The Capitalist Bloodsucker-N

An amalgam of San Francisco's The Capitalist Bloodsucker, a magazine of Marxist opinion and George Stanley's N, Capitalist Bloodsucker-N is a forgotten mimeo from the Spicer era of mimeo in the early 1960's. It is not listed in the back pages of Secret Location and George Butterick does not include it in his list of little magazines for the Dictionary of Literary Biography on the Beats published in 1983.

I have been looking for issues for a few years and this is the first I have seen. The magazine opens with Jack Spicer's baseball picks for 1962. Spicer picked the Braves in the National League. The San Francisco Giants would win the pennant that year. This was also the year of Willie McCovey's heartbreaking line drive to Bobby Richardson that ended the World Series.

Capitalist Bloodsucker-N is typical Spicer circle material: Richard Duerden, John Allen Ryan, Larry Fagin, Tony Sherrod, drawings by Fran Herndon. Yet with a political slant. Ron Loewensohn writes: at 4.65 an hour I just made/$1.17 writing this poem. There is a piece on Terrorism ("The first terrorist act was throwing someone's pipe out the window. It is, also, not only the first terrorist act but the terrorist Act.") and the issue ends with Spicer's Three Marxist Essays, which includes Homosexuality and Marxism, The Jets and Marxism and The Jets and Homosexuality). "Homosexuality is essentially being alone. Which is a fight against the capitalist bosses who do not want us to be alone. Alone we are dangerous."

There are ads for The Anxious Asp and Katie's as well as a call for manscripts for H: The Heterosexual Magazine for those "annoyed by the more-or-less shall-we-say to-put-it-bluntly SWISH hegemony in the American arts?" H will reveal all promising "A l'autre main, if you are one of 52,300,000 American men who have never seen a naked woman -- you wage-earner, professional man, hairdresser you, Assistant Professor of Gestalt Psychology -- here is something that will make your hair stand on end." "What is a 'straight bar'? What do they mean when they talk in hushed whispers at California and Montgomery of 'the wife and kids,' "tax planning,' and 'bridge'? Who is William Carlos Williams?" There is a two page parody of Kenneth Rexroth as well. Like J and Open Space, this is Spicer circle mimeo in its purest form.

If anybody has any information on number of issues or other bibliographic info please send it along.

JB