I have not visited San Francisco without visiting City
Lights Books; I’d feel guilty not visiting if I’m there. It’s a great rite of
passage for any lover of the written word.
So it was
with usual enthusiasm that I entered again on my most recent trip to California
and the great city of sourdough.
City Lights
is well known for its fiction and poetry. It is of historic note as a center of
the Beat writers and it is owned by the still-living beat writer and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (his
book of poems A Coney Island of the Mind
is one of the best ever by the beat generation).
Looking at
the political books near the register, there was no attempt at balance. There
was the latest from an aging academic and Soviet apologist, a diatribe from a
racism hustler gloating over the demographic changes in the U.S., and the usual
suspects. I bear no grudge against my many leftist friends and there are many left-wing
causes I agree with, but a good bookstore will try to provide some balance, and
you couldn’t balance this bookshelf if you put Mein Kampf on it. A bookstore has a right to stock whatever it
wants on its shelves and I’m sure most of City Light’s customers gladly drink
what passes for the “progressive” Kool-Aid today. But would it hurt to stock some
opposing viewpoints? Politically speaking, our literary world has become an
echo chamber of self-hating marshmallows.
The
upstairs room is dedicated to poetry and to the Beat writers. A chair by one of
the bookshelves had a sign on it that read ‘Sit Down and Read a Book.’ The
larger rocking chair next to it had ‘Poet’s Chair’ painted on it. I decided to
sit there, since I do indeed write poetry. I picked up a book of poetry from a
nearby table that looked interesting. It was a large but not thick book that
had an interesting cover with what looked like a bloody doll or puppet on it. I
don’t remember the poet’s name. I sat down and read some poetry and realized
the stuff I write is better. I turned the book over and read the brief blurb
about the author: someone with a predictable pedigree of the literary
establishment and not the poetry power to match it.
But a good
literary scene happens when people go off on their own and take inspiration from
the real world around them. Flocking to a bookstore because Allen Ginsberg once
took a shit there doesn’t promote good writing.
I was no
longer in the magical place of wanderlust young poets. I was in a retail store
that helped suck the life out of literature by cashing in on long-dead
celebrities and following the same institutional claptrap that would have made Jack
Kerouac puke in his backpack.
There is a fine line between
inspiration and commoditized hero worship. My latest trip to City Lights made
me believe the venerated bookstore had crossed the line. But then again, it’s a
business. It knows we’ll keep buying books there. I’m guilty as charged. I
bought a large R. Crumb coffee table book and Knut Hamsun’s
Growth of the Soil.
City Lights
Books inspired me once again, but differently than in years past. I left with a
determination that the current guardians of our culture’s literary estate need
to have their throats cut. Let the call go out in America today for a ninja
army of a new vanguard who will make poetry and literature real to people
again, and not the province of the sad sacks of coffee shops and admissions
offices. Great writers don’t eat tofu. Great writers eat sausage, spinach and
pussy.
