Jerry Brown

Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (“Jerry Brown“), lawyer, author, politician,  two times Governor of California (from 1975-1983 and from 2011-2019), sometime Presidential hopeful, might at first glance seem an unlikely component of Beat history, Beat studies, the Beat sensibility, but on second thoughts – maybe not.  He is most easily identified with his long-term friendship with poet Gary Snyder (in 1975 Brown appointed Gary as the first chairman of the newly-established California Arts Council, a position he held onto for the next four years). But he appears on the Beat radar way before that. As a student at Berkeley, in the early “Sixties, at a pivotal time, he had as his teacher Mark Schorer who had played a major role in the famous Howl trial some few years earlier appearing as a star witness for the defense.

Allen writing to Gary about the then-Governor back in April of 1976:

“Going to LA this Sunday for a local Buddhist festival at UCLA – meet Ken Kesey and visit (Timothy) Leary in San Diego Federal Jail – working on his case again with PEN Club and Amnesty International to get him out. He says Gov. Brown visited him in jail, before he was released from California authority last year.

and adding:
“Is Brown ripe enuf to run for Prexy?”  (Brown in 1976, made the first of his three unsuccessful Presidential runs)

Steve Heilig, writing many years later, looking back on the occasion of a 2009 event in San Francisco celebrating the publication of The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, recalls:

“Snyder genially read a few seemingly random selections from the book’s letters, and then said ‘Well, we’re all old pals here, let’s talk. Any questions or comments?” Brown, sitting nearby, stood somewhat stiffly and said, “Yes, Gary, I need to correct something in one of the letters in this book.”

“Ginsberg’s letter implies that I, as Governor, might have had something to do with Leary being released”, Brown complained.. nicely yet firmly, to Snyder. “I want it known that I never did visit Leary there.”

OK, then. It was safe to say that to most if not all present, this seemed a tremendous stretch and some ado about nothing, especially over thirty years later. Silence ensued, and even Snyder seemed at a loss for a reply to his old friend.”

“What, are you running for office or something?”, Heilig calls out. Turns out he was.

 

Back to 1976, and the Beats were all behind him. A now curious artifact from that period is the little compendium Thoughts, published by none other than City Lights.

which included a few Zen-like observations like:
“I don’t have any goals: they will evolve as we go along.”
“We’re going to move left and right at the same time.”
“Life just is.  You have to flow with it.  Give yourself to the moment.  Let it happen.”
The contrast between this spiritual seeker and the seasoned establishment politician made Brown, an enigma – a feeling that was voiced on his 1992 campaign, and indeed has dogged him throughout his long and illustrious career.

This 2011 Politico article tracks  him “from moonbeam to mainstream”

From more recent times:

In 2020 he was subjected to a long and extensive history by the Berkeley Oral History Project  

From this past December, a Conversation with Governor Jerry Brown from the Public Policy Institute of California

and, similarly from December – contemporary thoughts – here

Jerry Brown will be celebrating his 88th birthday today