Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Frogs At The Bottom Of The Well


Frogs At the Bottom Of The Well, by Ken Edgar
No month stated, 1976  Playboy Books

I recently discovered this obscure paperback original, and it pretty much offered all I could want in vintage pulp fiction: a hotstuff female cop goes undercover with a group of “man-hating women” who plan to carry out a terror attack on New York City. The stepback cover – complete with ‘70s-obligatory female pubic hair on the interior art (below) – only sealed the deal. 

But before even reading the book I encountered a bit of a mystery. For one, there’s hardly any info at all about Frogs At The Bottom Of The Well online, other than two terse Goodreads reviews. (The title, by the way, is taken from a Chinese proverb: that “frogs at the bottom of the well only see a part of the sky.”) But looking up the book I saw that there was also an edition published by Hamyln Books in England in 1975 – a year before this Playboy Books edition. (Cover for this one also below.) This of course was cause for concern – was Ken Edgar a British author, meaning that the novel would have that sterile, “I don’t want to get my hands dirty” vibe typical of British pulp? 

Well for one, I can happily report that Ken Edgar was indeed an American author; the Playboy edition also has an “About the author” section at the end, kind of unusual for a PBO. But what’s strange is, no mention is made anywhere that Frogs At The Bottom Of The Well was previously published in the UK. Indeed the copyright page makes it clear that this is the “First Edition,” and it’s copyright 1976 under the name Ken Edgar. So who knows. In one of those flukes I think I got a signed copy, at that – mine is signed “For my friend Gary – Ken.” 

It was interesting knowing who Edgar was as I read the book. Get this: he was the professor of psychology at Indiania University of Pennsylvania, and here in this novel he clearly identifies “radical leftists,” particularly “socialists,” as terrorists who must be wiped out. Imagine that today! Good grief, we live in an era where college professors get cancelled for not openly endorsing Hamas terrorism. Edgar’s age isn’t given in the brief bio, but searching online I found that he was 52 when this Playboy edition was published (he died in 1991), which also brought another interesting layer to the book – it features solely young characters, but there is a wisened vibe to the narrative. One imagines Professor Edgar became concerned with the young “radicals” at his college, and how they were polluting young minds…one wonders, then, if Edgar suspected that these young radicals would grow up and instill that very same radicalism as college administrators and professors themselves. 

Edgar only published a few novels, this one of the last ones. He was also mostly a “hardcover author,” and that is how Frogs At The Bottom Of The Well is written: more literature than pulp. I mean, to a certain extent. This is still a novel about a lesbian hippie terror cell complete with a super-hot redheaded cop going undercover and having hot lesbian sex with the cell’s leader – that is, when she isn’t lusting after the mysterious FBI agent who put her on the case, or having hot straight sex with the male hippie terrorist who created an A-bomb that will be used to blow up…the World Trade Center. 

That’s right: the plot of the novel ultimately concerns the planned terrorist destruction of Building One of the WTC. Ken Edgar died ten years before that event became a reality, but despite which his terrorists are a pale reflection of the real thing – these ones intend to blow up the World Trade Center on a weekend, to minimize innocent casualties. For these are your typical hippie terrorists, up against “The Man” and “The System;” and one must gun down a police officer in cold blood to be initiated into FUN (aka “For an Ultimate New Society,” which techinically is “FAUNS,” which also would’ve worked given that these are all girls!). 

Into this world is thrust Molly Reagan, a 29 year-old policewoman in Indianapolis who, when we meet her, is pulling off that total ‘70s pulp-crime role: serving as sexy bait for a killer-rapist who targets women. With Molly’s breasts already mentioned in the second paragraph (indeed, “Her breasts were unusually perfect for a girl so tall and slender”), I knew I was in for just the type of read I was seeking. We are to understand without question that Molly Reagan is smokin’ hot, with a body to match. But she isn’t just all beauty, as Edgar gives her a lot of depth; in particular, she has a gifty for witty repartee. In fact, a lot of Frogs At The Bottom Of The Well is given over to bantering dialog, to the extent that, ultimately, forward momentum is lost. 

While the novel never really descends into trash, the opening indicates the possibilities that it could: Molly is introduced to us as she waltzes through a park in hardly anything, being called “Slut!” by the angry old men sitting around on park benches. It also indicates that Molly will not be the kick-ass female cop demanded in today’s entertainment: when spotted by the slasher Molly is scared and runs – though she does bash him in the face a few times. She’s saved by her partner, a treetrunk named Roy who is a ‘Nam vet and who harbors a secret love for Molly, despite being married; Ken Edgar will dwell much on Molly’s worry that Roy might ruin things by saying he loves her or whatever, but Roy is presented as such a good-natured doofus that the entire subplot is moot. 

But then, the narrative baggage accumulates, making Frogs At The Bottom Of The Well seem a lot longer than its 234 pages would imply. This is mostly through much introspection on Molly’s part; we do get very much into her thoughts at times, and there is a lot of waxing and waning on various things – but I guess that’s to be expected when the author’s a professor of psychology. But Molly is really the idealized woman, with looks to spare, intelligence, and a quick wit. But we know she’s missing something, and she wonders if it’s her fate to never be married, still single and living with her mother at 29. Right on cue mysterious – and of course handsome – FBI Inspector Kittaning shows up: Molly’s name was picked by the “computer” as the only policewoman in the country who might be able to help with a case that threatens the nation. 

Of course, this satisfies the need Molly has been searching for, so she takes the job – with Roy going along as her backup – which requires her to move to New York City and pose as a Indianapolis transplant who is engaged to be married to a high school phys ed teacher (Roy), but who has latent lesbian proclivities…all so as to serve, once again, as bait. But this time for a woman: May-One, lesbian leader of New York’s FUN cell, a 26 year-old slim brunette who has a preference for redheads, particularly ones with lots of intelligence and a quick wit. The goal is for Molly to play the long game: become May-One’s girlfriend, and ultimately get inducted into FUN, so she can stop the threat the FBI suspects: that FUN is teaming up with an all-male radical leftist cell and together plan to blow up the WTC with a “suitcase atom bomb.” 

Only when she and Roy arrive in New York will Molly understand all that is required of her: Kittaning has not been very forthcoming (like for example how previous agents assigned to this job have never returned), but that will turn out to be typical of the mysterious FBI veteran, who doesn’t even tell Molly his first name or his age. We know he’s single, at least (and it will develop that he is single due to the murderous actions of FUN), which of course will cue the eventual sparks between the two. Not that Kittaning is in the book much; this is very much Molly Reagan’s show, and Edgar keeps the narrative focus on her throughout. It must be said though that Molly doesn’t seem too shocked that Kittaning intends for her to enter into a sexual relationship with another woman. But brace yourself: all the sex will be off-page, for the most part, with only a few sleazy moments here and there. 

Rather, characterization is more Edgar’s concern, and he really does bring Molly to life, as he does May-One, a self-involved and egotistical girl with a penchant for drugs, casual lesbian sex, and quoting Nietszche. It was interesting to once again be reminded that the more things change, the more they stay the same. We’re informed that radical socialism only draws two types: intellgent people and “misfits.” And the most radical are made up of narcissitic children of wealth who didn’t get enough love from their daddys as children, hence they lash out at society, looking to fill an emotional void with revolutionary invective. They cannot create and can only destroy. Kittaning is very concerned about these malcontents, and here in this 1976 novel the FBI is determined to wipe out the socialist threat…we don’t even need to wonder how the FBI is aligned today

The events occur over the span of some months, and things become more real between Molly and May-One, who by the way takes the bait almost humorously fast. In fact on her first night in New York Molly meets May-One, taken to one of the girl’s favorite bars to play her role of sexy bait, but the relationship develops over time. Despite the bushy interior art, there really isn’t much vis-à-vis lesbian exploitation, other that is a part where May-One strips down and has Molly give her a bath. But Edgar keeps all the juicy details to the reader’s imagination; curiously, even how Molly feels about the sex itself is left unspoken, which is strange given the focus otherwise on Molly’s mental musings. The closest we get on this is a bit later on where Molly has a quickie with the leader of male terrorist cell, thinking to herself “a man, at last.” But even here the focus is more on emotions and reactions, not lurid descriptions. 

This extends to how the narrative plays out as well. Despite the cool cover on the Hamlyn edition, the FUN girls at no point tote subguns and go blasting. More of the book concerns Molly hanging out in their safehouse in New York and trying to prove herself to May-One’s distrusting comrades, a distrust that goes away once Molly has proved herself in FUN’s initiation: gunning down a cop. This part is carried out like an episode of Mission: Impossible, and Edgar brings a great deal of suspense to it. But otherwise the girls of FUN spend more time fighting with each other, with lots of trouble in particular caused by drugged-out “misfit” Halsey…who by the way initially is used by May-One to keep Roy away from Molly. But again Edgar doesn’t dwell on any of this stuff, like how married man Roy feels about having so much adulterous sex with a female radical (I’m sure it must have been terrible!). But then this is I guess another indication of a time long gone, as Molly and Roy have the unspoken understanding that they must sacrifice themselves for this job. 

It's more on the suspense tip with lots of emotional and psychological asides, and as mentioned the characterization is strong – Ken Edgar, despite the pulpy setup, is intent on making the novel realistic. In some ways Frogs At The Bottom Of The Well is like the “serious” version of contemporary paperback The Savage Women, which also featured a cell of “man-hating women” in New York. But Edgar’s novel is more of a psychological suspense yarn, whereas The Savage Women trades on coarse vulgarity and exploitation (yes, I intend to read it again someday!). Even the few “action scenes” here are built up around character development, like when Halsey goes nuts. 

As professor of psychology Ken Edgar really plumbs the thoughts of his characters and what makes them tick. He is good however at not being too obtuse. From her first briefing by Kittaning, Molly is aware that the female radicals of FUN all had absent fathers as children…as did Molly, whose own father was a career Army man, always off fighting some war, and finally losing his life in Vietnam. That Molly has the same psychological background of the FUN girls is what, obviously, the FBI computer picked up on, but Edgar leaves this as a subtext…an emotional subtext, in how Molly will see May-One and the others as “just girls,” before reminding herself how they’re all cold-blooded murders. 

The finale also goes for the psychological edge; Molly struggles to retain her undercover status through the book, at one point going so deep that Kittaning and Roy essentially disappear from the narrative. Even when Molly finally gets confirmation that the FBI was correct, that FUN plans to bomb the World Trade Center, it goes for more of a suspense-thriller vibe, with the terrorists painstakingly digging a tunnel beneath Building One. I did appreciate how they didn’t “want too many innocent workers to get hurt” in the blast, a far cry from the real-life terrorists of 2001. I did enjoy Molly’s final confrontation with May-One, Edgar well paying off the long-boil tension that Molly will be outed as a cop. 

Overall Frogs At The Bottom Of The Well was entertaining, with the caveat that at times it seemed to drag; it should have been a lot more fun to read than it turned out to be. The characters were all pretty well-rounded, and Edgar also did a good job of making the FUN girls more than just caricatures. I just felt that he got a little too inside the heads of his characters, so that forward momentum was often nill; and also the witty banter, while humorous at first, quickly got to be grating. 

Here is the two-page interior art, credited to Chuck Hammerick: 



And finally here is the cover of the Hamyln paperback from the UK, which makes the book seem more pulpy than it truly is:

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Vice Row


Vice Row, by Fletcher Bennett
April, 1963  Playtime Books

My friends, there are covers and then there are covers, and this obscure early ‘60s “adult” novel has a cover. It fills my head with so many thoughts, all of them depraved. In fact the cover art is so good I’m sure it will be censored by the prudish AI bots that now patrol Blogger. As is typical the art is uncredited, but I’m sure someone out there might have an idea who it’s by. Also, it doesn’t really illustrate a scene in the actual novel, but it certainly captures the vibe of the book – which, as one might expect, really isn’t even very “adult” at all in today’s world. I mean the book would be considered PG-13 at best today…either an indication of how things were just too conservative and sutffy back in the early ‘60s, or an indication of how morally bankrupt we have become in our modern era. (Prudish AI bots notwithstanding.) 

I picked this one up several years ago and I’m not sure why I took so long to read it. What I was not prepared for was how good of a book Vice Row turned out to be. Actually the cover, despite being so great, is detrimental to the actual quality of the novel itself, but I’m sure that’s typical for a lot of the so-called “sleaze” paperbacks of the era. For example The Devil’s Lash, another “racy” paperback that had quality writing throughout, or even the work of Ennis Willie; with the caveat that Fletcher Bennett is more risque here than either of those examples, though even Bennett’s actual sex scenes are either vaguely described or fade to black. No idea who Bennett was, but a few paperbacks were published under his name by Playtime Books; also no idea if it was the same author for all of them or if “Fletcher Bennett” was a house name. 

Whoever Bennett was, he proves himself quite familiar with the mindsets of whores – or “girls,” as one of them requests she be called in Vice Row. I like to imagine that Bennett just carried out a lot of field research. Seriously though, he brings more to the story than the sleaze one might reasonably expect; the “girls” here are all fairly three-dimensional (so to speak!), and Bennett invests the tale with a sentimental touch that never descends into maudlin sappiness. Even the finale, in which the killer’s identity is exposed, packs an unexpected emotional punch. 

I love the coarse cover copy, which calls out that “the new girl becomes the most popular whore on vice row.” This would be Laurie, a ravishing auburn-haired young woman fresh on Vice Row who is so gobsmacking beautiful that most people can’t believe she even is a whore. We get our first indication that Vice Row is slightly more risque than other “adult” novels of the era when Bennett describes Laurie’s ample charms: 

Her face was smooth and sweet as that of a schoolgirl. Her mouth was soft, her nose was narrow and upturned, her cheeks were rosy as spring flowers. Only her eyes betrayed the knowing mind hiding behind that innocent face. Beneath the long black sweep of her lashes, the dark pools of her gaze flashed a signal as old as time, and it was a signal the regulars of the Row knew very well indeed. 

The eyes of passersby didn’t linger on her face, however. There were far more interesting things to look at. 

Such as her breasts. 

They were as round and sweetly-shaped as autumn apples, and rode proudly on her torso with a firmness that did not need the enhancement of a bra. A moment’s close study told the simple truth – the girl wasn’t wearing a bra. At the tips of her round breasts, the tiny protrusions of her nipples made buttons in the material of her dress. The girl’s breasts belonged to her entirely, and they were obviously a pair to be conjured with. 

Among other things. 

The girl’s bottom was just as beautifully-fleshed as her bust. As she walked, twin tense cheeks worked in a rhythmic flexing against the seat of her dress. The curves were smooth and taut, of a size and shape to fit the curl of a man’s fingers neatly. 

Her legs were long. The roundness of her thighs could be glimpsed in the way the cloth of her skirt clung to their contours, and her shapely calves shifted with subtle muscle as she walked. She wore simple sandals on her feet; her ankles were finely-boned, her toes were slender and straight, the toenails were painted red. 

Now that my friends is how you exploit a female character! 

I forgot to mention, but “Vice Row” is really named Water Street, an area well-known for prostitution in some never-stated city. Bennett keeps the entire 224-page novel focused on this area, and populates it with a small but memorable cast. Surprisingly, “new whore” Laurie will not turn out to be one of the main characters; rather, she is a source of much discussion among the Vice Row regulars, and Laurie herself only appears in a handful of scenes – none of them, I should specify, being a sex scene! Rather, the majority of the heavy sexual lifting will be carried out by a blonde pro named Bunny, one who – we are copiously informed – has big boobs and a big butt and, unlike most pros, really enjoys having sex. 

The novel features a memorable intro of Laurie arriving on Vice Row, looking like some goddess among the riff-raff; she’s carrying luggage with her, which everyone finds hard to understand – surely she isn’t a new girl on the Row? Immediately she is accosted by a youth who drums up the courage to ask Laurie for her going rate, but Laurie shuts him down cold, even threatening to slam him in the jewels with her suitcase. Surprisingly, this affronted youth will become one of the novel’s many characters, simmering with rage that Laurie spurned him and trying to find her so he can get revenge – while taking out his anger on other hapless hookers. 

Another main character is soon introduced: Pop, elderly proprietor of the Double Eagle, a bar on Vice Row that is frequented by the girls, though Pop himself has no involvement in the business. This greatly puzzles sleazy Sergeant Polowski, a corrupt cop who allows Vice Row to operate because he’s paid off by Pop and the brothel owners and whatnot. However the main madam on the Row is Nell, a heavyset lady who “offices” out of a diner – which she owns, as well as the building it’s in. Bennett shows some foresight here with Nell being a successful businesswoman, owning quite a chunk of Vice Row and keeping her affairs in order. 

But then, throughout Vice Row Fletcher Bennett shows an understanding of character well beyond what one might expect of a vintage sleaze paperback. Pop in particular is prone to philosophical ruminations, and there’s a nice running theme about his “dream” to one day retire from Vice Row and live on a farm out in the country. There’s also a nicely-developed rapport between new girl Laurie and Pop, who immediately takes a paternal interest in her, sensing that there is something special about this girl – however, I was a little surprised that Laurie soon after essentially faded into the narrative woodwork, only appearing in passing. 

Much more focus is placed on Bunny, Bennett again expanding on his theme with the sentimental storyline of a prostitute falling in love with her john – a story Bennett handles so successfully that it’s actually a moving storyline. This would be Louie, an unhappily-married dude who, when we meet him, has just engaged Bunny for an hour’s work. This is how the two meet, and also where we get an indication of the type of sex scene Bennett will write in Vice Row

She rubbed against his belly, positioned herself, then thrust her body upward in an expert lunge. 

Their flesh blended. 

His mouth continued to kiss her breast as she began the tingling rhythm, moving her hips in time with the ticking of timeless mechanisms. Instinctively, he took up her beat, measuring his own plunge downward so that it corresponded with her lunge updward, slapping bellies with her, then pulling apart so that their deep sweet connection was almost lost. 

Almost, but not quite. 

Bunny felt the thrill coiling inside her. This, she decided, was going to be a real man. This one was going to be a blast. 

“The ticking of timeless mechanisms” – almost sounds like the title of a Pink Floyd song. So as you can see, the topical details are mostly relegated to the bodies of the women, but the actual “dirty stuff” is more intimated, or happens off-page. The above is actually the most explicit sex scene in the novel. So I guess even sleaze books could only go so far in the early ‘60s. I find this stuff so interesting; ten years later Harold Robbins would have best-sellers that featured not only super-explicit sex but even had characters pissing on each other

I also found it interesting how the meanings of words have changed over the decades. For example, that “hunk” was once used to describe an attractive woman! “You’re some hunk of woman,” etc. But then “hunk” is also used to describe a good-looking man in the book, so I guess once upon a time “hunk” was a unisex description. Even stranger is that the same, apparently, could be said about the phrase “well hung!” Judging from Vice Row, “hung” was once also used to describe a woman’s ample charms – “The way you’re hung” and etc, referring to a lady. And no it’s not a transvestite being discussed! 

There’s also a thriller element at play with the gradual reveal that a killer’s on the Row, one who specifically targets hookers. Bennett periodically cuts over to the perspective of the killer, never divulging his identity; we only know he wears a “disguise” when in public and also that he uses a straight razor – and has killed 30-some hookers in his career, slashing their throats and then mutilating them. Bennett well handles the mystery of the killer’s identity, but I must confess it soon became apparent who the killer really was; the revelation is another indication of how things have changed since 1963. What might have been shocking then is “I figured that out a hundred pages ago” today. But I won’t divulge it here so as not to spoil the surprise for those who decide to read Vice Row

That said, Bennett really handles the story with skill, jumping often from character to character to keep the story moving. Even Sgt. Polowski comes off as a realized character, and not the cliched corrupt cop one might expect. Though he does prove himself an unlikable character, taking “payment” from hookers at his whim, leading to a bit where slim pro Fay must keep her gorge down while taking care of the “thoroughly unpleasant” Polowski. Fay is mistreated throughout the narrative, and again not to go into spoilers but Fletcher Bennett sufficiently develops his prostitute characters so that it resonates with the reader when some of them are killed – and one becomes especially concerned that others in particular might also be killed. 

There’s almost a vibe of Herbert Kastle in the murder sequences; not in the style of the prose but in how the killer realizes he can basically get away with anything, given that he’s killing off the scum of society. And Bennett again shows the plight of these hookers when one of them is murdered, and we’re told that “by the end of the week” most people on Vice Row can’t even recall what she looked like. But as mentioned the reader does care for them, especially Bunny, who as it develops is essentially the main female character in the novel; Bennett skillfully dovetails her growing love with Louie alongside the imminent threat that the killer will slash Bunny’s throat. Speaking of which Bennett doesn’t much dwell on the gore, though we’re told the bodies are so disfigured that characters puke when they see them – most notably Polowski, who discovers the first corpse. 

But there’s also quite a bit of genuine humor in Vice Row. To be sure, there’s nothing satirical nor spoofy about the book – everything is on the level. But some of the character interactions are humorous, especially a conversation between Bunny and a hooker named Jan, who suspects every other hooker of being a “dyke.” But when Bunny questions Jan on why she suspects this – namely how those “dykes” will refer to other girls’s bodies so adoringly – Bunny exposes how Jan talks the very same way about the other girls. Hence, one might reasonably suspect that Jan herself is a “dyke.” There’s also some darker comedy – and another indication of changing sentiments – when Louie decides between Bunny and his cold fish of a wife. Louie’s wife refuses to have sex with him, so an angered Louie goes home, “belts” his wife a few times to snap her out of it, then forces her to go down on him – and when he realizes she’s just faking her excitement, he tells her “Goodbye, bitch!” and heads back to Bunny! 

There really isn’t much wasted space in the book, and Bennett really keeps the story moving. He also successfully weaves together the connecting dynamics of the various characters, from Bunny and Louie to the punk kid who likes to beat up Vice Row hookers. Also the unmasking of the killer is very well handled, and despite being a bit harried – one gets the impression Bennett was quickly approaching his contracted word count and thus wrapped it up – it still packs an emotional wallop. What could have been a bonkers, sleazy reveal is instead cast in a more somber glow, given that it’s elderly Pop who ruminates on it all – in fact I got the impression Fletcher Bennett himself might have been older, as there’s more of an introspective and reflective vibe to things than the primal rush one would expect from a younger, hornier author.  Then again, I did find it curious that the majority of the sex scenes were relayed through the perspective of Bunny, which almost led me to suspect that “Fletcher Bennett” might have been the pseudonym of a female author.

Overall I very much enjoyed Vice Row, and it’s inspired me to read some more of those vintage “adult” crime paperbacks I picked up several years ago.

Monday, March 18, 2024

The Last Ranger #9: The Damned Disciples


The Last Ranger #9: The Damned Disciples, by Craig Sargent
October, 1988  Popular Library

Here’s a funny little “Glorious Trash behind the scenes” story: the reason it’s taken me so long to get back to The Last Ranger was that I couldn’t remember where I put my copy of this ninth volume! I have so many books in so many boxes that I put together a spreadsheet years ago to keep track of where everything is; geeky but necessary when you have thousands of books. I try to keep all volumes of a series together in the same box, but due to the nature of collecting that sometimes doesn’t happen – as apparently was the case with The Last Ranger. The only problem was, I failed to note which box The Damned Disciples was in, so for the past few years I’ve been sporadically searching for it. 

Anyway, that’s the slightly-interesting backstory. More importantly, this is the next-to-last volume of The Last Ranger, and one suspects Jan “Craig Sargent” Stacy knew it was, as the first page notes that the tenth volume, to be titled Is This The End?, is forthcoming. While it doesn’t state it will be the last volume, the title certainly indicates it will be. Also I’m happy to report that Stacy shows a renewed interest in the series this time, after the dud of the previous volume, perhaps because he did know the series was wrapping up. The Damned Disciples opens shortly after the previous volume, with Martin Stone still suffering from the bad leg wound he received “two weeks ago,” in the course of that book’s events, and trying to make his way back to his nuclear bunker in the Colorado mountains. 

As mentioned in my review of the first volume, when I read the first few volumes of The Last Ranger as a kid in the ‘80s, it was the scenes that took place here in this bunker that most resonated with me – something about the safe, high-tech paradise hidden in a post-nuke wasteland. But reading the series again, I see that Stacy doesn’t even spend much time in the place; even this time, after enduring the usual aggressive climate and mutated wildlife expected of the series, when Stone finally does make it to his hideaway safehouse, he only stays there for a few pages. Strange, especially given that it’s got all the comforts of home, and then some; you’d think the guy might at least take a few weeks off and enjoy a beer or two. The hidden subtext is that Stone is freaked by the “ghosts” who inhabit the place, ie his mother and father. Speaking of which, Stone still doesn’t seem to harbor much regret that it was he who caused his mother’s death in the first place – his bullish insistence to leave the bunker in the first volume causing his mother to be raped and killed and his sister to be abducted. 

It's due to Stone’s sister, the perennially-abducted April, that Stone leaves the bunker this time – in a bizarre subplot never broached again in the narrative, Stone receives a fax that “we” have your sister. But a fax machine is just one of the countless amenities here in this high-tech safehaven; Stone even has access to robotic gloves which he uses to operate on himself, while watching it all on a handy TV screen! To make it even crazier, Stone’s learned how to do the operation thanks to that data-dump his father left for him in the computer banks; a sort of self-contained internet that serves up info at the punch of a button. Stone’s wound has become infected, so he has to operate on himself with these “experimental” robotic hands that were designed for handling radioactive material or somesuch; tongue firmly in cheek, Stacy informs us that “it was a simple matter” for Stone’s father to get himself a pair of these robotic hands for his high-tech nuclear bunker. 

As if that weren’t enough, after fixing his own leg Stone then builds himself a new motorcycle, using yet more equipment he has stashed around the place, plus parts from different bikes and vehicles. Stacy doesn’t give a good idea of what the resulting motorcycle looks like, but we’re to understand it’s a Frankenstein sort of contraption that looks bizarre – but is even faster and more powerful than Stone’s previous bike, which was destroyed in the previous volume. Oh and I forgot – Stacy further explains it away with the offhand comment that Stone was the “top mechanic” at a bodyshop when he was younger, thus he’s capable of building a bike on his own. But with this one he also straps a .50-caliber gun to the handlebars, and stashes other weapons about the thing; we do indeed get to see these weapons put to use in the course of the novel, which I’m sure would have pleased Anton Chekhov if he’d ever read this novel. 

We know from the first pages that a blonde-haired young woman has been adbucted by a group calling themselves The Disciples of the Perfect Aura; only later will we realize that this is April Stone, and the Disciples have brainwashed her into their cult, which operates around the La Junta area of what was once California. In another of those synchronicities that would have Jung scratching his goattee, we learn that the leader of this cult, Guru Yasgur, idolized none other than Charles Manson as a child – I chuckled over this, given how I’ve been on such a Manson Family kick of late. Shockingly though, Jan Stacy will ultimately do very little with the Manson setup, with Guru Yasgur barely appearing in the novel. 

Instead, the brunt of The Damned Disciples is focused on the degradation of Martin Stone. For some inexplicable reason it’s as if Jan Stacy just wants to take his anger out on his protagonist, thus much of the book is focused on the breaking and brainwashing of Stone. After coming across some cripples who have been branded “Rejects” by the cult – helping them to regain some of their dignity and teaching them to defend themselves – Stone heads into La Junta…and is promptly captured. The city is comprised of smiling, overly-happy cultists and the black-robed rulers who report directly to Guru Yasgur and The Transformer, the sadist who is behind the brainwashing and torture – and who turns out to be the true villain of the piece, at least insofar as the amount of narrative Stacy devotes to him. 

Hell, even April is lost in the shuffle; the entire reason behind Stone’s presence here, April only appears for a few pages…but then, that’s typical of the series, too. It’s not like she’s ever been a major character. One wonders why Stone even cares anymore. But the poor guy sure does go through hell for her; the Transformer vows to break Stone, and the reader must infer that it was the Transformer who sent the fax in the first place, given an errant comment later on that Stone is strong and that is why the cult wanted him. But man, once again The Last Ranger descends into splatter fiction territory – like when Stone, who struggles against the drugs used to brainwash him, is given a “Death Lover,” which is literally a female corpse in a casket, and Stone is thrown in the casket with it, complete with gross-out details of worms coming out of the corpse-bride’s mouth to “kiss” Stone, and he’s locked in there all night to, uh, consecrate this ghoulish marriage. 

It's all pretty extreme, only made more so with the knowledge that Jan Stacy himself would soon die of AIDS – which as ever gives the ghoulish splatter elements of The Last Ranger an extra edge. But man, with dialog like “You must learn to dance with the monkey of death, with the gorilla of termination,” you just know that the guy isn’t taking it too seriously. Plus Stone has some funny smart-ass comments throughout; like when he gets out of the coffin with “the Death Lover” the morning after, his first line is, “I sure hope she don’t have nothing.” Regardless, he’s still brainwashed, thanks to “the Golden Elixir,” a sweet-tasting concoction made up of heroin, cocaine, LSD, and etc – and, further rendering the entire setup of the novel moot, the brainwashed Stone is tasked with stirring the “hot dry vat” in which the Golden Elixir is made! I mean, was this why the Transformer (or whoever?) sent the fax to the bunker? Because they needed a new guy to stir the vat and it just had to be Martin Stone? It’s just very clear that Stacy is winging his way through the narrative. 

Stacy does at least retain his focus on who Stone is, and what makes him special – namely, that he is a “bringer of death,” as his American Indian friends once proclaimed him. His strength is such that even a mind-blasting daily drug regimen can’t keep down his willpower. That said, the cult-killing retribution isn’t as satisfying as one might expect, with some of the villains disposed of almost perfunctorily. What’s more important is the surprise return appearance at novel’s end of a series villain previously thought dead – SPOILER ALERT: none other than “the Dwarf,” the deformed (plus armless and legless) villain last seen in the third volume, when Stone threw him out of a window. (We learn here that the Dwarf landed in a pool – and he tells Stone that he should have looked out the window to see where the Dwarf landed!) 

Hey and guess what? April is abducted yet again, a recurring joke in The Last Ranger if ever there was one, and by the end of The Damned Disciples Stone and his ever-faithful pitbull Excaliber are off in pursuit. And speaking of which, Stacy’s still capable of doling out scenes with unexpected emotional depth, like when Excaliber himself is dosed with the drugs and set off against Stone…but refuses to attack his beloved master. 

In one of those reading flukes, it turns out that I’m at the same point in both The Last Ranger and it’s sort-of sister series Doomsday Warrior (which Jan Stacy co-wrote the first four volumes of): I’m now at the final volume of each series. So what I think I’ll do is read them both soon, just to gauge how these two authors handled their respective series finales. Like they said in those ’80s NBC promos: “Be there!”

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Mindf#ckers


Mindfuckers, Edited by David Felton
No month stated, 1972  Straight Arrow Books

Yes, friends, the title of the book is really “Mindfuckers.” I just changed it in the post title given the overly-sensitive AI that now polices Blogger. Which is fitting, because this book is essentially about thought control. Subtitled “A Source Book on the Rise of Acid Fascism in America” and comrpised of three very, very long articles that originally ran in Rolling Stone, Mindfuckers was published by the Rolling Stone imprint Straight Arrow, and likely it had a low print run, given how scarce the book is now. Luckily someone uploaded it to the Internet Archive

The book has been on my radar for quite some time, but I only now decided to read it because I’ve been on one of my infrequent Rolling Stone journalism kicks, and also because I’ve been on a Manson Family kick. Mindfuckers opens with the Manson piece, titled “Year Of The Fork, Night Of The Hunter,” credited to David Felton and David Dalton. Per Joe Hagan’s Sticky Fingers, Felton and Dalton argued over who should be the main writer for this piece, until editor Jann Wenner intervened and gave it to Felton – something Dalton was very upset over. Personally I find it confusing that the two authors have such similar names. 

Originally appearing in the June 25th, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone, “Year Of The Fork” took up the majority of the publication; I consulted my Rolling Stone: Cover To Cover CD-Rom and scanned through it to compare to this reprint in Mindfuckers. It appears the only thing missing is the photography that graced the original version, but for what it’s worth the copyright page of Mindfuckers states that “Portions of this book, in slightly different form, originally appeared in Rolling Stone.” I didn’t do a thorough A/B review, but I didn’t see any glaring changes, so the edits must have been very slight indeed. 

Running to a hundred pages, “Year Of The Fork, Night Of The Hunter” is certainly comprehensive, and as expected paints a very good picture of the era’s counterculture. In this regard it’s even more of a success than Ed Sanders’s contemporary The Family. But unlike Sanders, in which the author’s hatred for Manson and his “vampires” was palpable, Felton and Dalton convey an almost sympathetic tone. Indeed, again per Sticky Fingers Wenner’s original goal was to publish a story titled “Charles Manson Is Innocent,” but upon Felton and Dalton’s investigation that goal was scrapped. Likely Dalton had a lot to do with this, as per Hagan’s book he was living on Spahn Ranch when the story was written, and had first heard of Manson through Beach Boy Dennis Wilson (with whom Dalton also lived at one time, again per Hagan). 

Published before the trial began, the story caused enough waves that, per prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in Helter Skelter, it caused trouble for both the defense and the prosecution. Bugliosi also notes that the “copycat” scenario had its origin in this story; Felton and Dalton float the idea that the Tate-LaBianca murders were perpetrated so as to get Family member Bobby Beausoleil out of jail. But as Bugliosi notes, this half-assed defense wasn’t even brought up until after Manson and his three killers (Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten) were found guilty. (Charles “Tex” Watson, who carried out the brunt of the killing those nights, hadn’t gone to trial yet.) Bugliosi presents the inside scoop on how this article caused waves, noting in Helter Skelter that even the judge on the case was aware of it. 

Writing-wise, the Rolling Stone style, only a few years old in 1970, is already apparent. Predating the gonzo journalism of Hunter Thompson, Felton and Dalton don’t insert themselves as protagonists into the narrative, and for the most part the writing is on the level. It’s only in the counterculture vibe that the piece seems different than something published elsewhere – and this was one of Felton’s first assignments, coming in from the Los Angeles Times, where he’d won a Pulitzer. Perhaps the biggest coup of Felton and Dalton was an interview with Manson himself, which appears midway through the piece. 

The story encompasses most every aspect of the Manson story, starting off with a memorable open in which the authors take us on a virtual tour of Los Angeles, focusing on the areas of Manson’s impact as if we were hitting each one on a leisurely day’s drive. Then the authors meet with an anonymous attorney on the defense side who shows them gory photos of the murders and exposits on the particulars of the case – certainly stuff that would’ve construed a leak and could have gotten the entire trial thrown out as a mistrial. From there the story appropriates the vibe of one of those vintage Rolling Stone interviews in that the interview dialog goes on and on (and on)…with the caveat that it isn’t John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix or whoever doing the endless talking, but Charles Manson and his “super acid rap,” looking like a “cajun Christ” in his prison garb as Felton and Dalton interview him. 

This internminable interview once again outs Manson as a bullshit artist supreme. Like I wrote in my Helter Skelter review, it’s a wonder anyone took this guy seriously – certainly today no one would, given his constant self-comparisons to Christ, comparisons which would fall on deaf ears in this (mostly) post-Christian era. But Manson very much sees himself as a ‘60s Christ, about to be crucified (one almost gets the impression he regretted never going to the death chamber – then his martyrdom might have been ensured). In fact his attempts at being compared to Christ are ridiculous throughout his endless spiel, which is only occasionally broken up by befuddled responses from our two reporters. Charles Manson’s delight to finally be in the spotlight – to finally matter – is evident throughout this interminable sequence. 

After this we get lots of first-person recountings on Manson from followers new and old, which is how the piece closes; probably the highlight of “Year Of The Fork” is that it captures the Family immediately post-Manson, still living at Spahn Ranch and still eating food taken from garbage cans. We have Gypsy, for example, giving a metaphysical speech no doubt taken from Manson; the authors imply that Gypsy, slightly older than the other Family members, seems to secretly understand that Manson might never be coming back to them. I found this interesting from a modern perspective, as Gypsy (real name Catherine Share) has appeared in a few recent Manson documentaries, having cast off the cult shackles years and years ago. She was featured, for example, in the 2018 Manson: The Lost Tapes documentary on Fox, which featured a memorable moment of the former Gypsy putting on a pair of glasses to watch a recently-discovered film of Manson. Doubly ironic in that it was a visual display of how the Manson family was so long ago – the 70-something Catherine Share watching a film of the 20-something Gypsy – but also ironic given that Manson banned glasses in the Family. Something, by the way, he expounds upon in the interminable intervew in this Rolling Stone story. 

Overall this was certainly an interesting read, notable because it starts off seeming to be pro-Manson, but Felton and Dalton continue to pile up the evidence against him. The Helter Skelter motive isn’t mentioned, but we do get a lot of stuff from Manson and Gypsy on how the Beatles are sending out coded messages – even if The Beatles themselves don’t realize it! But in the capturing of the time and the place “Year Of The Fork, Night Of The Hunter” even bests Ed Sanders’s book. However, it’s no Helter Skelter

Next up we have another 90-page feature: Robin Green’s “The Great Banquet Table Of Life – We Deliver,” which first appeared as “Sgt. Bilko Meets The New Culture: The First Church Of Christ, Realtor,” in the December 9, 1971 Rolling Stone. Per Joe Hagan’s execrable Sticky Fingers, Robin Green was editor Jann Wenner’s “resident assassin,” the person he would send when he wanted a hit piece on someone. This particular story was briefly covered in that biography; Wenner’s mother, a rather self-obessed sort named Mimi, had fallen in with this pseudo-Tim Leary named Victor Baranco, and Jann Wenner was jealous of this (Hagan saddles Wenner with all sorts of hangups in the book, from latent homosexuality to Mommy Issues), so he sent Robin Green off to do a hit piece on Baranco. 

Regardless of the origin, the story really isn’t that compelling, and in fact has the vibe of a Kurt Vonnegut story or something. Well, maybe that’s stretching it…though Green does open the story with a quote from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. But essentially this one’s about this guy named Baranco who one day realized he was perfect as-is, despite any hangups or issues or whatnot, and so decided to teach others to accept their perfection. Or somesuch. But the gist of this Rolling Stone piece is that he charges his followers exorbitant amounts of money for basic things, and also puts them up in houses that they have to pay rent on and fix up, and etc. Green’s writing is fine and she carries the story along, adding a humorous note with the dimwitted cult members – many of them affluent types whose pockets are easily picked – she interracts with while researching the story. 

Rounding out Mindfuckers is the 178-page opus “The Lyman Family’s Holy Siege Of America,” by David Felton and from the December 23, 1971 and January 6, 1972 issues of Rolling Stone. This story, a book in itself, documents a Manson-esque cult founded by a banjo-playing mystic; a cult that boasts it hasn’t killed anyone…yet. The opening is especially memorable: we’re in Boston, where a cult member is disguised as a security guard in the Lyman Family compound. The “guard” runs away in the dead of night – and Felton reveals that in reality it’s none other than Paul Williams, former Crawdaddy writer, whose Outlaw Blues I reviewed here a few years ago. 

Similar to Felton’s piece on Manson, we then flash back to the origins of this cult, which started in Boston in the early ‘60s with the apperance of a Mel Lyman on college campus, toting a banjo. The drug of choice was Morning Glory seeds, which per recent discovery could be soaked in water and ground up for an LSD-type experience. He was into the folk scene and could play Bach on his banjo and whatnot, and in the style of the time he began accumulating followers. I had a hard time understanding why, though. After 178 pages I still found nothing special nor memorable about Mel Lyman, at least in the way he was presented by David Felton – why so many followers would willingly boast that they “served” him was just a mystery. 

Regardless, Felton serves up this story as if it were a counterculture epic, painstakingly interviewing several of Lyman’s early followers – some of whom refused to have their real names shown in the story. Throughout there is the insinuation of Lyman’s evolving mean temperament, particularly given how his followers were so afraid of him. But boy it does go on, Felton doggedly pursuing leads to figure out the mystery of the “Lyman Family.” And speaking of which, despite getting started earlier, Lyman gradually became inspired by the Manson Family – particularly by the Rolling Stone story Felton himself wrote, which brings a full-circle vibe to the anthology. 

Felton takes us through the earliest days of the family, with lots of material from fellow musician Jim Kweskin, who also became a follower of Lyman – as did Paul Williams. I’m not familiar with Kweskin but I was surprised (and a little disappointed) to hear that Paul “Crawdaddy” Williams, who displayed such an independent strain of thought in the pieces collected in Outlaw Blues, could have fallen in with a cult – particularly one in which he gave up his own individual thought. I guess if nothing else this is a demonstration of the cult of personality, something Lyman apparently shared with Manson – though the drug regimen he put his followers through didn’t hurt matters. 

There’s quite a bit of stuff about some flap at a radio station where Lyman’s music was about to be played, but the levels were wrong, and the family accused the station of intentionally doing this, leading to a scuffle – as I say, Felton quite develops the theme of an undercurrent of violence in the Lyman Family. Also mystery, with the investigation leading Felton to realize that Lyman had at least one secret identity, which he apparently used in a brief capacity as a music director at that radio station. Meanwhile Felton hangs with the cult members at family HQ in Boston, where they eat communal meals and throw people in an isolation room for running afoul of groupthink. You kind of what to go back in time and shake the shit out of these people – I mean it’s the height of the goddamn counterculture era and they’re giving up their most basic rights for a dude who plays the banjo. Oh and on that note – family members are also occasionally denied having sex by Lyman, despite the fact that he himself has plenty of gals for his personal enjoyment. 

Felton does a good job of building the mystery around Mel Lyman, though; the vast majority of the story is just Felton talking to people about Lyman. One of the more interesting parts concerns Mark Frechette, an actor who at the time was momentarily famous for starring in Zabriskie Point, Michelangelo Antonini’s flop counterculture movie of 1970 – which also was spotlighted in Rolling Stone at the time. Many years ago, when Zabriskie Point was almost impossible to find, I went on a hunt for it and then learned about Frechette; all I knew was that he’d been an unknown, discovered on the spot by Antonini and cast as the lead in his picture. And also that he died in prison a few years after the movie was released – having been sent there for robbing a bank. What I didn’t know was that Frechette was involved with the Lyman Family, and Felton spends a bit of time with him here in the story…mostly relating how Frechette kept trying to sway Antonini to the Lyman path. Interesting here that Frechette is presented as someone who will be going on to a Hollywood career, which was not to be. 

When Lyman does appear in the finale, he’s almost humble and soft-spoken, quite anticlimactic after the preceding 170-some pages of buildup. He’s a far cry from Manson, I mean to say; Felton even drops incidental details like how Lyman is missing teeth. He comes off more like an underdog than a cult leader, but then again this might have been his intention – this meeting with Lyman stems from the family’s concern that Felton was going to write a negative story about them. Speaking of which, prior to the Lyman meeting there’s an unintentionally humorous bit where some of Lyman’s thugs confront Felton in his home and make vague threats to him, and Felton finally kicks them out – and they leave! I mean they’re totally in a different league than Manson’s family. 

Anyway, as a document of the era’s “acid gurus,” Mindfuckers is pretty interesting. The writing is good throughout, but the book certainly isn’t worth the exorbitant prices booksellers charge for it; if you’re after the Manson piece, you can also find it in the much-more-affordable paperback anthology The Age Of Paranoia, credited to The Editors of Rolling Stone and published by Pocket Books in 1972.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Doomsday Warrior #18: American Dream Machine


Doomsday Warrior #18: American Dream Machine, by Ryder Stacy
July, 1990  Zebra Books

What can I say about this penultimate volume of Doomsday Warrior? That it’s incredibly stupid? That it’s the worst volume of the series yet? That it’s a sort-of rip off of Total Recall with a little Dune thrown in? That Ryder Syvertsen has clearly stuck a fork in the series and has entirely lost all interest in it? No matter what I say, I won’t be able to properly convey how ultimately terrible American Dream Machine really is. 

Well, one positive thing I can say is that it doesn’t rip off the previous volume, which itself was a ripoff of the volume before that. For this one, Syvertsen goes way back to the tenth volume to rip himself off; for, just as that tenth volume was an “imaginary story” that had no bearing on the overarching storyline, so too is American Dream Machine an “imaginary story” that, for the most part, has nothing whatsoever to do with Doomsday Warrior. This volume also has the first real appearance of Kim Langford in the series since…well, since that imaginary story in #10: American Nightmare, I think, with the additional similarity that the “Kim” who shows up in American Dream Machine is also an imaginary figure, same as she was in that earlier “imaginary story.” 

Turns out I was correct when I guessed that there’d be no pickup from the closing events of the previous volume, which as we’ll recall ended with Rockson and his team still not having reached a neighboring city, where they hoped to gather resources needed to rebuild a ravaged Century City. There was also some stuff about a bunch of new recruits Rockson had to train. Absolutely none of that is even mentioned here. When we meet Rockson, he’s flying a commandeered “Sov” fighter jet, soaring west to meet up with pal Archer, whom Rockson hasn’t seen “in three years.” 

Yes, friends, three years have passed since the previous volume; it’s now “around 2096,” we’re told (Syvertsen has also thrown in the towel on pinning down when exactly the books take place), and boy it turns out a whole bunch of stuff has happened since last time. For one, the US and the USSR has entered a truce, with all occupying Soviet forces having withdrawn from the United States(!), though we’re informed that there are still guerrilla bands of Russian fighters out there who haven’t gotten the message. Chief among them would be Killov, who we are told without question is still alive (though he doesn’t appear this time), and also Zhabnov, onetime ruler of Moscow who hasn’t been seen for several volumes; both men have a mad-on hatred for Rockson and are determined to kill him. 

Not only that, but we’re told that President Langford is now the official, uh, President of the reformed US, but he’s so old and frail he’s in a wheelchair now…and gee, the reader must only assume it’s due to fallout from the brainwashing torture he endured back in #16: American Overthrow, a subplot Syvertsen never did follow up on. Also, we’re told that Kim, Langford’s hotstuff daughter, is in the reformed DC with her dad, where she plans parties and stuff – and Rockson figures he’ll “never see her again.” As for Rockson’s other “true love,” Amazonian redhead Rona, she too is out of the picture, off in some other liberated city. We also get the random note that Detroit, the black member of the Rock Squad, has been assigned by Langford to be the Ambassador to Russia, and given that Premiere Vassily is now so old and incompetent, the USSR is actually being run by his Ethiopian servant, Rahallah (who also doesn’t appear – we’re just told all this stuff). So, Rockson muses as he flies along in his fighter jet, the world is essentially run by two black men: Detroit and Rahallah. 

But man, all this is well established at the point that this story begins…it’s news to us readers, but it’s been Rockson’s world for the past three years. Indeed, things are so slow now that mountain man Archer plain left Century City three years ago, bored with the lack of fighting…and Rockson just heard from him for the first time, having received an urgent fax from Archer that Archer needs help! So there are a lot of problems here already…I mean, Archer has ever and always been an idiot, his bumbling stupidity a constant joke in the series. How the hell did this dude learn how to send a fax? And for that matter, since when did he even know how to write? 

Beyond that, though…I mean Rockson receives this urgent “Help!” message, and just all by himself hops in this “Sov” fighter and heads for Archer’s remote destination. No backup, no “new Rock Team” (we also learn Russian guy Sherasnksy has gone back to Russia…but Chen and McLaughlin are still in Century City, at least), just Rockson going solo for no other reason than plot convenience. And even here we get the series mandatory “man against nature” stuff, with Rockson crash landing in rough terrain and then having to escape a giant mutant spider…just “yawn” type stuff after 18 volumes of it. 

The entire concept of Archer having been gone for three years isn’t much followed up on; Rockson and the big mountain man are soon drinking beer and shooting the shit in the bowling alley Archer now calls home(!). There’s also a new character to the series – the absurdly-named Zydeco Realness, an elfin “Techno-survivor,” ie yet another new mutant race, this one having survived the past century in silos, hence their small nature and weird manner of speaking. Also, Ryder Syvertsen has discovered the word “diss,” which mustv’e come into the parlance around this time (I probably learned the word from the Beastie Boys at the time); Zydeco’s people are obsessed with being “dissed,” and will take affront if they even think they are being dissed. Rockson has never heard the word before, and Syvertsen has it that it’s a word the Tecno-survivors have created themselves. 

The titular “Dream Machine” is a device the Techno-survivors have created for people who are about to die…sort of like that bit in Soylent Green where you could have like a sensory experience on your way through the out door. So off the trio go, riding over 50 miles of rough terrain – but wait, I forgot! Rockson actually gets laid…indeed, quite a bit in this novel. But again demonstrating the marked difference between this and the earliest volumes, all the sex is off-page…well, most of it. The few tidbits we get here and there are so vague as to be laughable when compared to the juicy descriptions found many volumes ago. But Rockson makes his way through a few green-skinned wild women, of the same tribe he last, er, mated with back in…well, I think it was the ones way back in #3: The Last American

It's curious that Syvertsen often refers to earlier volumes in American Dream Machine, more so than in any past installment; we are reminded of how long ago certain events were. But then he goes and makes the rest of the novel completely unrelated from the series itself. Anyway, I realized toward the end of the book that Syvertsen was indulging in this reminiscence because he must have known the end was near, as by the end of the book you know we’re headed for a series resolution. However I’m getting ahead of myself. As mentioned instead of any series continuity, we instead get a bonkers plot that rips off Total Recall to a certain extent…which must’ve been quite a trick given that the movie hadn’t come out yet when Syvertsen was writing his manuscript. Or maybe it was the Total Recall novelization, published in hardcover in 1989, that inspired him. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. Or maybe it was just the original Philip K. Dick story. 

So Rockson gets in the Dream Machine, which looks like a big metal coffin, and sure enough as soon as he’s under none other than Zhabnov and his forces storm in – completely coincidentally! – and they take everyone prisoner. And when Zhabnov discovers Rockson in this machine, he has the Techo-survivors turn the dream into a nightmare. For the next hundred-plus pages we’ll be in this nightmare world, which is where the similarity to previous volume American Nightmare comes in…just as with that one, this one too will be a “nightmare” with no bearing on the main plot of the series, with even Rockson himself a completely different character. 

That’s because he’s now “Niles Rockson,” a wealthy playboy living in a penthouse in NYC in the pre-nuke 1980s, enjoying a romantic time with hotstuff blonde “Kimetta.” None other than the dream version of Kim Langford, with the curious tidbit that, despite having been plain ignored for the past several volumes, Kim is now presented as Rock’s soul mate, the love of his life. Well anyway when the nightmare begins…Kim suddenly becomes a mean-looking tough chick (still hot though, we’re informed – with, uh, big boobs despite her small stature!), and the action has been changed to…Venus

Suddenly Kimetta is angry at Rockson, meaning the dream has changed but Rockson of course is not aware he’s in a dream; reading the novel is a very frustrating experience. And it gets dumber. Some cops come in and haul Rockson off for the crime of being a “playboy!” He’s put on a “prisoner ship” and sent off into space, headed for the artificial planet Esmerelda, which is a prison colony. Yet, despite this being a nightmare, Rockson – in the narrative concocted by the Techno-survivors at the behest of Zhabnov – still gets laid. A lot. Hookers are sent into his room each night, a different one each night, and every time it’s fade to black. One of the gals happens to be from Esmerelda, the planet they’re headed for, and since Rockson’s so good in bed (we’re informed), she treats him to “the Esmereldan position.” Demonstrating how juvenile the tone of Doomsday Warrior has become, Syvertsen actually describes this screwing-in-a-weird-new-position thusly: “It would be difficult to explain.” And that’s all he writes about it. 

We’re in straight-up sci-fi territory as Rockson is taken to this planet Esmerelda…where he learns he’s going to become a gladiator. And at least sticking true to the series template he’ll need to fight a bloodthirsty monster in the arena. It’s all so dumb…and, well, at least it’s dreamlike, with non-sequitur stuff like Kimetta – who now has become the daughter of the prison warden on Esmerelda! – giving Rockson a talisman that will protect him against this monster. It just goes on and on, having nothing to do with Doomsday Warrior, yet not being strong enough to retain the reader’s interest; Syvertsen’s boredeom with it all is very apparent, and this feeling extends to the reader. 

At the very least I was impressed with how Syvertsen just wings it as he goes along…given that all this is a “dream,” he’s able to change the narrative as he sees fit. But gradually Rockson starts to figure something is amiss with this world, and begins to remember “The Doomsday Warrior.” But again it’s very juvenile, with Rockson suddenly certain that if he escapes Esmerelda, he will awaken into his real reality. The finale of the dream sequence features some unexpected emotional depth, when Rockson realizes that his beloved Kimetta is “just a dream, too.” This leads to a sequence where the series gets back to its New Agey roots; The Glowers, those godlike mutants also last seen in the third volume, show up to save Rockson – who is near death from his experience. This kind of goes on for a bit, with the Glowers and Rockson’s pals using a Medicine Wheel to put Rockson’s soul back together with his body. 

Here's where it becomes clear Ryder Syvertsen has the end of the series in mind. Well, first we get more juvenile stuff where the Glowers bring out a massive ship made of ice and snow and upon it floats Rockson and team back to Century City – where the Glowers have called ahead telepathically. Rockson is given a hero’s welcome, and what’s more Rona and Kim are there waiting for him, and we’re told they’ve “settled their jealous differences” about Rockson, and have decided what to do about him – but will tell him more later. The main Glower announces that Killov is alive, and only Rockson can stop him, thus setting the stage for the next (and final) volume. 

But man…here comes the scene we’ve waited so many volumes for: that night there’s a knock at Rockson’s door, and he opens it to find both Kim and Rona there in negligees, and they laugh and push Rockson back on his bed, and the reader is promised the Doomsday Warrior three-way to end all three-ways. But friggin’ Ryder Syvertsen ends the book right there!! (I’m currently working on my own 200-page fan novelization of this sex scene.) 

As mentioned, the next volume is to be the last…but the series has been over for Syvertsen for a long time, now. That said, I might get to the last one sooner rather than later, for American Dream Machine seems to be leading directly to that next novel – meaning, the next one shouldn’t open three years after this one. 

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Sticky Fingers


Sticky Fingers, by Joe Hagan
No month stated, 2017  Knopf

I remember when this book came out a few years ago; the most notable thing about it was that writer Joe Hagan, who had personally been asked by Rolling Stone honcho Jann Wenner to write the definitive history of the magazine, had turned in a book so displeasing to Wenner that Wenner cut off all ties with Hagan, disavowing the book (and going on to write his own autobiography). Reading the 547-page doorstop that is Sticky Fingers, one can understand Wenner’s displeasure. While the book starts off on relatively sound footing, it soon becomes apparent that Joe Hagan’s goal is to write a modern-day The Lives Of John Lennon (a book that he even references in the text): a malicious attempt at cutting down his subject. But, as with Albert Goldman’s much-detested biography of John Lennon, the subject of Sticky Fingers ultimately comes off as okay – it’s the biographer who comes off like the bad guy. 

Sticky Fingers is at least shorter than Goldman’s epic of a character assassination, but it’s no less vindictive. What’s interesting is that the first half of the book seems relatively even-toned, until the knives come out in the second half. But, at least for this reader, the cumulative effect was that I became sympathetic to Jann Wenner. For, like Goldman in his Lennon bio, it soon becomes clear that, while Joe Hagan has interviewed many people for his book, he has only used their negative comments about Wenner. Just as The Lives Of John Lennon gave the impression that John Lennon was a marginally-talented narcissist who only stumbled into success through luck, so too does Sticky Fingers convey that Jann Wenner is a “star-fucker” and “groupie” who managed to run the definining magazine of his generation only by luck. 

The frustrating thing is that I was looking forward to the book. I’ve long been interested in the very early Rolling Stone, and over the years have picked up several original issues, the majority of the mass market paperback anthologies, and also in 2007 I got the Rolling Stone: Cover To Cover CD-Rom, which features every page of every issue from the first one up through 2007. I also picked up two earlier “unauthorized histories” of Rolling Stone: Robert Sam Anson’s 1981 book Gone Crazy And Back Again, and Robert Draper’s 1990 book Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History, neither of which I’ve read. I’ve also picked up – and reviewed here – a few roman a clef novels about Rolling StoneRising Higher and Angel Dust

All of which is to say I’m very interested in Rolling Stone, at least the first several years of it, though I admit I lose interest once the ‘70s become the ‘80s and beyond. Reading Sticky Fingers, though, never once did I get the impression that Joe Hagan has ever liked Rolling Stone, and nowhere in the book does he capture the magic of flipping through those early issues of the magazine, the newspaper so brittle from the years as to split in half as you turn the page, to find nigh-endless interviews with rock personalities of the day, epic album reviews, psychedelic art, various feature stories, “dope world” communiques, and occasionally even poetry. There is a definite magic to the first ten or so years of Rolling Stone, and it’s clear why readers of the day “grokked” it, but Hagan can’t be bothered to tell us that. Indeed, when he does comment on the magazine, it’s in a derogatory or mocking tone. 

However, it’s to Hagan’s credit that about 85% of the book focuses on the ‘60s and ‘70s. Indeed, the ‘90s and ‘00s only take up a few pages at the very end of the book. This is because the ‘60s and ‘70s were the prime years of the magazine, something everyone acknowledges. And too, Hagan does provide the occasional interesting backstory about some of the more famous stories from the magazine’s golden years, some of which had me accessing my CD-Rom to check them out. But one wonders if this same behind-the-scenes info is also in Anson’s and Draper’s books. 

For the most part, though, Sticky Fingers is a biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner…but, just as Albert Goldman’s Lennon bio was also about Yoko Ono, so too is Sticky Fingers also about co-founder Jane Wenner, aka Jann’s wife. (And a quite attractive wife at that, if you don’t mind a little toxic masculinity with your review.) As I say, it’s pretty incredible how similar Sticky Fingers and The Lives Of John Lennon are. We even start at Wenner’s childhood, with the same focus on Wenner’s mother as there was on Lennon’s mother in that other book – with the caveat that Hagan is much more enamored with Wenner’s mom than I was, as she comes off as the epitome of the self-involved “upper crust” narcissist. I did appreciate Hagan’s subtext (possibly unintentional, though) that Wenner’s mother decided late in life that she was a lesbian, just as Jann Wenner himself came out as gay later in his own life. 

While I have not read those earlier Rolling Stone exposes, one thing I know they both agree on is that Jann Wenner was not the best of bosses, sort of enjoying the high life with rock royalty and leaving his employees to do the brunt of the work. To which I say, “Who gives a shit?” Honestly, this sort of ignorace about the working world baffles me…it’s like these biographers have never had a real job outside of the journalism industry and don’t understand that this is essentially how it works in the corporate world. So yes, there’s a fair bit of bitching from Rolling Stone employees new and old, but again the humorous thing is, no one would know who any of these people are if they hadn’t worked for Rolling Stone in the first place. But then the same sentiment can be extended to Joe Hagan himself – I’d never heard of the guy previous to this book. 

Writing-wise, Hagan does for the most part keep his narrative moving, but the passive-aggressive tone soon becomes wearying. He also writes in that pretentious style favored by modern journalists; back in the ‘90s I remember getting a subscription to Esquire due to a bunch of frequent flyer miles, and I was immediately turned off by the highfalutin, desperately-trying-to-sound important writing style throughout. Unsurprisingly, Joe Hagan writes in that exact style, doling out sentences like, “When Simon and Garfunkel came to San Francisco to play the Community Theater in Berkeley in May 1966, they made a special trip to Berkeley to meet Ralph Gleason, whose collection of Lenny Bruce recordings, bequeathed to him by Bruce himself, was highly prized samizdat.” To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy: If you use words like “samizdat,” you might be a pretentious twat. Especially if it’s in a sentence that also has “Simon and Garfunkel” in it! 

As in Goldman’s Lennon-bashery, from the beginning of this epic tale we are to understand that Jann Wenner had no real part in anything that made Rolling Stone great, and any success he enjoyed was either due to someone else’s idea or due to a fluke. So then the origin of Rolling Stone itself is framed as Wenner perhaps ripping off some other underground magazines of the day, then straight-up using the printing plates designed for a defunct paper. Only occasionally will Hagan admit that Wenner might have come up with a good idea on his own, but just as soon as we’re told something positive, Hagan will undercut it with a biting comment – he does this throughout the book, increasingly so as we get a few hundred pages in. Again and again, any time we are told of a good deed Wenner has done, or any time someone else makes a positive comment about him, there will be a single-line sentence that undercuts Wenner. For example: 

Travolta was pleased [with Wenner’s screen test for a featured part in Travolta’s 1985 movie Perfect]. He characterized Wenner’s second screen test “one of the best I’ve ever seen…I’ve never seen a beast like this one on celluloid before.” 

At least that’s what he said in his “actor’s notebook” that Wenner published in Rolling Stone. 

Just like that, throughout the damn book. Speaking of Lennon, Sticky Fingers is even framed around him, opening in 1970 – well after Rolling Stone had become a success – with Jann and Jane Wenner enjoying a brief friendship with John and Yoko. We get the insider scoop that Wenner, despite Lennon’s specific demand, published Lennon’s long interview with the magazine as a book, Lennon Remembers, and Lennon never forgave him for it. Obviously a jerky move, but then again one could see Wenner’s point – the interview would have been the property of the magazine, for Wenner to do with as he pleased. Speaking of which, we get a lot of legal wrangling between Wenner and Mick Jagger over the use of “Rolling Stone,” with Jagger incensed in the early days that it infringed on his band’s name; wranglings which humorously took decades to be worked out between the two men. One wonders how Jagger feels now that this book, too, “rips of” the Stones for its title – but even then, “Sticky Fingers” is a lame title, as it has no real bearing on anything…other than being yet another dig at Jann Wenner, implying that his career has been the result of “sticky finger” thievery and backstabbing. 

Despite being 500+ pages, Sticky Fingers is very shallow in the research department. Again, it’s all written about on the surface level of an Esquire article. We’ll get cursory overviews of some of the more famous pieces that ran in Rolling Stone, maybe a little behind the scenes stuff…but that’s it. There’s no mention whatsoever of more minor figures from the magazine’s early days: no J.R. Young, no Smokestack El Ropo. Not a single mention of either of them – nor any confirmation of my pet theory that early contributor “Elmo Rooney” might have been Steve Martin, who literally portrayed Elmo Rooney in the ultra-weird Rolling Stone 10th Anniversary TV Special. (“Elmo Rooney” was probably really Charles Perry, who was also “Smokestack El Ropo,” but still – it’s a fun idea.) 

One of the things that drew Wenner’s ire upon the publication of this book is Hagan’s strange obsession with Wenner’s sexuality. In a way I can appreciate it, though…I mean Hagan has at least tried to cater to a “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” ethic. But the obsession with Wenner’s latent homosexuality and how it shaped Rolling Stone in its early days – even subconsciously! – gets to be as wearying as the constant single-sentence barbs. Indeed, coupled with Hagan’s other obsession (namely, the insinuation in Keith Richard’s autobiography that Mick Jagger has a small penis – something Hagan refers to several times in this book!), the reader begins to wonder if there’s a little “latency” in Hagan himself. Actually this might explain the increasingly vicious tone the book appropriates toward Wenner. 

On that same note, Hagan is really, really bothered that Rolling Stone was essentially “by white men for white men.” Of course, the white population of the United States was around 90% in 1970, but who cares about such trivialities – I mean Jann Wenner should’ve catered at least a little to the nascent albino trans population, for crying out loud! How dare he go for the majority of the population? I mean what was he, a businessman or something?? But boy, we do get a lot of today’s mandatory white male-bashing; Hagan most seems to be bothered by Joe Eszterhas, who wrote for Rolling Stone in the early ‘70s before heading to Hollywood. Hagan has it that Eszterhas was not only a chauvinist but that he also plain made up most of his stories. To which I say big woop; this is no different than what writers were doing over at the Men’s Adventure Magazines of the day. Kudos to Eszterhas for pulling it off in a more “respectable” periodical. Hagan also mentions that Eszterhas liked to carry around a buck knife, which he’d lay down on the table when in heated discussions in the editorial room – a WTF? note that made me laugh out loud. I think I’m gonna start doing that at the office. 

Hagan is so focused on his white male-bashing that he misses the forest for the trees. For, despite being “by white men for white men,” there were indeed women and “people of color” (in the modern parlance) at Rolling Stone, even in the earliest days. Chief among them would be Robin Green, the first female reporter, and Ben Fong-Torres, a Chinese journalist who was one of the main contributors for years and years. So hey, right there – opportunities for Hagan to expound upon “muh diversity.” 

But in another laugh-out-loud miss on Hagan’s part, we’re told that Robin Green was Jann Wenner’s “resident assassin,” the reporter Wenner would send when he wanted a hit piece on someone, and not really good for much else. And Fong-Torres was even worse, notorious for snooping through the personal belongings of his subjects and also publishing personal material in his stories – like stuff taken directly from a private notebook he spied in someone’s house. And it’s humorous – no doubt unintentionally so – that Hagan does essentially the very same thing in this book! According to Rolling Stone veteran Greil Marcus, Hagan took a particular story Marcus had given him about Jann Wenner and distorted it to make Wenner look bad; Marcus further declared Sticky Fingers to be a “vile” book. 

Anyway, while there was some precious “muh diversity” at Rolling Stone, even in the beginning, apparently Green and Fong-Torres weren’t the best representatives…or something. It just made me laugh, particularly given how incensed Hagan was at Jann Wenner’s race-and-gender faux pas in 2023, more on which anon. 

Despite all attempts to make him appear spineless and craven, Wenner still comes off in a positive light…in particular in a flap in the Rolling Stone offices after the publication of the Altamont special, in 1970. This was, in Hagan’s dramatic telling, a watershed moment in the paper’s origin, as the radical leftists in Wenner’s employ demanded that their boss trounce Mick Jagger for his part in the debacle and death at that festival…pushing Wenner to defy his “groupie” image and go after Mick Jagger himself. Wenner did so…after which, in typical fashion, the radical leftists wanted more: they wanted Rolling Stone to become overtly political, and essentially staged a coup. In a move modern-day executives at Disney and Boeing and etc should learn from, Wenner stood his ground and kicked the radical fuckers out. And Rolling Stone went on to its greatest success in the ‘70s, while those fired radicals faded into the woodwork. Certainly there is a lesson there, but Joe Hagan misses it…perhaps intentionally so. 

Otherwise the mistakes are for the most part minor, like when Hagan tells us that “the first Steve Miller Band album” was Sailor, when in reality it was Children Of The Future. Since stuff like this is admitedly outside the scope of the book, it’s forgiveable. But the goofs about Rolling Stone are a bit harder to swallow, given that this is supposed to be the “definitive story” – I mean, like on page 414 we get a scant few paragraphs on Tom Wolfe’s serialized Bonfire Of The Vanities, which ran for 27 installments in the mid-1980s in Rolling Stone. Not even broaching the plot or telling us much at all about the story or its reception, Hagan informs us that the protagonist is “a Wall Street trader,” Hagan unsurprisingly using the character as an opportunity to take yet another swipe at Wenner, lending the impression that Wolfe was serving up a veiled parody of his editor. There’s only one problem. In the original Rolling Stone serialization, protagonist Sherman McCoy was a writer. It was in the heavily-revised hardcover edition of the novel, published in 1987, that Tom Wolfe changed the protagonist to a Wall Street trader. Hagan has gotten this detail wrong. Which makes one wonder how much else in Sticky Fingers he’s gotten wrong. 

The appearance of Hunter Thompson at Rolling Stone after the Altamont issue was another factor that took the paper to its success, and Hagan writes of the increasingly fractious relationship between Thompson and Wenner. But otherwise there isn’t much here about Hunter Thompson that’s revelatory; I mean he comes on strong, burns out quick, and is soon a shell of his former self. At least this is how he’s presented here; Hagan has it that none of Thompson’s work after the mid-‘70s is worth the paper it was printed on. We do at least get another dig at Joe Eszterhas here, this time from Eszterhas himself (who likely regretted talking to Hagan, given how Hagan made Eszterhas come off in the book), who claims he tried to emulate Hunter Thompson. This is clear just from reading Eszterhas’s pieces, in particular one of his last stories, the infamous “King Of The Goons” hit-piece on Evel Kneivel. 

There’s no denying Rolling Stone lost much of what made it special as the ‘70s wore on, and by the point in Haggan’s narrative where the magazine becane a slick and moved to New York my interest had waned – as had Joe Hagan’s. The ‘80s-‘00s are for the most part rushed through in a few hundred pages, or should I say I skimmed through a lot of it. I’ve never had time for Bruce Springsteen or Bono, and Jann Wenner was a big fan of both, hence there’s a lot of stuff about the two of them which I skipped. That said, the cover of “Blinded By The Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band is one of my favorite songs ever. I couldn’t care less what the Springsteen original sounds like.  Otherwise we just get a litany against Wenner for all the things Hagan accuses him of missing as the century neared its end...like his reluctance to feature rap in the magazine, or how he missed out on the importance of MTV.  Yawn

As mentioned as the book goes on the knives increasingly come out, and we get a lot of stuff about Jann Wenner lying to people, or enjoying the high life while his poor employees must scrimp and save, or how he’d take credit for articles others worked on. Again, yawn. (Which rhymes with “Jann!”) We also get too much on Wenner’s sex life, with the curious tidbit that it’s his affairs with men that Joe Hagan most focuses on. (Hmmmm….) On the female front it sounds like the guy did pretty good for himself – I was especially impressed by his involvement with none other than Mary Microgram of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test, a book I read 30 years ago and keep meaning to read again. Aka Denise Kaufman, she was also in the all-female group Ace Of Cups, which was a favorite of Jimi Hendrix. 

But the absolute nadir of Sticky Fingers is the Afterword, in which Joe Hagan essentially pats himself on the back for not turning in the hagiography Jann Wenner apparently expected. And how does Hagan know Wenner expected such a thing? Why – because Wenner would take Hagan to concerts! And Wenner gave him Rolling Stone merchandise…a-and he even gave him the complete mono vinyl set of the Beatles discography as gifts! And Wenner showed Hagan photos of rockstars from Wenner’s personal collection! I mean, the craven bastard!! No wonder Joe Hagan felt justified in sharpening his knives and cutting that fucker up good! Seriously though, this last part is just unbelievable in its lack of self-perception; totally unaware of the ill-will he is engendering in his reader, Hagan basically congratulates himself on the great job he’s done with this book – and he’s also eager to tell us how Jann Wenner stopped talking to him after Wenner read the manuscript, shortly before it went to press. For Hagan stipulated that Wenner would not be able to make any edits to the book – cue another round of self-congratulations for this incredibly wise decision. 

Ah, but if you thought the knives were out in Sticky Fingers, just check out this hit piece from the September 2023 Vanity Fair. So in September of 2023 Jann Wenner published a new book titled The Masters, focused on seven rockers who in Wenner’s estimation were “masters” of the art – and Wenner had the absolute fucking gall to only write about white men. The horror!! In an interview with the pathetic New York Times Wenner further stated that “performers of color” were outside his area of focus, and further – gasp! – he said that female performers weren’t articulte enough in the rock field, or somesuch. 

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the virtue-signalling world of modern journalism. Joe Hagan’s glee at finally getting to really dig into Jann Wenner is almost palpable in this Vanity Fair piece. 

The thing is…well, first of all, Jann Wenner has every right to say what he wants, and if I wore a hat I’d take it off for him, just for how he demonstrated the courage of his convictions. A rare sight indeed in today’s emasculated era. But Jann Wenner has the right to say what he wants because of the little fact that we live in the United States, and we have freedom of speech here. The PC Thugs of Hagan’s industry think they are arbiters of what is “permissible” speech. FUCK THEM. Jann Wenner is free to say whatever he wants, even if it ruffles feathers. If he is guilty of anything it is apologizing for his comments. Curiously, for a bunch of so-called “liberal” types who “just want to breathe,” these modern-day progressives are like sharks with blood in the water when they detect any weakness in their enemies. The woke battlefield is littered with the corpses of famous personalities who have said something “wrong,” apologized for it – and then been cancelled. Jann Wenner is just the latest example. If there is one lesson from any of this, it is never to apologize to the foaming-mouth radicals, and only to fight back. Sadly, only a very few understand this. Jann Wenner himself once understood this…like when he fired those in-house radicals in 1970. 

But the other thing is, Wenner really isn’t in bad company. I’m not sure if he’s been cancelled yet (which could be easy because he’s dead and not around to defend himself), but in 1948 the poet Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess put forward the notion that women could not be poets, that only men could truly write poetry; women, in Graves’s philosopy, were instead the muses who inspired poets. Thus in Graves’s estimation the only poets with a “voice” were men. This, essentially, is the same proposition Jann Wenner has put forward about rock music. And I can’t say I disagree with him. Obviously there are exceptions – glaring exceptions at that – but for the most part rock music is the product of white males. Sure, rock originated from rhythm and blues played by black musicians in the early 20th Century…just as much as it originated from the country music played by white musicians in that same era. But what it came to be – what most people think of when they think of “rock” – was mainly the work of white males in the 1960s and 1970s. Sort of like how Buddhism began in India…I mean, do you think of a person from India when you think of a Buddhist? 

And besides, all this race and gender identity politics bullshit is a modern obsession. Back in the glory days of rock, the musicians didn’t make a big deal out of being white, or being male, and nor did the listeners. Hell, if you listen to the Freeform Progressive Rock Radio of the era, you’ll notice that there was just as much soul and blues played as there was rock. But we live in an era of race obsession, no matter how absurd, thus Jann Wenner’s comments struck such a nerve. 

But then I could have just linked to Greil Marcus’s superbly-argued defense of Wenner.

Personally I think Wenner shouldn’t have backed down…and in fact his “faux pas” was another indication of how he has an innate sense of knowing the direction things are going. Fortunately, we are currently seeing pushback against race and identity-focused ideologies, particularly against companies that espouse these ideologies. As it turns out, most Americans don’t like being told how to think; Hagan’s industry is crumbling as a result of people cancelling their subscriptions to these woke propaganda outlets. In my mind, Jann Wenner’s only mistake was that he didn’t retain control of Rolling Stone and take the tone of the magazine into more of a populist direction. After all, the underground of today is the right. The left has become the establishment. In the ‘60s the FBI targeted hippies; today the FBI targets grandmothers who took selfies at the Capitol. And curiously a lot of those former hippies are now Trump supporters. Even I know a few people my age whose parents were hippies back in the ‘60s but who are now MAGA Republicans…and I hardly know anyone, so you have to wonder how many of them there really are out there. Rolling Stone, just as it had once before, could have become the voice of this new underground. 

If you think that sounds crazy, just remember that Donald Trump was himself once a Democrat. 

I bring up the dreaded topic of Trump because Joe Hagan himself does, in the closing pages of Sticky Fingers. We are told that Wenner was “interested” in Trump’s 2016 candidacy – cue more hue and cry from Hagan, who again displays his coastal ignorance by telling us that those dim-witted Trump supporters only vote for Trump because he’s famous. (FYI, they aren’t voting for him because he’s “famous.”) In Hagan’s mind, Donald Trump is the epitome of the fame-obsessed narcissism Jann Wenner has long been enamored with; there follows the most superficial appraisement of Trump that…well, it gives one an indication of why most Americans are so ill-informed, if they’re getting their “news” from people like this writer. 

This book upset me so much that I actually looked online for a way to contact Jann Wenner somehow, to let him know Sticky Fingers was just a stupid hatchet job and “nothing to get hung up about.” It’s just a vicious screed that ultimately makes the writer look like the bad guy, without showing any true understanding of its subject – again, the similarities to Goldman’s Lennon bio are many and profound. And no doubt the fates of both books will be similar. Hagan seems to have a premonition of how his own book will be treated by history: toward the end of Sticky Fingers he mentions how upset Jann Wenner was with Goldman’s The Lives Of John Lennon when it was published in 1988, commissioning a rebuttal in the pages of Rolling Stone…yet Hagan notes it was all for naught, as Goldman’s book was “destined to be forgotten.”  Surely the same fate has already befallen Sticky Fingers

My only regret in reviewing Sticky Fingers is that I’m giving the book any visibility. So I guess I read it so you don’t have to. But if you do get the urge to read it, try getting it from your library – or maybe order a cheap remaindered copy on abebooks.com. Checking there now, it seems there are a ton of such copies available for a pittance. Which is about all this “vile” book is worth.