertheless discon–
certing to be associated with such goings-on, and the fact that Fred
Dupee, at the request of the John Dewey Society, had consented to
be moderator, chairman, introducer of Ginsberg and his fellow-poets,
while it provided the wives of his colleagues with the assurance of
seats in a section of the hall reserved for faculty, was not without its
uncomfortable reminder that Ginsberg had, in a sense, got his way;
he was appearing on the same Columbia platform from which T. S.
Eliot had last year read his poetry; he was being presented by, and
was thus bound to be thought under the sponsorship of, an important
person in the academic and literary community who was also one's
long-time friend. And indeed it was as Dupee's friend that one took a
first canvass of the scene: the line of policemen before the entrance
to the theater; the air of suppressed excitement in the lobbies and
one's own rather contemptible self-consciousness about being seen in
such a crowd; the shoddiness of an audience in which it was virtu–
ally impossible to distinguish between student and camp-follower;
the always-new shock of so many young girls, so few of them pretty,
and so many dreadful black stockings; so many young men, so few
of them - despite the many black beards - with any promise of
masculinity. It was distressing to think that Dupee was going to be
"faculty" to this rabble, that at this moment he was backstage with
Ginsberg
&
Co., formulating a deportment which would check the
excess of which one knew them to be capable, even or especially in
public, without doing violence to his own large tolerance.
For me, it was of some note that the auditorium smelled fresh.
The place was already full when we arrived; I took one look at the
crowd and was certain that it would smell bad. But I was mistaken.
These people may think they're dirty inside and dress up to it. Never–
theless, they smell all right. The audience was clean and Ginsberg was
clean and Corso was clean and Orlovsky was clean. Maybe Ginsberg
says he doesn't bathe or shave; Corso, I know, declares that he has
never combed his hair; Orlovsky has a line in one of the two poems
he read - he's not yet written his third, the chairman explained -
"If
I should shave, I know the bugs would go away." But for this
occasion, at any rate, Ginsberg, Corso and Orlovsky were
all
clean
and shaven; Kerouac, in crisis, didn't appear, but if he had come he
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