Underrated Reads review of Amerikan Krazy

June 21, 2016 Henry Korn Leave a comment

Thanks for reading Amerikan Krazy JD Jung! Glad you enjoyed it!

The full review from Underrated Reads appears below. (Emphasis is mine.) Be sure to check out their site for other great recommendations.

“The next thing Herb knew he was standing naked in the Johns Hopkins University powerhouse with a combination of Kennedy’s brains and his study date’s menstrual blood smeared all over his body…”

This hallucination was among many as Herb Horn was near death after an explosion in Viet Nam. He had an obsession with finding out the truth behind the JFK assassination. Before serving in the war, he was expelled from John Hopkins for accusing Lyndon Johnson for the murder. Herb’s other possible scenarios would later include a mafia hit or that Joe Kennedy sold his soul to the devil.

For most of the 1970s he was recovering from combat injuries while suffering from permanent PTSD. During this time, he was plagued with an overactive imagination that quietly drove him nuts. The cartoon characters that he grew up with from an amusement park franchise kept creeping back into his mind and he believed that they were controlling society as a whole.

He joined up with some fellow vets and they go through many bizarre adventures for various purposes. Most of all they try to make sense of what was happening to America with the purpose of saving the country from corporate brainwashing and control . However, paranoia, lust and drugs try to to divert them along the way.

Amerikan Krazy takes us on a hilarious, surrealistic trip through American political and cultural history. Part fact, part conjecture with a lot of fiction, this story provides a cautionary tale for American society.

Chunks of current day culture creep into the story such as AnonyMouse (the cartoon mouse) and cell phones. I’m sure that I didn’t even catch all of them. I thought that the bit with Teyvon Rudolph, the fictional son of Olympic track star Wilma Rudolph and JFK was in bad taste though. The murder of the young Floridian a few years ago is still painful for most of us.

That said, Author Henry James Korn’s bold and irreverent style is what I liked most about the story. If you’re interested in a bizarre fictional take on American history, this is for you . Just remember, American Krazy is not for those who are easily offended.

Source: JD Jung in Underrated Reads | Amerikan Krazy – Henry James Korn

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Amerikan Krazy, Angry Mobs

Drugs, Revolution and Rock & Roll: How I Lost My Political Virginity at the Morrison Hotel

June 20, 2016 Henry Korn 1 Comment

A few weeks ago artist Glenn Brooks asked an interesting question about Amerikan Krazy on my author page at Goodreads.com. I thought I’d share the answer with everyone here as well.

Question

Glenn Brooks asked Henry James Korn:
“You use several song lyrics throughout your book, some more subtly than others. On page 60 you use the term “Dusky Jewel” and on page 88 “Roman wilderness of pain” my question is: Are you a Doors fan? were you fortunate enough to see them live? and, if so, do you think this experience (coupled with the 60’s “tune in, turn on and drop out” mentality in some camps) influenced/affected your writing?”

Answer

Thank you for noting that Amerikan Krazy contains references to consciousness-changing music by The Doors, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and more.

Like many in my generation, folk and rock music strongly influenced my socialization and political development. As I think back on those years, my prototypical Woodstock-like communal experience occurred at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 where Robert Allen Zimmerman premiered a searing acoustic version of Mr. Tambourine Man. But to respond to your question more directly, I first saw The Doors live in the futuristic International Ballroom of the Washington Hilton Hotel in the fateful year of 1967 when I was expelled from my university for publishing an article criticizing President Lyndon B. Johnson in the pages of the campus newspaper.

My guest at the Doors bash that night was a poet and Vietnam bound draft resister who was AWOL from the U.S. Army at the time. As college friends, he and I had “chased our pleasures here and dug our treasures there” and witnessed “weird scenes inside the gold mine.” And if you must know we experienced our first Doors performance under the influence of Aldous Huxley and were thoroughly familiar with the British author’s promise of ecstatic redemption via chemistry espoused in The Doors of Perception–a book title that inspired the naming of the band. Jim Morrison’s socially surrealistic and ferocious performance at the Washington Hilton that November night reinforced our intoxication with the revolutionary potential of art. After playing the Doors songs that comprised their debut album, Light My Fire over and over on my dilapidated stereo, my friend and I were more eager than ever to Break on Through. Our heart’s desire in those days was to arrive at an ideological tipping point exemplified by Berthold Brecht and Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater that the Doors termed “the other side.”

But according to Morrison’s dark prophecy, William Blake’s road of excess apparently did not lead to the Palace of Wisdom but rather to The End– a haunting neo Freudian epic about incest and patricide that describes a psychotic killer on Jack Kerouac’s freeway to purgatory. In the course of what later became the Apocalypse Now theme song, an assassin informs his father that he intends to bash in his skull–a direct political action at the familial level that my friend and I mistakenly believed was a prerequisite to overthrowing state power. Even today, Robby Krieger’s wicked take off on My Country ‘Tis of Thee (God Save the Queen) that kicks some versions of LA Woman into gear remains a insolent challenge to ruling class values that still sets its listeners on an anarchic trip arguably inspired by Journey to the End of Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and City of Night by John Rechy. But in Morrison’s version of paradise lost, the Hollywood Hills are filled with fires, flea bag motels and topless bars are burning to the ground, and murder rules the streets–perhaps a reference to the Watts riots in 1965 that dramatically revealed what overthrowing state authority might look like.

Many years later, the news that our country’s titular sugar daddy, President Ronald Reagan had been shot by a pistol toting young fantasist named John Hinckley Jr. at the Washington Hilton hit me hard–perhaps because I knew in my gut that I could have grown up to become Morrison’s road killer or Bob Dylan’s orphan with a gun instead of a sweet talking, bow tie and blazer wearing museum executive. But in my new role as a teller of humorous tall tales from a radical perspective, I try to do what Bob Dylan recommended in It’s All Over Now Baby Blue and take what I have gathered from coincidence. If only my former Brooklyn Heights neighbor, Norman Mailer, was still alive and helping me puzzle through the ramifications of a national nightmare that came true at the very location where the Doors advocated for madness, murder and revolution fourteen years earlier.

Nevertheless, I hope this extended response helps you understand why numerous Amerikan Krazy protagonists, PTSD victims all, are depicted battling both patriarchic rulers and knee-jerk patriotism that are represented in my novel by a dystopian theme park that I intentionally named Founding Father Land.

Artists take aim at their country and their county – The Orange County Register

June 16, 2016 Henry Korn 12 Comments

I was quoted in this recent article about the gallery exhibition inspired by my recent book Amerikan Krazy.

Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald in corporate suits shake hands as the Twin Towers burn behind them. A little boy carries a machine gun and wears a helmet and boots, his colorful clown costume dissolving into military camouflage. A neon sign that says “TREASURE FREEDOM” but blinks “R U FREE.”

Max Papeschi, Just Married

Mark Chamberlain has run BC Space Gallery for more than 40 years, and said this current exhibit, “Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance” has been an easy one to pull together. It’s a distillation of many of the shows he and his late business partner Jerry Burchfield have held in the space, one flight of stairs up from Forest Avenue in downtown Laguna Beach. Not only that, but it’s a collection of many Orange County artists who have long worked with or known Chamberlain, a fixture in the area’s art and environmental scene for years.

“Amerikan Krazy” is provocative, and no topic is off-limits, from Disneyland to war to corporate power. Most of the artists in the show have been featured at BC Space before, and the works range from the 1980s until now.

“I’ve done a lot of thematic shows that deal with social/political (issues), and I come up with these concepts and I send the word out to a few people that I know are politically attuned or environmentally attuned or something, and they come through,” Chamberlain said as he walked through the gallery recently.

“Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance” takes part of its name from the new book” Amerikan Krazy” by Henry James Korn. From 2008 to 2013, Korn worked at the Orange County Great Park. He was responsible for the creation of the Palm Court arts complex and culture, music, art and history programs.

“The book is very much about total corporate control of public and private space,” Korn said. The story follows a wounded Marine veteran haunted after having missed the chance to assassinate a presidential candidate who later causes massive human suffering and wreaks havoc on America’s wealth and democracy.

It’s a way of understanding what’s happening in politics now, Korn said.

“Because if ever there was a recognition that our public life and politics have gone crazy, it’s this moment.”

The central setting in the book is modeled after a dystopian Disneyland. But it also parallels the development of the Orange County Great Park, which was formerly the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, Korn said. As a nod to Korn’s ties to the Great Park, Chamberlain included art about the park in the exhibit.

Photographer Tom Lamb took aerial photos of the park. One, “ET Courts,” shows the officers’ tennis courts from the former Marine base seen from directly above. The surface is broken up by dirt and debris. A palm tree sprouts in one court, perhaps where someone once stood to serve a ball.

“The courts was actually a wonderful image that I found while flying,” Lamb said. “It really shows the change of time. There’s layers and layers of information.”

Chamberlain and Burchfield had their own involvement with the Great Park. In 2006, they created the world’s largest photograph, 11 stories wide and 3 stories tall, of the control tower and its surroundings. “The Great Picture” was meant as a document of the land’s transition from the El Toro base into a park.

Chamberlain at one point was an advocate for the Great Park’s creation, he said.

“The Great Park was a grand vision created by the public as to what we were going to do with this former Marine Corps air base, the swords would be pounded into ploughshares. And now it’s become a developers’ haven.”

Development and corporate power is a theme throughout “Amerikan Krazy.” Mickey Mouse’s face pops up throughout. Sometimes he’s wearing a Nazi uniform. In one work, he’s the representative for Playboy.

Aritst Jeff Gillette takes aim at Disneyland. His paintings in BC Space Gallery include one that has replaced the Disneyland sign with a common expletive and another with the Magic Castle as a flimsy, cheap facade in a field of trash. His “Dismayland” paintings in part inspired a massive installation last year in England by street artist Banksy, a macabre take on the famous theme park.

“The perpetuation of fantasy, sheer fantasy, and as if that’s the American Dream, when the reality is more like this,” Chamberlain said as he walked by Gillette’s “Desert Debris Dismayland Castle.”

Lynn Kubasek’s “My Father’s Flag” and “Flag of My Brother” are versions of the American icon that she created in the 1990s. It’s not an anti-war statement, she said.

“They were created during a period of time when people were burning flags, and I’m thinking, ‘That’s ridiculous. Let’s create something new.’” She used her brother’s Air Force fatigues to make a flag and emblazoned it with little military aircraft. She made “My Father’s Flag” out of baby blanket fabric. That kind of turns the flag as a military symbol on its head.

“We don’t show work predicated on its salability,” Chamberlain said. “We focus on art that we think needs to be shown.”

Source: Artists take aim at their country and their county – The Orange County Register

Writing

Excerpt from Muhammad Ali Retrospective

June 14, 2016 Henry Korn 1 Comment

In honor of the passing of “The Greatest,” the following is a short excerpt from my book Muhammad Ali Retrospective (Boffo Socko Books, 2016):

TRACKING

It is Muhammad Ali Day in New York City and the Champ is talking about his plan to fight his two most formidable ring rivals, George Foreman and Joe Frazier, one right after the other on the same night. It is a joyously demented scheme. When I ask my friend Nick Storoff, one of the most experienced and knowledgeable boxing writers in the City, whether there is even a remote possibility he is serious about going ahead with the stunt, Nick says, “Unequivocally, absolutely, irrevocably no. He’ll never do that.” “Never?” I inquire. “Never,” comes the reply, “And I’ll be saying that right up to the night of the fight. The guy has done so many incredible things. You just never know with Ali.”

At least the plan answers the question of what, after going to Africa, whupping George Foreman, regaining his crown and earning five million dollars, Ali could do for an encore. So I am encouraged to ask, “Champ, have you ever considered fighting Foreman and Frazier in alternate rounds?” “Noooooo,” replies Ali, turning the idea over and over in his mysterious mind, “I don’t think it would work.” Then suddenly he leaps toward me, grabbing the lapels of my raincoat with a startling deftness and a touch so light I am immediately assured he’s not serious. “Hey, Man, are you trying to be funny or something?”

Is the con-man afraid he is being conned?

“No, Champ,” I assured him, “I’m serious.” But of course all the time I’m trying to persuade him I’m serious, I’m laughing and laughing.

Back on the press bus going to Rikers Island, Nick tells my story to the other reporters with considerable relish. While I enjoy the attention, I also understand that as a communication, my first encounter with Ali was a failure. For his response, while delightful, foreclosed the possibility of further consideration of an interesting idea with which Ali was, for a moment, intrigued.

“Nice campus,” grunts a grizzled veteran boxing photographer as the bus pulls into the front gate of the Rikers Island Adolescent Remand Center. The reporters guffaw. The place does look like a community college, except for the barbed-wire fence, windows with bars and the fact that the site is located on the glide path into nearby LaGuardia Airport.

Louis Farrakahn, Muslim Minister, a slick and smiling man in a black fez and sunglasses, introduces Muhammad Ali to the inmates. The Champ emerges from behind a curtain and strides to the podium as the prisoners roar. And while the substance of his talk could be construed as cruel (in its vivid evocation of what it’s like to be in jail – a feeling the inmates know far better than Ali and presumably don’t need to be reminded of), the fact is that Ali, and only Ali, can lay it on the line and get away with telling the inmates they’re fools for landing in jail.

Here is how Nick Storoff described the scene in his newspaper column the next day: “Ali lifted his hand and there was quiet. And when he began absolutely seriously, by saying, ‘I want to thank all of you for coming here today.’ the inmates broke up, the laughter rolling at him in waves he rode deftly back to them. ‘Somebody told me you couldn’t help it!’ he said, and this time he was laughing with them . . . Soon he was telling them the kind of things a podium is good protection for . . . ‘Ask yourself – was it worth all this, what you did to get in here? You think you’ll never get caught. But why are we in here if we never get caught? Way before you there were bad cats, Al Capone and Dillinger, and for some reason they never won either. Life is too short to spend in a place like this . . . You wake up in the morning and you ‘re in jail. Nothing to do but wait for sleep and then sleep comes and you wake up the next morning and you’re still in jail. You can’t get in your car and drive anyplace you want. Can’t eat the food you like. Can’t get out, run around, take a jog in the park or be with your loved ones, a wife or girlfriend. Don’t spend your life in no jail. What could you get that could be worth all this? Ten million dollars – and I know you didn’t get no ten million dollars – Ten million dollars ain’t worth two years in jail.”

Yet Ali’s rap is filled with contradictions. After trying to sell the inmates on good behavior he calls himself a bad cat and issues a challenge to the baddest cats in the hall. He asks where the bad guys are and the entire audience hollers, “Here!” “Now who’s the baddest?” says Ali and several hands go up. “See that little Dude over there?” Ali responds, pointing to one of the inmates, “He’s not bad, he’s crazy!”

His contradictory message is clearly confusing to many in his young audience. Sometimes the prisoners think Ali is kidding and he is constrained to tell them to “Listen good, ’cause I’m being serious.” Other times, Ali is plainly joking and putting them on, but the kids take it seriously. How does he feel and what does he really think?
With his serious rap out of the way, Ali climbs down from the stage to jive with a prisoner rock band. They slam into a blazing boogaloo and Ali does the shuffle, shadowboxing in time to the music. The crowd roars, chanting, ” Ali, Ali, Ali” on the beat of the drum.

Then Ali returns to the podium to talk about his boxing plans, including his scheme to fight Foreman and Frazier on the same night. Ali uses his body and hands as he talks. When he mentions Joe Frazier, he evokes him by impersonation. When he mentions driving a car, his hands move up to take the wheel. It is extremely intriguing and I suddenly realize that for the past fifteen minutes I have not given a thought to notes, pictures, the tape recorder or anything else related to reporting the event. I’m mesmerized and can’t think of anything but enjoying the rapid-fire poems, jokes, riddles, boasts, insults and stories.

“How many of you inmates would like to see me fight Foreman and Frazier on the same night?” “RAYYYYYYYYYY!!!!” “How many wouldn’t?” A few hands were raised. “You see those guys? Look at ’em. And when I leave, git ’em and whup ’em!”

Ali finishes and is accorded a standing ovation. As he strides down a corridor leading out of the building, he is stopped by two City officials who ask him to pose for a picture. Ali lines them up, a $40,000-a-year Commissioner on each flank. Suddenly the men notice Ali has leaned his arms on their shoulders and is now curling a huge fist in their faces. The men squirm with discomfort and the Champ mugs, the flashbulbs pop and Ali laughs and walks away. Perfect!

Moving down the hallway, he jumps into the secretarial pool to deliver some kisses and hugs, closing the door on the press saying, “See you later fellas.” The ladies are still squealing as Ali walks back into the sunlight, dabbing a smudge of vermilion lipstick from his cheek. The secretaries still chatter with surprise and delight. Muhammad Ali knows how to make people happy.
But inevitably there is another side to all this. For at the conclusion of his lecture, Ali said, “Where’s the warden? I want to see the warden.” In response, a middle-aged Black man in a Department of Corrections uniform, smiling, clearly excited (thinking, perhaps, that this was his moment in the sun with a Black champion he, too, admired), came forward. Ali looked him over with disdain, turned to the audience and recited:

“While the body of the prisoners are in captivity,
the mind of the warden is in prison.”

The prisoners howled their approval and the warden looked crushed beyond consolation. So Muhammad Ali knows how to hurt people, too. So much complexity. So much contradiction. What does he truly think and how does he really feel? I’ve got some ideas, but like Nick Storoff says, “You can never know for sure with Ali.”

Want to read more? Muhammad Ali Retrospective is now available as an ebook on Amazon for just $4.99 or for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited Subscriber. Not a subscriber? Join Amazon Kindle Unlimited with a 30-Day Free Trial.

Amerikan Krazy

Art and social commentary combine at BC Space | LA Times

June 13, 2016 Henry Korn 15 Comments

The Los Angeles Times has a nice piece through the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot on Amerikan Krazy:

Art and social commentary combine at BC Space

by Kathleen Luppi, kathleen.luppi@latimes.com

During the early 1970s, photography wasn’t commonly accepted as fine art. Laguna Beach, even then known as an artists colony, was devoid of photography laboratories producing color and black and white prints.

But some, like photographers Mark Chamberlain and Jerry Burchfield, fought back against the idea.

Artist friends tried to discourage the two from opening a photography business and gallery in the coastal town, but Chamberlain and Burchfield were set on creating a studio that would meet the needs of their artwork and vision.

And 43 years later, BC Space, the nondescript gallery off Forest Avenue that never relied on advertising — other than a listing in the phone book — is still attracting audiences to its innovative shows and exhibitions, which often depict political, social and environmental issues.

That cultural unease and rebellion runs through the gallery’s current collection, “Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance.” The assembled art — not just photographs — of more than 20 Southland artists was named after author and arts curator Henry James Korn’s latest book, Amerikan Krazy.

Korn, former arts and culture program development specialist for the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, wrote about the meaning of power in post-modern America and the conditions of contemporary life.

The exhibition, which features artists Jeff Gillette, Tom Lamb and Stephen Anderson, among others, spoofs theme parks, fast food restaurants and development.

Jacques Garnier’s black and white photograph “Ode to Failure” is a snapshot of a highway overpass.

Glenn Brooks’ “Good Meds Bad Meds” is an actual miniature bookcase — not a photo or a painting — that holds pill containers and a mask of a lifeless face.

Lynn Kubasek’s “Flag of My Brother” is a similar sort of artifact, in this case a replica of a flag made out of a striped military jacket.

“A lot of this is questioning American values, corporate power and abuse,” Chamberlain said. “War has been a constant theme, because it’s the most uncivilized and inhumane activity we can do.”

Chamberlain, a native of Dubuque, Iowa, earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Iowa. Two days after receiving his master’s, he was drafted into the Army.

His one-year tour of duty in South Korea during the Vietnam War would change his life.

While stationed overseas, Chamberlain picked up photography as a creative outlet. He took Korean language classes and met a photography instructor in the military crafts program who told him to capture deeper meanings when photographing subjects, landscapes and lifestyles.

When he returned home, Chamberlain wanted to open a photography gallery, so he headed to Los Angeles. He relocated to Laguna Beach when he learned that his brother-in-law was studying at UC Irvine.

When inquiring about submissions for the Laguna Beach Winter Festival of Arts, Chamberlain met Burchfield, and the two became the first to submit photographs for the festival.

Two years later, the friends formed a business partnership and opened BC Space.

The gallery, which can only be entered through a discreet steel door, is a former Masonic Lodge. When the artists took it over, the 900-square-foot studio quickly became a place for dialogue during contentious times locally and nationally.

In 1980, Chamberlain and Burchfield began to photographically document Laguna Canyon Road, to help preserve it and draw attention to the route’s importance. Over 30 years, at the beginning of each decade, the two took photographs of the length of the road, day and night.

With the help of artists, they created “The Tell” photomural and installed the giant work across from the Irvine Co.’s proposed Laguna Laurel Housing Project.

The statement of environmental destruction received coverage from CNN and Life magazine and attracted over 11,000 demonstrators. The land was released for public acquisition and is now part of the Laguna Wildnerness Park. “The Tell” was disassembled for storage after most sections were destroyed in the massive 1993 Laguna wildfire, which destroyed or severely damaged 441 homes and scorched thosands of acres.

Burchfield split from the business partnership in 1987. He and Chamberlain remained friends and collaborated on art projects together up until Burchfield’s death in 2009.

Chamberlain, the sole owner of BC Space, has since expanded the gallery’s exhibitions and said he continues to explore current art trends and mentor other artists.

“We just kept evolving,” Chamberlain said. “And I am very proud of that.”

—
What: “Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance”
Where: BC Space, 235 Forest Ave., Laguna Beach
When: Runs until June 24; gallery hours by arrangement
Information: (949) 497-1880; bcspace.com
—

Writing

Muhammad Ali Retrospective: The Greatest of All Time

June 4, 2016 Henry Korn 57 Comments

Fortunately I spent a long time many years ago writing an entire book about “The Greatest” because today I’m not sure I’ve got the words.

Rest in peace…

You’re my man!

–Muhammad Ali to Henry James Korn on 12/10/1974

Muhammad Ali Retrospective

e-book: Muhammad Ali Retrospective(Boffo Socko Books, 2016) ISBN: 978-1-943912-07-0
paperback, 119 pages: Muhammad Ali Retrospective (Assembling Press, 1976) ISBN 0-915066-18-4

SUMMARY

Dream-champion or media myth? The times and lives of a Heavyweight King, uncovering the startling yet profoundly plausible possibility that this eccentric hero might truly be the greatest man in the world. Muhammad Ali Retrospective by Henry James Korn is an innovative collection of stories, essays and articles by an award-winning author.

Video: Muhammad Ali Retrospective

reading by Henry James Korn on Vimeo
Running Time: 32:20
Franklin Furnace, New York, September 21, 1978

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS

“With the publication of Muhammad Ali Retrospective, Korn fulfills his promise and emerges as one of the most polished, expert professional writers on the scene. Korn is obviously derived from the School of Mailer but in a sense Korn has gone Mailer one step better and got rid of Mailer’s looseness, loquacity, and omnipresent “I” without losing his specific hard-imaged language and psychological penetration. This book should be put on all required reading lists of contemporary U.S. fiction.”
–Choice: the Journal of the American College Library Association

“Henry James Korn’s new book about Muhammad Ali evokes a sense of Ali’s triumph and the tragedy of Black America. It is well researched, carefully thought out, and most important, lyric, as poetry is lyric.”
-Roger Kahn

“For all those who admire the Champ and what he represents, Korn’s innovative book will prove their belief in Muhammad Ali as Superman.”
– BooksWest Magazine

“In Muhammad Ali Retrospective, Henry James Korn’s wry, affectionate collection of perspectives on the Champ, the fighter emerges as a man as well as a myth.”
–The Village Voice

“Muhammad Ali Retrospective is an unusual and provocative view of an unusual and provocative subject: this daring blend of fact, whimsy and outrageous speculation may be the only sensible way to approach a man who is never what he seems.”
-Robert Lipsyte