![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/SinclairBeilesca1998inJohannesburg-e1354379722383.jpg\" "\\"Sinclair")
<\/a>SINCLAIR BEILES (ca. 1998)<\/p><\/div> When I read Heathcote Williams’s description of a bizzare project<\/a> that for a time obsessed the South African poet Sinclair Beiles, who wanted to plant \u201cthe barren Sahara desert” with “industrial quantities of discarded tea-leaves,\u201d I remembered a letter Carl Weissner<\/a> once wrote.<\/p>\n March 30th, 1971<\/p>\n Dear Sinclair: The Sahara is irrigated. Now what? While armies of hippies along the San Andreas fault are down on their knees waiting for a sign. It\u2019s fascinating what stupidities human beings will subject themselves to. I see your ambassador put in a pitch to the junta in Athens for your freedom and repatriation. It wasn\u2019t necessary to continue with bread and water, etc., since you\u2019ve managed to earn points in a way that will make you immortal in the eyes of the hitchhikers of the world. Penniless in Greece? Just punch the next Marine officer in the face in Piraeus harbor, you\u2019ll get arrested and locked up\u2014bingo! You\u2019ve got a roof over your head. I\u2019ll remember that, in case I ever find myself in a harbor town without a peso, standing on a corner with no place to drop anchor.<\/p>\n CARL WEISSNER, [Marseille, May 11, 2010]<\/p><\/div> At WDR Cologne they\u2019re producing a three-hour program about the Black Panthers. I\u2019m involved as translator and speaker and get to recite pages of Huey Newton: “We intend, within the confahns of the oppressor state, to stay armed to the teeth for decades! Centuries!…” Howgh.<\/p>\n Another thing: You can do me a favor by not directing all possible people to me. I recently got a letter from Paloma Picasso in her wonderful handwriting, and what does she want? That I write something for her soon-to-be-appearing European(!) literary magazine. <\/p>\n Now think about that. She\u2019s barely 21. Why do you give her ideas like that? Next minute she goes to Christian Lacroix and says: \u201cMonsieur, I\u2019d like to design some jewelry for you. If that\u2019s okay.\u201d The name opens doors and gates, with the result that every week she\u2019s got three or four new things going on, out of which nothing ever materializes. Tell her she should become the mistress of Salvador Dali. Ah, he\u2019s already got one? Then never mind.<\/p>\n Ah — and again you let yourself be committed to an English nuthouse (Why does Annie comply with this shit? Oh no, I see now that this time your dentist committed you — how come? I bet he gets a kickback.) Just so you can write a play in rhymed verse in peace and quiet . . .<\/p>\n Sinclair, I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: iambic pentameter is not your friend. And rhymed verse definitely not. Hands off that stuff and write more well-paid filth for Maurice Girodias. Then we\u2019ll eat out of your hand with dog-like ecstasy. A sense of accomplishment you won\u2019t want to miss out on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I found the letter earlier this year, not long after Carl had died. It was stored in his computer. In 1971 he didn’t have a computer. He must have transcribed the letter sometime after 2007, when he began using one, and when Beiles was already dead. (Beiles died on Nov. 3, 2000.) <\/p>\n What’s puzzling is that the letter is written in German. As Beiles’s friend and publisher Gerard Bellaart<\/a> points out to me, Beiles read German but not well enough to have understood the letter, and Carl would have known that.<\/p>\n I’m betting that Carl, who wrote and spoke fluent English, translated his letter from an English original possibly to help fill out a book for Milena Verlag<\/a>, his publisher in Vienna. And I’m betting that the original won’t be found among Beiles’s papers because, given Beiles’s fragile psyche, Carl would not have mailed it.<\/p>\n Gerard Bellaart<\/p><\/div>As Bellaart puts it, “My hypothesis is he never intended that letter to be sent to Sinclair. He knew perfectly well what a mental backlash it would provoke. As you observed, Carl was too much of a mensch to not consider the mental implications.”<\/p>\n The references in the letter testify to its authenticity. In fact, Beiles had been jailed in Athens for trashing a Naval officer’s Mercedes, and Paloma Picasso was asking writers willy-nilly for texts to publish in Point Virgule,<\/em> a magazine that never got off the ground. Also, as Bellaart notes, “Carl’s appreciation of Sinclair’s Chaucerian inclinations is about as damning as was mine at the time.”<\/p>\n But consider this. It’s possible he never wrote the letter, in either English or German, in the first place. At least not on March 30, 1971. It just might be a first-class beauty of a post-dated fake, like the marvelous letter of July 8, 1968, that Carl wrote to William S. Burroughs from the Waikiki Ebbtide Motel, which Melena published last year in Die Abenteuer von Trashman<\/em><\/a>. That, he told me after it appeared in print, is “pure fiction. What the hell, I LIKE fiction…”<\/p>\n Big thanks to Mark Terrill who was kind enough to translate “Brief an Sinclair Beiles,” to Eddie Woods who facilitated it, and to Gerard Bellaart for, well, everything. To all you folks who read German, have a look at this:<\/p>\n Carl Weissner: Brief an Sinclair Beiles Dear Sinclair: Die Sahara ist bew\u00e4ssert. Was jetzt? W\u00e4hrend Armeen von Hippies am San-Andreas-Graben knien und auf ein Zeichen warten. Es ist faszinierend, zu welchen Bl\u00f6dheiten der Mensch sich herabl\u00e4\u00dft.<\/p>\n Ich sehe, dein Botschafter hat sich bei der Junta in Athen f\u00fcr deine Freilassung und Repatriierung verwendet. Es war ja auch nicht n\u00f6tig, noch weiter bei Wasser und Brot usw. , denn du hast in einer Fasson gepunktet, die dich bei den Trampern der Welt unsterblich macht. Pennyless in Greece? Haust du einfach im Hafen von Pir\u00e4us dem n\u00e4chsten Marineoffizier eine rein, wirst verhaftet und eingelocht \u2013 bingo! schon hast du ein Dach \u00fcberm Kopf. Das merke ich mir f\u00fcr den Fall, dass ich mal in einer Hafenstadt ohne Peso 1 an der Ecke stehe und keinen Ankerplatz finde.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Carl-Weissner-SELF-PORTRAIT-5-11-2010-250px-225x300.jpg\" "\\"CARL")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/GERARD-BELLAART-photo-e1354463422108.jpg\" "\\"GERARD")
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\n(s\u00fcdafrikanischer Cutup-Autor; 1959 bei Olympia Press in Paris zust\u00e4ndig f\u00fcr die Erstausgabe von NAKED LUNCH)<\/em>
\n30. M\u00e4rz 1971<\/strong><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/EbbtideMotelLetterfirstpage.jpg\" "\\"Ebbtide")
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