Ned Polsky (1928–2000)

“The cool world is an iceberg, mostly underwater.”

A 1999 reprint edition of a 1967 compilation of articles written between 1960 and 1965; the cover calls it “a classic study of deviance.” I don’t know if this was revelatory for the time, but it is an entertaining time capsule, interesting as a slice of social commentary from a different era. Poolroom hustlers, Village beats, and consumers of pornography hardly even qualify as deviant in the mass/consumerist/media culture of our 21st c., but some readers can still value this as a primer on the sociology of deviance and a critique of social research methodology. Hustlers, Beats and Others follows in the footsteps of David Maurer’s The Big Con, stands for a kind of precursor to Laud Humphrey’s Tearoom Trade, and reads like a dissection of bits of Luc Sante’s Low Life projected into the late-20th c. What makes it especially worthwhile, though, is the idiosyncratic presentation of Polsky, with a combination of high-brow and low-, scholarship and polemics.

Polsky adds a new foreword and an extra chapter (“Thirty Years On”) to the 1967 edition, allowing for the kind of justificatory self-reflection that few obscure academics ever get to indulge in, and he makes the most of it. He gets to take credit for his early, unusual access to various midcentury American subcultures and a trenchant, countercultural critique of sociological methodology (‘criminology is bullshit!’), but mostly he gets to explain and demonstrate a prose style—his “associative and synthesizing bent”, appealing to those who enjoy “the likes of Mulligan’s Stew or Life: A User’s Manual”(yes!)—in contrast to the typically “inane and repetitious academic manuscripts” that get published. (He also lets us know that audio book is an oxymoron). He favors the functionalist approach over the ‘labeling’/linguistic approach (bye bye early Wittgenstein!), claims Nietzsche as an inspiration, and deploys epigraphs from Pascal and Al Capone. His discussion of pornography alludes to Sade and Genet.

Hustlers, Beats is rich in such suggestive referents, and Polsky can let loose a good rant; the combination of scholarship and polemics is more common now, he knows (“Thirty Years On”),

but for reasons that are harmful to humane learning and the disinterested exercise of intellect. The polemics usually come from ideologues with nonscientific or anti-scientific or even anti-intellectual agendas: neo-Marxists, ethnicity freaks, neo-Burkeans, reverse racists, gender benders, cold warriors searching for new enemies, Leo Strauss epigones, Billy Graham crackers, populist multiculturalists or anti-elitists, neo-Jungians, and various road companies of the Paris Follies. Pow!

A receptive reader will encounter nuggets of offbeat information, turns of phrase to savor, and insightful ideas to ponder. To wit:

“Conning is only a matter of degrees.”

“Hustling distributes its rewards strictly on the basis of individual talent and hard work, and depends upon the kinds of skills that a lower-class youth has a good chance to acquire—unlike, say, the skills whose acquisition depends on parental encouragement of reading.” Ouch.

From a footnote: circa 1960, “America’s most racially integrated deviant subculture is probably the homosexual.” Halloween and Mardi Gras are drag balls.

“A huge dimension of the hustler lexicon is in the use of obscene exclamations. The hustler is particularly given to these exclamations when he unintentionally misses a shot.”

“The hustler’s nickname is a monicker, not an alias.”

Beats are hip but are “definitely not hipsters.”

The etymology of “hip” derives from opium smoking.

“The majority of Beats are not exhibitionists or publicity-seekers, but want to remain inconspicuous as far as squares are concerned…The cool world is an iceberg, mostly underwater.”

Beats’ avoidance of work is an ideological refusal, “not so much a sign of inability to accept the reality principle as a sign of disaffiliation from particular, mutable realities…”

Beats are not apolitical but antipolitical, something new in American history.

“An extraordinary number of male Beats, white and black, are fully bisexual or in some cases polymorphous perverse.”

Beat poetry is bad poetry. “The practice of spontaneity gets rid of ‘artificiality’ by getting rid of art,” though “a good deal of Beat literature that fails as Art is quite enjoyable as Wisecrack.”

Technological change benefits producers of porn: witness the increased sales of 8mm cameras…and CD-ROMs (!)

Social research usually stumbles against the realization that “the behavior of people often contradicts their attitudes…and such discrepancy is widespread in areas of life involving socially encouraged hypocrisy and unawareness, as in the case of sex behavior.”

“Just think of what may happen when most people have attached to their telephones a screen on which they can see the caller.”

Yeah. Imagine that.… (mer)