Al Goldstein slightly past his prime but not yet homeless: Las Vegas, 2001. © Carl A
Compensations are interesting psychological mechanisms. If you lack something, you compensate. If you lack a lot, you compensate a lot. Although this may be a slightly simplified view of life and psychology, it certainly convinces as an applicable theory all through the life of Al Goldstein. From insecure child and teenager to embodying all the clichés of the extrovert smut-peddler, making millions and making headlines, not seldom under the umbrella of ”freedom of the press” and other altruistic banners. Any- and everything was possble with a little bit of timing and great media coverage. And if you couldn’t get that, then you just started your own magazine.
Goldstein’s baby, ”Screw Magazine”, was basically an ad magazine based in Manhattan that in the late 60s and early 70s spread over the US and got Goldstein into a lot of (compensatory) trouble. Although most of his ventures were successful, his persona as troublemaker, defender of personal freedoms and advocate of the exploding porn culture of the 70s, later on got the better of him. Life changed, but he seemingly didn’t. The result was that Goldstein essentially lost everything he owned ($10 million, at least) and became a celebrity homeless person, a porn bum on the run through the streets of New York. Was this some kind of compensation for not having felt enough guilt during his hedonistic heyday? The thought must surely have occurred to him. Or was Goldstein simply a burnt out gourmand, a wreck, a shell that couldn’t keep up with Internetian times? Sort of, ”It’s not easy being evil in a world that’s gone to hell”?
Jack Stevenson’s biography of Goldstein, ”Beneath contempt and happy to be there”, is both very funny and very sad. It displays the entire spectrum of Mr Screw’s career, ideas, successes and failures, and neither white-washes nor points moralistic fingers. It is in many ways a highly entertaining introduction to the mind of a genuine American anti-hero, who absolutely deserves his place in the hall of infamy of the US counterculture – especially if you ask Goldstein himself of course.
Screw Magazine was always predominantly a vessel, a platform and a channel for Al Goldstein’s personal agendas. According to Stevenson’s book, these agendas were motivated as much by personal libido as by challenging morals and the status quos of ”square” America. The mere fact that Goldstein admits to this – in fact, has bellowed it out a thousand times – probably makes him more believable than many other remnants and ”do-gooders” from the 60s and 70s. I’m thinking specifically of heavy druggies like John Lennon, but there are many others of course. Lennon was actually a friend of Goldstein’s and supported him in some ways, which apparently bought him a safe zone from Goldstein’s endless vitriolic spewing out against everything and everyone (again, often including himself).
The irrational chaos of this overweight ego sometimes sounds fictional, which creates wonderful new dimensions in the reading. I actually had the pleasure (?) of hanging out with Mr Goldstein in Las Vegas in 2001, and while reading this book, I can both remember and affirm his abrasive tone, the cigar-chomping, his ripped boxer shorts and the overwhelming chaos in the hotel room. While giving a frustratingly fragmented interview, he was also on the phone with some poor airline person who got the most offensive treatment I’ve ever heard. Such a persona can of course be hard to deal with on a personal level but if you look a little closer, you can actually find the essence – a strange sense of humour that is programmed not to make people laugh but to provoke. In that sense, Al Goldstein has never been far removed from his one time hero, Lenny Bruce.
”Beneath contempt” is a well-researched and well-written little tome that whets the appetite for more. This is basically my only criticism of the book. There should have been more. Goldstein’s own hagiography,”I, Goldstein” (written together with another 42nd Street aficionado, the former Screw-writer Josh Alan Friedman) works as a great complement (and vice versa), but I would have loved to see more of Goldstein’s own ranting from various phases in and out of Screw in ”Beneath Contempt”. That aside, Stevenson’s book definitely cuts the mustard and eloquently tells the story of a great American dream turned nightmare, a larger than life drama featuring a compensatorily inclined, Jewish, New York-based intellectual version of Larry Flynt. Flynt stayed on top, albeit in a golden wheelchair. Goldstein lost the flow or, some would argue, was overflowed by what he himself had helped set in motion.
Beneath contempt and happy to be there – The fighting life of porn king Al Goldstein
By Jack Stevenson
Headpress paperback, 2011, 220 pages
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