Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture

by Paul Krassner

Overview

Uncensored, uncontained, and thoroughly demented, the memoirs of Paul Krassner are back in an updated and expanded edition. Paul Krassner, “father of the underground press” (People magazine), founder of the Realist, political radical, Yippie, and award-winning stand-up satirist, shares his stark raving adventures with the likes of Lenny Bruce, Abbie Hoffman, Norman Mailer, Ken Kesey, Groucho Marx, and Squeaky Fromme, revealing the patriarch of counterculture’s ultimate, intimate, uproarious life on the fringes of society.

Whether he’s writing about his friendship with controversial comic Lenny Bruce, introducing Groucho Marx to LSD, his investigation of Scientology, or John Kennedy’s cadaver, no subject is too sacred to be skewered by Krassner. And yet his stories are soulful and philosophical, always authentic to his iconoclastic brand of personal journalism.

As Art Spiegelman said, “Krassner is one of the best minds of his generational to be destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked—but mainly hysterical. His true wacky, wackily true autobiography is the definitive book on the sixties.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593765033
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	09/11/2012
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	1,061,986
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 8.82(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor, and a contributor to the The Realist. Krassner became a key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s as a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and a founding member of the Yippies. He lives in Southern California.

Editorial Reviews

In 1984, when People magazine published a special section on the 1960s, it hailed Krassner as the ``father of the underground press.'' Krassner's typically puckish reaction: ``I demanded a blood test.'' On and off since 1958, Krassner has published the Realist , a no-holds-barred satirical magazine whose influence is wildly disproportionate to its modest circulation figures. Along the way, he found time to edit Lenny Bruce's memoirs, introduce Groucho Marx to LSD, and serve as Larry Flynt's publisher for Hustler. Krassner is an engagingly modest man who constantly seems surprised to be asked to appear in public with Norman Mailer, Ken Kesey, or Allen Ginsberg. A marvelous portrait showing how a man kept his sanity, integrity, and sense of humor through some very turbulent times; for most popular collections.-- Thomas Wiener, formerly with ``American Film''

Library Journal

Actually, on the evidence here, Krassner—founder/editor of The Realist and the most outrageous cultural critic of his era—no longer raves now that he's in his 60s. Which is just as well, because otherwise it's hard to imagine the provocateur who published spurious outtakes of The Death of a President that had LBJ having sex with JFK's corpse being mellowed out enough to write this affectionate memoir of his countercultural life and times. Much of the fun here comes from sharing Krassner's gallery of famous friends, limned in generally crisp portraits and starting with publisher Lyle Stuart, who in 1958 bankrolled The Realist; Stuart's then-employer, Bill Gaines of Mad; and, a bit later, comic/junkie Lenny Bruce. As The Realist's fame grew, so did Krassner's circle, which came to encompass Groucho Marx (who took LSD with the author and soared on Bach); Abbie Hoffman (gutsy, wired) and Jerry Rubin (with whom Krassner formed the Yippie Party); Ken Kesey, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, John Lennon; Manson-slaves Sandra Good and Squeaky Fromme (who nearly seduced Krassner into a m‚nage … trois); and Larry Flynt (who in the late 70's hired Krassner as publisher of Hustler). Also nostalgia-worthy are Krassner's sepia-tinged memoirs of his N.Y.C. childhood (especially a humorous run-in with a dwarf at Coney Island) and of his first glimmers of the absurd. More personal-emotional and less interesting are his recollections of his paranoid breakdown in the 70's, and, a decade later, of his grappling with his daughter's sexual awakening; more scattered are his most recent memories, of reviving The Realist and joining the 60's Memory Lane circuit. There's little of the edgy naughtinesshere that, at its peak, had Krassner publish an infamous cartoon of Disney characters at an orgy; what's taken its place is an engaging avuncular impishness that Krassner wears well—and even with dignity. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen) (First serial to Playboy and High Times)

Kirkus Reviews