In Heaven Everything Is Fine

I've blogged about Peter Ivers before, the musician and provocateur who cut a legendary figure at late-60s Harvard, and was a confidant of Doug Kenney. I'd run across Peter in my reading every so often, and always suspected that there was an interesting story there.

Now I know for sure thanks to a new bio, In Heaven Everything Is Fine, written by Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz. The book (very wisely I think) identifies Ivers' still-unsolved murder as the hookiest part of the tale, and their emphasis on this gives In Heaven a pretty interesting structure. First there is a chapter of Ivers' "unsolved life," told in standard chronological fashion; then a few pages of quotes about that period from friends famous and otherwise; then finally a few pages of quotes about the murder investigation, from the detectives and friends involved in it.

I usually get irritated by gambits like these, feeling that they're gimmicky, hiding flaws in the life and/or the telling, but I have to say that in this case, it works. When it doesn't, which happens once in a while, it's due to something that the authors could not control. When the glamor of a subject is unrealized potential rather than mature achievement, one is stuck with a parade of assertions. These are ultimately unsatisfying--even if notable people are making them. Everybody thinks their friends are geniuses, everybody mythologizes their college years, and if Peter Ivers had gone to Michigan instead of Harvard, this book wouldn't exist.

But that is not the fault of the authors (or Ivers), and since it does exist, I'm glad they did it with such skill. The one persistent annoyance I felt as I read was a reticence to really dig into Ivers' flaws; after all, this was a man who was murdered, probably by somebody who knew him well. Obviously not everybody was charmed by his mercurial genius; obviously he didn't treat everybody well. But since this book depended on access to Ivers' friends and family, it's not surprising that it is 97% positive. It's a credit to the authors that there is any negative at all, and if In Heaven is a bit of the anti-Wired, well, so be it.

At book's end, one is not only left with a sense of what might have been, but also of the cruelty contained in peaking too young. From the doubly lofty heights of Harvard in 1968, it seemed a foregone conclusion that "the Three Musketeers," Doug Kenney, Peter Ivers, and Tim Mayer would change the world. Out of those three, only Kenney did, and even Doug's success, as prodigious and rapid as it was, could not have existed without the efforts of many other, less celebrated talents. National Lampoon would've collapsed in 1971, mostly unlamented, had it not been for Henry Beard; and it would've made Doug and Henry a lot less rich had O'Donoghue, Kelly, Hendra, McConnachie, McCall, Miller, and O'Rourke not been on board, just to mention eight off the top of my head. Not to mention Belushi, Ramis, and Chase, each of whom had their own genius, and had been living their own lives, which just happened to cross Doug's in the right way at the right time. And of course there was Matty Simmons, who for all his flaws, was the reason the opportunity existed in the first place, not only NatLamp but also Doug's great launching pad Animal House. So perhaps what Peter Ivers was, was Doug Kenney without that beautiful piece of serendipity named National Lampoon. Both men died mysteriously, by the way, and a leading theory of each is a drug deal gone bad. The role of drugs in distorting and dismantling the dream of the Sixties is a theory I explore deeply in this novel I just finished, so I'll leave it there.

In Heaven places great emphasis on the LA punk/New Wave scene of the early 1980s, and Peter's role in it. In my humble opinion most of that has turned out to be a dead end, both artistically and as a larger cultural force. Every generation since the Beatles feels it needs a cultural movement to define itself, but that's a structure imposed on reality to keep us consuming media. Applying a little historical distance, it's difficult to ascertain which is more dubious, breaking time into generations, or looking to guitar players to sum up the zeitgeist. So John Belushi liked Fear. So what? More people in 1981 listened to Shostakovich, to pick a name at random, and that doesn't mean that Shostakovich played a huge role in defining the art and music of that time. Whatever impact Fear might've had came from the fact that its listeners were between 16-30--and that's the footprint of marketing, not art.

Punk and New Wave were surface changes, not structural ones, and any claims of vast impact are immediately and profoundly gainsayed by the quality of our current culture. Which is not to say that people can't enjoy them, only that people need to be more aware of the great hustle that's being run--"we'll give you media, but we'll keep all the money and power." And within media, the commercial imperative of the constant new thing, and the political effects that this has had. Ever-shifting cultural change--rebellion as fashion--gets in the way of the broader structural changes human society needs. Attention paid to hairstyles is attention not paid to other things.

Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean there wasn't something there only that, like the comedy of the Seventies, punk and new wave was no match for the assimilative abilities of those who control our culture. In the case of the comedy, I can see what was lost, and mourn it; but I'm not surprised it was lost. I'm more surprised that something new and authentic existed for as long as it did. In the case of the music, I like Devo and USA's "Night Flight" as much as the next guy, but to me their influence is limited to one small tidal pool (or, if you prefer, market segment). Since Frank and Buckholtz clearly love that time, that scene, I recognize their love, even if I don't fully buy its larger significance. The Church of the Sub-Genius is a fantastic artifact; satirically brilliant; if it didn't exist, it would necessary for someone to create it. But its aggregate impact is probably smaller than one single mega-church in Texas. Artists don't like to hear stuff like that, but it's the only thing (besides original sin) that explains the mess we're in.

Still, if you're interested in any of the worlds Peter Ivers touched--Harvard in the 60s, LA in the 70s, bands like Fear and Devo, David Lynch--In Heaven Everything is Fine is well, well worth reading. Pick up a copy.