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3.5 AVERAGE
3.5 AVERAGE
I've had this book for some time. I bought it second hand and it turned out to be a signed copy. To a lady called Eleanor who got it signed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1988. I first came across Haynes when I watched an documentary about him, focused on his long running and record holding dinner party. That led to me actually having an email conversation with Jim's team and an invite to the party. Alas, I never got to go before he died. Which I regret.
If you haven't heard of Jim Haynes then you'd probably have no idea how influential he was. An American who having got himself stationed at an airbase outside Edinburgh set up a paperback bookshop in Edinburgh. That bookshop became the seed of a literary life that led to him setting up a literary festival - which I think is now absorbed into the overall Edinburgh Festival - and a theatre, The Traverse. Which is still going. He left Edinburgh, set up the Arts Lab in London, which was one of alternative London's central hubs. He's one of the founders of IT magazine. He went to Amsterdam set up Sucks and the Wet Dream Festival, which was all about the sexual revolution. Then Paris, where he got involved with World Passports and started to hold his dinner party, which went on until his death in 2021.
It's a very name dropping book, but it is impossible for it not to be because he knew everyone. He had dinner with Mary Whitehouse and Indira Gandhi. He organised one of Yoko Ono's first events in London. He knew Mick Jagger. He was a mover and shaker, but he never really became part of the establishment. He tried to stay true to his radical roots. In some ways he looks like the archetypal sixties guy, but his liberality about sex isn't entirely matched by his conservatism on violence in art.
The book's format is pretty interesting. There's Haynes's own words. Then there are notes and letters from friends about Haynes. And cuttings, letters and writing from the time. It's like a journal as much as an autobiography.
This is out of print now. I don't know if it will ever come back into print, but Haynes is a man worth knowing about. I wish I'd gone to the party.
If you haven't heard of Jim Haynes then you'd probably have no idea how influential he was. An American who having got himself stationed at an airbase outside Edinburgh set up a paperback bookshop in Edinburgh. That bookshop became the seed of a literary life that led to him setting up a literary festival - which I think is now absorbed into the overall Edinburgh Festival - and a theatre, The Traverse. Which is still going. He left Edinburgh, set up the Arts Lab in London, which was one of alternative London's central hubs. He's one of the founders of IT magazine. He went to Amsterdam set up Sucks and the Wet Dream Festival, which was all about the sexual revolution. Then Paris, where he got involved with World Passports and started to hold his dinner party, which went on until his death in 2021.
It's a very name dropping book, but it is impossible for it not to be because he knew everyone. He had dinner with Mary Whitehouse and Indira Gandhi. He organised one of Yoko Ono's first events in London. He knew Mick Jagger. He was a mover and shaker, but he never really became part of the establishment. He tried to stay true to his radical roots. In some ways he looks like the archetypal sixties guy, but his liberality about sex isn't entirely matched by his conservatism on violence in art.
The book's format is pretty interesting. There's Haynes's own words. Then there are notes and letters from friends about Haynes. And cuttings, letters and writing from the time. It's like a journal as much as an autobiography.
This is out of print now. I don't know if it will ever come back into print, but Haynes is a man worth knowing about. I wish I'd gone to the party.