It would be difficult to overstate Charles Plymell’s importance to Beat literature, little magazines, and independent publishing.
Unlike many writers associated with the Beat Generation, Plymell wasn’t simply influenced by the movement—he was there. He lived with Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in San Francisco during the early 1960s and moved comfortably through the overlapping worlds of poetry, jazz, publishing, psychedelia, and underground culture. Yet to describe him merely as a Beat writer misses the point. His best work stands comfortably alongside that of his contemporaries: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, and the others who transformed American literature in the second half of the twentieth century.
As both writer and publisher, Plymell occupied a unique position. His work has appeared everywhere from important little magazines to publications issued by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books. Through his own publishing ventures—including NOW and The Cold Spring Journal—he helped bring the work of countless writers into print, among them Herbert Huncke, Gerald Malanga, Roxie Powell, and many others. He also happened to print the first issue of R. Crumb’s legendary Zap Comix, a fact that alone would secure his place in American underground culture.
What I admire most about Plymell is that he seems to have been present at nearly every interesting moment. In interviews he recalls the Kansas City jazz scene of the 1950s, driving Route 66, seeing Charlie Parker and Fats Domino play before they became legends, and later finding himself in San Francisco at precisely the moment the Beat Generation gave way to something new. By the early 1960s he was living on Ashbury Street, experimenting with LSD before the arrival of the hippies, dancing to Ray Charles records with Neal Cassady and friends, and watching the counterculture emerge in real time.
His synaesthesia press chapbook, Journals From Lysidia, is excerpted from Hand on the Doorknob: The Charles Plymell Reader, published by Water Row Press. The project owes a great deal to Jeff Weinberg, whose enthusiasm and encouragement played a major role in bringing Journals From Lysidia into existence. He has been a good friend to the press since its inception.
Looking back, I’m still amazed that a press as small as synaesthesia had the opportunity to publish work by someone who stood so close to so much literary and cultural history. Then again, that’s one of the pleasures of small-press publishing. Every now and then, the right manuscript finds its way to the right place.
