THE ENGLISH GARDENS
207
Generation. It was a question, in fact, which was the creation
of which.
Ten years ago, fresh from reform schools and jail (an ex–
perience that had rather strengthened his belief in the goodness
of man), after an apprenticeship as a black-haired youth
in
the
harsh trade of Getting Along With Fellow Cons, Nicolas emerged
with an eye out for the easy thing and chanced upon the mak–
ings of a literary movement. This was happening in a bar and
restaurant on MacDougal Street, down in Greenwich Village–
where so many movements have seen the light of day. Cloaked
in his fortune's smile, creased khaki pants, and a torn black
shirt, Nicolas encountered some young men from New York and
Columbia Universities. A few beers later these young men per–
ceived in Nicolas's tough, optimistic, code-like utterances a New
Talent.
As
the days passed Nicolas's new friends (mostly gradu–
ate students whose long, rather Spenserian verses had appeared
in University magazines) were quoting to each other notes
Nicolas was apt to leave in their various rooms. For example
this one, in an upper West side rooming house:
Man, do you snore! A trumpet of angels! I'm going over to
walk on the river. I'll be around.
Or this one left in a Village apartment:
You got sex on the brain. Let's
f . . .
k the stars, that's for
poets.
His literary pronouncements were quoted, too:
"I walked in there, yesterday, and Manas's reading a book.
He's all excited and yells at me, 'Hey, this Shelley's great!' "
"Shelley ! .. ?" fondly but cautiously.
"Yeh, Shelley. Nicolas says Shelley's the Man of the Times."
A
legend was beginning.
As
Beatnik letters grew and Nicolas began to become a
'poet', both found simple candor a chief piece of equipment. In
Nicolas it was more over-candor. Reaching for the heart of the
matter, expressing the truth of his reactions to, say, jazz, cars,
sex, or in describing his disgust with his listener, or his listener's
