Renaissance, A Magazine of the Arts #2: Bukowski as Editor Gets Open City Shut Down

This is a fairly important piece of history regarding censorship in America during the late 1960s. It’s also a tale of what-not-to-do when being an editor during such times.

Published on September 26, 1968, Renaissance, A Magazine of the Arts #2 was a literary supplement in Open City, the Los Angeles weekly where Charles Bukowski’s Notes of a Dirty Old Man columns were first published.

Open City publisher John Bryan asked Bukowski to be the guest editor for this second installment of the supplement. Despite knowing what would most likely happen, Bukowski decided to print Jack Micheline’s short story “Skinny Dynamite”. Micheline describes Skinny as a “white jew with a black soul” who begins giving blow jobs at 10 and having sex at 11. Skinny prefers “spades and Puerto Ricans” and the story climaxes with a gang bang at a Puerto Rican gang house that begins with a “Chinaman” performing anal sex on Skinny.

After publication, John Bryan was charged with obscenity and the resulting legal costs would subsequently force Open City to go bankrupt. Bukowski denied any responsibility and refused to take part in subsequent fund raisers by other poets and musicians. As Bryan would later recall, “Bukowski played the editor and I went to jail”.

Bukowski’s contribution to the issue is called “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. It is also erotic, but in Bukowski’s own cynical style. Micheline used “fuck” several times in his piece, while Bukowski used phrases like “orgy butter” and “cunty trick”.

Other contributors include willie, d.a. levy, Gerda Penfold, Steve Richmond, Diane Di Prima and Joel Deutsch.

For a nearly 60-year-old newspaper printed on cheap paper, this copy is in fairly good shape.  There are small tears along the edges and a bit of browning here and there, most notably at the folds.  There is one-inch tear at the bottom of the first page and it seems like it was in a damp environment for a bit.

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