On the Choad
Sadly, much of the academic canon has neglected a lost classic of literature. One of the great masterpieces of the early 1950s Beatnik movement, the novel that helped define that generation, On the Choad. This lost masterwork helped codify the struggling and confused youth of post-war America in the 1950s. The almost musical cadences and challenging discourses of social and ethnic taboo helped reveal the stasis of hegemony and expose the truth of a generation drifting toward douchebaggery and the self-scroteing need to pollute hotties with their greasy seed.
An improvised, rambling and poetic free structure, “On the Choad” is a brilliant classic by the writer Alan Greaseberg, pictured here, that deserves acclaim that has been long neglected. Here’s an excerpt:
Great New Jersey glowed red before our eyes. We were suddenly on Trenton Street among hordes of douchebags, some of them sprawled out on the street with their feet on the curb, hundreds of others milling in the doorways of saloons and alleys. “Wup! wup! look sharp for old Poppy McCollar there, he may be in Jersey by accident this year.” We let out the ‘bags on this street and proceeded to downtown Jersey. Screeching trolleys, scrotey frat ‘bags, Bleethed out hotties, cutting by, the smell of hair gel, Axe Body Shots and beer in the air, neons winking–“We’re in the big town, Sal! Whooee!” First thing to do was park the SUV in a good dark spot and wash up and dress for the night. Across the street from the Limelight we found a redbrick alley between buildings, where we stashed the SUV with her snout pointed to the street and ready to go, then followed the college ‘bags up to the club, where they got a room and allowed us to use their facilities for an hour… Old brown Jersey with the strange semi-scrote, semi-douchebag types going to work and spitting. Poppy stood in the cafeteria rubbing his belly and taking it all in. He wanted to talk to a strange middle-aged douchebagette woman who had come into the cafeteria with a story about how she had no money but she had buns with her and would they give her butter. She came in flapping her hips, was turned down, and went out flipping her butt. “Whoo!” said Poppy. “Let’s follow her down the street, let’s take her to the ole SUV in the alley. We’ll have a ball.” But we forgot that and headed straight for North Clark Street, after a spin in the Loop, to see the hootchy-kootchy joints and hear the bop. And what a night it was. “Oh, man,” said Poppy to me as we stood in front of a bar, “dig the street of life, the rank choads that cut by in Jersey. What a weird town–wow, and that woman in that window up there, just looking down with her big breasts hanging from her nightgown, big wide eyes. Whee. Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there.”
