Writer Charles Plymell is a legendary figure. He was involved with a loose gang of experimental writers and outsider artists centered around Wichita, Kansas in post war 1950`s America. Plymell and the Wichita Punks had road tested speed, dropped LSD, held mescalin rituals and experimented with art and other creative forms. Were they Beat before the term had risen, been marketed and branded out of the San Francisco joss stick hippie scene? The chronological order is important in understanding his work, as Charley makes clear in this interview. He has seen a lot since his birth on the Kansas high plains in 1935 and the early memories of the sound of the wind in the cab of an Reo Speedwagon truck. His father was a cowboy, his mother once a stunt car driver. He printed Robert Crumb`s first edition of the cult and famous Zap Comix in 1968. As part of the hip Wichita scene of the 1950`s he is also a contemporary of and, either a friend, collaborator or publisher of, some of the coolest and influential...more

Law dogs ahead!

Okay, you know what that means. Fair warning has been issued – the head tap before your own issue, I suppose. I understand that’s said to be good manners. But I wouldn’t really know about that. I believe that my manners, when my blood is my own, are impeccable. But the ‘head tap’ – that’s what one of Tony’s forwarded lunacies called it – never occurred to me as being called for. I suppose I always take things for granted in many different ways. But it would seem to be in keeping with this grim jaunt: Glory holes and polite fingertips in a quick touch to a woman’s head.

Currituck Sound, where the rivers meet the sea, is where we’ll end. The Pasquotank and the Perquimans

But I’m thinking about the nature of telling these awful things. I just left a woman crying a few minutes ago. She relies on me immensely, mainly to grit my teeth in her stead. This seems to be something I’m... more