Josh Alan Friedman

review of
Josh Alan Friedman's Black Cracker
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 10, 2018

Read the full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1048735-friedman

I got this bk b/c John Arnold of Phelgm's corner sent me a copy after I expressed interest in it. Coincidentally, it's signed. It's about Friedman being the only 'white' kid in attendance at an otherwise all-black school in New York. There are times when Friedman has his mother accuse him of being an exaggerator. The reader doesn't know whether he's exaggerating or not. There's the description of the white racist mom chasing him w/ a pitchfork. Was that exaggerated? Maybe it was just a salad fork. There's the time where he describes black women lynching him — but not quite enuf to kill him. Was that exaggerated? Maybe they just threatened him. I tend to believe it's all true.

Friedman is a musician too & there's a list of his other bks & of his "albums" (when that word's used I tend to think of vinyl records but it might not mean that);

"BOOKS
TELL THE TRUTH UNTIL THEY BLEED
I, GOLDSTEIN: MY SCREWED LIFE (with Al Goldstein)
NOW DIG THIS: THE UNSPEAKABLE WRITINGS OF TERRY SOUTHERN (co-editor, with Nile Southern)
WHEN SEX WAS DIRTY
WARTS AND ALL (with Drew Friedman)
TALES OF TIMES SQUARE
ANY SIMILARITY TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL (with Drew Friedman)

"ALBUMS
FAMOUS & POOR
THE WORST!
BLACKS 'N' JEWS
JOSH ALAN BAND"

Much of the above interested me. When I was a teenager & I sideswiped social scenes w/ a hardcore group of older 'hippies' one of whom was called "Trick". I remember that they liked Screw magazine, the raunchiest hard-core sex magazine I'd ever seen. They also liked the band Fleetwood Mac who I thought were completely uninteresting so I didn't respect their musical opinions much. Al Goldstein, Screw's editor, was always a bit too much for me. Still, his extremeness held some fascination.

Terry Southern cowrote Candy, a sort of modernized version of de Sade's Justine, wch I never read but I thought the film was fairly funny. Drew Friedman is Josh Alan's younger brother, who's a cartoonist, & I've seen his work & liked it so I like that connection. Judging by the titles & what little I know of what they imply (e.g.: Times Square was a notorious commercial sex district), sex seems to be a major subject. It wasn't in Black Cracker.

The 1st paragraph of the "Prologue" is:

"I returned to Glen Cove after thirty-five years. My family moved away when I was ten in 1966. From first through fourth grade, I attended South, the last segregated colored school on Long Island. I was the only white kid. Four years—an eternity to a kid—of readin', 'ritin' and 'rithmetic. Then we moved close to New York City and get away from South School. It closed anyway after the 1966 school year." - p 3

On this return trip, he inquired about his old friends from elementary school, the ones we read about when the bk enters its post-Prologue chronological stage.

"A wino loitered around the sidewalk where Bobo's shack once stood. I might have been a bounty hunter or private eye for all he knew. He grew less suspicious when I told him I went to South School back in the day.

""Bobo Monk?" I asked.

""Dead."

""How?"

""Narcotics," said the wino. More than ten years ago.

""Jeffrey Lincoln?"

""He dead, too. Narcotics. Same time as Bobo."

""Torrence?"

""He in prison down in Florida, for life."" - p 5

I like Friedman's writing, it's playful, it's personal, it doesn't reek too much of 'I-was-taught-to-write-this-way'.

"And then all hell broke loose. Once-innocuous images of Black folklore, from the days when Southern aristocrats believed in the marked superiority of colored cooks: Here come Rastus up the middle, aka Mr. Cream of Wheat, having clawed out of the slave burial ground, with his red bow tie and puffy white chef's hat; kindly old Uncle Ben, escaped from the rice plantation, marching like a zombie; and everybody's favorite, Hecha Momma (Aunt Jemima), waddling behind, from pancake box to corporate fox, batting her spatula at my head." - p 6

Or how about this?: "Boy's inhumanity to boy." (p 42) It might not seem like much. it's 'just' a variation on the common phrase 'Man's inhumanity to man.' Still, little tweaks like that defamiliarize the familiar just enuf to make it interesting.

The Wilshire family are Friedman's exemplary white racist family. Still, while they persecute him for being Jewish & for going to the black school & having black friends he still manages to have an uneasy friendship w/ them from time-to-time.

""Hey, Whitey, you really got 'em?" asked one of the greasers.

""Yeah, I got 'em," said Whitey Wilshire, opening the truck of his jalopy. The greasers were more excited than he was. He reached into a green duffel bag and brought out a cache of fireworks called Nigger Chasers. Each package had a caricature of a bug-eyed darkie on the run, hair a-frazzle, a puff of smoke bursting after his airborne ass. A cartoon balloon said the usual Feets do yo' stuff.

"It seemed odd that anybody would manufacture a product specifically designed to chase off colored people. Maybe it was a package from long ago. Everyone knew fireworks came in on slow boats from China, stocked "under the counter" at Chinese laundries. They were illegal in New York. But in China, they'd never set eyes on Negroes, only heard of their legend, like dragons. Nigger chasers were like that exotic Asian toothpaste called Darkie, with the grinning minstrel on the box." - p 24

I'm glad those never made it to the neighborhood where I grew up.

The author is a few yrs younger than me but we're still close enuf in age for us to share some growing-up things in common. One of them is Famous Monsters of Filmland & the related monster model kits that I assembled as a child.

"The car puttered along past Vic's candy store, where my father got his newspapers and cigars, and I got my monthly copy of Famous Monsters. The arrival of each new issue, hot off the press, was one of the great thrills in life." - p 25

"My ideas on death stemmed from pictures I saw in my favorite magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland. But they never portrayed the grim reaper as a big fat colored lady. The two of them who led this death march were scarier than Dracula or Frankenstein—whom I secretly believed were my guardian angels. But neither had yet come to my rescue. Real monsters roamed the earth. The lady who tied my hands behind my back snorted like a rhino through her massive nostrils. They pulled the rope up as high as they could around the branch, which lifted me off the ground . . . but just barely." - p 53

Anti-semitism has never really made any sense to me. Why not pick on the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses? I'm not saying people shd pick on them either, I just mean why the fucking Jews all the time?! It's an obsession for some people. No doubt there have been some Jews at some time or another who've been assholes — but show me any group that doesn't have some assholes & I'll show you what a deluded person you are.

""Drew-the-Jew, Drew-the-Jew, how do you do?" asked the oldest kid, shaking hands with my brother. Drew was clueless as to why his religion, which he knew nothing about, was foremost on their minds." - p 222

"As a token of farewell, the greaser who invited me to hang out put his face up to mine:

"A Jew ain't nothin' but a nigger turned inside out."" - p 28

Does that mean that Blacula turned inside out is Jewula? Sounds messy. What does Jewula do to a victim? Rub bile all over them?

"By the end of my first year at school, I naturally developed the same speech as my friends. It disappeared before white people. My parents never seemed to detect it. Most of the time, maybe as a survival tactic, I believed I was a colored kid.

""He a white nigger," Bobo and Jeffrey would explain upon introducing me to wary relatives.

""He don't look like no nigger to me. You sure?"

""Yeah, ah'm sure. He just got light skin."" - p 31

It gets complicated doesn't it? I mean, what if Jewula were about to rub bile over the white nigger Jew & the intended victim were to suddenly turn inside out in some sort of self-protection instinct? Wd he be a high yeller w/ some kind of lemon flavor like those horrible freshener things? Wd Jewula's bile turn on itself in an attempt to flee being rendered lovely smelling?

"The term "Black" was a racial insult, and if muttered by a white cracker, them was fightin' words. Any colored kid that wanted to learn had someone—older brother, paroled uncle or mother—to teach him to fight." - p 39

I find that a bit confusing b/c we're talking 1963-1966 or thereabouts & at that time there were the Black Muslims, there was the popular slogan "Black is Beautiful", there was the Black Panther Party (ok, that wasn't founded until October, 1966).. The point is the term "black" was used in connection w/ "Black Power" by black radicals &, in my experience of it, it was a very powerful positive identity politics force. I'm not saying that Friedman is wrong about what was happening in his area, I'm just saying that I wdn't generalize beyond the local.

"A few years later, when the same liberal friend had a daughter, she was put in a Skinner Box—a radical experiment devised by behaviorist B.F. Skinner, wherein the newborn child spent her first year in an isolated box, protected from germs, society and her parents' loving touch—not to mention Negroes." - p 47

"An operant conditioning chamber (also known as the Skinner box) is a laboratory apparatus used to study animal behavior. The operant conditioning chamber was created by B. F. Skinner while he was a graduate student at Harvard University."

[..]

"An operant conditioning chamber permits experimenters to study behavior conditioning (training) by teaching a subject animal to perform certain actions (like pressing a lever) in response to specific stimuli, such as a light or sound signal. When the subject correctly performs the behavior, the chamber mechanism delivers food or another reward."

[..]

"An urban legend spread concerning Skinner putting his daughter through an experiment such as this, causing great controversy. His daughter later debunked this."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

In other words, I doubt the veracity of Friedman's story here. It's sensational but unlikely. I don't think that even a behaviorist wd seriously suggest keeping a child in a box of any kind for an entire yr. The child wd most likely die. Nor was the purpose of the Operant Conditioning Chamber to keep children from germs or Negros, etc.

I have a friend who claimed that he was put in a Skinner Box as a kid but I recall him describing it as a crib w/ various dangling things meant to stimulate his perceptions & motor coordination. Perhaps this is what Friedman is referring to w/o realizing it.

Leading up to the lynching story partially quoted from above is the beginning of it where Friedman's friend Jeffrey tries to take him home & is rc'vd in a less-than-enthusiastic way:

""Just a minute, Mr. White Cracka! Where the hell do you think you is goan?" All the colored women took notice, and I froze under their haughty gaze.

""He wid me," said Jeffrey.

"The woman who had been lecturing the mob stood up. "Why you bringin' this white shit over here Jeffy, ah'm surprised at 'chu!"

""Momma, it's okay cause he mah fren," came Jeffrey. "Besides, he really one of us, he a white nigger."" - p 50

That was the mid '60s. I'm not sure things were that different by the mid '80s. In the early to mid '80s I spent a fair amt of time wandering the streets of BalTimOre late at night, sometimes spraypainting graffiti. One of my companions was a young black guy who was also a graffitist of the tagger variety. I remember one time we went into the Club Charles together, a favorite bar of John Waters's, only to be shown the door immediately b/c we were so obviously poor AND b/c, HEY!, it was a black guy & a white guy together. Late one night my friend took me back to where he lived w/ his grandmother but he cautioned me to "be really quiet. My grandma hates white people." I think we probably both sortof thought that was funny in a sick way b/c we saw the same ole same ole hopeless shit everywhere we looked.

Another thing that Friedman & I share, other than Famous Monsters of Filmland, is the beauty parlor & the beehive:

"Seated across the room was her best friend, Lu. Lu had arrived from a big afternoon at the beauty parlor—the most exciting event in her life. Her hair was in a fresh beehive." - p 79

My mom has been going to the beauty parlor every friday for as long as I can remember to get her beehive reinforced. My bedrm was across the hall from the bathrm when I was a kid & my mom sprayed hairspray to keep her beehive immobile. It seemed like she spent 20 to 40 minutes every day spraying. How anyone cd do that w/o brain damage is beyond me. Then I wdn't make the claim that there wasn't brain damage involved — but I won't go there. We had a convertible but we cdn't put the lid down partially b/c her hair might get mussed, we went to the ocean but she didn't swim b/c her hair might get mussed. To this day, I make the bold claim that the expense of maintaining her hair was always a higher budgetary priority than the kids. For a certain type of woman, the beauty parolor & beehives are crucial. Think a deromanticized Bride of Frankenstein.

Friedman is, obviously, a writer & he's a writer who does writerly things like interject chapters into the narrative that change the pace a bit so it doesn't get boring. On page 92 there's a chapter entitled "19. Things I Believed as a Child:

"That when the emergence of color TV was ballyhooed in the early '60s, I literally thought it meant colored TV—some new television set that just broadcast Negroes. When I discovered this wasn't the case, I was gravely disappointed.

"That Mick Jagger was Alfalfa of The LIttle Rascals, all grown up."

My color TV was broken so I thought it was some new television set that just broadcast Martians.

Another thing that Friedman's youth & mine have in common is snow:

"The birth of Jesus had an enchanting, warm glow, with a string of light bulbs across the snow—and we did get snow every Christmas. The display helped guide Santa Claus to our hamlet. Being secular, we only celebrated Christmas." - p 93

Wd my life be totally different now if, as a Christian, I'd only celebrated Chanukah? I think that might just be the recipé for WORLD PEACE. Everybody just celebrates Chanukah no matter what religion they are. All the children assemble models of Jewula helping little old ladies across the superhighway during rush hr. No more bile. Anyway, I'm glad that somebody else remembers that once upon a time in mid USA (i.e.: BalTimOre & New York) there was snow every Christmas. All of my younger friends think I'm just making that up & twirl their fingers around their foreheads when they think I'm not looking. I'll get them. Friedman & I also share a list of the essential belongings in case of a nuclear attack. I'm told this is called a "bugout bag" by "Preppers" — who apparently aren't the same thing as "Preppies".

"Stuff that you could use. Whoopee cushions, handshake buzzers, severed rubber fingers, masks, Aurora monster models (which, combined with Testors Glue, will probably stay together for centuries), and a perennial favorite: plastic vomit. The package said "Oops!" on the outside. Fortified with plastic vomit, I thought I could take over the world." - p 118

I'll be laughing out the other side of my face (the only side I'll have left) after the nuclear attack happens. The thing is, if wars were fought with Aurora monster models & plastic vomit we wdn't have to worry about nuclear attack. Life cd be so simple.

Remember Jim Crow? People can be such morons:

"Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them. . . . The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose fo reading books or periodicals." - p 124

At the nursery school I went to the precocious kids didn't see anything written about sharing condoms so we figured that was ok.

Friedman takes the train into the BIG CITY:

"But the route offered glimpses of Long Island's "Gold Coast" of the Gilded Age, where 19th century robber barons built thousand-acre estates. American castles hidden in wooded regions of Glen Cove. They were now abandoned ruins, historical parks or private schools.

"The Gold Coast was the polar opposite of Glen Cove's colored section. Fantastical mansions built by F.W. Woolworth, the DuPonts, and seven Pratt family estates, hiers of Standard Oil." - p 136

The public library in BalTimOre, where I worked long ago, was the Enoch Pratt Free Library. What I wonder is: if Jim Crow laws still existed, wd Black Cracker be allowed in both the colored & the colorless schools? Deciding that might just be the straw that broke the conscientious racist's mind.

"Pomade-haired young colored ladies in white frocks beckoned from behind the Nedick's hot-dog counter. They made surreptitious appoinments with Long Island Rail Road commuters. Balding white men in starched shirts and ties sweated profusely as they arranged illicit rendezvous with the colored hot-dog waitresses. The counter ladies were hookers. And smiling broadly in a Nedick's hot-dog cap nehind the counter, like a Pullman porter at your service, was the young actor-to-be, Morgan Freeman, his first job fresh from Mississippi. This I was to learn many years later, but the face was unforgettable." - pp 140-141

"I want a hot-do for my roll, I want it hot I don't want it cold. It must have lots of mustard.." - Butterbeans & Susie

The trip into the BIG CITY was so that Friedman & a friend cd make a little cash as shoe-shiners, a profession traditionally occupied by blacks only. Friedman's account of his encounter that day w/ the Nation of Islam might be filed under 'suspected-of-exaggeration' or 'too-good-to-be-true' but I tend to believe it (call me naive or irresponsible or something):

""Our people in the shoe shine business are nothing but rejected and despised members of the so-called Negro race," said the robotic man.

""Up, you mighty race!" chanted one of the men.

""Now, you want a shine or not?" interrupted Mr. Shuggs. "Otherwise, take yo' damn feets off dat stool, and move yo' Honorable Elijah ass on outta here. Goddamnit, we workin'."

"The men took one long hard look at him, then turned to leave. "Brother Malcolm," said one bow-tie man to another, as they marched off in formation, "I think you failed to persuade him."" - p 147

Read the full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1048735-friedman… (altro)