In January 1960 the San Francisco Examiner (a Hearst newspaper) offeredKenneth Rexroth a job writing a weekly column. He accepted. By May 1961 thecolumn had proved popular enough that he was asked to do two and sometimeseven three per week.
The association was an odd one. Although Rexroth was by that time awell-known figure in the Bay Area, he was known primarily as a political and cultural radical, and even (somewhat misleadingly) as "the godfather of the Beat Generation." But he was willing to work for the Examiner as long as they gave him complete freedom to write whatever he wanted. They did till June 1967, when they fired him after he wrote a particularly scathing article about the American police.
All told, Rexroth wrote approximately 700 columns for the Examiner. I am tentatively planning to post all of them 50 years after their original appearance. If all goes well and don't get OD'd with the project, it will be completed on June 18, 2017.
Normally I plan to post each column on the exact 50th anniversary of its original appearance. But to kick-start the series, I have posted the first five all at once -- January 31, 1960, plus the four from February.
Needless to say, the columns vary widely in topic and interest. Some offer incisive commentary that remains astonishingly relevant on all sorts of general issues, social, political, cultural, urbanistic and ecological. Others are more dated, such as reviews of particular musical or theatrical performances. I think you will find, however, that his remarks about even the most ephemeral topics are full of amusing observations and perceptive insights; and that the ensemble constitutes a unique and fascinating chronicle of those eventful years.
