Keeping it Real: Pioneering Social Critique and Counterculture @Hoole

The Realist, a pioneering magazine in social criticism and satire, was edited and published by Paul Krassner, a journalist, comedian, author, and driving force behind the Yippies, the "New Left", and 1960s counterculture. Although the Realist is often considered part of the underground press of 1960s counterculture, it was first published in 1958 in New York City and was nationally distributed by 1959.

The Realist fell out of regular circulation in 1974, and received financial support from none other than John Lennon to stay afloat. The final issue of The Realist ran in Spring 2001. It is widely considered the first magazine to print conspiracy theories and criticizes political, religious and cultural issues.


Over the period of the Realist’s publication, contributing authors included social activists, comedians, and political radicals like Richard Pryor, Kurt Vonnegut, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, and Margo St. James. These people and many others wrote articles and illustrated cartoons on issues including racial and sexual freedoms, the Vietnam War, Communism, medical developments, and organized religion.

The Hoole Special Collections Library holds fifty issues of The Realist, including the first issue that ran in June-July 1958 as a “social-political-religious criticism and satire” publication and claimed, in its first headline, to be “An Angry Young Magazine…” Other issues range in date from April 1959 to April 1965.

Our collection of Realist magazines was donated by retired English professor Dr. Mathew Winston. This fascinating publication provides an almost continuous monthly record for over half a decade of what the counterculture was talking about, or often talking against.

Special thanks to Jamie Burke, UA American Studies major for her work with Hoole's copies of The Realist!

A privately developed online archive of the Realist is accessible here, and an edited volume, Best of The Realist was published by Krasssner in 1984.

Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press

On Tuesday, December 4 at 7 pm in Gorgas Library room 205 Dr. Jeff Weddle, Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Studies will talk about his new book, and screen a documentary film –Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press (University of Mississippi Press, 2007) .

The event will begin with a lecture on the on small press/little magazine history and how Loujon fits into all of it, and will do a brief reading from the book. We will also have on exhibit original Loujon Press titles including this copy of the Outsider 4-5, which features a photograph of poet and novelist Kenneth Patchen in a body cast. These materials are part of the Book Arts Collections held at the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library.

Following Weddle's talk, there will be a brief intermission, then a screening of the fascinating documentary, The Outsiders of New Orleans: Loujon Press, directed by Wayne Ewing and co-produced by Weddle. The film premiered on November 11^th at the Denver Film Festival. More information is available at http://www.denverfilm.org/filmcenter/detail.aspx?id=21582

In 1960, Jon Edgar and Louise "Gypsy Lou" Webb founded Loujon Press on Royal Street in New Orleans's French Quarter. The small publishing house quickly became a giant. Heralded by the Village Voice and the New York Times as one of the best of its day, the Outsider, the press's literary review, featured, among others, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, and Walter Lowenfels. Loujon published books by Henry Miller and two early poetry collections by Bukowski. Bohemian New Orleans traces the development of this courageous imprint and examines its place within the small press revolution of the 1960s. Drawing on correspondence from many who were published in the Outsider, back issues of the Outsider, contemporary reviews, promotional materials, and interviews, Jeff Weddle shows how the press's mandarin insistence on production quality and its eclectic editorial taste made its work nonpareil among peers in the underground. Throughout, Bohemian New Orleans reveals the messy, complex, and vagabond spirit of a lost literary age.

Jeff Weddle holds a PhD in Communications from the University of Tennessee and has a broad range of interests and expertise. This talk and film are not to be missed! The flier for the event is available for download at http://www.lib.ua.edu/events/documents/weddle_flier.pdf

This event is co-sponsored by UA Libraries, the Program in Creative Writing, and the generous support of Lakey and Susan Tolbert.