Background
Rumaker, Michael was born on March 5, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Michael Joseph and Winifred Marvel Rumaker.
(This book is terrific. The reader feels that he/she is th...)
This book is terrific. The reader feels that he/she is there, living through Black Mountain’s endless difficulties in the most intimate way. A wonderful chronicle, the book to put next to Martin Duberman’s Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community. Jonathon Williams Michael Rumaker’s finely detailed, evocative memoir puts personal flesh on Black Mountain College’s historical bones. He brings to life the daily texture of what it meant to live in that remarkable community. Martin Duberman Michael Rumaker seems to have forgotten nothing. The portraits of people I know myself are dead-on—Fielding Dawson, Jonathon Williams, Robert Creeley, etc. And of course, Charles Olson, the Papa Whale himself. But the historical context is there as well, brilliantly. Best of all is Rumaker’s self-portrait, indirectly presented, the best kind. A lovely (and valuable) book. Russell Banks An increasingly articulate record of ‘those happy few’ who were its persons in the closing years of the college. The poet and rector Charles Olson makes an ample and defining pivot for the meld of stories here told—of persons in displacing crisis, of elders confounded with responsibility and poverty, of the all too indifferent world surrounding this fragile company in perhaps the most decisive experiment ever to be attempted in the history of American educational enterprise. Robert Creeley
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933132663/?tag=2022091-20
(Mickey seems to see and hear everything, revealing as he ...)
Mickey seems to see and hear everything, revealing as he does, Michael Rumaker’s amazing abilities as a novelist. Rumaker has a wonderful eye for realistic detail and an exceptional ear for dialogue. His ability to create realistic American characters living in 20th century America rivals any American novelist I have ever read. Pagan Days is one of the best novels I’ve read in a lifetime of reading. Michael Rumaker is a working-class Marcel Proust, a great novelist, inspired by memory to write this truly memorable novel. Anne Geismar Mickey’s days as a “pagan” open his eyes to an almost mystical, but certainly aesthetic, view of the world where each experience, no matter how difficult or painful, offers him a vision that will carry him through life. Pagan Days enriches our literature, and reinforces that the avant-garde need not be unintelligible to communicate the complexity of being human. Rumaker’s characters breathe like Rodin’s figures—they are alive, real, sinewy, torn, ecstatic, and transformative. Jeffery Beam
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933132590/?tag=2022091-20
(The dates are important to mention in order to put the op...)
The dates are important to mention in order to put the open sensuality in the novel in perspective., that is, pre-AIDS, when male-male sexuality was being liberated from its centuries-long subterranean hiddenness into a visibility if only, in this instance, of the twilit and claustrophobic "freedom" of a bath house. (M.R. from the intro)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982807406/?tag=2022091-20
( New York Times “111 Held in St. Patrick’s AIDS Protest...)
New York Times “111 Held in St. Patrick’s AIDS Protest” December 11, 1989 While some 4,500 people demonstrated outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral yesterday, several dozen disrupted the Mass at 10:15 A.M. to protest John Cardinal O’Connor’s recent statements on abortion, homosexuality and AIDS. Some of the protesters chained themselves to pews inside the cathedral, while others shouted or lay in aisles. The police said 111 people were arrested, including 43 inside the church. Many of the protesters were carried out on stretchers after refusing to stand up. Dozens of protesters blocked traffic on Fifth Avenue by lying in the street. Michael Rumaker’s witty fable blends the marvelous and the murderous as it takes us on a grown-up children’s crusade across Manhattan. The object of their pilgrimage—to destroy the malefactors of the Church. The result—one grand surprise after another. The Canterbury Tales in reverse for the furious queer 80’s and 90’s.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0963296221/?tag=2022091-20
( A newly expanded edition of an enduring classic, Robert...)
A newly expanded edition of an enduring classic, Robert Duncan in San Francisco is both a portrait of the premier poet of the San Francisco Renaissance and a fascinating account of gay life in late 1950s America. Following his graduation from Black Mountain College, Michael Rumaker made his way to the post-Howl, pre-Stonewall gay literary milieu of San Francisco, where he entered the circle of Robert Duncan. His account of that time gives an unvarnished look at Duncan's magnetic personality and occasional failings, while delivering vivid snapshots of other significant poets like Jack Spicer, John Wieners, and Joanne Kyger against the backdrop of legendary North Beach haunts like The Place, Vesuvio, and City Lights Books. Contrasting Duncan's daringly frank homosexuality with his own then-closeted life, Rumaker conjures up with harrowing detail an era of police persecution of a largely clandestine gay community struggling to survive in the otherwise "open city" of San Francisco. First published in 1996, this expanded edition includes a selection of previously unpublished letters between Rumaker and Duncan, and an interview conducted for this edition, in which Rumaker provides further reflections on the poet and the period. Michael Rumaker has written several novels and short story collections, as well as the memoir Black Mountain Days. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Black Mountain College—where Duncan served as his outside thesis advisor—and Columbia University. He taught at City University of New York and the New School for Social Research.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0872865908/?tag=2022091-20
Rumaker, Michael was born on March 5, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Michael Joseph and Winifred Marvel Rumaker.
Rumaker graduated from Black Mountain College in 1955 and later wrote a memoir of his time there. Returning to New York, he attended Columbia University and received an Master of Fine Arts in 1969, after which he began teaching writing.
He hitchhiked to San Francisco where he encountered the literature of the Beat Generation. Rumaker"s first appearance in paperback was in 1959 in the book Short Story 2, which featured short stories from him and other authors. His short stories in the book received a favourable review in The New York Times, where he was described as an "impressive young writer
His short stories, Gringos and other stories, appeared in 1967.
A revised and expanded version appeared in 1991. He began to write directly about his life as a gay man in the volumes A Day and a Night at the Baths (1979) and My First Satyrnalia (1981).
Black Mountain Days, a memoir of his time at Black Mountain College, has a strong autobiographical element. In addition, there are portraits of many students and faculty (including the poets Robert Creeley, Charles Olson and Jonathan Williams) during its last years, 1952-1956.
Following his graduation from Black Mountain College, Rumaker made his way to the post-Howl, pre-Stonewall riots gay literary milieu of San Francisco, where he entered the circle of Robert Duncan.
His account of that time in the book Robert Duncan in San Francisco, first published by Donald Allen at his Grey Fox Press, gives an unvarnished look at the premier poet of the San Francisco Renaissance. Rumaker will release previously unpublished letters between himself and Robert Duncan for a new edition, published by City Lights.
( A newly expanded edition of an enduring classic, Robert...)
(In Black Mountain Days, Michael Rumaker has written a tou...)
(Mickey seems to see and hear everything, revealing as he ...)
(A small dirt smudge on the front edge of the pages - not ...)
(The dates are important to mention in order to put the op...)
(PIZZA: SELECTED POEMS includes fourteen poems written by ...)
( New York Times “111 Held in St. Patrick’s AIDS Protest...)
(This book is terrific. The reader feels that he/she is th...)
(NONE, Expanded Editi)
(Reprint)
Member National Writers Union.