When Post-Realism (And the 1960s) Came to Iowa City: An Afterword

Abstract

YOU MIGHT SAY that Trouble-Making Fiction, or what we then called post-realism, and what nation later called the 1960s, all arrived in Iowa City on same date, Friday afternoon, October 20, 1967. occasion was a conference called The New Grotesque, Or, Is There a Post-Realistic Fiction? and scene was antiseptic ballroom of Student Union, where Richard Poirier, author of A World Elsewhere, a study of style in American Literature, was lecturing on The Literature of Self-Parody. With a polished combination of learning and humor (befitting editor of latter-day Partisan Review), Poirier had quoted examples of intentional stylistic excesses of Henry James, James Joyce, and Norman Mailer, attacked modern writers who made formal issues of fiction into subjects of fiction, and then started a long aside on Jorge Luis Borges, describing him as pre-eminent post-realistic author: a philosopher and novelist and jokes ter whose entire work was an examination of world as fiction and reality in fiction. But Poirier was over his allotted time, and expressions on many faces said, as they do in Iowa City when professors from East or West tell them what they already know, Does this guy think we've never heard of Borges? Everyone was also waiting for next event, a Eulogy to Lenny Bruce, by man who was in a way martyred sick comic's heir, Paul Krassner, editor of underground satirical magazine?the dirty, deadly opposite of Partisan Review?The Realist. Then doors at back and sides of ballroom opened quietly, and in came members of San Francisco Mime Troupe, dressed in white sheets and holding candles. Chanting and moaning like monks, they came forward and formed a line across front of room. There, solemn and defiant, they blocked off stage and barred anyone from going up to stop or rescue suddenly distressed but still lecturing lecturer. Who did quickly slip on stage were Ronnie Davis, Mime Troupe's director, dressed in blue jeans and denim shirt, and Paul Krassner, also in jeans and jean jacket. There were a few brief words, no scuffle, and off went