572
heeded. The doctor was taken
up with the other Frenchman,
who began telling how he
would handle Corso in his place.
Corso poked him once more.
"Do you like Baudelaire?"
"I detest Baudelaire."
"He detests Baudelaire!" He
threw up his arms in glee. "I'll
bet you don't even like Shelley,
or Rimbaud, or The Little
Prince...."
"Look," the doctor said,
visibly exasperated by the two–
front assault, "you need psychi–
atric help immediately, and I'm
trying to recommend a good
doctor - a friend of mine in
New York-"
"Are you married?"
"Yes, I am married. What
has that to do with anything?"
"When is the last time you
held your wife's hand? When is
the last time you kissed her?"
"What nonsense is this-?"
"Doctor, when is the last time
you slept with your wife?"
The doctor stiffened, taking a
most un-Frenchlike offense; he
rose from the table and march–
ed away, tearing his notes to
shreds-"Merde alors! C'est un
cretin, lui! Plus qu'il est lou,
psychopatique, plus imbecile–
Idiot meme!
! !" The French–
man in the trench coat followed
him out, flailing his arms wildly
...
" Qu'est qu'il a ditl Qu'est–
ce qu'il a dit?"
For an hour or so afterward,
Corso went from table to table,
a small wounded boy in sear;:h
of adult solace ... "He wanted
to send me to a head-shrinker
... He says I'm infantile...."
There was an absurd, martyred
wretchedness in his voice. By
suppertime he had forgotten the
incident entirely, and won a
small sum of money playing
stud poker with a trio of Har–
vard Law students.
Corso invited me to his cabin
one afternoon, and showed me,
among his other treasures, a
thick stack of letters from Gins–
berg, Kerouac, Burroughs. He
picked some at random and
read them aloud: each of them,
by a seeming coincidence, con–
tained encomiums on his poetry,
especially a late piece of escha–
tological verse-"BOMB." "My
father says it's got more vivid
imagery than my own stuff,"
wrote Ginsberg. "I'm trying to
line it up for an Evergreen
Anthology," pledged Kerouac.
" . .. Apostate . . . Apotheotic
. . . Apocalyptic," clarioned
Burroughs. I thought the poem
good, with a vigorous talent for
Homer-scaled metaphor-"The
top of the Empire State ar–
rowed in a broccoli field in
Sicily" - and a willingness to
take the bull
by
the horns in
writing of our times which dis–
tinguishes it from much of our
polished academic pastiche.
Corso also revealed-whether
tongue-in-cheek or not, I'll
never know, nor does it really
