Tales of a Cultural Conduit and The Nervous Set

The best portrait of Jay Landesman as a cultural conduit was written by Beat historian John Clellon Holmes, 'Most of the time, Landesman was that unique phenomenon in a status-drunk society: a man who knew that the only really hip style is the next one, the one that hasn't been established yet. In the late forties he shifted his attention to the popular arts without sacrificing his sense of the culture as a whole.' Landesman's significant contribution might be his originally conceived lifestyle which, set against the conformity of the Eisenhower years, places him at the heart of that group of 'movers and shakers' who permanently changed America's personal and artistic values. Tales of a Cultural Conduit takes us from Landesman's life as an antique dealer in St. Louis, to New York and his magazine Neurotica: the Authentic Voice of the Beat Generation and on to the Crystal Palace Cabaret Theater in St. Louis. where he invited then unknown artists to break in their act including Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, and Lenny Bruce. 'The cocktail hour was orchestrated like an opera bouffe - music, booze and just the right mix of jarring people...Landesman produced Waiting for Godot instead of South Pacific and thus heralded the cultural renaissance,' wrote Holmes. After a party that lasted ten years, the Landesmans headed for London, just as the place exploded into the kind of popular culture Landesman thrived on. While putting down permanent roots in England, he sent a manuscript , The Nervous Set, an exploration of life in New York in the 1950s, to Gershon Legman who urged him to publish it: 'It's a perfect portrait of the period which I do not believe has ever been portrayed at all, let alone so well.' And so it has to be included here, along with Landesman's reminiscences from birth to his very latest London tales, bringing his rare style full circle, proving that he continues to be a cultural conduit of an extraordinary kind.