Thursday 13 November 2008
A Life in Pieces is a biography of sorts, an eclectic mix of stories and recollections by and about Scottish beat writer Alex Trocchi most of them previously unpublished by the people who knew him. There follows an extract from an interview with William Burroughs.
What was the first occasion that you met Trocchi and what were your impressions of him?
I met Alex on a plane, going to the literary conference in Edinburgh in 1962. That was a conference organised by John Calder, who came over to Paris and persuaded me to go. We both got there and they handed us some money, you know, sort of spending money. I'd read Alex's Cain's Book, which was one of the early books about heroin addiction, and so we had a lot in common immediately. He was sort of an ally at the conference. Hugh MacDiarmid was stalking around in his kilt with his knobbly blue knees saying that Burroughs and Trocchi belong in jail, not on a lecture platform, old jerk. Yeah, it was kind of a lively conference. Another guy got up and read in his native language, which was Swahili or something that nobody could understand, and Norman Mailer was more or less the master of ceremonies. It was a very lively conference I would say. Lady Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, disapproved of us very much. Well, it was no . . . my impressions of him were, well, what I expected.
And what did you expect?
A knowledgeable person and knowledgeable about addiction and intelligent. There was an argument at the conference when MacDiarmid denounced Trocchi and yourself as cosmopolitan scum . . . Well, they were arguing. I wasn't present at that particular occasion. But yeah, MacDiarmid was very much in evidence, and also, well not to get on to the subject of myself but Mary McCarthy gave me a boost at the conference. Myself and Nabokov, and it helped me a lot. You saw Trocchi on frequent occasions after that.
In what way were you likeminded?
Well, I was on heroin too. Later, when I met him in London, he used to help me shoot up. See, my veins were gone in my arms. Old Alex could find a vein in a mummy. Marianne Faithful mentions that when she'd get her heroin pill she'd go to Alex to get shot up. {1} Alex had a lot of trouble with police for saying that heroin should be legalised and also he would let people in to his apartment that he shouldn't let in, you know, people with stolen goods, stuff like that. I remember when John Calder and myself went down to court for him and the Judge said, well, people like Calder and Burroughs . . . I guess, you know? Okay, so he got off with it. The story was that a guest had some stolen stuff. It's known as guilty knowledge but he should have known that this material was stolen. Not receiving, but . . . it's a lesser form of receiving stolen goods 'cause he didn't buy them. So there were a number of occasions like that when Alex was in trouble. Trocchi liked to see himself as an outsider.
Did you share that idea about being an outsider?
Well, I don't know. Alex, of course, had a terrible writer's block. He'd almost rather do anything than write and he had something called The Long Book that he was working on. He stuck a number of publishers by getting an advance on this book that he hadn't written and which was never going to get written.
Did you share the same philosophy about drugs as Trocchi?
Oh, I don't think there's any philosophy about drugs particularly. I don't think of it in philosophic terms. Trocchi decided to take heroin for a particular reason.
Did he ever speak to you about why he took it?
Well, usually, most people like it when they take it and they go on taking it. They become addicted and then they have to have it. It's a pretty simple proposition really, you don't need any elaborate justifications, particularly, once you're hooked.
When Trocchi had writer's block, were the drugs an excuse for not writing?
I don't think so. It wasn't the drug, because he wrote Cain's Book when he was on heroin in the States and that was certainly almost the only thing that he did write. He was one of the early writers on addiction, one of the first writers on addiction. It was published by Grove Press and was sort of classic, is still more or less a classic.
What particularly impressed you about Cain's Book?
It was just a very good book, a very accurate book about addiction. The whole experience of addiction, what he got from it and the feeling of self-sufficiency, impregnability. Yeah . . . it was a very good book on the subject, one of the best.
You described him as being 'a pivotal figure in the literary world of the 1950s and '60s'. What did you base that upon?
Well, I . . . (telephone rings, conversation ensues) . . . Okay, Patti. Well, I'll have to sign off now . . . I hope to see you. Thank you for your call. Bye . . . Patti Smith, to say that he was one of her favourite writers. She also said . . . she didn't know he was dead, for Christ's sakes. She was waiting for another book. I said, you could wait a long time, even if he were alive.
You described him as a pivotal writer . . .
A pivotal writer in that he was one of the early writers on addiction, which became an increasingly important, pivotal subject . . . Incidentally, Alex Trocchi, I remember at the literary conference, said that he was an astronaut of inner space, that phrase . . . it's rather . . . not in a rocket but in inner space.
Did you and Trocchi share ideas about mainstream society in any way?
I don't remember anything. Well, he always saw himself as on the other side of course because the police were always bothering him, coming around searching his place. Although he got his heroin on prescription from the noted Lady Frankau. A lot of junkies came from America to avail themselves of her services. She died, the he got another doctor.
Does it strike you as ironic that somebody who was preaching some kind of revolution ends up on the National Health Service getting drugs?
Well, no, it was the only way he could get them. There was pressure on the English to stop prescribing for addicts which they did, more or less. So there were the same problems of people OD-ing in public toilets and a large black market, mostly Chinese White from Hong Kong, so the number of addicts increased geometrically. See, at the time, when I knew Alex, that was in the Sixties, there were only about 600 addicts in the whole U.K. After the Brain Commission got through, there were thousands. Still are I imagine. I don't know. In Troccchi's essay 'The Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds' he gave the idea of being radically opposed to society.
Did he ever discuss this with you or did you find it a bit far-fetched?
I think that it is indeed far-fetched but he possibly had some idea there's enough minds that would . . . Different ideas would of course make a change in society and that's not without foundation. It's the way changes come about.
Do you think in the Sixties Trocchi effected much change?
Hard to Say. Is there anything about Trocchi that lingers in your memory? He was an individual . . . that's it. They don't make 'em like that any more.
What was the first occasion that you met Trocchi and what were your impressions of him?
I met Alex on a plane, going to the literary conference in Edinburgh in 1962. That was a conference organised by John Calder, who came over to Paris and persuaded me to go. We both got there and they handed us some money, you know, sort of spending money. I'd read Alex's Cain's Book, which was one of the early books about heroin addiction, and so we had a lot in common immediately. He was sort of an ally at the conference. Hugh MacDiarmid was stalking around in his kilt with his knobbly blue knees saying that Burroughs and Trocchi belong in jail, not on a lecture platform, old jerk. Yeah, it was kind of a lively conference. Another guy got up and read in his native language, which was Swahili or something that nobody could understand, and Norman Mailer was more or less the master of ceremonies. It was a very lively conference I would say. Lady Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, disapproved of us very much. Well, it was no . . . my impressions of him were, well, what I expected.
And what did you expect?
A knowledgeable person and knowledgeable about addiction and intelligent. There was an argument at the conference when MacDiarmid denounced Trocchi and yourself as cosmopolitan scum . . . Well, they were arguing. I wasn't present at that particular occasion. But yeah, MacDiarmid was very much in evidence, and also, well not to get on to the subject of myself but Mary McCarthy gave me a boost at the conference. Myself and Nabokov, and it helped me a lot. You saw Trocchi on frequent occasions after that.
In what way were you likeminded?
Well, I was on heroin too. Later, when I met him in London, he used to help me shoot up. See, my veins were gone in my arms. Old Alex could find a vein in a mummy. Marianne Faithful mentions that when she'd get her heroin pill she'd go to Alex to get shot up. {1} Alex had a lot of trouble with police for saying that heroin should be legalised and also he would let people in to his apartment that he shouldn't let in, you know, people with stolen goods, stuff like that. I remember when John Calder and myself went down to court for him and the Judge said, well, people like Calder and Burroughs . . . I guess, you know? Okay, so he got off with it. The story was that a guest had some stolen stuff. It's known as guilty knowledge but he should have known that this material was stolen. Not receiving, but . . . it's a lesser form of receiving stolen goods 'cause he didn't buy them. So there were a number of occasions like that when Alex was in trouble. Trocchi liked to see himself as an outsider.
Did you share that idea about being an outsider?
Well, I don't know. Alex, of course, had a terrible writer's block. He'd almost rather do anything than write and he had something called The Long Book that he was working on. He stuck a number of publishers by getting an advance on this book that he hadn't written and which was never going to get written.
Did you share the same philosophy about drugs as Trocchi?
Oh, I don't think there's any philosophy about drugs particularly. I don't think of it in philosophic terms. Trocchi decided to take heroin for a particular reason.
Did he ever speak to you about why he took it?
Well, usually, most people like it when they take it and they go on taking it. They become addicted and then they have to have it. It's a pretty simple proposition really, you don't need any elaborate justifications, particularly, once you're hooked.
When Trocchi had writer's block, were the drugs an excuse for not writing?
I don't think so. It wasn't the drug, because he wrote Cain's Book when he was on heroin in the States and that was certainly almost the only thing that he did write. He was one of the early writers on addiction, one of the first writers on addiction. It was published by Grove Press and was sort of classic, is still more or less a classic.
What particularly impressed you about Cain's Book?
It was just a very good book, a very accurate book about addiction. The whole experience of addiction, what he got from it and the feeling of self-sufficiency, impregnability. Yeah . . . it was a very good book on the subject, one of the best.
You described him as being 'a pivotal figure in the literary world of the 1950s and '60s'. What did you base that upon?
Well, I . . . (telephone rings, conversation ensues) . . . Okay, Patti. Well, I'll have to sign off now . . . I hope to see you. Thank you for your call. Bye . . . Patti Smith, to say that he was one of her favourite writers. She also said . . . she didn't know he was dead, for Christ's sakes. She was waiting for another book. I said, you could wait a long time, even if he were alive.
You described him as a pivotal writer . . .
A pivotal writer in that he was one of the early writers on addiction, which became an increasingly important, pivotal subject . . . Incidentally, Alex Trocchi, I remember at the literary conference, said that he was an astronaut of inner space, that phrase . . . it's rather . . . not in a rocket but in inner space.
Did you and Trocchi share ideas about mainstream society in any way?
I don't remember anything. Well, he always saw himself as on the other side of course because the police were always bothering him, coming around searching his place. Although he got his heroin on prescription from the noted Lady Frankau. A lot of junkies came from America to avail themselves of her services. She died, the he got another doctor.
Does it strike you as ironic that somebody who was preaching some kind of revolution ends up on the National Health Service getting drugs?
Well, no, it was the only way he could get them. There was pressure on the English to stop prescribing for addicts which they did, more or less. So there were the same problems of people OD-ing in public toilets and a large black market, mostly Chinese White from Hong Kong, so the number of addicts increased geometrically. See, at the time, when I knew Alex, that was in the Sixties, there were only about 600 addicts in the whole U.K. After the Brain Commission got through, there were thousands. Still are I imagine. I don't know. In Troccchi's essay 'The Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds' he gave the idea of being radically opposed to society.
Did he ever discuss this with you or did you find it a bit far-fetched?
I think that it is indeed far-fetched but he possibly had some idea there's enough minds that would . . . Different ideas would of course make a change in society and that's not without foundation. It's the way changes come about.
Do you think in the Sixties Trocchi effected much change?
Hard to Say. Is there anything about Trocchi that lingers in your memory? He was an individual . . . that's it. They don't make 'em like that any more.
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