The premise of my Missing a Beat collection was, first, that the Beats dumped Seymour Krim. It’s like that scene in Goodfellas when DeNiro gets the news that Joe Pesci, instead of being made, got whacked.
“He’s gone.”
“Whaddya mean? asks DeNiro.
“Well, you know what I mean. He’s gone.”
Well, I just got news like that about Krim. But in my case, it was good news.
Not long after my book came out I saw that a new history of the Beats was also coming out. The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete Uncensored History of the Beat Generation threatened my whole thesis. Certainly any book that is complete would have to mention Krim, at least as editor of the The Beats (1960).
So I kept checking Amazon, waiting for the moment the publisher allowed searches inside the book so I could check the index and figure out how much humble pie I would have to eat. Would there be just one or two mentions, that I could dismiss as insignificant, or a handful that would force me to concede that the Beats were not literary Goodfellas? They didn’t whack Krim. He was just in witness protection.
But when the index came on line I learned that Krim is with Hoffa. Krim is swimming with the fishes alongside Luca Brasi.
Or as the voice on the phone told DeNiro, ”He’s gone. And we couldn’t do nothing about it.”
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