When I was about 15 or 16, I used to hang out at the Venice West Café. I met a lot of peculiar and interesting people there — none more interesting (or more peculiar) than the poet Claire Horner. He used to hang out on the beachfront, at the pagoda at Dudley and the Boardwalk during the day, and in the VWC at night. He read poetry in the Café, and peddled his mimeographed “books” of poetry out of a brown paper bag. They had names like “Please don’t step on the Bacon”, and were usually about 50 – 75 pages, on kindergarten art class quality colored paper. He read alongside people like Bukowski, and performance artist Taylor Meade. But Claire never got famous — partly, I think, because he really wasn’t all that great.
His poetry was uneven. Some of it was spacey, word picture stuff that was like a cross between E.E Cummings and ASCII art. Some of it was sentimental slop in the vein of Rod McKuen. What I liked best (being 15) was his humor – scatological, vile, and unrepentant in its anti authoritarianism. More than that, I liked Claire because he had time. He only worked when he needed money, and he mostly just hung out — and he had time to talk to a kid who wanted to know everything about art and truth and beauty and who asked a whole lot of really stupid questions.
I don’t know what happened to Claire. When I came back to Venice in the early eighties, he was gone. He had always been a private man, not interviewing with the poetry press and not liking to be photographed. I had one of his books somewhere, but it’s gone now. Even if I knew where it was, because of the paper, it would be dust and crumbles now.
But he had time. That was the exception — most of the creative people I knew were busy, and moving forward. I was lucky to meet a few who head time for a kid. They were the people that pretty much determined the direction my life took. Venice was a hotbed then — a throbbing pulse of new culture, and it’s really hard to convey the feeling of excitement that was floating around then. Things were changing, and everybody wanted to see what came next.
NOTE: The large image of Claire Horner at the top of the page comes from filmmaker and photographer Leland Auslender’s short film Venice Beach in the Sixties: A Celebration of Creativity. Look for more on that film and other of Auslender’s work in DI in the future. In the meantime, to learn more about Auslender and his “Celestial images” inspired by the years he spent in Venice (and documented in the film), go to celestialimages.com.
Maurice Lacy the fellow he is with always sat in the corner by the window in the Venice west…
I knew Clair very well and I know what happened to him. I have most all or all of his books and we made a docunemtary about the Venice West Cafe. You may contact me if you wish. 310-589-2519.
Ralph.
I met Claire in 1965 at the Venice West Cafe when I was an 18 year old kid newly arrived from New Jersey. We chatted several times and exchanged letters for a couple years after I returned to NJ. A most interesting man who made me laugh and think. Used to have two of his book but they recently got away from me and I think I miss them. Pretty interesting combination of pedestrian and weird “poetry” but always good for a trip down memory lane. Diana
Clair was my father; my parents were divorced when I was 10 years old. Clair took off with me and we went to Florida for a year. We were tracked down and I was returned to my mother in 1957. I have great memories of that year. Clair was a few decades before his time, a very talented and complex person. He lived his life as he on his own terms. He built model airplanes with 8 ft wing spans that we would put in flight and chaise with the car. We had a large living room in an old farm house that would be full of “Dirty Dan the space pirate” in B29 looking space ships fighting more modern looking space ships all drawn by hand that moved by rolls of the dice, we saved the galaxy many times. He did sculpture, cartoons for the newspaper, worked as a radio announcer, sold vacuum cleaners, hustled pool, raised gardens, etc. He took great pride in converting preachers out of their faith and He could give you a verse of the bible that would tell you the opposite of the one you picked. From what my mother tells me he had an IQ of 166 and loved women and playing with your mind. He wanted to be a stay at home dad do his artwork and raise us kids. People convinced my mother (a Christian School Teacher, not a match made in heaven) that that was not normal. Of course he was not the norm in 1957. Sid Horner
I was very happy to discover articles about the gas house. I,m in the
caricature in the Gas House Gang by Shanna Moore.I left the Probation
Dept.about the time her photos were made. Anna Haag and I remainded
friends and in contact until she expired a couple of years ago. I don,t know what happend to John I left in Dec 59, for Europe,we had a big going away party at the Gas House. I first stayed with Anna,s family for a few months and returned to Detroit to start over again. When the Probation
told me to move out of Venice,that was the end. I still visit Venice,was there two days ago. I,m aretired Social Worker,got my Master,s 1976,still living in So. Ca
I too came to Venice as an 18 year old college student in 1963. One of my proudest possessions is a button that says: “Veteran of the Venice West Campaign.” I had been reading, from the four of Clair Horner’s books that I still have, over the phone to a friend in the south of France. I was very please when i googled “Clair H. Horner” and got this page… It’s 2:00 in the morning and I have a grant proposal to finish in the morning so I’m not going to go into all of the memories that this brought up tonight,.. but I do want to say that I have read and reread these books for 46 years and I am still blown way by the flashes of brilliance and humanity in them. Clair Horner was a everything he said he was. He was a man who wrote books had them printed in editions of a thousand and sold them one at a time in coffee houses, on the beach and in Olivia’s diner in Venice. He lived in a world of beatniks, drank buttermilk and liked women.
He wrote things that I still find profound and sometimes prophetic after all this time. I was writing a piece to post on BBC about the conviction of Scientology, in France, on charges of fraud, when I quoted Clair: “You couldn’t make a religion too silly to be believed.”
I’ll repeat a few of my favorite Clair Horner epigrams:
“Religion safely places goodness in the realm of imagination, where it can’t bug the tyrants.”
“If you commit a large enough crime, you’ll get away with it, because no one will want to admit it happened.”
“The smart criminal stays on the right side of the law.”
“You can be unfaithful to no one but yourself.”
“Computers don’t depersonalize life; they personalize machines.”
“Kindness ad weakness look alike, to a careless observer.”
“Writing is like sex, you can’t say anymore than your audience is capable of hearing.”
And my favorite:
“I wish men were more interested in bridges than pyramids.”
Each of the above Quotes is from “Please Don’t Stumble Over the Brunch… on your way to lunch”
© Clair Horner 1967
“I think if the human race realized what it is it would die of embarrassment.”
“So far, I’ve saved about 200 people from being saved; including one ex-preacher. It’s important work”
“Of the beat scene and the square scene, I’m a little bit of neither one.”
from “Please Don’t Step On the Bacon” © Clair Horner 1963
The world could have used a lot more Clair Horners but there was only one.
PS. I still have four of his books and although the pages are a little brown they are not “dust and crumbles.”
It was a gas to see the picture of Maurice Lacy, who was, himself, a poet and musician. There was no mention of two of the strongest artistic figures on the beach at the time, Tamboo (Curtis Smith) singer and conga drummer, who later sat in with Dizzy Gillespie, who as I told my friend in France tonight, was the greatest entertainer I’ve ever known. I’ve seen Tamboo sing on a San Francisco Muni Bus late at night and get old Chinese women off their seats and on their feet clapping their hands. It was a wonderful world where we could smoke dope and play drums all night on the beach. Tamboo died three years ago in SF of prostate cancer. And there was, Eden Ahbez, who wrote the Nat King Cole hit “Nature Boy” and used to play a squeeze box and sing sea-shanties at the Venice West. Everybody knows what happened to Larry Bell… Does anyone know what happened to the painter, Ed Newell?
Thank you Sid, for that insightful portrait of your dad… Joey Tranchina 650.369.0330
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I have 4 of Clair Horners books:
“Please Don’t Step On the Bacon” © Clair Horner 1963
“Please Don’t Step On the Eggs Either” © Clair Horner 1964
“Please Don’t Sit On the Left-Overs” © Clair Horner 1966
“Please Don’t Stumble Over the Brunch… on your way to lunch” © Clair Horner 1967
When I came to Venice, I had just spent most of the summer in San Francisco, reading my poems in coffee-houses on upper Grant Avenue on bills with poets like Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg and Dan Langton. I was way down the list and read mostly after the first-string had left but there were often still still pretty girls left in the audience so I was cool with it, All that is to say, I was not overly impressed with the literary scene in Venice. While I did appreciate the integrity and grittiness of Stewart Perkoff’s work, I never considered Clair Horner a poet. But, even at the time, I did consider him a world-class epigramarian, a Humanist, and an individual deep thinker. Twenty years later when William Dickey, approved my book of poems, for a Master’s Degree at San Francisco State, he used the latin phrase “sui generis” (constituting a class of its own, unique), I took that as a tremendous compliment. I would extend that compliment to Clair’s work For all the good and bad in it, is unique and after almost 50 years, I still find the good in it to be exceptional.
I am writing this post for two reasons:
1. If anyone has copies of other books by Clair Horner, I would appreciate either Xerox copies, quality scans or access to the originals so that I can scan them myself, which takes less than 2 hours…
2. I would like to contact Sid Horner, Clair’s son, to obtain permission to post the entire body of Clair’s work (unedited) on a web page dedicated to that purpose.
I believe that there is much in them that is worthy of being preserved.
“Man is like a dog, with a leash in his mouth, looking for a Master.”
<<< Clair Horner
Joey Tranchina
email me at; joey4rigs@earthlink.net &/or joeyfoto@free.fr
FYI: I live between Redwood City California & Séte, France. I have directed a needle exchange program in Silicon Valley, for 20 years, I am currently developing a medical support project in Mali, West Africa, and have just begun a series of translations of the poems of Giillaume Apollinaire.
For all his independent ways and boho/hobo habits, Clair was a very square guy with a traditional morality. He neither drank nor did drugs, and he was by turns exasperated, amused, or pitying of those who did. Mostly he was cheerful and jocular, and laughter was his second language. He lived a like religious monk but was an avowed atheist. He had no politics that I could detect and simply wanted people to be kind to one another. I liked him very much and think of him as an example of Venice’s more benign and benevolent aspect.
In 1973 I bought a red 544 Volvo and left Massachusetts for LA in search of Ed Ruscha I found Ed living in Hollywood. I wound up sleeping in my car in Venice and hanging out at Mr Jone’s Pub playing pool and listening to Clair.We would fly rubber powered model planes on the beach. Clair was Venice to me and now in the cold of New England I remember those warm nights and beers at Mr Jone’s Pub.
When I left to go back to Boston, Clair painted a beautiful Palm tree on the side of my car.
I met Clair in Fairmont West Va. in the late fifties.He was one of the most interesting characters I ever met.
I had a few copies of his poems somewhere. What ever happened to him?
I met Clair in the late 1950′s in Fairmont, WV. He was quite a character. I still have some of his poems.