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Fug You
An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side
Description
Fug You is Ed Sanders’s unapologetic and often hilarious account of eight key years of “total assault on the culture,” to quote his novelist friend William S. Burroughs.
Fug You traces the flowering years of New York’s downtown bohemia in the sixties, starting with the marketing problems presented by publishing Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts, as it faced the aboveground’s scrutiny, and leading to Sanders’s arrest after a raid on his Peace Eye Bookstore. The memoir also traces the career of the Fugs — formed in 1964 by Sanders and his neighbor, the legendary Tuli Kupferberg (called “the world’s oldest living hippie” by Allen Ginsberg) — as Sanders strives to find a home for this famous postmodern, innovative anarcho-folk-rock band in the world of record labels.
Fug You traces the flowering years of New York’s downtown bohemia in the sixties, starting with the marketing problems presented by publishing Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts, as it faced the aboveground’s scrutiny, and leading to Sanders’s arrest after a raid on his Peace Eye Bookstore. The memoir also traces the career of the Fugs — formed in 1964 by Sanders and his neighbor, the legendary Tuli Kupferberg (called “the world’s oldest living hippie” by Allen Ginsberg) — as Sanders strives to find a home for this famous postmodern, innovative anarcho-folk-rock band in the world of record labels.
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Praise
“This brilliant memoir not only chronicles the band?s early days, but paints an outrageous, inspiring picture of life among the artistic outlaws of New York?s Lower East side in the `60?s.”
New York Post, 12/11/11 “Sanders…brings us back to those idealistic days.”
Baltimore Sun, 12/8/11 “In short, impressionistic chapters, Sanders details his adventures, as well as his encounters with seemingly everyone who was anyone in the Beat and hippie scenes…Sanders provides a fly-on-the-wall view of many facets of a turbulent decade.”
Metro Focus, 12/13/11 “In addition to Sanders? enlightening personal take on New York in the ?60s, the pages of Fug You are lined with wonderful gems from the poet?s personal archive. Between the covers the reader will discover doodles by the likes of Burroughs and Sanders himself, rare Fugs concert photos and flyers, many drawings of cannabis leaves, intimate shots of Allen Ginsberg and other demented, wonderful esoterica.”
New World Review, Vol. 5, Num. 28 “At its best, Fug You evokes the wide-eyed spirit of adolescence, with its delusions of purity and heartbreaking enthusiasm and dynamism.” Huffington Post, 1/3/12
New York Post, 12/11/11 “Sanders…brings us back to those idealistic days.”
Baltimore Sun, 12/8/11 “In short, impressionistic chapters, Sanders details his adventures, as well as his encounters with seemingly everyone who was anyone in the Beat and hippie scenes…Sanders provides a fly-on-the-wall view of many facets of a turbulent decade.”
Metro Focus, 12/13/11 “In addition to Sanders? enlightening personal take on New York in the ?60s, the pages of Fug You are lined with wonderful gems from the poet?s personal archive. Between the covers the reader will discover doodles by the likes of Burroughs and Sanders himself, rare Fugs concert photos and flyers, many drawings of cannabis leaves, intimate shots of Allen Ginsberg and other demented, wonderful esoterica.”
New World Review, Vol. 5, Num. 28 “At its best, Fug You evokes the wide-eyed spirit of adolescence, with its delusions of purity and heartbreaking enthusiasm and dynamism.” Huffington Post, 1/3/12
Village Voice, 11/29/11
“[A] vivid memoir of the decade…Today?s Occupy Wall Street movement can take, if not a lesson, at least inspiration (and perhaps solace) from Sanders?s triumphs and travails.”Publishers Weekly, 12/12/11 “[Sanders] engagingly depicts how the culture of New York City in the 1960s shifted from the beats to the hippies.” PopMatters.com, 12/5/11 “Sanders tells the story in a series of vignettes that are sometimes funny, occasionally frightening, and typically littered with the names of The Famous and The Dead…In the end this is a work that recalls with vivid and loving detail the haphazard glory of those wild, wild bygone times.” Hartford Advocate, 12/7/11 “Sanders ties all of his earliest threads—up to 1970—together in the most engagingly idiosyncratic memoir of the year…Indeed, now that his friend and mentor Allen Ginsberg is dead, Ed Sanders is the strongest living link between the Beat Generation, the hippies and all other underground currents that have trickled along the countercultural pipeline since then.” High Times, February 2011
“[A] vivid memoir of the decade…Today?s Occupy Wall Street movement can take, if not a lesson, at least inspiration (and perhaps solace) from Sanders?s triumphs and travails.”Publishers Weekly, 12/12/11 “[Sanders] engagingly depicts how the culture of New York City in the 1960s shifted from the beats to the hippies.” PopMatters.com, 12/5/11 “Sanders tells the story in a series of vignettes that are sometimes funny, occasionally frightening, and typically littered with the names of The Famous and The Dead…In the end this is a work that recalls with vivid and loving detail the haphazard glory of those wild, wild bygone times.” Hartford Advocate, 12/7/11 “Sanders ties all of his earliest threads—up to 1970—together in the most engagingly idiosyncratic memoir of the year…Indeed, now that his friend and mentor Allen Ginsberg is dead, Ed Sanders is the strongest living link between the Beat Generation, the hippies and all other underground currents that have trickled along the countercultural pipeline since then.” High Times, February 2011