Yet keeping a barge seems also to have liberated the otherwise selfabsorbed Trocchi into a style of observant visual and aural notation, soaked in the attenuated present. Perhaps heroin should also be given some credit for this perceptual patience. On the other hand, there is nothing more tedious than Trocchi's rants proselytizing for drugs, or his paranoid philosophizing about conformity. "While the mediaeval Church couldn't burn every heretic, it is just possible that the modern state can, even without recourse to the atomic bomb. . . ." If he seems to have had something of a persecution complex, reality sufficiently supported it: local narcs were on his case quickly, tailing and harassing him (mainly because he was pushing as well as using), and eventually he was caught selling drugs to a minor, and had to flee the country before sentence was passed, sticking his friend George Plimpton for the bail money while stealing two of Plimpton's suits. Back in London, he registered as an addict, received his drugs from the state, and settled down to elder bohemian status, issuing Situation1 manifestos such as "Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds," which called for cultural revolt, sly subversion, and a life of play (he was very big p л pjers and trocchiland 127 c H £ L S t « I ludens), helping to organize free universities with R. D. Laing, °П • out at the Edinburgh Poetry Festival with Ginsberg and ghs signing and pocketing advances for sequels to Cain's Book, but ®иГГ wrjt;ng anything of significance again. Perhaps he'd already said what he had to. _ I remember reading Cain's Book when it first came out, in i960, and being drawn to its intimate, truthtelling narrative voice. Though it sput t rs in the last onethird, and doesn't quite add up to a satisfying whole, I'm amazed on rereading it how sharp and frank the best parts remain, what a fine writer he was in the traditional sense-strong sentences and vivid scenemaking-but how irritating the bohemian rants have become. Trocchi's posturing about the hazards of drug addiction betrays more than a little grandiose selfpity, using the excuse of the Great Writer. You can agree that American antidrug laws are idiotic and still hold Trocchi responsible for the waste of his talent, not to mention the damage he brought to others (pimping his young wife, dealing to minors). He would have retorted that the others acted of their own free will. Today, I put antennae out for the feel of Trocchi in his old waterfront hideout. Here is the way he described it: Pier 72 is the one immediately north of the new heliport which lies in the southern end of the basin formed by Piers 72 and 71. The remainder of the basin is used to moor the scows of a stone corporation with quarries at Haverstraw, Tomkin's Cove, and Clinton Point on the Hudson River. Piers 72 and 73 are close together. Nine scows at most are moored there.