Other Scenes

On Saturday, June 22, a demonstration expressing support for French workers and students was held in front of the office of the French consulate in the First National Building in downtown Detroit.

The demonstration, which protested the Gaullist government’s recent ban on public assembly and the suppression of French student organizations and revolutionary political parties, was jointly sponsored by the Young Socialist Alliance (Y.S.A.), the Socialist Worker’s Party (S.W.P.), the Inner City Voice, the Arab Student Association, and Black Conscience magazine.

Leonard Brown, editor of Black Conscience magazine, Paul Dozier, co-chairman of the Black Political Study Group, and a number of S.W.P. candidates, issued statements of solidarity with French radicals that were to be forwarded to Premier Pompidou by the French consulate.

Demonstrations similar to the one in Detroit were held in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Toronto, and Vancouver, as well as many other cities in the U.S. and Canada.

The French youth organizations that have been declared illegal are the Revolutionary Communist Youth (JCR), the March 22 Movement led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Federation of Revolutionary Students, Workers Voice, the Revolutionary Group, the Union of Communist Youth (Marxist—Leninist), and the Liaison Committee of Revolutionary Students. In addition, four adult political groups were banned. They are the International Communist Party, the Internationalist Communist Organization, the Communist Party (Marxist—Leninist) and an anarchist group.

Andy Warhol is alive and well. He’s sitting up in his room at New York’s Columbus Hospital, reading magazines and not talking to anybody yet. Despite bullets in his head and chest he’ll be fine. Meanwhile, Grove Press goes ahead with plans to publish his novel, “Twenty Four Hours” in the fall.

Having produced the ultimate deadpan paintings, the totally static movie, a pop group that wanders offstage while feedback entertains the audience and a pop-up book that can’t be read so much as looked at, Warhol has now turned his attention to tape recording. “Twenty Four Hours” is an untouched taped record of 24 hours in the life of Andy (carrying the Norelco tape recorder), Ondine, articulate star of Chelsea Girls and other movies (who does most of the talking) and whoever they run into on their serendipitous journey around Manhattan. It sounds revealing—but isn’t.

To the average reader, in fact, the book might as well be in code. To start with, Andy is referred to throughout as Drella or “D”, short for the nickname ‘Cinderella’, known only to intimates. Ondine is clearly identified and some of the Warhol gang or friends (Gerard Malanga, Billy Name, Paul Morrissey, Steve Schorr, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders) are featured by name, but how many people are going to identify references to or by Taxine, the Duchess, the Mayor, Billy Bedroom, Norman or ‘the number one artist’?

As for the subject matter, it shifts almost every sentence in a surrealistic manner that resembles James Joyce more than anything else. It’s important to remember that the book is documentary—god knows, it’s surely too freaky to have been made up.

Having lied to the United Nations for years, Arthur Goldberg—new chairman of the U.N. Association—will lie now, for it...

“What’s the date of any night? It takes two days to specify one night” (Paul Maag)...

As if things aren’t bad enough, William Buckley is now about to launch a magazine devoted to anti-communism in the tradition of his often-admired idol Joseph McCarthy. Won’t these nuts ever learn?...

Simone Whitman—once Simone Morris—specializes in the absurd juxtaposition of non-sequiturs. In a recent concert, for example, she played a Beatles record while singing a tuneless counterpoint alongside it; and spent twenty minutes under a crate in the center of the audience whistling...

An Australian professor introduced the same man to five different groups of students calling him, variously, 1) “a student from Cambridge;” 2) “demonstrator in psychology from Cambridge;” 3) “lecturer in psychology from Cambridge;” 4) “senior lecturer from Cambridge;” 5) professor from Cambridge.” Each group of students was invited to estimate the man’s height and each group—on the average—estimated it as about half an inch higher than the previous one...

St. Louis’ Trans-action magazine (75 cents from Box 1403, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. 63130) is America’s only “sociological” magazine, and the nearest equivalent to England’s New Society mag...

“It is, I suppose, a tribute to the national intelligence that almost everyone, no matter how unlettered, has learned not really to listen to the words of politicians” (Dick Schaap in New York.

The new OZ (No. 12) is ‘newspaper-magazine-poster all in one—the’ most sophisticated magazine appearing in English anywhere...

“Advance news from the Broadway Establishment for 1968–69 promises a lot more of the same drivel....” (Pandora in the Guardian)...

John Pudney in London’s Daily Telegraph magazine quotes one of his poems from 20 years ago along with the dreary analytical notes accompanying, it in a school text book and adds: “I protest against any work of mine being used to cause such mental affliction...

No Californian can afford to miss How to Kill a Golden State (Doubleday), $6.95) in which author William Bronson writes: “California has led the world into the age of mass affluence and has become standing testimony to man’s infinite capacity to befoul and destroy in the quest for an ever-higher standard of living.”