I have no pride in being a human, though, because I had nothing to do with my becoming one. If you must give me a label, then label me a human being.
“Not even an American-in the sense that, as one book reviewer puts it, to call a man a South African just because he was born in South Africa is like calling a kitten a biscuit because it was born in an oven. Not Unitarian or Buddhist or Existentialist.
Not a liberal or a conservative or a vivisectionist. Not a socialist or a capitalist or an anarchist. Not a Communist or a Fascist or a Prohibitionist. Non-partisan in that I’m not a Democrat or a Republican or a Vegetarian. “In my capacity as editor of The Realist, I am both non-partisan and partisan. But basically, one’s individuality consists of conformity-to oneself. If one’s individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. “However, I am neither for conformity nor for non-conformity. “This editorial will be written in first person singular, as a sort of symbolic gesture toward a society where conformity has replaced the weather as that which everybody talks about, but which nobody does anything about… In the first issue of The Realist, published in Spring 1958, Krassner laid out a philosophy that has remained essentially unchanged in the 60 years since: Here are his first editorial and a few of his recollections, all part of an hour-plus conversation that had me believing in time travel, comic phantoms and the undeniable limits of linear thinking. Krassner can tell the story of The Realist, and how many other things came to be, better than anyone. No doubt that’s what happens when people take themselves too seriously it’s also what happens when a “news” magazine for adults comes out of the offices of Mad, the initial home of The Realist in 1958. As the editor of a nationally distributed underground magazine, The Realist, Krassner showed Disney characters in a full-on orgy, published detailed conspiracy theories and suggested Lyndon Baines Johnson had sex with John F. In our phone call conversation, Krassner claimed, “My vocabulary is leaking”, although that’s likely due to his prolific writings over the last 60+ years and his willingness to exclaim “FUCK” when everyone else was speaking in asterisks, at-signs and stars. Now 86, Krassner is on-it as much as ever, although he needs a walker to get around as the result of being brutally and irreparably beaten by San Francisco police in 1979 while reporting on the Dan White trial.
Krassner has been sued by countless oh-for-gosh-sakes-be-polite corporate types for his statements, stories and commentaries he was the first living man inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame and has sworn he’ll never appear on television without being high. His Prankster nickname, “Zen Bastard”, best sums up a man who as a six-year-old played a precise violin at Carnegie Hall and who as an adult befriended those set on loosening up an intolerant puritan America–– Hugh Hefner, Ken Kesey, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Larry Flynt, Richard Pryor, George Walker, Norman Mailer and Lenny Bruce––continually bedeviling anyone who claimed they were in charge. Perhaps there is no single word to describe Krassner. It could be said Krassner is a modern oracle––or, a sort of seer––the one who knows all and who can talk of the past, present and future with outrageous clarity and humor. “Unicorn” would be better: Krassner has caused generations of cocktail-sedated-starched-white-shirt conformists to look at him like he has a huge horn growing out of his forehead. The term “legend” reduces the journalist, satirist, editor, publisher, comedian, Merry Prankster, Yippee co-founder and lecturer to the status of a mythic creature.
#Zen bound pacifist how to
How to describe Paul Krassner in a word? Legend? No, that’s too simple. Reel One: Paul Krassner’s Vocabulary is Leaking In the first part of this long interview, he talks about the founding of The Realist, the origins of the antiwar movement at Berkeley and his friend and collaborator Lenny Bruce. Publisher/editor of The Realist, satirist, comedian, Merry Prankster, Yippie co-founder, and compatriot of a who’s who of the counterculture is still shocking all the right people at age 86.
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