Krassner chronicled his satirical pranks in his self-published magazine, The Realist.

Paul Krassner at City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, 2009. Photo by Heidi De Vries / Wikimedia Commons / CC by 2.0.

By Michael Simmons | The Rag Blog | August 14, 2019

REMEMBERING PAUL KRASSNER

• Listen to Thorne Dreyer‘s August 9 Rag Radio interview with Michael Simmons, Jonah Raskin, and Judy Gumbo Albert as they honor the memory of Paul Krassner.
• Read “Paul Krassner, 1932-2019: American satirist” by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.
• Also read “A ‘Yippie original’ remembers ‘Realist’ editor Paul Krassner” by Judy Gumbo Albert on The Rag Blog.

When I was 12-years old in 1967, my father Matty Simmons published Cheetah — a slick magazine designed for what the press called “hippies.” It was a fine publication — top-shelf scribes like Tom Nolan, Robert Christgau, and Ellen Willis contributed, editor Jules Siegel ran his legendary “Goodbye Surfing, Hello God” profile that announced to the world that Brian Wilson was a mentally ill genius and Mama Cass Elliot doffed her oversized duds and posed nude for a centerfold. But “slick” and “hippies” were oxymoronic and Cheetah tanked at the newsstand, folding in a year.

Though I was but a lad, I was paying attention and there was one contributor whose writings and exploits inspired in me a special delight that appealed to remnants of my mischievous childhood and a more sophisticated analysis of the ever so fucked-up world. That satirical terrorist was Paul Krassner.
Continue reading →