Talk:Joan Vollmer

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[edit] New edits

I added some material and subtracted the parenthetic explnations besides the names of obvious people, such as Ginsberg and Burroughs because to mention their signifigance is too obvious and unnecessary. Plus they are hyperlinked to their own articles. I am a little worried about the amount of copyrighted quotes used in the article. It may violate copyright to use so much, even if you give the author credit. If I find more time, I would like to paraphase some of the comments into the articles. Only a few lines of quotes seems to be appropriate for an article.--Mikerussell 06:07, 2005 July 17 (UTC)

Please don't paraphrase the quotes. The longest of them is only around 350 words. This is hardly beyond the bounds of customary "fair use" -- you should look into that more before you panic about it.

I'm curious what you think is "inappropriate" about those quotes. I took the trouble to type them up because they're some of the very few things in print that give us any idea at all about what kind of person Joan Vollmer was.

I can't say that I like all of your edits here -- in particular, I object to shifting the focus away from Joan Vollmer to William Burroughs. He has his own page, you know? -- though I'm glad to see that someone is interested in working on it... I was planning on expanding on her bio a little more myself, I just hadn't gotten to it.

(And if you really want a challenge: all accounts agree that Joan Vollmer was an extremely intelligent woman, very well read, and very much into intellectual conversation. Can you find *anything at all* about what her ideas were like? What kind of things did she say in all of these marathon discussions?)

-- Doom 07:24, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

My concern in this matter was totally about copyright, meaning I was actually worried someone other than I (perhaps an 'over-officious' admin), might delete the material because it took too much from others, and thus deprive the article of the information and insight they provide. I certainly won't paraphase them because I would not due them justice, so don't worry about me deleting them. I actually doubt they do violate copyright, but my comment above was more based on worry than right.--Mikerussell 04:22, 2005 July 26 (UTC)

[edit] A Pimp in Bed

Also removed:(Joan's oft quoted comment was: "They tell me you're a faggot, but you're as good as a pimp in bed.") Who or where does this come from? I am not certain it provides an accurate impression of how she really thought and felt about Burroughs.--Mikerussell 06:13, 2005 July 17 (UTC)

At this point, I have the impression that it's more of a paraphrase than a quote... I think I've heard different versions of it. Here's one, from p.123 of my edition of the Ted Morgan book, in Chapter 7:

... in early 1946, Burroughs moved into Joan's apartment, and they became lovers. Although primarily homosexual and professing a caustic misogyny, Burroughs didn't mind having sex with women, and he must have been proficient at it, because Joan, a woman of wide experience at twenty-two, gave him high marks, saying, "You make love like a pimp." Primarily, however, their relationship was one between two remarkable intellects. ...

And I think I remember a slightly different version quoted in a Burroughs documentary I saw fairly recently.

(just curious-What documentary did you see? I would like to watch it, if I haven't seen it before. Any partial details/item description would be appreciated.)--Mikerussell 05:25, 2005 July 26 (UTC)

Burroughs (1983), directed by Howard Brookner, produced by Howard Brookner and Alan Yentob. Most of the segments it uses were filmed between 1978-1982. Jim Jarmusch is credited with doing sound on a number of them.

This is quite a good documentary -- it kicks off with Burroughs appearence on "Saturday Night Life", which I'd forgotten about (at a guess that's the key factor behind his comeback in the 80s). This is a pretty tight documentary, with lots of readings by Burroughs, alternating with historical interviews both with Burroughs and some other principles, all intercut in a roughly chronological fashion. Early on they show Burroughs walking around St. Louis, talking to people who used to know him -- they didn't ask how he met David Kammerer though, a bit of info that seems to be missing. There's a lot of footage of Huncke and Ginsberg, as well as quite a bit of Terry Southern, and some of Lucien Carr. Burrough's son makes an appearence, and a relatively prominent character is a crewcut blonde fellow with glasses who plays Burrough's secretary later on in his life. One of the most interesting historical bits, I thought, was where Ginsberg gets Burroughs to talk about the "skits" they used to act out in the 1940s, hanging around the infamous apartment -- Burroughs goes into character, and in a subtle way stays there for some time. They talk quite a bit about Joan Vollmer's death, interviewing both Ginsberg and Carr, who were on the scene shortly before it happened. Ginsberg essentially pushes the "assisted suicide" idea.

Great info, I have a very vague recollection of seeing it on Canadian TV late at night years ago before I had ever read/knew much about Burroughs. I will look for the documentary. --Mikerussell 03:55, 2005 August 10 (UTC)

Some quotes from Burroughs about Vollmer: "Well, we had all these very, really, in retrospect, very deep conversations about very fundamental things ... Her intuition was absolutely amazing."

Burroughs quotes Joan Vollmer: "You're supposed to be a faggot, but you're as good as a pimp in bed." -- Doom 08:14, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Can I ask you where you're getting your information? What makes you think there's something misleading about that "oft quoted remark"? If you have *any* source of information about Vollmer, I'd be happy to read it. If you care, the current state of my researches are over here: http://obsidianrook.com/doomfiles/LOOKING_FOR_JOAN_VOLLMER.html

Just as an aside, Ted Morgan goes on to say:

She started Burroughs thinking in new directions, got him interested in the Mayans, suggested that Mayan priests must have had some sort of telepathic control.

This is one of the *only* places I know of where one of Joan Vollmer's intellectual opinons are even hinted at. We know a lot about what kind of drugs she did, we know something about who she had sex with. What did she think?

-- 07:24, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Her own perspective issue

I think that you have to be careful in quoting Ted Morgan's Literary Outlaw, which is a great read, and very interesting and valuable for anybody wanting a Burrough's biography. BUT, if you read the book, or own it which I think you might, just read the "Note on Method" 'disclaimer/caveat in the front matter (something I bet his publisher might have insisted on). I have read the book several times, some parts much more than others, and I detect a certain 'lack of distance' from the subject, meaning Morgan crosses the line into- at times- 'showing off' his familiarity with Burroughs and his friends, thus presenting a picture Burroughs and his gang want to project/protect. This by no means depreciates the work in my humble opinion; much of the insight Morgan offers is genuine and independently considered. Nevertheless, I think it is really good to temper Morgan with a book like The Letters of William S. Burroughs: Volume I: 1945-1959, edited by Oliver Harris (ISBN: 0140094520, 1994), where the only piece of Vollmer’s own writing is published (as far as my limited knowledge is concerned). She would infrequently scribble a few additional sentences at the bottom of Burroughs’ letters to Ginsberg.

You ask a great question about presenting ‘her perspective’ but I am not aware of a source that answers it. She never wrote, as far as I know. It is not completely ridiculous to say she is kind of like Socrates- who never wrote- and we learn of him only through his ‘friends’ writings, which are often remarkably divergent. Moreover, I think Burroughs was very reluctant to discuss Joan with Morgan, or anybody, and thus you get just ‘quips’ or patterned opinion such as ‘she was very smart’ from people. I have wondered how Burroughs' struggle to relate to his own son was a function of his regret/shame/pain over killing the mother of his only kid- a constant reminder of her- was his kid, right? Whatever the case, I thought the 'pimp in bed' quote- even if accurate- Christ knows I have said a lot things in moments of bravodo or exagerration- misrepresented the overall character of their relationship, which you rightly imply is not very well understood, and tends to be dominated by Burroughs' perspective. Maybe you know more than I, but it sounds awfully shallow to use as a measure of their attachment to one another. --Mikerussell 05:25, 2005 July 26 (UTC)

I'm actually not interested in portrarying their relationship in any particular way. Shallow quip or not it's an actual line of dialog that the people who knew her claim that she said. They haven't given us very much to go on -- despite writing obsessively about each other, Joan got swept under the rug, I presume (a) because she was an embarrasment to Burroughs, and (b) because they had a bad case of sexism (was she less important, less interesting than, say, Neal Cassady?) -- Doom 08:26, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

True, good point, I certainly would have found her much more interesting than Cassady, but I'm not gay, and I actually kind of like women. But I can honestly say that fact has never really diminished my interest or appreciation for Burroughs; come to think of it Kerouc was straight and was fascinated with Cassady more than anyone. At any rate, Burroughs says 'pimp in bed' thing in the documentary, huh? Well maybe it flatters his ego or something. Kind of cheap thing to say especially if he knew it was going into a film. Your comment above about the 'assisted-suicide' angle pumped by Ginsberg is also very insightful. I will have to see the film.--Mikerussell 04:06, 2005 August 10 (UTC)

Well, what I would say is that it's just a funny remark that says something about her character. But it doesn't really matter that much: so what if it does show him or her in a "bad light" or something. It's not our problem to play press-agent for them. Don't try and sanitize them, you know?

By the way, it's not all that clear how straight Kerouac was -- one take on Kerouac is that his real problem was that he didn't come out of the closet. I haven't looked into it, but I wouldn't assume that his interest in Cassady was entirely heterosexual...

Any way, yeah, the "assisted suicide" interpretation occurred to me a while back, and it was interesting to see Ginsberg pushing it. Ginsberg said "I always thought that she had goaded him into it" or something like that, and he lead up to the remark (which I have here in my notes): "She was using him to get her off the earth, she was in a great deal of pain.".

If you care, my personal take on this is that nothing any of these people say on the subject is reliable: there are too many motives for delusion or deception. In particular, these days it seems to me that Burroughs remarks on the subject were awfully practiced and calculated, intended to be crowd-pleasing, while subtlely letting himself off easily. He had premonitons that something terrible would happen. It was the upwelling of the "malevolent force", the "ugly spirit". If I remember right he goes as far as to hint that this force/spirit is inside all of us. And he concludes -- with a throb of emotion in his voice -- that if it weren't for Joan's death he would never have become a writer. It's all too easy for me to hear Doctor Benway talking there. -- Doom 05:54, August 12, 2005 (UTC)