He was a violin prodigy as a child and then a successful stand up comicPaul Krassner calls himself an investigative satirist. People magazine called him the father of the underground press. He founded the Realist magazine in 1958 and published it through 2001. For years his style of personal journalism blurred the line between observer and participant, even while he helped define the modern modality for free speech. He covered the antiwar movement, then co-founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. He published material on the psychedelic revolution then took LSD with Timothy Leary Ram Dass and Ken Kesey As a stand up comic he was mentored by Lenny Bruce, then edited Lenny Bruce’s autobiography.
His articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, Spin, Playboy, Penthouse, Mother Jones, the Nation, New York, N.Y. Press, National Lampoon, Utne Reader, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Times and the L.A. Weekly. He writes a monthly column for High Times, “Brain Damage Control,” and he contributes to The Huffington Post.
His autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture, was published by Simon & Schuster. His newest book is Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today
In the end, George Carlin was right when he said of Paul Krassner, “This man is dangerous--and funny; and necessary.”
My conversation with Paul Krassner.
tells of her parents who married in 1968, as they merged two complicated strains of American heritage: Boston blue blood traceable to the Mayflower and Southern African American with a cross strain of Mexican–Native American. Her parents seemed poised to defy history. They were two brilliant young American writers. Married in 1968, a year that seemed to separate the past from the present; together, these two would snub the histories that divided them and embrace the radical future of the time. When their marriage disintegrated eight years later, it was, as one friend put it, “the ugliest divorce in Boston’s history”—a violent, traumatic war that felt all the more heartrending given the hopeful symbolism of their union. Their breakup personified the complexity of racial issues that have been with us right up until today.
is also a very emotional and personal story; one that mirrors societies transformation from the psychedelic 60's to the reality of the '70's. Greenfield writes a kind of "rock 'n' roll, Tender is the Night" amid the backdrop of glamorous lifestyles and very famous icons of the time.