[00:00:00]
Richard Kostelanetz: "culture outside the university," there wasn't any culture outside the university when I was at Brown. I went to RISD once, down the hill. We just didn't do it, I don't know why. Maybe other people did but I didn't. And I tried to turn it over to people who might have. So everything was around the college literary magazine which I was the editor of, then we did a rebel literary magazine that was banned called Hubris which I trust they have. There was a great teacher named S. Foster Damon who had been part of the art and musical avant garde dealing back to the twenties who taught me an awful lot of stuff especially how to be a professional, and there were friends you made- people you knew on campus. But there wasn't any conscious avant garde in any sense that he [Prof. Buhle] understands the term from his experience.
[00:00:48]
Sarah Bird: Any conscious, but-
RK: Ah no nah no. Not at Brown when I was there and in the late fifties early sixties, there were people who went on to distinguished careers in the avant garde, I can tell you who they were. Walter Carlos became the composer switched on Bach, he became Wendy Carlos in the early seventies and he did a long article in playboy magazine that I happen to have a copy of which isn't easy to find describing what went on. And he's continued, his music isn't so avant garde anymore. There's a composer named Alvin Curran, Richard Foreman was there, the playwright, who was central in avant garde theater. There's a fellow named Allen Sondheim, who has had much of a visible career, who has done some interesting, eccentric work. He would be – born in 40, Allen was born in 43, Richard was born in 37, Alvin Curran in 38, Walter-no Wendy Carlos born in 40. These are the people, I didn't know Walter in college, he was a townie, a townie, you didn't know townies, I wish I did, he said he founded an electronic music club at brown in 1962, I don't remember it. But I'm not going to d-
[00:02:00]
SB: You graduated in 61 right?
[00:02:02]
RK: I graduated in February of 62, I graduated a semester early. On the women's, there were some theatrical women, Elizabeth Diggs was a playwright, and her friend Emily Arnold McCauley whose done some children's books of a rather extraordinary sort. They graduated in 61. They are curious because I guess I can say this they were I think roommates, certainly close friends who married campus stars had children and became lovers 30 years ago and have been together ever since. If that's avant garde I suppose so. Whether it was- there wasn't any visible homosexuality at brown when I was there.
[00:02:52]
RK: I don't know. Oh I vaguely heard of somebody, you're right, I remember it was brought to my attention but it was not a person I knew. We certainly thought we knew everybody important intellectually at Brown in my years. It turns out not to be true. There were people I didn't know such as Walter Carlos, but we certainly thought we did, (laughs)
[00:03:10]
SB: Why was that?
RK: There weren't that many people. It just wasn't that big a world. There was the literary magazine. There was there wasn't much of a music scene, there was a folk music scene, but there wasn't much of a music scene, in any terms, even jazz scene that it came to understand it, there were guys that certainly had certain ambitions, I wonder if that's true of () at Yale fifteen years later, I'll ask him, I think he said there wasn't much of a jazz scene at Yale. Ok ok did he? Ok ok [inaudible]
[00:03:41]
RK: Incidentally, one rule I have about ivy league schools that pretty much holds. Certainly true at Brown the guys who went on to careers in the arts did not major in the arts. Any of the arts. I majored in American History, I remember ___majored in Philosophy, Walter Carlos majored in physics, because the writing programs especially I think the arts programs as well, were designed to teach high school teachers. Maybe they still are but heat was the orientation. To spread the gospel what the teachers did to the next generation.
[00:04:19]
RK: Oh, I've been intellectually shaped by Brown more than anywhere else certainly, more than graduate school, more than high school years.
SB: Where did you go to graduate school?
RK: I went to Columbia. Incidentally high school, I agree with what Mary Anne said, the most important thing I learned in high school was to touch type. She went to a better high school. You went to a better high school but the most important thing I learned was how to touch type that's about it. We had a reunion recently oh, I didn't tell you this, I realized I didn't take the honors course, in English especially, if I took them I might have had a better education in high school than I had.
[00:04:51]
SB: People never got together and generated…[inaudible]
RK: No go ahead.
RK: At Brown while I was there? NO, not a chance. What they taught you at brown and I think this is serious, is they taught you to handle a large amount of intellectual information efficiently. I mean Bill McLaughlin with his religion class and six hundred pages a week of reading
[00:05:12]
SB: Who is Bill---
RK: Oh ask Paul he was a hero to Paul's he stayed until his death a few years ago. I remember, we had to read The Titan was a novel, a six hundred page novel by Dreiser and some lady student said 'do we have to read this for the exam?' and he said 'yeah it shouldn't take you more than two hours' I used to slunk off, like what's wrong with me am I incompetent or something? I mean these guys were tough. Especially if you did the honors program which I gather they don't have any more. The honors program was also. You want to hear really about Brown?
SB: Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:45]
RK: The thing that was important about Brown then...
Woman: Sorry.
RK: She's an undergraduate
[00:06:35]
RK: The thing that was important about Brown was that they had the honors program and that meant that you had classes in the afternoon that were seminars rather than big lecture classes in the morning. And you never saw the morning people after awhile they sort of disappeared they were mostly drunks anyway. At that time. But the honors programs made their own community, socially as well as intellectually. And they were rugged, they were tough, you had to do some work for them. Bill McLaughlin had had some, Dennis – had one and then there were the university courses as well that were tough. So you had a lot of good exercise. And so when I got to graduate school I knew what I was gonna do. And grad school had really very little influence on me. Foster Damon had influence on me, with whom I'm still in touch now and then, had influence. He was a sociology professor he turned me on to literary magazines, on to cultural magazines, to writing for cultural magazines real early. Foster turned me on to the avant garde in the American arts he was an English professor who did the first big book on Blake in America in 1926. Bill turned me on to history which is what I went to graduate school in and I still think like a historian. Bill was tough tough tough, but it was always with a smile. And the fellow named Juan Lopez Martinez who was the other fourth major teacher, he was very important to Richard Foreman and the Richard cites him as one of the great teachers in his own little memoir he had in the New York times theatre section some years ago. Juan was a European culture man, he was a Spanish refugee from the Spanish civil war and he represented continental culture in a way that no one else at Brown did. Richard was much more turned on by him than I was but he certainly got into a lot of good European literature.
SB: Um you said in your presentation that you when you were nineteen that you knew you didn't
RK: Yeah 'cause I had a job as a camp counselor. From which I was fired. I said ah I don't want to work for anyone anymore. But I also think that its cultural, my family are Spanish Jews and Spanish Jews are unemployable. Simple as that, except by each other briefly. I was told by my cousin, who's a little younger than I am, her father is my mothers younger brother knew early on that he'd never work for anyone else, its slavery, simple as that…I believe that too.
SB: Do you think that anything at Brown had anything to do with that decision?
RK: No. That was a personal thing. I had to got to graduate school in those days because the military would have taken you otherwise, so I went to graduate school in American history and I went to Columbia which was the opposite of brown cause there wasn't much teaching, they didn't really bother you. And it was a cosmopolitan campus unlike Brown, Brown at that time seemed very isolated. Yeah physically up on top of the hill and there was an opportunity at Brown for myths to circulate that so and so was a great poet or so and so had a major idea that had no currency outside the campus, oh yes, yes. Well I gather that in the seventies it was semiotics or something like that. Well in the late fifties but you'll never believe this, it was Christianity. University Christian association sponsored all the symposia. I remember when they showed the seventh seal- university Christian association sponsored the symposium when they wanted to show the film operation abolition, anti radical film that was done, university Christian association sponsored it and Charlie Baldwin the chaplain of the university was one of the speakers. Well that would never happen even at that time outside of Brown. Now I gather that whatever is fashionable would change over the years, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was still, if that's still true at Brown.
SB: Well, what...
RK: That there is something going on there that seems very big there but wouldn't have much currency outside the campus.
SB: Well it's difficult.
RK: Yeah you wouldn't know. You'll find out soon, you'll find out soon.
SB: My guess is that it would probably be modern culture and media which is what semiotics has turned into.
RK: Oh ok….
SB: Yeah, it seems less isolated than it used to be.
RK: Really you think so?
SB: Well people seem to go to RISD more often than they did and there are classes at RISD.
RK: Well we always had cross registration. It wasn't true.
SB: But when my dad was there he said the same thing that it was difficult.
RK: Well how old is your dad?
SB: Um 51.
RK: Ok well he's a decade younger than I am, her age.
RK: Hah
Woman: Hah
RK: You were fifty last week, you're not fifty yet?
RK: Even then it was hard- She doesn't get it, there's a situation, Brown is on a hill it's a very steep hill, RISD is halfway down the hill and so you have to come back up the hill. So you really felt no connection to Providence, downtown Providence or East Providence at all?
SB: What's East Providence? Hahaha.
RK: Well East Providence is where Brown is. Well in the sense that I lived on Hope street, where the historical society now is, next to it 117 Hope street, and that was really more off campus at the time than it is now. But it was the beginning of a Portuguese slum, really, called Fox Point. I think its still called Fox Point. It was slummier then. And Foster Damon lived at 24 Thayer.
SB: Who is Foster Damon?
RK: This great professor of English the Blake scholar who was so important to me.
SB: Oh oh.
RK: And so I used to go to Fosters house for dinner once a week. And he was some age... I am now mid sixties and he would be involved in various things in Fox Point boys clubs and whatnot, and he would take in as house boys- because his wife had been institutionalized for many years- he would take in houseboys as helpers, selected kids some of them went on to careers at Brown like Ernie Costa. So he had some connection to Fox Point, wish I did but I didn't. Oh, and the great mystery is- is the Brown kitchen still run by Portuguese speaking blacks?
SB: Um yes, I would say there is a good number.
RK: Do you know what those people are I didn't find out until much later.
SB: Yes they are Cape Verdeans.
RK: Yeah they're Cape Verdeans. I was told that they were Portuguese speaking Moors. And then around a dozen years later I met a fellow a video artist named –suddenly forgot his name-Tony Ramos who said that his relatives worked in the refectory at Brown and told me they were Cape Verdeans and I said oh that's what they were ha-ha and Cape Verdeans are interesting because they did not come to the country as slaves, they were immigrants.
SB: Could you tell me about on campus within your circle of friends as though it was small enough…
RK: It was because of the honors courses. Because of the honors course business was very key, it was very key. We were snobs, we were intellectual snobs or de facto snobs. You just didn't see the morning people, I mean you went to lunch with them, and we had a group of seven tables were for eight, seven of us ate together, the last two years especially.
[00:13:28]
RK: I'll tell you a wonderful story. When I had my high school reunion I knew everybody, but when I had my college reunion I got a book I didn't know who any of these people were, I had no idea, I have a pretty good memory for people, I didn't know who these people were. I never went um for that reason, so you were segregated socially as well as intellectually, and my girlfriend who later became my wife was in a similar track.
SB: What was she studying? [13:53]
RK: English and Philosophy. And she was salutatorian of her year. And these were all humanities.
SB: Yeah, you mean opposed to social sciences?
RK: I guess so, I guess so Philosophy and English seemed to be what people majored in certainly the that knew. I'll think about it, one of our lunch boys was poli-sci, Jack Cavey, if I took those- yeah history yeah- pretty much so, and we'd have our folk singings on the weekends, and then there was also this phenomena at Brown. Brown- the great intellectual event, something would happen that night, Joan Baez would come or something like that and you would go to them all, or you would try to go to them all, not like New York where ten things happen at once and you go to none of them. Um so whatnot, but we went to those, and some of those were important to us intellectually, culturally. Pete Seeger came, I remember E.E. Cummings came. E.E. Cummings and Foster Damon were college buddies, so it was very important that he came. Foster was an extraordinary man, I hope he's remembered in some way or another, he founded the Harris collection, he knew avant-garde music, he knew avant-garde literature. He had founded, as an undergraduate at Harvard, the Harvard musical review, which was meant to be a review of contemporary music. He founded it with a man who went on to a more distinguished career named, Roger Sessions, whose daughter I eventually got to know quite well, so Foster is important to me. And he was important for a different reason, he was a balkiest and she became a balkiest. And we would go to his house once a week and have dinner and she would cook it, it was wonderful.
SB: Um I have a question.
RK: Sure go ahead.
SB: Did you move right from providence to SoHo?
[00:15:47]
RK: No I went and moved to the East Village, SoHo didn't quite exist at that time; it existed a few years later.
SB: OK, when you were at Brown, you were studying American Civilization?
[00:15:56]
RK: Yeah, right.
SB: And so were you purely history or were you...
RK: Well my thesis at that time was Henry Miller, at a time when Henry Miller was not acceptable. For Hyatt ---- who was at that point in his Christian phase.
SB: (laughs) sounds like everyone was…
[00:16:16]
RK: And Hyatt agreed to do it, somewhat reluctantly I gather, because when my wife picked up the paper, since I had graduated in February, and she said there are no marks on it and he said "I had nothing to say" (laughs) and then a few years ago- who comes back to Brown as a graduate student and now has a Faulkner chair at the University of Mississippi and says to Hyatt, that he'd like to do his thesis on Henry Miller. By this time its '64 and Hyatt says to him "not for me" (laughs) he told me that story, he told me that story, said he decided to do his thesis on Faulkner and he became a Faulkner professor so he wasn't too off I guess in his decision to do that. And I was history literature, I know what I was going to tell you. You felt at that time that to avoid the writing program was a good idea, yeah. I had a good buddy. David Kelly, who was really important, he discovered Foster for me, I'll tell you the story, I've written it more than once. He decided he was going to be a writer and major in writing. He was a year ahead of me. He went to Andover or Exeter, I cant remember which, and so he was more sophisticated than the rest of us and he comes to lunch, I'm a sophomore and he's a junior, and he says, 'Foster, you gotta see this guy, he seems to have gone to school with John and E.E. Cummings!" I said ok. So I went to see the guy. And David continued in writing but I made the realization, partly through David that I should stay away from the writing program, which I think was a program for high school teachers.
SB: Right right. [17:51]
RK: David went on to get an Iowa degree and is now a prominent west coast ghost writer. I gather a very good ghost writer but with no books under his own name. You asked another question, did I answer it?
[00:18:05]
SB: well I guess I- but you sort of did answer it- I was just asking if you were already interested in the avant garde when you were at Brown?
RK: Yes I remember reading an edition for Harold Rosenberg's A Tradition of the New, some of that came from knowing Dennis Rong a little bit too because he contributed to the New York intellectual journals you know to a certain degree. Although, yeah, and he's till around, I tried to get Paul in touch with him but Paul didn't want to do that cause Dennis is an anti-communist. And Paul thought that he would have some problems. Paul has edited the Dictionary of the American Left and the major anarchist critique of his dictionary is that it makes communism the center of the American Experience, yeah, [inaudible] and there is a famous review, anyways that goes on blah blah blah… [inaudible]
SB: Do you want to stop the machine?
[00:18:55]
RK: What year are you in?
SB: Sophomore
[00:18:57]
RK: You're a sophomore, wow, he's sending the kids down. (laughs) Hope you get better. I-I-I- Bill McLaughlin ran that program in my generation and I was signed on by my sophomore year. Well I always liked Bill but he wasn't gonna do my Henry Miller thesis (laughs). Well, he certainly did give out literary works about- as intellectual history.
SB: Tell me about hubris. [19:25]
RK: Oh, well it was fortunate that I was not chosen editor of the literary magazine, which was called the Brown Review at that time. So I resigned and with the help of Lillian Robinson who went on to a distinguished career as a feminist literary scholar you should try to find, I think Paul knows who she is. Lillian Robinson, she teaches in Montreal these days. A Hunter girl. A Hunter girl turned to her roommate and said 'I think you're the first white Anglo-Saxon Protestant I've ever met.' Hunter High School is a special private high school in New York City its mostly Irish, Jewish, Caribbean, Italian, and Asian. Ok, a specialized school for women only and Bob Camer helps out. He's still a friend. Ken Burrows is part of this. Ken Burrows might have had more social contacts in this. One of the more curious phenomena which I guess I can tell you privately, had to do with marijuana, I suppose, marijuana doesn't quite hit eh campuses until after me.
SB: Really?
[00:20:22]
RK: Yeah, but Ken Burrows probably smoked marijuana in 1961, which was sort of an avant garde thing to do (laughs). He's now a lawyer in New York, he's married to Erica John, whose a novelist of some note. I can give you- I'm sure I gave Paul these emails, I don't think that he pursued them very well, you see Paul doesn't have a sophisticated computer to get google at home.
SB: Really?
RK: Yeah at least eh last time I checked with him, he couldn't go online very well to do research at home, so I gave him certain clues and he'd didn't quite- wasn't able to pursue them. So…
SB: So what were your reasons for Hubris?
[00:21:02]
RK: Oh, just in the b-, we also had gotten a manuscript, which was done by a graduate student, Eli Stock, and it had involved masturbation which was a bit much at that time so we printed the magazine, we circulate it and it was sold and then many a few months later I suddenly get a call from the president at Brown, Barnaby Keenan, who at that time was a CIA operative of various sorts and uh, he banns it, now there weren't many issues left at that time, but he banns it, he threatens us, uh, nobody got fired but he scared- he scared Bob Camer. Bob Camer was a red diaper baby, the fellow with the boat that we mentioned. I wasn't scared. And Bob sort of shaped up well. Also there was a dean at that time named Charlie Watts who was very good to me, Charlie made sure I got through Brown. In part because he had done his doctorate with Foster Damon and was glad that I was seeing Foster since he was too busy to see Foster in the funny way that he just got busy at the time. Charlie was a young dean he was in his thirties, thirty-two, thirty-five no more. He was good, yeah, he died not too long ago I remember. [inaudible]
[00:22:15]
RK: I guess we wanted to do it, and we had this manuscript by Eli Stock, which we knew was good, which maybe we wanted to publish, I mean, was some, I'm not remembering the details very well there. There also was, curiously, enough of a folk music scene there to make a record, which however, I'm not part of but I have a former intern who went to Brown ten years ago and he has a copy of the record.
SB: Really?
[00:22:34]
RK: Yeah twelve inch record. I forgot about that, his name is Steve Silberstein and remind me to get you a copy of the record, Bob Camer would know about it, I certainly directed Paul to Bob Camer, whoever is not a good email correspondent to put it mildly. He didn't call me all summer, trying to get go out in the boat, didn't hear from him. Do you have any questions, you asked a good question a moment ago about Hubris which I simply didn't remember, oh well, I know that [inaudible] did not become editor of the Brown Review the guy who become editor was a guy who committed suicide soon afterwards. Yeah. One other guy- who was, no, wasn't Steve did I mention Bill Burleson? Did I mention the people who were there? Bill Burleson went on to a poet career but he left in the middle of his sophomore year. Ah, his mother just died at the age of a hundred and she was very wealthy. She had a big apartment on Park Avenue that he grew up in with- I saw it was on sale for twelve million or something like that. Eleanor Lambert was her name. Oh ok, um there was a fellow named Peter Goldman, who went on- who seemed to be more radical than most, socially or aesthetically, he played folk music, he had a great film a few years later and then disappeared from the film world, and I gather he had worked, for a publicist, was a publicist or a public relations for Ampaca as a lobby? In New York City. I was told this by a woman a little younger than I am, the one who is making the Annie Oakley film that I told you about with the guns in the house? Who was a Pembroker, a term which you might have heard about.
SB: Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:08]
RK: It doesn't exist anymore. Her name is Rina Frifeld and she is born in 44. It's also... [inaudible woman] Yes, now about women with guns, in other words, oh you know about that ok ok. I don't know what her culture at Brown was but… There is another woman named Elizabeth Levy, who writes children's' books about American history, she must be born in sixty two so about sixty four. She knew Peter Goldman and told me what happened to his later career.
[00:24:55]
SB: Um, one more question. Just about RISD, you said that you didn't really know anyone at RISD but-
RK: I subsequently knew people who went there, I said I subsequently knew people. In SoHo especially.
SB: Yeah that's what I would think.
RK: who were there when I was there but I never met them. Never met them, I wish I did.
SB: The campus's seemed really separate to you then?
[00:25:09]
RK: Very separate, very separate. And I'll tell you the one time I went to RISD it was for the concert of the new lost city ramblers, which was a singing group (laughing) what? Which was the sons of Pete Seeger, or the step-sons of Pete Seeger, or the nephews of Pete Seeger? And John Cohen, something like that, it was a folk group of the early sixties and that was the one time I went to RISD to my recollection, and I think I would remember otherwise. What did your father do at RISD?
[00:25:45]
SB: Um, architecture.
RK: And he still does it?
SB: Yes, but right after school he became a blacksmith.
RK: Huh, okay.
SB: But you said, did you feel that the RISD campus wasn't all that intriguing to you even though you were studying avant garde art and literature? Or you felt that RISD just wasn't that much of a draw as other-
[00:26:06]
RK: I have no idea. Yeah. It was off the map.
SB: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:09]
RK: It was off the map. [inaudible woman, laughing]
[00:26:23]
RK: Yeah, its possible, its possible. And also I was living on the other side of the campus, Hope street.
Woman: I was part of the five college consortium and I would never have thought to go to another school…
[00:26:43]
RK: Yeah, maybe. I don't think I knew anybody who went down there. The guys who were inter- I wonder if Richard Foreman did, I should ask him sometime. He doesn't have a very good memory but you know whom I'm talking about, he's a playwright of some note, one of the most distinguished playwrights of our time, especially for avant garde work-runs his own theater. The (inaudible) historic theatre, lives across the street from me. On Worchester street, his ex-wife lives upstairs. Yeah, there's actually a great visual artist in Boston who no one seems to know about except me, and I think he's a great visual artist, named Paul Lafolley, lives at two hundred Bromfeld Street and runs something called the Boston Visionary Cell and he has an exhibition right now at Suffolk College in Boston, L-A-F-O-L-L-E-Y.
SB: Was he in your class?
RK: Well you have a problem here. He says he was born in 1940, he says that he went to Brown, I'm pretty sure he was there before I got there.
SB: Yeah.
RK: Got it? (laughs)
SB: No.
[00:27:47]
RK: Okay (laughs).
RK: He's lying about his age I would think.
SB: He was there before you were you were pretty sure, oh I see.
[00:27:55]
RK: I'm pretty sure he was there before me, ok, but he says he was born in 1940 I mean he puts that in print. And Paul, incidentally, is one of the greatest talkers about his ah, I told you, remember? He gave those lectures last January at the Kent Gallery, I mean man, he can go on, and he can put up a work of his and talk about it for two hours. Speaking of which, Wendy Carlos, if you've ever heard her talk, is a great talker also and I have a great story, ever hear Wendy say, Brown boy, they cut it away but they still cant take the talking out of it (laughs) they can't- Walter became Wendy.
SB: Oh, ok. Walter is transsexual.
RK: That's who I'm thinking of- Yeah yeah yeah, they cut something away but they cant cut away the talking (laughs).
[00:28:41]
SB: Oh, ok (laughs).
[00:28:42]
RK: That's who I was asking you about. Ivy league boys- oh transsexual right, rather than transvestite, I'm sorry you said transvestite not transsexual, transsexual was what Walter was. Of course, yeah. And the Playboy article…wonderful.
SB: OH, ok, now its all making sense ok.
[00:28:58]
RK: Ok, ok. No but I think there was a transvestite as well, somebody brought to my attention.
SB: Oh, I'm sorry.
Woman: No, transvestite yeah yeah and she lives near you. I see him on the street now and then I think he lives around the corner from-near the Strand.
[00:29:23]
RK: No, and has a friend. I told you the wonderful story, this is off the record but I'll tell you, I'll tell you later, I'll tell you later (laughs). I haven't seen her on the street in a while but I've certainly seen her on the street and sometimes at concerts. We talk about Brown you know, he's had a very ah, he was involved with Eric Hansel, Eric Hansel went on to do the Cincinnati Pops, and Ron Nelson, two very conventional composers. But Walter had a physics degree and he went to (inaudible) music studio and he figured out computers real fast and figured out machinery real fast. He was- by 68, only few years out of Brown, he did a world class piece of work, Switched on Bach. I was at the party for it, I remember. And I admired him for it and I hope our class will recognize him for it; pioneering activities in more ways than one. Not going to happen but- okay, tell me what else, wanna hear about the sex life at Brown? It wasn't much. Not much.
[00:30:21]
SB: Um, I don't know. I mean, its mostly whatever you're compelled to say.
[00:30:31]
RK: They really, they gave you a good education. Not in the making of art, that I had to learn on my own. But in handling intellectual materials.
SB: Right. What did you think of the Visual Art Department.
[00:30:46]
RK: I had no- I took an art history course and that was it. The music department, I didn't take any courses. I kind of wish I did but did not. There was a –there was an architectural historian there named William Jordy, who I subsequently knew socially and I wish that I had taken his courses cause he was certainly important to other people I knew like David Cornevy, John Asbury's boyfriend, he was about six years behind me. But by the time I met Bill I realized that the two years I could have taken his courses he wasn't there. He was away for two years. And then he comes back for that one year where I'm only a half a year, but I don't take his course, something like that. He was good.
[00:31:29]
SB: Why did you have that last semester?
RK: No, I had advanced standing. Advanced standing so I graduated half a semester early.
[00:31:34]
SB: Oh, I see.
RK: Yeah.
SB: There are a lot of people now who graduate in the middle of the year because they took time off.
RK: Yeah, people didn't take time off in my years. No, it was sort of like a confession of failure to do so. And the one fellow who did was a fellow named Ken Burrows who I mentioned a moment before, who I think took nine years to graduate brown. Which at that time seemed very off the wall, I guess it doesn't so much now a days. And then he gets a law degree afterwards. But Ken had problems staying there and although I would- I had more problems socially my freshman year. I thought the place was very disagreeable, filled with drunks.
SB: Really?
RK: Yeah and the image I remember best was you would come to, you had to eat in the refectory, which is where the fraternities are and you'd come to lunch on Monday morning and there'd be a truck parked next to the refectory with all the cans- the bottles taken out of the fraternities and you had to smell this thing before you had lunch (laughs) and it was such a turn off. I mean, such a turnoff unless you were involved in it. Oh incidentally one more guy who I actually saw two weeks ago I should mention, is Ray Barry. Raymond J. Barry is a Hollywood actor who was the fullback at Brown, um, my years. And he then joins, becomes involved in avant-garde theatre in the sixties and seventies with the open theatre, the living theatre. I remember a performance he did in the living theatre in the sixty nine, where he was a big- he was a fullback you know so all the little actors beat up on him, it was fantastic, I brought it to his attention and he said 'oh yeah terminal oh yeah yeah yeah' um he gave a one man a ah two man show that he wrote as well at the ah theatre for the new city, it was an avant-garde theatre in New York city two weeks ago. I saw the end of his, the end of his run. And he went out to Hollywood twenty-five years ago and has had a good career but he certainly demonstrates as an actor that he still knows what avant-garde acting is all about. And I was very impressed, I met also there Dick Nurse, N-U-R-S-E, thanks for reminding me, the night I went who was involved in our folk singing activities and is now running a theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
SB: Oh, you performed?
RK: I didn't perform, we just sang to each other on Saturday nights, on weekend nights nothing much was happening, somewhere where you could, somewhere to do so.
Woman: Maybe at RISD.
RK: We didn't go down the hill to RISD, we didn't go down the hill to RISD. We never met those guys. But I was real impressed with Ray's performance. I think he majored in philosophy. A lot of guys majored in philosophy at Brown, who went on to art careers. Another playwright named John Ford Newman, who's also done some acting who spoke about with your- [woman speaks] Foster? Maybe. I don't know what they did in philosophy. Richard Forman did philosophy, Mac's wife did it too so.
[00:34:38]
SB: I don't know how it was then but um now American Civilization is probably one of those classes that is most interdisciplinary.
[00:34:39]
RK: Oh that's what attracted, that's what attracted me to it, it had just started at that point and it was a way not to do writing. I couldn't have done writing, I could have done history, also not to do English, you-you- English was thought to be, by my ex-wife in particular thought to be something to stay away from.
[00:34:55]
SB: Yeah.
[00:34:58]
RK: As I recall. The other example of Brown's isolation was the course by George Morgan, I guess he's gone by now. He ran his thing for many years, I never told you this story, George Morgan was an applied mathematician who was a Vietnamese refugee and very upset by World War II who was going to teach a course on modes of life of experience and it was going to be a course on the truth, or on something or other. And he handpicks students, who were um impressionable and not too worldly so they didn't understand what he was doing. And it became quite obvious that he was preaching cultural neo-Conservatism. Cultural conservatism. And the search for unity was important, I remember that kind of thing and that unity people were good. And, um, he had his aculitese, but again it was one of those things that could not have survived outside of Brown. There'd have been too many correctives who would have said, 'hey, he's teaching cultural conservatism.' You know it was taken even by Bob Caven my red diaper baby friend, who brought to my attention the central influence on Morgan at the time was Louis Mumford in his late period, which I had forgotten about, umm, Bob reminded me of that when I last saw him. So um, another example of something that depended, wouldn't have happened outside Brown, depended on the isolation, but again it was very much of that time, but I think Morgan ran that course for many years, it was called University Course One. One and two. Well my ex-wife figured out right away what was going on but you had to be naïve to get into the class (laughs) and she was smart like that. This is wonderful, can I get a copy of this?
SB: Yeah, sure.
RK: Please, okay. Thank you. Ok.
SB: Yeah it was really nice to meet you. This is going to be really difficult to transcribe I can tell with all these names.
RK: Oh yeah, well just run the transcription to me and I'll just correct them. Mail it to me I'll just correct the names for you.
SB: You don't mind doing that?
RK: Oh, of course not. Its easy to do. Just put them in capitals…