|
Arthur Glick "Art" Kunkin (born 1928) is an American journalist, political organizer, machinist and New Age esotericist best known as the founding publisher and editor of the ''Los Angeles Free Press''. Born in New York City, he attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science and the New School for Social Research, eventually becoming a tool and die maker and joining the Trotskyite movement as an organizer for the Socialist Workers Party, where he was business manager of the SWP paper, ''The Militant.''〔(''Smoking Typewriters'' ) by John McMillian (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 37-41. Retrieved Feb. 22, 2011.〕 Beginning in the late 1940s Kunkin was associated with C.L.R. James and the radical Marxist Johnson-Forest Tendency. During the 1950s he was Los Angeles editor of their journals ''Correspondence'' and ''News & Letters'', while working as a master machinist and tool and die maker for Ford and General Motors.〔Stewart, Sean. ''On the Ground: An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Underground Press'' (PM Press, 2011).〕 During this period a number of theoreticians and organizers of the Johnson-Forest trend (including Raya Dunayevskaya, Martin Glaberman, Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs) were concentrated in the auto industry in Detroit, where they worked to recruit black workers and gain influence inside the auto workers' unions. In 1962 Kunkin left General Motors to go back to college and work toward a graduate degree. Soon afterward he had his first experience with a local newspaper on the staff of a Mexican-American paper in Los Angeles called the ''East L.A. Almanac''. "For the first time in my life I was writing about garbage collection and all kinds of community problems," he later recalled.〔''Uncovering the Sixties'' by Abe Peck (Pantheon Books, 1985), p. 22.〕 Meanwhile he was also doing political radio commentaries for KPFK Pacifica Radio while serving as the Southern California district leader of the Socialist Party. In May 1964 he produced the first trial issue of the ''LA Free Press'' as a one-shot distributed at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and May Market, a fund-raising event for KPFK. The response was favorable enough for Kunkin to start publishing the ''Freep'' (as it came to be called) on a regular basis starting in July. The core group of volunteers and supporters who got involved in the paper included people from KPFK, the bohemian crowd that hung out at the Papa Bach bookstore, and The Fifth Estate, a Sunset Strip coffee house which provided office space for the ''Freep'' in its basement.〔("Notes of a California Bohemian: Cafe Au L.A." ) Lionel Rolfe, ''dabelly.com''. Retrieved Feb. 22, 2011.〕 The paper soon became a nerve center of the burgeoning hippie scene.〔(''A Companion to Los Angeles'' ) (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), p. 329. Retrieved Feb. 22, 2011.〕 The atmosphere at the ''Freep'' was described by a reporter for ''Esquire'': "Kids, dogs, cats, barefoot waifs, teeny-boppers in see-through blouses, assorted losers, strangers, Indian chiefs wander in and out, while somewhere a radio plays endless rock music and people are loudly paged over an intercom system. It's all very friendly and rather charming and ferociously informal."〔''Previews of Coming Attractions'' by William Murray (World, 1970), p. 281.〕 Launched on a shoestring budget, the ''Free Press'' struggled for years. By 1969 circulation had exploded to 100,000 copies, but legal problems stemming from publication of a list of names of undercover drug agents put the ''Freep'' in a precarious financial position just as it was expanding its operations to include a printing plant, a typesetting firm and a small chain of bookstores. Underpaid staff members left in two waves of defections to form the competing newspapers ''Tuesday's Child'' and ''The Staff''.〔''The Paper Revolutionaries'' by Laurence Leamer (Simon & Schuster, 1972), p. 56.〕 By 1972 Kunkin and the paper were deep in debt to the very pornographers whose advertising had been the source of the paper's profits, and Kunkin lost control of the paper and was fired, rehired, and fired again, as the paper spiraled slowly into oblivion, paralleling the nationwide decline of the underground press. Kunkin's post-''Free Press'' career began with a stint as a professor of journalism at California State University, Northridge, followed by several years as president of the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, an esoteric mystical group founded by Manly Palmer Hall. This was followed by an apprenticeship in alchemy at the Paracelsus Research Society in Salt Lake City, where he edited their journal ''Essentia''.〔(An Interview with Art Kunkin ) Christopher Farmer, ''Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Tradition'' (Summer 1988). Retrieved Feb. 22, 2011.〕 He later became a lecturer in alchemy and other New Age topics at the Institute for Mentalphysics retreat center near Joshua Tree,〔("The Last Alchemist" ) ''Fortean Times'', June 2008. Retrieved Feb. 22, 2011.〕 and a columnist for the Desert Valley Star.〔("Notes of a California Bohemian: Art Kunkin: Mystic in Paradise" ) Lionel Rolfe, ''dabelly.com''. Retrieved Feb. 22, 2011.〕 ==References== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Art Kunkin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|