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By Donald Gutierrez Berkeley in the 1950s is typically remembered for the academic stars who built the reputation of the University, a rigid administration, and a largely compliant, even apathetic, student body. But the Berkeley Fifties I remember were considerably more creative and critical of society than most people realize. I recall a Berkeley community-at-large that embodied a tradition of bohemian nonconformity and libertarianism. And, contrary to popular belief, there was resistance to the status quo and to the increasing authoritarianism of society, and this in turn prepared the way for the deep swells of social-political rebellion and activism that were to follow in the Sixties and Seventies. I entered the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1950. Around 1952, I decided to become an English major, studying at one of Cal's top departments. Unfortunately, my general sense of the attitude of professors back then was that students were to be tolerated while faculty got on with the "real business" of publishing. To the administration, we were basically numbers to be filed, arranged, and dispersed. And, although we students didn't have to pledge allegiance to the flag, the faculty and staff did--the Loyalty Oath cast an authoritarian pall over the campus. That authoritarianism manifested itself in a number of ways in the classroom. I recall being bawled out by one prominent English professor for using too many prepositions in a sentence and, later, for asking for a letter of recommendation (I had disturbed him when he was eating a sandwich while chatting with a colleague in his office). The mandatory ROTC courses were also a problem for me. One day, I arrived at my ROTC instructor's office to discuss my grades; but, somehow, Captain MacDonald and I got into a discussion about my pacifist views (which had contributed to my low grades in his course). Our exchange was brief and not at all genial; MacDonald dismissed me from his office in a fury. My dismal ROTC grades almost cost me the renewal of my University scholarship. Classes themselves were often huge--it was not uncommon to find as many as six hundred students in a lecture hall--and that increased the sense of distance between the faculty and students. Some small classes did exist, and there were scholars at Berkeley, such as Josephine Miles, who besides being fine teachers were helpful, even kindly, in their relations with students. But, by and large, my impression then was of an authoritarian, impersonal University.
In the early part of the decade, when I first became an English major, the Bay Area was already nurturing impressive bohemian, literary, and art circles--even politically radical ones (including the important anarcho-pacifist groups connected with veterans of the Waldheim conscientious objector camp up in Oregon, one of whom, Lewis Hill, founded the pioneering radio station KPFA). I used to pass one of their haunts on my way back from
The Circle Bookstore was just one outpost of bohemian culture in Berkeley that drew poets, painters, left-wingers, gays, and Kerouacian transients. There was another place known simply as The House, a vacated building on Channing, just off Telegraph, which was an ideal place for bohemians and other marginals to squat. I lived in the Phleahouse, just east of College Avenue on Webster Street, a three-story house where I was building manager for a year or so with Marlene, my artist wife-to-be. It was filled with writers, drop-outs, and English majors. On one occasion a Turkish artist, strongly experiencing the disgust artists sometimes feel about their work, threw several of his paintings out the window at around two in the morning. Because the window was shut, the resulting racket was spectacular. Such noisy goings-on were typical at the Phleahouse. You never knew who was going to show up at these avant-garde refuges. Poets Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser, and Robert Duncan sometimes congregated at The House, along with painters, some of whom would go on to make it big locally or in New York. And, to my delight, straying faculty would sometimes stroll over to the Phleahouse, coming by for wine or coffee and a midnight chat. (I recall, for example, coming home late one night to behold a casually dressed English professor chatting about 17th-century English poets; this struck me then--as it does today--as wonderful.) There was plenty of both sedate and wild dancing at our many parties, which provided relief from the insane practice of trying to carry on intellectual or polemical discussions over the din of music and chatter. At one party Marlene and I attended, everyone appeared to be remarkably quiet and relaxed; it dawned on us that "tea" had been "served." So, if the highly regulated system of the University got on a student's nerves, the bohemian gathering places of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco's North Beach provided an alluring contrast. They offered marijuana, cheap Burgundy, cool jazz, maybe the Woman; they were distinctive havens where the flamboyantly or perversely odd was tolerated, even admired. Such places provided relief for those who felt oppressed by the rigidity and uniformity of student life: getting to class regularly and on time, sitting in an uncomfortable (especially for a left-hander like me) chair for fifty minutes or longer, two or three times a day, listening passively while "knowledge experts" spoke at you. Another avenue for escape from campus authority and pressures was the movie scene. The Berkeley Cinema Guild was a local movie house that later became part of film history. Started by Edward Landberg, it was a relatively small place that was to become famous because of the high-quality films frequently offered there and the personality driving it--Pauline Kael '40. Kael, then Landberg's wife, gave the Berkeley Cinema Guild esprit, excitement, and glamour. Her publicity techniques and short, peppy, and perceptive reviews made movies an exciting force in Berkeley. I worked for a time as the Guild's projectionist, but was fired for allowing the film for the Marx Brothers' At the Races to spring from the reel and loop demonically all over the booth. I was rehired by Pauline and worked for her for a few months in 1957, mainly sand-papering banisters in a two-story Berkeley house the Landbergs had recently bought. As she worked on her eye-catching film programs, a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and a drink or coffee in hand, she would talk brilliantly about the latest Proust biography or best foreign film. Kael's mind was so quick and penetrating that I usually felt tongue-tied around her. (The only time I ever recall her a bit flustered was when the great film-maker Jean Renoir, with his booming voice, showed up at her house one night.) One of the refreshing things about Kael and also the Bay Area poet Kenneth Rexroth was their almost comically arrogant, anti-academic attitude. If one was tired of classroom rigors and
On campus, the student literary magazine the Occident was strongly influenced by the bohemian goings-on in town. While the magazine had an office in the Student Union, it held some of its meetings and parties at the residences of the editorial staff. Besides the usual contingent of idealistic students who vaguely aspired to be writers someday, the Occident's staff also included individuals who had already arrived at styles of
The Occident people were usually bright--some, such as Joan Didion '56, became well known authors in their own right--but few were as eccentric as one editor who was said to wear a locket around his neck containing a pubic hair from each person on the magazine staff. Whether this alleged offering was voluntary, mandatory (in order to remain on the staff!), or physically coerced, I am not certain, but the locket rumor was just one indication of the more lurid side of Berkeley's bohemia. You never quite knew what you might encounter when entering one of these haunts--perhaps the odor of incense, exotic music in darkly lit rooms, or, if you were lucky, a candle-lit skull--or what new books or ideas or burgeoning poets you might come across. On one occasion I encountered a "Lawrencean"--a type of eccentric bohemian who studied the works of D.H. Lawrence as scripture. This discipline supposedly endowed these individuals with the power to look right through someone to see if he or she possessed (Lawrencean) authenticity. When I met this seer, he was ominously quiet, my possible phoniness perhaps obvious. It all seemed a long way from English 301 (Introduction to Literary Criticism), and yet this was only blocks from Sather Gate. This proximity used to make me feel rather schizoid, the values represented by academia and bohemia seeming at times so antipodal. The first offered a profession and a decent living, but also the threat of creative aridity and social conventionality; the second, if perhaps more vital or creative, promised no discernible income. My wife and I left Berkeley in 1958 for New York, where I worked first in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, then in a left-wing, social sciences library, and finally for Grosset & Dunlap, the book publishers. In 1964, I returned to California to get a doctorate in English at UCLA, and then joined the English department at Notre Dame. Despite my unease with the rigorous and demanding culture of Berkeley, it prepared me well for my future academic career. The political radicalism and bohemian nonconformism I acquired during my seven years at Berkeley also found expression during the following 45 years--from my defense of controversial literature, like Ginsberg's "Howl" or Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in the late '50s, to my opposition to American capitalism on the one hand and Stalinist totalitarianism on the other. Looking through my files recently, I was surprised to see the abundance of protest letters I sent to various institutions and media, as well as the polemical essays I'd written over the decades, up to and into my retirement. Most of these documents (including letter-writing for Amnesty International for 16 years) have argued for human rights, social and economic justice, and the individuating power and liberating magic of the arts. Looking back, I can see more clearly that the combined bohemian and academic atmosphere at Berkeley (including cultural influences from San Francisco) intensified my awareness and understanding of significant events in the world. The Berkeley spirit forged in me a dedication to truth, justice, and beauty. Whether or not I lived up to those ideals, I have always regarded my experience of that thriving bohemian Berkeley as vital to the education I received in the 1950s.
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 Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady Photo by Carolyn Cassady
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