1959-10-10 — Page 14

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A Beatnik Takes To Buddhism

By RICHARD LISTER

THE DHARMA BUMS, By

Jack Kerouac. Deutsch.

15s,

MR

IR JACK KEROUAC is the spokesman of the so-called Beat Generation in the States; and his first novel, On the Road, gave a graphic picture of what these boys and girls were up

to.

In rebellion

the against standardised e and material values of America, they refused to do ordinary routine jobs or live ordinary routine existences.

in leather jackets and jeans, looking as much as possible like

the

the

James Dean, 201

they hitched their way acro53

discovering their continent, country in their own way, de- spising all its manifestations of success, but glorying in its free- com, is Jazz and all signs of vitality.

Life, they preached, was "tor kicks; and anything and every- lo stealing, thing from girls marijuana, fast driving, drink

the kicks It was justified by gave.

The course

Weil, now the Beat Cenera- tion have taken to, of all things, Buddhism, which is very boring of them, for those who like to keep up with what the young are up to have only just begun to

master what "Beat" meuALS.

Now we've got to take a course in Buddhism. The Dharma Bums will do as a first lesson.

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, (1959.

ROBERT PITMAN on new books

Does grief hold their

I

⚫ For 40 years

the

women romance-writers of Britain havo held mallkons of mother and daughters spellbound with their tales of elopements, of pasionato sheike, of

broken love....

• What is the secret of their success? What maglo formula do they UNOT Urwiska Bloom's Julest book. may help to provide the answer.

CUTE,

success

diatikes aa he

THE KISSES

For

secret?

readers

for

who romance

"I was clever enough" wills my needle. I remember a Kttle Apache dress I made myself from a remnant of crEPC" de Chine and a coloured handker chief."

When A Coloured Man Asks A Girl To Dance

\By E. R. BRAITHWAITE”

| WHITE AND COLOURED. By Michael Banton, Cape, 21x.

THE

THE widespread and widely reported racial troubles in Britain inevitably produce a spato of sociological surveys, Each claima to throw fresh light on the attitudes and behaviour of the various groups which comprise Britain's multi- racial communities.

·

Most of these surveys are dry, od a few girls, bowed politely, academic esmys which are out and asked May I have this of date by the time they are dance with you? But met with

aArm 'No' cach time. published,

White and Coloured narrowly "Then I noticed that one or being, another of these two coloured chops from Monm misses

The Side....just went round. prisey, scholarly affairs, author cannot resist the familiar tapped the prospective partner stereotyper.

on the shoulder, and said, 'Hey, baby, you going to have this dance and the girl Just followed him."

There 15 the complaining Negro, who makes no real effort on his own behalf and is always anxious to misinterpret any word for gesture os prejudice.

Less chance

to hands that cannot stop all. She was shipped back Though expecting a child, was poor I was given, RK8800 o Billl. And all the time God her in Britain.

Nella left him, taking over his year by my mother on which to watching!"

In the liner, the Uttle girl family of chlidren too. She had drets myself and for all enter-

the chil tainments, Í hand often taken MIU, But Ursula Bloom reveals wandered up from the second- no money. To keep

bu that there was also plenty to class cabins and

noticed dren she got up at four each last penny

on the 25th to start watch to far as the rector him- familiar face on the first-class morning

typing out wondering if I should have to

walk for the next five days. self was concerned, For Harvey deck. It was her father with romances.

to So you begin see the was hopelessly fond of women, his third wife. especially if they were either

These were the memories of Eloom-Robino-Muskett pattern? TAKE a butterfly net very young or elderly.

For each writing began with war-nurse Denise. Sadly her mother would

in nced and sorrow, In her hospital she fell today and go in quest murmur: Your father likes love with

officer. a wounded

For each

there was a mar- of the most bizarre and them

apples, But after the war he income riage which went wrong,

back there were the vanished. Somehow he could

Grea! War

THE DOOR

There are the usual salty tales glamorous of a the always preen or rotten.”

rot, carn. So clever Denise memories of the

of English women, from Moss "Reluctantly, I had to adopt flap specimens that

supported a growing family by stamped at the impressionable

way and I had a their age and a walling audience of Later, in more opulent times, Side or Mayfair, deliberately this crude round the gardens of the

of near number of dances. It seems to Once Harvey was caught tapping out romance In

had Barbara appeared at a pageant deking the association the vestry, shabby top flat in Maida Vale. women kissing a bride in

sexually athletic me the more reined you appear *British and representing

Ship- primitive, book-world.

Next take Netta Munkelt yehrned

the less chance you have with But it happened to be several

that war HIGH glambur during

and ping." She had designed her coloured men. (late't novel HE

these girls.".. to days after the wedding.

But though it says nothing tted FENCE, Hutchinson, 12s. 6d.). whom, perhaps, the death rolls own costume, Then there was D

Her train, 20 rt, long, incor- which is really new, an occa woman associated with Edward Quietly, steadily, she sells more had robbed of romance for ever..

And aristocratio Barbara porsted a lit-up scale model stonal pertinent and constructive lay not in his colour but in ex- VII. "When Edward trotted than 30,000 copies of her ex-

(latest novel-KISS of the Britanula. A door of observation year. Carland?

emerge hare his unfamiliarity with and out by the partcullis, Dad slipped cellent romances

Jenkins, 128. Gd). the Albert Hall had to be re- and there. And thanks fr through the back door.") But when World War I began OF SILK.

to prevailing rules, in Obviously

she an exception,

moved to allow her to enter. authentic on-the-spot reporting, the Finally there was the sea-sick she was a young specialist

zeems at first. Yer is she? A With ideas Hke that ready to parts of the book, are lively and lady on a pleasure-boat of statistics in Fleet Street,

She married P man from few weeks before the 1914 War pop out how grim it must have challenging. Weston-super-Mare.

widower with a ended her father was killed in been for young Barbara to rely Always Rector Bloom was The Times,

first Her But the France.

marriage on crepe his own.

Chine remnants. ready to console ladies in dis- family

For a potential romance writer, one marriage was tragic, The man ended in divorce. tress, Ilo Donsoled this

once con that musi have been incentive for

Undil Werks on end,

at from The Times was insanely

"When I indeed Fast Mr Bloom and young jealous, vindictive. Ursula decided they specimens

would have to leave him and set up horne themselves,

Their species is peculiar these Islands.

They suck their nectar clusively from gardenias love-in-a-mist.

They flutter through moonlight in a delicate cloud of sex.

been They have

fluttering without pause for almost 40 years.

They are the women romance- writers of Britain.

What wonderful

names they are. Repeat their

Ursula Bloom: to yourself:

Writes Ursula: "We drove. Denise Robins; Netta Muskett; Barbara Cariland.

away from a rectory dank with What images those names November drippings, our faces and DUT What visions of swollen with tears, conjure up elopements, of burning lips, of hearts etck." sheiks and unreliable foreign But the rector's conscience aristocrats berserk with passion, was untouched Ten days later of broken hearts healed only he wrote in his diary:

Advent Sunday. 1909. It's a by the good, clean penicillin of

glorious morning, bright and clear, and frosty. ... My cold ir harrid, no wonder after all cedured last week."

It is not a novel in the ordin- ury sense. It is a running com-on Englishman's love. mentary, miter, on the day to day life of a Beat Buddhist.

He's all for the simple natural life now, and the wide open spaces. He lives in a chack on the West Coast boxes for furniture.

with

le mixes disgusting

orange

NO YOUNGER SUCCESSORS

of

But for me the names

women also arouse a those

question: What is their secret of success? What is the common factor that set them all writing meals so successfully? out of dehydrated cereals and For look at two striking facis fruit. He meditates two or about them. They are all past three times a day, and stands their mid-files; and they are on his head five minutes a not only unrivalled In their morning cure his

thrombo- own field they have virtually phlebitis.

·

He rushes off for a couple of days to serumble up a mountain) with Japhy, the leading young Brut Buddhist, and they throw off their clothes, and feel grand and lonely and sad up there and think how big space is.

They come down for an orgy with girls and wine and medi-

tale some more. They produce wonderful, beautiful short little profound, poems like: A horse's hool is more delicate than it looks.

Meditation

The Elegant Edwardian

was

a delightful book both amusing and tender. Now Youth at the Gate...which I find quite as

the delightful -- takes

Bloom story on to the First World War.

We find Ursula and her geteel mother living on an allowance of HK$1,290 a year at Harpenden. We and Ursula making ends meet by playing no younger successors at all. the plano at the local cinema Why? What unique fuiry of and scratching the latest WOT romance waved a wand over news on to lamp-blacked slides them. some time in the with her hairpins. 'twenties?

the

THE HORROR

I believe that a new book, to published recently, helps

When the side about the fall supply

shower. It 13:

Ursula went up, YOUTH AT THE GATE by of Liege

to think of the Ursula Bloom (Hutchinson 16). heart-broken

dead-played Through If you are not up to date with Allied your Bloom reading you may be the Night of Doubt and SorTOW. One old gentleman in the surprised by Youth at the Gate.

Until recently Miss Bloom audience, deeply moved, was best known for her slightly her a great box sin-burned fiction. My favourite in appreciation, quote from her novels:-

sent

of chocolates

Thus we see the war through We see "Her imbs white as marble young Ursula's eyes. and not one half inch of the horror of It, and the home fleth upon their front's curious buck-drop to the He leaves Japhy and hitch-shrivelled

She had come horror-the

to

stage turns of hikes East to Christmas with his loveliness.

the Bing family, and for three months, him wearing nothing but a pair George Robey and

silk stockings and Boys; the Brides in the Bath while they work, he meditates of black

kid glover to match, murders; the

letter- angry in the woods and forgives them black

writers in the newspapers for being sure.

Strangely ravishing effect."

Then back West to Japhy again, with more orgles, more meditations, more hikes into the hills.

►

He gets a summer job, fire-

But in 1957 Miss Bloom wrale ("Tea plus tobacco and liqueurs a race of neurotie

a very different sort of book, is creating

women

I was about her father, the women in our cilles,” wrote one Rev. Harvey Bloom, a Strat- man. "These drugged ford rector. Its title: The, are no fit mothers for a virite Elegant Edwardian.

race."}

Elegant Harvey Bloom, ac

watching alone on a remote cording to his daughter, was high l called Desolation, where ever so many profound on unusual clergyman.

thoughts come to him, such as:

Once a drunken coal haulier

The vision of the freedom of in the parish fell from, his cart

eternity was mine for ever.

when

WEN

And WO a.150 SEO the tragedy of Ursula's own årst

Bloora marriage, Mrs dying of cARGEN; dearly sh wanted to see ber daughter 80 married before she diedī.

Ursula married young Army captain named Arthur,

and was killed: The, same day

pretty a woman died who, so it was by a

But frankly, if I were you, I'd seld had been kicked miss out on the Beat Buddhist drunken husband.

Harvey's Bermon at the phuse, and catch up with the

again young

they've woman's funeral was not dis- inoved on to something less cruel. Eyeing the heavy drinkers dreadfully naive and boring. among the mourners, he cried: "Let this be a lesson to you all -(London Express Service).

Looking at me are bloodshot

THE BABY

It was not until after the that wedding that she learned

* dipsomaniac, Arthur was

As the war progressed Arthur deteriorated He collapsed in comas. He feared Ursula might leave him. To prevent thut happening ho slept with ✡ loaded Colt revolver on the pillow between them. Finally,

ihe a few years before ended, Arthur diod

Ursula was left with a baby to support.

Her writing career was about to begin.

war

Yet how does Ursula Bloom's other romance-writers?

Well, look at those writers.

Take Denise Robins (latest novel--DO NOT GO, MY LOVE Hodder 138. 8d.). While teen-

story explain the genesis of the

THE MURDER JUDGE TOOK NO CHANCES FOR 18 years he was the man they called the Chief. He was Gordon Hewart, Lord Chief Justice of England from 1922 to 1940, the subject of a new biography — THE CHIEF by Robert Jackson (Cassell, 218.). Hewart is already known for his wit and eloquence. Now from an anecdote in The Chief we learn of another quality-Caution,

age. Uraula. Bloom was nurs- Once Hewari had the task of ed down, Unworried Avary ateing a drunken husband, Denise dismissing the appeal of on. Browne and Kennedy who Writes blographer Jackson: Hospital. But already she had murdered a policeman in 1928. "At two o'clock Avóry pushed known her, share of tragedy,

Her parents had separated back his chale, Are you. Walk-

was a baby, She was met two friends, One was he said to Hewart. Not for the told that her mother was des4. She was shipped off to her The moment, replied Hewart, other was Mr Justice Avory want to have a wordwlih | father's: rolaves in America and sent to a Christian Science who had originally sentenced · Blesser." the two men.

boarding-school. There she was Hewart watched Avory !. stride off. Let him go on me beaten every day, but she wea Cheerfully Avery produced a wald Hewart in a low vates, on not meant to cry because she letter from an unknown willer, there occasions that nearly who wrote that his would shoot always shoot the wrong man. Avpry it the appeal were turn

*** London Express derulos),

was a teenage nurse. In a war-

At lunch after the case he lug bacit to the cours now? when she

Lord

Justice. Siosser,

was supposed not to feel pain.

Then at seven, Denise wak told her mother, was alive after,

every

As for need she Aded to a coluranisi:

JACKY'S

DIARY

弟弟

JACKY MENDELSOHN

AGE 32/2

de

This morning We ALL GOT UP BRIGHT 18 early so WE Could Go To the

Country for a Weak End.

World rights ReserVED.

(Only There was lots of other PEOPLE WHO

HAd got up even Brighter,cause They were on Line a Heap of us.

does

This boy's dimeulty clearly

the

E. R. Braithwaite, who comes from Drlitsh. Gulana, tự the author of To Sir With Love, Dx Benton also quotes illuminating illustrations from an account of his experiences other works. A coloured student, de a coloured teacher in an East describing his

visit to a local End school. dance hall, recalls: "I approach-

00000

-(London Express Service),

jon The WAY We Saw a Axident. One car bunked into aN'OTHER CAR of Wow were they SCREAMING ON EACH other

PS: BUT afterwoods they Became Friends, Cause They started into Copy dowN EACH others address,

Pretty Soon we stopped & Ale Dinner in Like TROLLEY CAR. Except it didn'T HAVE anY WHEELS...WHich was Lucky, Cause SET CAR Sick if i eat when i'm riding

DINER

四四回

(0000 70

ALSO

they

SPELT

Dinner

WRONG

We!

So finely A MAN CAME in a Truck With A BIG Fish Hook

after WE HAD Drove Some More miles. The CAR STOPPED Riding on A COUNT of Some Thing got Busted. Daddy Tried To fix it by SAYing Magic Words, but it didn't work.

GRX SLXPO

on it & gave us a Ride Backwoods, WHICH WAS LOTS OF FUN, 9-6

ny How The Car

WORDS

IS STILL BUSTED, So we'rÈ gonna have to STAY Home for The Whole WEAK End *

Fooey! Sincerely,

JACKY