Southern Bookman

Blake Bailey's kaleidoscopic biography of Philip Roth withdrawn after sexual abuse allegations against author

Philip Roth shocked his admirers by retiring in 2012, holding the title of America's "greatest living novelist."

Exulting in public acclaim and seeking to control his legacy, Roth lived on for another six years, filling his days watching television, visiting haunts near his homes in rural Connecticut and New York City's Upper West Side, and engaging in friendships with young women.

Roth devoted much of his remaining time to influencing the work of his chosen authorized biographer, Blake Bailey, giving numerous interviews, opening his files and directing Bailey to close friends, family members and still friendly former lovers.

Roth granted Bailey freedom to draw his own conclusions and give a full and honest account of Roth's polarizing career.

Bailey's nearly 900-page opus, simply titled "Philip Roth, The Biography" is stirring critical division and controversy similar to that drawn by Roth's 31 books written over 53 years.

Accused by critics of taking a too sympathetic view of Roth's sordid treatment of women, Bailey himself is enmeshed in a sexual abuse scandal. Publisher W.W. Norton stopped printing his book this week, and Bailey's literary agency dropped him over allegations made by former female students whom he taught at a New Orleans middle school before embarking upon his career as a literary biographer.

The women claimed that Bailey fostered affectionate relationships with them as students, then made unwanted sexual advances to them when they had reached adulthood. One of his former students charged him with rape. Bailey vehemently denied the accusations.

Bailey's exhaustive biography gives cracked-mirror, kaleidoscopic views of Roth. Roth's incessant sexual escapades bury Bailey's efforts to make Roth sympathetic.

While Bailey casts blame on Roth's first wife, Maggie Martinson for their disastrous marriage, Roth is revealed as vindictive and malicious. Martinson died in a car accident before her divorce proceedings threatened Roth with financial ruin. After using her as a model for his novel "When She Was Good," Roth never stopped vilifying Martinson.

Roth's long, eventually ruinous relationship with actress Claire Bloom unfold with scenes reminiscent of Marat/Sade. The appalling efforts of two highly intelligent, creative, civilized people to destroy each other unfold with moments of dark comedy. Bloom's account of the once close relationship's demise, "Leaving the Dollhouse," incensed Roth with its allegations of his misogyny and abuse of women.

Until the end of his life, Roth expressed bitterness over Bloom's charges. While casting blame on Bloom, Bailey gives validity to her accusations, detailing Roth's affair with one of his married Connecticut neighbors during his years with Bloom. He also carried out many flings, including an apparent attempt to seduce a friend of Bloom's daughter, the opera singer Anna Steiger. Steiger and Roth's mutual hatred for each other poisoned his relationship with Bloom.

The book details many of Roth's feuds with literary figures. During his life, Roth displayed a propensity to turn against even close friends. One of them was his first chosen biographer, Ross Miller, the nephew of playwright Arthur Miller. When they were pals, Ross Miller regaled Roth with salacious anecdotes about Marilyn Monroe, his former step-aunt.

Roth and John Updike expressed solidarity for each other's similar careers until Roth fell out with Updike over a negative review. Before Updike's death, which saddened Roth, they reconciled.

Roth's close friendship with his Connecticut neighbor, William Styron, ended when Roth refused to see Styron in his last years battling depression. Yet Styron's widow, Rose Styron, who discovered Roth's first triumph "Goodbye Columbus" in the Paris Review slush pile, invited Roth to Styron's memorial, which he remorsefully attended.

Another feud erupted with esteemed critic Irving Howe, one of the Jewish intellectuals who disparaged Roth for what they saw as a betrayal of Jewish culture.

Before "Portnoy," Roth incensed Jewish religious leaders with his short stories "Defender of the Faith," which appeared in the New Yorker, and "The Conversion of the Jews." The stories, collected in "Goodbye Columbus," showed Jews with negative character traits, not an image the Jewish fathers wanted revealed to American readers.

The novella "Goodbye Columbus" also upset the Jewish elders, by showing an assimilated Jewish character, Neil Klugman, pursuing the Jewish Radcliffe student Brenda Patimkin, whose family lives in an affluent suburb. Roth's first steady girlfriend, Maxine Groffsky, later the European editor of the Paris Review, was the model for Patimkin. (Here is a Southern Bookman piece on Groffsky, based on a Paris Review interview with her. Until reading Bailey's book, I didn't realize she had dated Roth.)

Roth's complex relationship with Saul Bellow is another leitmotif. Although Roth idolized his fellow major Jewish novelist, Bellow was less enamored with Roth's work, especially "Portnoy's Complaint," which Bellow saw as close to pornography.  The troubled friendship ends with Roth hectoring the aging, dementia-suffering Bellow for an interview published in the New Yorker.

Bailey has been faulted for concentrating on Roth's sexual exploits rather than examining his  books. The biographer gives perfunctory, superficial summaries of each book, but not the in-depth analysis some reviewers wanted. Overwhelmed readers likely will feel relieved.

After his initial triumph with "Goodbye Columbus,"  a collection that included the title novella as well as the short-stories that outraged the Jewish establishment, Roth scored a controversial success with "Portnoy's Complaint." Bailey glaringly lacks an appraisal of where "Portnoy" now stands in American literature. The book's once controversial scenes, such as Portnoy masturbating upon the liver his family will eventually have for dinner, are likely to elicit more groans than laughs these days.

Other early novels, including the heavy-handed satires "The Breast" and "The Great American Novel," were misguided embarrassments, as Bailey concedes.

Roth's late career triumphs, beginning with "The Ghost Writer," the first of several novels narrated by Roth's alter-ego, Nathan Zuckerman, made him a major novelist. Without late works like "American Pastoral," and the divisive "Sabbath's Theater," Roth would not be worth such a massive biography.

Even in his most accomplished books, Roth relied too heavily on basing fictional characters on real life people, an imaginative weakness for such an esteemed writer. In one of Bailey's most appalling sequences, Roth bases a character on a troubled young woman he's dating at the time. The young woman, addicted to drugs, later died of an overdose.

She's among the many women abused by Roth who receive pseudonyms in Bailey's witness protection program.

The book gives an expansive account of the American publishing world from the 1950s until the early 21st century. Roth's life intersected with those of most of the era's literary figures, from writers to agents and publishers. 

Bailey's expansive, often entertaining book is a worthy companion to Mark Harris's recent biography of Mike Nichols. Like Nichols, Roth was an East Coast Jewish intellectual who discovered his artistic vocation at the University of Chicago.  The two books in tandem give a complete course in American film, theater and literary culture.

Roth's divided personality merged vindictiveness and a large capacity for resentment with flamboyant gestures of generosity.

With suffocating paternalism, he helped several young women find better lives, and paid for the health care for impoverished writer Veronica Geng in her last illness. He also gained admiration for bringing Eastern European writers crushed by communism to the attention of Western readers.

After the childless Roth made benevolent bequests to close friends, Roth left most of his estate to the financially stressed Newark Public Library, along with his extensive book collection and furnishings from his study, preserved in a special Philip Roth room.

Roth never forgot Weequahic, the close-knit Jewish neighborhood in Newark where he spent his childhood. He often revisited the community in his work.

While Roth was the frequent recipient of major writing awards, the Nobel Prize eluded him. His dismay over the decline of the novel in world culture was confirmed by his witnessing the awarding of the Nobel to Bob Dylan.

Bailey's portrait of the aging, depleted Roth brings sympathy. A series of ailments hasten his physical decline. The rising death toll of his friends and loved ones deepen his loneliness, eased by his father-like mentoring of young women, and his joy at their children.

Not yet three years after Roth's death, the title of "greatest living writer" appears less and less relevant to American literature. Roth's white male hegemony is a vestige of a former era. American literature's increasing diversity erodes the legacy of Roth and other vaunted American male writers.

Yet Roth's best books, with their raging narrative force, will live on.

 

 

 

 

Ringo Starr's ever shining light

Ringo Starr is an inspiration.

Serene and joyful at age 80, Starr is  giving a series of media interviews keyed to the release Friday of his five-track album "Zoom In."

Starr recorded the album during the pandemic via zoom and at his home studio, where several of his musical friends wore masks as they recorded. His record, and his related interviews in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal and USA Today to New York magazine, shine a light of hope.

As a member of the Beatles, Starr was overshadowed by the songwriting and musical brilliance of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, as well as George Harrison. Starr mainly played drums, with instinctive flair more than technical precision.

Yet his steady rhythms laid the foundation for the band's music, and his persona was an essential ingredient of the band's mystique. Starr's vocal performance on "A Little Help From My Friends" is among the band's defining moments. His Chaplinesque silent sequence at the end of "Hard Days Night" is a hallmark of 1960s cinema.

But few could have imagined his enduring and monumental musical career when the Beatles broke up in 1970. Like McCartney, he's recorded a number of hit records and enjoyed world-wide popularity.

After achieving sobriety, Starr formed his All-Starrs band in 1989, leading the group and its rotating cast of superstar musicians to a series of recordings and tours. He's displayed songwriting and singing talent little tapped during the Beatles years.

Because of the pandemic, Starr had to cancel an All-Starrs tour scheduled for last summer. But Starr's told several interviewers that he overcame that disappointment by recording new music, leading to the "Zoom In" Ep. He's joined on the record by luminaries such as Dave Grohl, McCartney, and his brother-in-law, the Eagles' Joe Walsh.

In the joyful interviews, Starr says that although he's rarely left his house during the pandemic, he's kept his spirits high by producing artwork and doing daily exercise as well as creating music. He also subscribes to a healthy diet: blueberries and broccoli the mainstays.

He's also published a photo book, "Ringo Rocks: 30 years of the All-Starrs." Over the years, the band's changing lineup has included legendary members of other groups, such as the Band's late Levon Helm and Rich Danko.

Starr's post-Beatles solo career has lasted longer than the life of Lennon, assassinated in 1980, tragically cutting short a brilliant solo career. Starr says he often thinks about Lennon, and Harrison, who died of cancer 20 years ago.

"All you need is love," the Beatles sang long ago. Starr lives by those words every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emily Nemens leaves Paris Review editorship to pursue career as novelist

Paris Review editor Emily Nemens announced Wednesday that she's leaving, three years after being the surprise selection to take over George Plimpton's venerable literary journal.

Nemens, the author of the successful baseball novel "The Cactus League," said she's moving on to write a second book. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “The Cactus League” drew critical praise. 

In her farewell letter, published on the Paris Review's web site, Nemens cited the journal's record circulation, web site and podcast development, and publication of several anthologies during her tenure.

An accompanying announcement from Mona Simpson, head of the journal's board of directors, revealed no signs of displeasure with Nemens, who took over from disgraced editor Lorin Stein, who replaced Plimpton after his death. Simpson lauded Nemens' leadership and announced a search for her successor.

A native of Seattle and a graduate of LSU's MFA writing program, Nemens vaulted into the prestigious position after serving as co-editor of LSU's lauded Southern Review.

After her move to Manhattan, she maintained her Baton Rouge ties, recently recommending the rhythm and blues, swing and jazz programs of WBRH, the Baton Rouge High magnet school's public radio station.

Along with editing and writing, Nemens has also contributed illustrations to the New Yorker and other magazines.

While Nemens didn't rule out a return to editing, she's brimming with talent to develop a lucrative writing career in a  publishing industry more and more dominated by women authors.

Nemens' departure follows a flurry of national media turnover, including the retirement of Washington Post editor Marty Baron last week. The New York Review of Books recently announced editorial changes.

Paris Review aficionados will keenly wait to see who fills one of American literature's prime jobs.

 

 

Farewell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

City Lights Bookstore shone through the fog and darkness of the San Francisco night, a beacon that made me think I was dreaming.

That was my first of several visits to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's fabled bookstore in the city's North Beach neighborhood. Each time, I felt a special sense of reverence and grandeur, as if at a World Heritage site.

Ferlinghetti, who co-founded the bookstore in 1953 as a mecca of free expression, died Monday at 101 at his home in San Francisco. His City Lights Publishing Co. gave the world "Howl" and other revolutionary literary works.

The cause of Ferlinghetti's death was interstitial lung disease, a scarring of the lungs, rather than Covid. But Ferlinghetti's the latest exemplar of American freedom and creative spirit lost during the pandemic. The covid era has brought a devastating toll on American culture. 

Associated with the Beat generation, although Ferlinghetti called himself the last of the generation of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," after Ginsberg's electric reading of the poem at San Francisco's Six Gallery in October 1955.

Ferlinghetti's City Lights Publishing won a court case upholding "Howl's" literary value,  a landmark for freedom of expression.

An acclaimed poet, novelist, travel writer and painter, Ferlinghetti was a major culture figure whose death deserved front-page recognition in The New York Times rather than display at the back of the Business section.

Ferlinghetti's "Coney Island of the Mind" is one of the few poetry books to achieve best-seller status. Last spring, he published a charming memoir, "Little Boy," capping a multitude of works written during his career. He also was a tireless activist for progressive causes.

The Times' obituary, while noting his Navy service during World War II, shamefully neglected to mention that he was a veteran of D-Day. It also failed to note that he visited Nagasaki after the United States' nuclear bombing of the Japanese city at the end of World War II. Seeing Nagasaki's destruction inspired Ferlinghetti's lifelong pacifism.

When the pandemic threatened City Lights' survival last spring, supporters rallied with contributions to keep the bookstore and publishing company going.

In his later years, Ferlinghetti lamented the high-tech industry's corporate forces ravaging his beloved San Francisco. Soaring housing prices, income disparities and gentrification sapped the social freedom and economic diversity that first drew him to the city.

Ferlinghetti's gone but the soul of San Francisco will keep beating at long as City Lights shines on Columbus Avenue.

 

 

 

 

 

John Keats' poetry lives on, 200 years after his death

Young American tourists like me, clutching their copies of "Europe on $5 a day," packed the Spanish Steps on a splendid midsummer morning.

I was the only visitor to the Keats-Shelley Memorial House next to the Roman landmark where the young backpackers gathered like a flock of birds above Bernini's Barcaccia fountain. 

Adjacent to the Spanish Steps, the two-room apartment where John Keats died on Feb. 23, 1821, was faithfully recreated, down to a replica of Keats' deathbed. After the 25-year-old poet's death from tuberculosis, Italian authorities had burned everything that remained.

When I entered, a severe English woman stroking a cat held in her arms came out from a back room, looked me over, and retreated.

All alone, I inspected the impressive collection of rare Romantic and Victorian books and artifacts, and stood for a moment beside the tiny bed in Keats' room before exiting into the brilliant sunshine and my contemporaries' palpable erotic energy.

In hopes that the warmer climate would improve his condition, Keats had traveled to Italy from England in the fall of 1820 on the Maria Crowther. After the ship docked in Naples, Keats was quarantined before making an arduous journey to Rome.

English artist Joseph Severn, who had nursed Keats during his final three months, drew a death portrait. Severn, in one of history's most encouraging humanitarian gestures, had agreed to accompany the dying Keats to Italy, although he'd barely knew him in London.

After a successful career as an artist and diplomat, Severn died in 1879 at age 85, and was buried next to Keats in Rome's Protestant Cemetery.

I was at the same age at which Keats died when I visited Europe. Now, 50 years have passed away. An epidemic has cost the lives of 500,000 Americans in 51 weeks. At times, it feels as if the world has made little progress in the 200 years since Keats died. Humans have ravaged the natural world that Keats celebrated in his poems. Those 200 years have been marked by endless wars. along with amazing accomplishments. Keats' poems are everlasting.

As Notre Dame English professor Ian Newman said in a recent essay, Keats' death shouldn't overshadow the cheerful, vibrant young poet of  his marvelous letters, a personality so intellectually and artistically aware.

In the winter of Keats' death, let us remember the glorious spring and summer of 1819, when he wrote some of the English language's greatest poems.

 

 

 

 

 

John Ed Bradley pens love letter to Louisiana artist Cora Kelley Ward

Louisiana native Cora Kelley Ward in her lifetime never received recognition for her art.

She was part of New York City's post-World War II art scene, a close friend of the influential critic Clement Greenberg. Ward was known within the artistic circle for taking photos of stars like Helen Frankenthaler.

But while Ward kept painting, she remained unheralded. Greenberg after Ward's death in 1989 at last praised her, but never during her lifetime.

Now, Ward's work is gaining acclaim. Louisiana writer John Ed Bradley in an article in the current Garden & Gun says he's become devoted to Ward's work, and keeps acquiring more and more of her paintings.

Bradley, an accomplished novelist known for his memoir about playing football at LSU for coach Charlie McClendon, "It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium," gives an impassioned discourse on art's power. 

Ward, born in 1920 in Eunice, La., was trained as a nurse in New Orleans and married a physician before leaving him to study art at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she met Greenberg.

After further studies at the Bauhaus in Chicago, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a nurse while pursuing her art. She also received a master's degree from Hunter College in New York.

Bradley gives a vivid portrait of Ward as a beautiful, engaged artist dedicated to her work despite her lack of success.

After her death, her paintings were donated to the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The museum held a bargain-basement sale of her work, where Bradley discovered it. At first he was indifferent to her paintings, but they began to mesmerize him.

He's not alone in his passion for Ward and her creations. Her paintings are drawing big-ticket prices at galleries, and the Mobile Museum of Art has acquired a sizable collection of her work. One of her paintings is shown above.

Bradley at the end of his article tells of offering a friend thousands of dollars for one of Ward's paintings. The friend wouldn't sell.

It's sad that Greenberg neglected his friend's work. But now, Ward's moment has arrived.

Rereading James Joyce’s “The Dead”

I once again reread James Joyce's "The Dead" to start the new year, although I'd thought I would give up my annual ritual.

After all of these years, I suppose I thought Joyce's story had no more to tell me.

But with the pandemic overwhelming hospitals, political turmoil boiling and the impending climax of momentous Senate elections in Georgia, I turned once again to the timeliness of the Misses Morkans' annual Christmastime dance in early 20th century Dublin.

Once again, I found the story new. It's changed over the years.

Almost as long as a novella, "The Dead" concludes Joyce's "The Dubliners," the brilliant short story collection that began his evisceration of his native city that continued with "The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man," "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake." For me, "The Dubliners" is his most precise portrait of the Irish city and its people.

I first read "The Dead" when I was Joyce's age when he wrote the story while in exile in Rome. I nurtured similar youthful ambitions.

As I grew older, I more and more identified with the story's main character, Gabriel Conroy, as he enters middle age.

Now, I have reached the age of the elderly sisters who give the party each year, looking back on their lives.

The story opens with a wide lens on the gathering at the Morkan sisters' house, then closes in on the intimacy of Gabriel and Gretta Conroy's marriage.

In the final scene, in a Dublin hotel room as snow falls outside, Gabriel's sexual longing for his wife is frustrated by her memory of her first love, a young man whom she believes died for her.

Her memory of the young Michael Furey is triggered at the party's end by the tenor "Mr. Bartell D'Arcy" singing "The Lass of Aughim," the same song that Furey sang for her when he caught pneumonia.

The story closes with Gabriel contemplating human mortality as he watches the snow fall beyond the hotel room window:

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

When I read the story this time, I found a new poignancy in the conversation between Gabriel and Gretta at the party after he's had a confrontation with his colleague Molly Ivors. Ivors accuses him of being a "West Briton" for not wanting to travel in Ireland.

"Were you dancing?" asked Gabriel.

"Of course I was. Didn't you see me? What row had you with Molly Ivors?"

"No row. Why? Did she say so?"

"Something like that. I'm trying to get that Mr. D'Arcy to sing. He's full of conceit, I think."

"There was no row," said Gabriel moodily, "only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn't."

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

"O, do go, Gabriel," she cried. "I'd love to see Galway again."

Gretta's simple reference to her native region shows Joyce's genius, foreshadowing the story's conclusion by signaling a depth of associations.

The story is a meditation on history and how it intersects with our lives. During the story, issues of the day surface, many long-forgotten, others still weighing upon us, such as British-Irish relations.

Reading the story, I was reassured that political crises reaching a climax this week will subside.

"The Dead" affirms the enduring power of love and art.

 

A Christmas wish for the return of live performances

For my wife's Christmas gift last year, I purchased tickets to Tony Bennett's Valentine's Day concert at Atlanta's Symphony Hall.

Bennett gave a great performance before a festive, sold-out audience. Before the show, we enjoyed a romantic dinner at the Arts Center's packed 1280 Restaurant.

Covid-19 was a small cloud on the horizon. In a few weeks, the virus had grown into a vicious storm, closing down all public events.

For Christmas last year, we also received tickets to see Wynton Marsalis perform with the Atlanta Symphony in March. We also planned to attend the Atlanta Opera's production of "Porgy and Bess" in late February. Both events were canceled as the coronavirus spread. I've imagined the performances taking place in some alternative universe.

In previous years, we've found under the tree tickets to "Hamilton" and "To Kill a Mockingbird." But no such gifts this holiday season, with Broadway dark and its return unknown. No concerts at Atlanta Symphony Hall to give as presents. The 1280 is closed.

With such a damper on Christmas joy, I was cheered at AJC stalwart Bo Emerson's recent report on the return of the Fox Theater's Mighty Mo organ after a renovation.

My Christmas wish is that one day we'll gather again to hear those majestic sounds.

 

New York Times' Anthony Tommasini won't give up his compact discs

New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tommasini in a Thursday essay vowed to hold on to his thousands of compact discs.

As the owner of many CDs, more rock, jazz, country and Americana-oriented than Tommasini's, I welcomed the support from a fellow pack rat. Tommasini also defended keeping old vinyl records, which I also possess from my college days.

For years, I've loved Tommasini's reviews and learned essays on composers, especially those not well-known. His essay affirmed art's power to enrich our lives.

When Tommasini recalled buying many of his CDs at the Harvard Co-Op at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass., across the Charles River from Boston, I felt the thrill of recognition.

Over the years, I've spent many happy hours at the co-op, as well as several other wonderful bookstores lining Harvard Square, one of my favorite places in the world.

Along with browsing and buying books at the co-op, I fondly remember eating lunch there one day, standing in the cafeteria line with Harvard students and professors. The stew was delicious, along with the overheard conversations.

Tommasini points out that the younger generation now listens to music through streaming services, as does his husband, Ben. I enjoy YouTube music videos, but haven't yet warmed up to services such as Spotify. Like Tommasini, I still enjoy going back to my CD collection for old favorites.

And, I keep buying new ones to add to those overflowing their ramshackle shelves. Perhaps I should adapt Tommasini's rule, imposed by Ben, that for every CD bought, one will be given away.

Tommasini also upheld the pleasures of reading old-fashioned books. I've also come to appreciate the convenience of e-readers. But I'm still a print creature.

Hey, Tony, I read your piece in the newspaper printed on paper, delivered to my driveway in the pre-dawn darkness each morning so that I can look up to see the moon, stars and planets. I don't even know the password for the Times' online publication, if that's the word.

Although I have a couple of turntables, I haven't returned to playing vinyl. I sometimes think of selling my vinyl record collection, which includes treasures like the original-cover Blind Faith album, but hold on to them year after year. And what about those cassette and VHS tapes? My house is a museum, or graveyard, of obsolete technology.

Thanks to Tommasini, I don't feel so alone and obsolescent myself in this de-clutter age. Anybody want a Moby Grape album?

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Jerry Jeff Walker

Jerry Jeff Walker's "Viva Terlingua" remains fresh and vital after all these years.

The 1973 album brought a new sound to aspiring Southern hipsters like me, making Austin as cool as San Francisco and New York.

Recorded with the impromptu Lost Gonzo Band, Walker's insouciant album defied both the refined Nashville sound and progressive rock pretensions. The feeling of a bunch of guys jamming on a front porch derived from a deceptive artistry

With era-defining standards like "London Homesick Blues," "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers," "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" and "Wheel," the album set the stage for Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jimmy Buffett.

Walker, who followed the country tradition of career-destructive drinking, drug-use and not showing up for concerts, died Friday at age 78 of throat cancer. Long sober, he kept performing and recording, inspiring younger singer-songwriters striving for artistic independence.

His good-ole-boy persona hid the sensitive performer who wrote one of the era's most beloved songs, "Mr. Bojangles," a poignant portrait of an aging street performer Walker said he met in the New Orleans drunk tank.

Walker and the Gonzo Band's performance of Clark's "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" shows artistic depths reached with little rehearsal.

The novelty "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers," hastily finished by Ray Wylie Hubbard for the album, consciously answers Merle Haggard's political anthem "Okie From Muscogee." As with Haggard's song, listeners interpreted "Redneck Mothers" on different levels, from satire to a perverse ironic pride.

"Viva Terlingua's" most masterful work, "London Homesick Blues" was written and sung by Gary P. Nunn, a member of the band.

Telling the story of a Texan in London feeling homesick for his native state, the song has the authority of a short story or film, evoking the essence of both places.

The band's rowdy honky-tonk performance, with Walker singing harmony, provides effective Texas-flavored counterpoint to the wistful, gloomy portrayal of London.

Walker was one of those American originals who made a lasting influence. For me and others of my generation, "Viva Terlingua" will always bring back that time when our youth was almost gone and we didn't want the music to end.