THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1957.
The hobo who talked Mr. Torme Tries A Rock 'n' Roll Joke So Far As I Can
to the seagulls
New York NOMETIMES New York seems like a
streets have mechanical brain. The numbers instead of names, and cross pre- clecly at right angles. The geometrical skyscrapers stand rigidly to attention,
But away from the steet and concrete centre of Manhattan - Greenwich Village
and Harlem, in Brooklyn and The Bowery -- the streets begin to wander and sprout ailey- ways. Here Now York is no longer the citadei
of conformists.
It has eccentries
some houses have
the
way Now
108
The nice. greatest of them all died. His name was Josephi Ferdinand Gould, but he was "Professur better known as Seagull" or "The Mongoose."
Bearded Joe Gould was Git. 4ln, and looked hardly bigger than a 10-year-old boy, He was 80 and looked 90. He lived on black coffee, tomato ketchup and cigarette ends. Ho slept on park benches and at bar counters. TWO HOURS
Yet for two hours every day, in library reading rooms or oh all-night subway trains, he worked on his masterpiece The Oral History of Our Time,
In some 300 notebooka be recorded more than 11 million words. A Hauntental collection uf dirty jokes, true confessions, boastful biographies, historical observations and alcoholle dreams.
It was gathered from tramps, cops, embalmers, prostitutes, sea- men and bar tenders, Few people ever saw his manuscripts. Those his who did could rarely read scrawl. But Could never waver- ed in his confidence, "I don't claim that all of the oral his- tory la Arst-class but some of it will live as long as the English language," he used to say. 'SURE, I'M MAD'
He ended his days in a mental hospital but all through his lite he admitted to being a madman. "Sure," he would concede,
of suffer from a mild formy insanity. I have delusiony of Erundeur. I believe myself to be Joe Gould."
Joe Gould rarely carned any. money. Quce he contributed long, wandering book reviews to the newspapers, He gave up be- cause he said it was against a man's dignity to compete with machines. "Those Sunday papers," he would say, "they've gol machines to review books, You put in a book, pull down a lever and a review drops out."
Once someone gave him rame ticket that won him television set. He had the prize delivered to his local tavern, gathered crowd of admirers, and smashed it with a borrowed sledgehammer.
1
2
• JOE GOULD-nicknamed 'Professor Seagull'— was one of New York's famed accentrics. He lived on black caffes, tomato ketchup and cigarette ends. He slept on park benches... and wrote $1,000,000 words for his masterpleas The Oral History of Our Time. When he died Eruval Hemingway sent a card, ssylog: 'Your guidance will never be forgotten....
ALAN BRIEN reports from New York
INCREDULOUSLY, the Press agent had said: "You will find that he is able to talk on most subjects— intelligently." The fact that a current pop recording star was capable of even coherent conversation seemed to surprise the man.
1,
AND FINDS THAT THE LAUGH IS ON HIM
Understand It
THE DRAMATIC UNIVERSE. By J. G. Bennett, Vol. 1. Hodder and Stoughton. €2-2-0.
personally, report it as of disc jockeys were invited to the urgent When I met Mel Torme, who has a much-publicised waste of Mr Torme's time and listen to Mr Anthony talk about ulcer, a coronary deficiency, bad dreams, a good wife and talent.
his gramophone records, But he two new records just issued, he said: "You might care 'n' roller who is a boyish-look- his audience what "a wonderful The 31-year-old reluctant rock spent most of the time telling to hear about my dreama. I reckon I know what's been ing, clear-eyed, teetotal Ron- little persan" his wite, screen causing them."
actress Mamle Van Doren, ir,
Greater love hath no man than to lay down his own pub- Helty for his wife.
It seems that A psychiatrist has worked it out that Mel, the melancholy stylist, has been worrying subconsciously about being ousted from
RECORD ROUND
rock 'n'
by RAMSDEN GREIG
has
rollers, the guitar bashing
prominence by
bedlam boys.
0
No Gimmicks
"Five minutes of the idiot E. . Cummings who wrote
But there bubble from ane of these things long poem to him.
of gladioli was a single spray would turn the stomach of
The came with a card saying "Your guld- goat," he observed.
ance will never "be forgotten." "Seagull" came from la habit of taking off his shoes and socks It was signed Ernest Hemingway.
-London Express Servier). and imitating a gull for any drinker who would offer him a The parody was always Bluss. kindly, for Gould loved gulls and claimed to understand their language.
several "I inves eurslated poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow into Seagull," would boast.
he
These are a few of the stories told by his friends when they gathered at a funeral parlour off Fifth Avenue. His friends were Lufficient proof that recentricity stil flourishes in the machine uge, DAPPER SPARROW
Robert
de
the
One was Prince Rohan Courtenay, who claimed to be Imperial Prince of Grand Imperial Order of Aristo- calle Hoboes-u dupper sparrow in white puts, with a tall silk hat, a silver-lopped enne und a
ablaze faney waistcoat
with
medals and orders.
Another was Prince Maurice of Bohemio, thin as a broom- stick with kng, grey, locks and beard, who seils newspapers around the village. "1 live in an ivory lower." he replied with dignity when a reporter asked his address,
But easily the most bourgcols and respectable figure at the funeral was "Professor Seagull" himself, In the con, clean- shaved, carefully
tansured,
neatly dressed 2 smort Broy sult and dazzling white shirt, be looted for the first time in 60 years every inch Joseph Ferdin- and Gould, B.A., Harvard, 1911.
His
the bohemfans who had shared his life and the Press who had come to record his death.
mourners ware
There was no sign of drama- who once tist William Saroyan said that Joe Gould was "One of the few genuine and original American writers." Nor of poet
Torme has grounds for singer
to the got worry. On this visit to theatrical lights of the West Britain the nearest stage End has been at Finsbury work the Chicago-born Park Empire.
THE SKELETON
the Skeleton Crostword the black squares and clue aumbers have to be filled in na well as the words. Four black squares and four elue numbers have been inserted to give you a start. The black squares form a
ACROSS
1. After
which, we hear, he's
a med-
cine-man I
4. Bleapy
head?
10. She has to
be kept absolutely QINAL,
Stirring occasion.
12 Service of Traditional craftsman-
ship.
1. Hold
to
Kive you
the right
to a quick look at the case? (two words)
14. Recent example
Of The.
current shrinkage of money +three worÍs).
19. Ja he paid to make
promising start? 20. Varnish covering
Account.
of ile
72. An attempt to indicate time
past
23. Indiscreet letters may make
one red in the face. 24. One who hadles with the
ball?
DOWN
1. Not a very good place to
leave things
2. Odious Indications of rela-
tive worth.
3 Expelled from so utterly un-
gutable a job,
5. Expert wanted when there's
a shortage of space.
6. Is she a model of all the
virittes ? (two words),
7. Prevents that sinking feeling.
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
SUNNY BOY WHO PROVES BY STATISTICS THAT YOUR CHANCES OF BEING HIT ARE AS REMOTE AS YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING THE SIXTY-FOUR MILLION
DOLLAR QUESTION.
SOME PEOPLE
ARE
EVEN
SCARED
OF
LIGHTNING
BUGS.
THE MUS
| TO WHOM.
THE ROAR
OF THUNDER
IS PEACE
||AND QUIET- IF HIS WIFE
WOULD
ONLY STOP CALLING COMP
IN OFF THAT
PATIO/
[T′′ ISAY
EVEN
SAFE
TO GO
OUT
·IN·
PLAIN
RAIN.
symmetrical pattern: the top half matches the ballom hair and the two sides correspond, So you can in 12 more: aqunte: at once to correspond with those given.
12
18
B. Sala come in handy for
making garinents,
9. They used to provide a key occupation for musical young Jadics.
14. Striking signal for action? 15. He could lord It to home
degree.
17. Box on board ship.
18. Just men to Edgar Walince, 20. The girl in the King's Head. 2. Pass, le Colonel
FRIDAY'S 'SOLUTION
ADVOLYUNGOÇON
PADA GOM G51FCLOSURES R “ENDRIINA C A KIN E CLANO NOE O RSPRINGOLEANED
DA
Why? Because Torme is (an individualist. He does not fellow current fashion, He is not a Nabob of Sob. Ho has no repulsive, ana- tomical gimmicks. He does not grunt, nor does ho groan. He sings words, and they come out of his mouth and not his nose.
And the West End at the moment has no time for talent like Torme's,
However, in order that he would not find himself com. pletely banished to Finsbury and the Provinces, Torme tried a compromise. He sang the only rock 'n' roller to pass his lips in 27 years in show business. This he per- petrated on the BBC show 6.5 Special And he looked as embarrassed
B & Free Minister who had found Sabrina at a ladies guild tea party.
smoker talks with mora (and Justifiable) enthusiasm about his latest long-player-Mol Terme Sings Fred Astaire (London 33). It is a collection for the discri- intnating. Here is the perfec- tlonist who usen his voice ilke a
New Role?
musical instrument and not like QKIFFLER · Lonnie Doregon a ship's foghorn operated by a ✯ and that ebullient rock 'n' drunken saltor.
rolter Tommy Steele will be The unmistakable Torme acting in pantomime this winter, stamp is put on Astaire it is announced, favourites like Nice Work If
You Can Get It, A Fine Isn't that what they have been Romance, Top Hat White Tie doing all year? and Tails, and Cheek To Check. The record is personally, ap- proved by the antique but still active Fred Astaire himself.
"A fellow gets a' great deal of personal satisfaction from mak- ing an album like this," Torme suys.
In Rovers
WHILE many
cctors
yearn for the lucrative returns of the singing sensations, here is Mel Torme preparing to iny down his microphone to play a dramatic, non-ringing role in a Alm. Talá month he begins work here on a plece called Operation Murder,
up as an American
He turns security agent,
for the
Selfless
TX threw a party last week American trumpet virtuoso Ray Anthony. A deluge
I'VE HEARD.
• Atmosphere is what a Night at Count Basie's (Vanguard 3aj has got. With Joe Williams sing- ing blues and ballade, this ona was recorded at Count Basie's bar in Hartem. During opening time, tumblare clink, telophons boils ring, and the numbers ins clude Indiana, More Than Ona For My Baby, Plensa Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gare, and Canadian Bunset,
Bob Sharples with orchestra and vocal group tackle in the Middie of on found (Decon 78).. Somewhere on that island is a wood in which they all get terribly lost.
⚫ Rockin' Shoes (RCA 78) la m run-of-the-mill rocker by the Amas Brothers with Jos Rois- man's Orchestra.
CLASSICAL
A DENNIS BRAIN DISC TO COME
who was killed Wee Dennis Brain,
In a car crash, was a unique His player of the French horn. -technique on-this-notoriously-wind-Instrumentalista,
difficult instrument was superb. He never cracked a note.
French Horn, Valume 2, Bololst, In a Brahms Trio, is Lucian Thovet, of the French School of
The man who once called rock roll "heinous" in the same breath as he said "I sing for the champagne buyers, for those who like it sophisticated and subtle told me apologetically: "I, er, wrote it in half an hour, you know. As a sort of joke, fellow."
The joke, however, backfired: when a recording company per- suaded him to record it-Every Whichway (Philips (70): -
He knows that crilles with hall an car drum are likely to rebel at the connoisseur's lapse.
Thunder And Lightning
AWAKENED AT
THREE'A.M. BY'A TERRIFIED WOMAN
WHO TELLS YOU THERE'S AN AWFUL THUNDERSTORM
AND EXPECTS YOU
TO DQ SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
KOM 1969 M GENTHAL FEATURES
COR,
WORLDS LIGHTS MÉSERVED.
horn concertos
of
His mastery can be savoured on a Columbia LP In which he plays four Mozart But Brain was equally at home among more modern..... and
more difficult----
therefore
works. Shortly before he died ha recorded with the Philharmonia Prokastra, two horn concertos by The dla whil Richard Straum.
be released In November.
For a completely different style and tona in horn playing, I recommend a dlso 'Issued this Docce called The
month by
Among orchestral works, the record of the month is undoubt. edly the very fine performance that Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonia Orchestra give to
Rachmaninoff's Becand Symphony (RGA).
● For those with a tasio for the touch of the unusual, I re- commend a disc entitled Mule from India, containing a selection of devotional, classical and love
recorded songs
Bombay (Argo).
DAVID BLACK
---(London- Express Service),
By Harry Weinert
"THUNDER ISN'T
DANGEROUS — ITS THE LIGHTANG ? *
TRY TO BE COMFORTING
YOU MIGHT AS WELL TALK TO THE WALL.
[WHEN THE LIGHTNING SIZZLES, A GOOD SAFE. [PLACE IS UNDER THE BED — IF YOU CAN
PERSUADE THE DOG TO MOVE OVER.
"WHAT A THUNDERSTORM!
"REALLY?
DIDN'T SLEEP A WINK'
I DIDN'T..
WALL
NIGHT
HEAR A
SOUND/
JUST WAIT UNTIL HE TRIES SMEARING TATTO
THE HOUSE AFTER A POKER SESSION.
THE author'n concern:ls with need to bring oma unity and coherence into the knowledge of nature which bas so greatly expanded in recent years. He wishes to at- tempt a new synthesis of the out sciences, and desires to
work a cosmology which wil show man's place in the uni- verse and thereby help him to and his
about it. For this taut he realists that the canvas upon which the future picture of God, man, and the waverse is to be painted will nood to
bo vastly greater than any that the mind of man has yet con ceived."
The author, Mr J.G. Bennett, Is a mathematician, a former Director of
British Coal The Utilisation Research Авросуд- Institute for the Comparative tion, and now Director 41 tipo Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences.
Ho holds strongly that the task of the sciences is not mere-. ly operational, but is to form hypotheses after experimenta- tion, and lo construct new thought-models. He acknow- "ledges' his indebtedness
in the present work to G. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky.
сап
He sets out, therefore, to examine metaphysics, eplate- mology, mathematics, and the natural sciences, with a view to Anding, first; language in which they
be thought together, and then A singlo united structure and pattern which runs through everything. Volume I is cosmology; volume II, which has not yet been pub- Lished, wili deal with the domain of values and hurnan experience,
A few points may be picked out to illustrate some of the author's views. The present age, he says, is one in which we think in terms of relativity and the uncertainly; our pleture of universe must be changed pe- cordingly to admit uncertainty into its very heart. Uncertainty is not the same as blind chance or mechanical determinism, but to is the opportunity for man use his consciousness and 'free- that dom, and to recogniso upon him reste "real responsi❤ bility for taking his own part in the universal task.” But this tincertainty also gives hazard and suspense, and henco · signi- ficance and drama to all happens, especially to the choice of free beings. Hence the title: "the-Dramatic Universe,”.
The universe is hierarchical; there
degrees of are nine knowledge, and (I think) twelve grades of being, from corpuscles up through protons and neutrons (third grade), viruses (fifth grade), up to the sun which is at the tenth grade, and the uni- verse which is at the twelfth ind highest, Corresponding to each grade is a special function, ez belonging to the sun is creativity; belonging to the universe is autocracy, or rule by flat.
The great principle, of ex- planation which the author is going to use' is Gurdjieff's doct- zine of reciprocal maintenance. This doctrine, (so far as I can understand it) looks to the uni- versal struggle for existence as lustrating the no less universal fact that all existences are dè- pendent on each other for ex- change of energy and therefore existence.
The universe alivo, Or rather, it is more than aliye. “We find it hard to believe" he writes, "that the earth itself' is a conscious being standing higher In scale of existence than the Individual organism.” And the stors are creative, the galaxies exercise domination, and tha universe rules. It in certainty hard 10 return to this belint, which historically was overcome by the Christian doctrine of creation. When we come across it in modern Umes, - GE for example in Gustav Th. Fechner's later work where he has the vision of the earth as a living angel, we say "this is poet, perhaps devotion, but not science, and not philosophy." Wod it may easily drop into hiperstition.
Though this is a strange ond unsatisfying book, one wants to commend the author for tils courage in flying in the face of the present unpopularity of mak- ing systems. His views, which are Informed and learned, hayo affinities with” Plato's „Timaejia; and his grades of knowledge and being together with the place he gives to numbers,” ZDE. mind of Gnosticism and Pythagoras. One has the im- pression that instead of provide Ing a thought-model of the und- verse which là new, he is doing ne more than reviving something which educated
Bas thought superseded long ago. But 3 is rash to speak in this way" today, when tho, ilterature of astrology. magic, and occultism, is on the intresse. It may be, bewever, that Mr. Bennett's second volumo will make his position clearer. Ho admits that the plan of the universe 'roen from the pELSPROW Ure, of volume: 1, "lacks tha dimension of responsibility, and the qualities of joy and suffer ing, of Joye and worship, .
PAPR