Post by rmarks1 on Jul 22, 2019 0:36:42 GMT -5
He was a prankster, a master of the put-on that thumbed its nose at what he saw as a stuffy and blundering political establishment.
And as much as anyone else, Paul Krassner epitomized a strain of anarchic 1960s activism — one that became identified with the Yippies as they nominated a pig for president and rained dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Along with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and a few others, Mr. Krassner helped found that group, and he also joined Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their LSD-fueled bus trip across America.
He was the founder and editor of The Realist, among the earliest underground humor magazines, one that was known for outlandish and raunchy cartoons and iconoclastic political and social commentary. Its contributors included Norman Mailer, Jules Feiffer, Terry Southern, Joseph Heller, and Mort Sahl. With some very long breaks, it endured into the 21st century.
Yet so naturally irreverent was Mr. Krassner that when People magazine labeled him the “father of the underground press,” he demanded a paternity test.
In all, he helped propagate a certain absurdist sensibility that encouraged people such as cartoonists R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman and comedian George Carlin to be more daring in mocking the insanities and hypocrisies of war, politics, and much of modern life.
Mr. Krassner died Sunday at his home in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., his daughter, Holly Krassner Dawson, told The Associated Press. He was 87. She did not give a cause, but said he had been in hospice care.
Mr. Krassner was writing freelance pieces for Mad magazine in 1958 when he realized that there was no equivalent satirical publication for adults; Mad, he could see, was largely targeted at teenagers. So he started The Realist out of the Mad offices, and it began regular monthly publication.
By 1967, its circulation had peaked at 100,000.
“I had no role models and no competition, just an open field mined with taboos waiting to be exploded,” Mr. Krassner wrote in his autobiography.
The magazine’s most famous cartoon was one, drawn in 1967 by Mad artist Wally Wood, of an orgy featuring Snow White, Donald Duck, and a bevy of Disney characters enjoying a variety of sexual positions. (Mickey Mouse is shown shooting heroin.) Later, digitally colored by a former Disney artist, it became a hot-selling poster that supplied Mr. Krassner with modest royalties into old age.
Avery Corman, author of “Kramer vs. Kramer” and other books, whose first essays appeared in The Realist, called Mr. Krassner “a cultural pioneer.”
“The pieces he wrote himself and the material written by others were saying to people that what we’re told by the establishment and the media may not be true, may be distorted, and at that time that was not an accepted idea,” Corman said in a 2016 interview. “For young people trying to dope out what the world was like, being a Realist reader was a way of distinguishing yourself: ‘I’m not gullible, I’m skeptical.’”
search.yahoo.com/search?p=paul+krassner+obituary&fr=yfp-t-s&fp=1&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
And as much as anyone else, Paul Krassner epitomized a strain of anarchic 1960s activism — one that became identified with the Yippies as they nominated a pig for president and rained dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Along with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and a few others, Mr. Krassner helped found that group, and he also joined Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their LSD-fueled bus trip across America.
He was the founder and editor of The Realist, among the earliest underground humor magazines, one that was known for outlandish and raunchy cartoons and iconoclastic political and social commentary. Its contributors included Norman Mailer, Jules Feiffer, Terry Southern, Joseph Heller, and Mort Sahl. With some very long breaks, it endured into the 21st century.
Yet so naturally irreverent was Mr. Krassner that when People magazine labeled him the “father of the underground press,” he demanded a paternity test.
In all, he helped propagate a certain absurdist sensibility that encouraged people such as cartoonists R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman and comedian George Carlin to be more daring in mocking the insanities and hypocrisies of war, politics, and much of modern life.
Mr. Krassner died Sunday at his home in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., his daughter, Holly Krassner Dawson, told The Associated Press. He was 87. She did not give a cause, but said he had been in hospice care.
Mr. Krassner was writing freelance pieces for Mad magazine in 1958 when he realized that there was no equivalent satirical publication for adults; Mad, he could see, was largely targeted at teenagers. So he started The Realist out of the Mad offices, and it began regular monthly publication.
By 1967, its circulation had peaked at 100,000.
“I had no role models and no competition, just an open field mined with taboos waiting to be exploded,” Mr. Krassner wrote in his autobiography.
The magazine’s most famous cartoon was one, drawn in 1967 by Mad artist Wally Wood, of an orgy featuring Snow White, Donald Duck, and a bevy of Disney characters enjoying a variety of sexual positions. (Mickey Mouse is shown shooting heroin.) Later, digitally colored by a former Disney artist, it became a hot-selling poster that supplied Mr. Krassner with modest royalties into old age.
Avery Corman, author of “Kramer vs. Kramer” and other books, whose first essays appeared in The Realist, called Mr. Krassner “a cultural pioneer.”
“The pieces he wrote himself and the material written by others were saying to people that what we’re told by the establishment and the media may not be true, may be distorted, and at that time that was not an accepted idea,” Corman said in a 2016 interview. “For young people trying to dope out what the world was like, being a Realist reader was a way of distinguishing yourself: ‘I’m not gullible, I’m skeptical.’”
search.yahoo.com/search?p=paul+krassner+obituary&fr=yfp-t-s&fp=1&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
Bob