The Ultimate Prank: a conversation with Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner's Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, its title prankishly co-opted from some disparaging procrustean of times past, includes details of his time as editor of Lenny Bruce's autobiography and confederate of Merry Prankster and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey and founder of the YIP (Youth international Party or "Yippies"), referencing his relationships with everyone from queen of the conspiracy theorists Mae Brussell to pioneering Black comic Dick Gregory to HUSTLER
publisher Larry Flynt to Chicago 7ers Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin to writers Hunter S. Thompson and William S. Burroughs, and in this reporter's opinion, is important and great. Krassner was conceivably the very first zinester with his infamous The Realist , which explains his willingness to provide thoughtful answers to some questions I sent him a few years ago as co-editor ot a zine called the Gut. I was especially pleased when he sent me a review copy of Confessions, which is not available in any bookstores, only at Kindle and on www.paulkrassner.com , where you'll also find a video of his 20-minute reading of Confessions at the Wiinnipeg Comedy Festival, and even more so when he agreed to a second email interview, this time for MightyMercury. The results are as follows:
Q. The just-released expanded version of your autobiography provides a bird's eye view into your interaction at one or another degree of intimacy with literally most notables in late 20th century American culture, from Groucho Marx to Lenny Bruce to Ken Kesey to Robert Anton Wilson. Was it luck or fate, your proximity to all these exceptional people?
A. It was simply that I had a unique magazine which resonated with the wave-length of such countercultural icons, and The Realist's circulation increased by their word-of-mouth and gift subscriptions.
Q. You recently left the social networking site Facebook after your account got hacked by some right wingers who used it to mass mail spam of some kind, with no apparent point of purpose beyond malice. You expressed appreciation for the broad range of communications enabled by that site and said you felt conflicted about leaving. Sad but true, the artistry and ethics of popular pranksterism appear to have devolved to this level of immature sadism in modern times, with a few brilliant exceptions like Banksy, the Yes Men, and Alan Abel, who carries on hoaxing the gullible media. Please name your favorite exception to this depressing statistic.
A. I don't know if it was right-wingers; could've been just electronic vandalism. In any case, my decision to quit Facebook was made before the hacker attack. The reason was because, with 5,000+ Facebook friends, it had become a distraction from working on my long awaited (by me) first novel, and so the irony was that at least 95% of them were fans of my writing. My current hero is Julian Assange-WikiLeaks being the ultimate prank, internationally pulling down the pants of arrogant officials who were embarrassed by the truth and whose criminal actions have been exposed.
Q. Abbie Hoffman was able to profoundly shock by wearing an American flag shirt, then the culture grew around this subversion and absorbed it, Larry Flynt had to wear one as a diaper to rouse the same degree of ire. The promotional poster for the recently released biopic American: The Bill Hicks Story pictures that outlaw comic wearing a star-spangled gag. Terrorism has replaced Communism as the prime Bugaboo, and the most obvious enemy is corporate personhood, which seems to have been in the works all along and just now come to fruition. What's next for us vs. them?
A. Abbie Hoffman got busted for wearing an American flag shirt, and now Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert wore American flag jackets at their televised Sanity/Fear rally. What was once taboo has become a fashion statement. Recently I was at a demonstration against the billionaire Koch brothers, who are the epitome of corporate personhood, galloping toward the marriage of government and corporations, Mussolin's definition of fascism.
Q. Sites like Facebook have empowered human connectivity to the point of becoming instrumental anti-establishment tools and enabling caste-busting interviews and articles with everyone from writers and musicians to metaphysicians to quantum physicists. Conversely, the majority of users are lulled into complacency by junk like Farmville and Mafia Wars. It would be easy to find this especially disheartening, but I find myself wondering if it's ever been any different. Hasn't most of your own life been spent in opposition to the majority mass?
A. Mel Brooks has said that 95% of everything is crap, which is why Levi Johnston has become a national celebrity only because he didn't use a condom when he fucked Bristol Palin. My tendency has been to seek out the other 5%. Americans have been dumbed down to make them more susceptible to propaganda, whether from TV commercials or politicians. What they have in common is the use of fear to persuade consumers and voters alike. Our national anthem begins "Oh, say can you see?..." and the answer is no, we're blinded by authority figures who reek with hypocrisy. But, in the words of William Bennett-former education czar, drug czar, morality czar, gambling czar-"Hypocrisy is better than having no values at all." Ah, yes words to live by.
Q. Last year I read a book by Adam Gorightly compiling all the theories about the backstory of the Tate-LaBianca slayings, in which he reported that when you became publisher of HUSTLER, pioneering conspiracy theorist Mae Brussell had accused you, Dick Gregory and Larry Flynt as being members of what she called the Power Control Group, a sort of top-down disinfo association. I can't find anything online to corroborate this, and am completely without prejudice, just wondering what you think about that. Robert Anton Wilson defines the word "zetetic" as never fully believing in anyone else's BS (belief system), not even your own. That's the kind of journalist I aim to be, so It's from within this non-prioritized nebula I'm asking.
A. That's bizarre. Mae Brussell wrote her first articles for The Realist and years later she contributed to Hustler. Like many conspiracy researchers--as brilliant and dedicated as Mae was--she also became suspicious of others who didn't totally agree with her conclusions. I've always wondered whether she would be for or against the 9/11 Truth movement. But, as for the Power Control Group? Here we were busy misusing our power In December 1977, when Larry Flynt brought Dick Gregory and me to Nassau Beach in the Bahamas. Gregory taught Flynt how to give himself an enema, and Flynt rubbed sunscreen on my back and said, "I'll bet Hugh Hefner never did this for you." Dangerous control freaks in action.
Q. Birds falling out of the sky, uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, London, and countless other recent developments have convinced millions that humanity is rapidly approaching some kind of evolutionary tipping point. Some find evidence for this proposal since one phase of the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, others because of all the expectant energy resulting from this statistic plus the aforementioned phenomena. Meanwhile the same old structures grind on. Are we kidding ourselves? Is it Friendly fascism time or are we about to be transfigured?
A. Friendly fascism is already here, and I'm hoping that it will be counteracted by a transfiguration, but that may merely be wishful thinking brought about by too many acid trips. There's an old saying, "May you live in interesting times," and it has been described as a curse. It was a curse to the ruling class, but to the rebels who questioned authority and brought about interesting times, it was a blessing.
Q. After a lifetime spent in journalism, you're working on your first real novel, starring a modernized Lenny Bruce-style monologuist. Immersion in any fictional endeavor can be far more evocative than statistical citation. I'm only guessing here, but presumably this character might be an amalgam of your memories of Lenny and your personal experience as a stand-up, a symbiosis clunkier to render in non-fictional form. What do you think about all that?
A. When Lenny died, I kept wondering what he would think about this, and what would be his take on that. I realized a novel would serve as an appropriate context to capture such speculation. In the book, those scenes where my protagonist is on stage have been developed in my own performances. I even began to feel that I was channeling Lenny, until one day he reminded me, "Listen, Paul, you know you don't believe in that shit." So instead, I just resent this imaginary character for stealing my material. It's a nice schizophrenic process. I mentioned to my friend Avery Corman--author of Oh, God and Kramer vs. Kramer, both of which became movies--that "Writing fiction is really hard. You have to make up everything." "C'mon, Paul," he said, "you've been making up stuff all your life." "Yeah,"I replied, "but that was journalism . . ."
