Fielding Dawson has called his "Penny Lane" series transitional work. They are in fact the last of his first person(al) autobiographical prose, but transitional? I think not. They are, especially "Two Penny Lane," a stunning apex to his work. The Metropolitan world of two writer friends, as told in dialogue, memory, and dream, is brought to life with such crystal-clear language, and at times with startling shifts, so as to disarm the uninitiated reader. But being stunned into this world is a sublime event. You will see yourself at the end of the bar, in apartments, and at the ballgame with Lucky and Guy. Unable to contain yourself you will interact with them, in their dialogues and experiences, and share their world. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

Fielding Dawson has called the "Penny Lane" series transitional work. They are in fact the last of his first-person(al) autobiographical prose, but transitional? I think not. They are, especially "Two Penny Lane," a stunning apex to his work. The Metropolitan world of two writer friends, as told in dialogue, memory and dream, is brought to life with such crystal-clear language, and at times with startling shifts, so as to disarm the uninitiated reader. But being stunned into this world is a sublime event. You will see yourself at the end of the bar, in apartments, and at the ballgame with Lucky and Guy. Unable to contain yourself you will interact with them, in their dialogues and experiences.

THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY is subtitled (cleverly I might add): "A Big Little Book." It's pocket-sized but packed with Dawson's usual whallop! This book of stories is a mixed-bag filled with Dawson's prison workshop experiences, and odd character pieces that harken back to his projectivist period. A nice blend of old and new. A personal favorite of mine is "Lone Cowbo," I've read almost all of Dawson's work and have never seen anything like this from him before. Pick this ... up and enjoy the vitality of this American icon.

NO MAN'S LAND is Dawson's newest novel, and first published full-length work based on his experiences as a teacher in prison writing workshops. Dawson's prose is as sharp as always, and the interaction between the main character and his pupils is expressed precisely (though not stalely) through dynamic dialogue. Congrats also to Mike Sherick of Times Change for the simple yet elegant design of the book. Fans of Dawson take heed, this man just won't slow down!

There are now an immense amount of books about teaching writing to incarcerated person, by fiction writers who are teaching writing by profession. This one was less sophisticated than many, with painful cliches throughout. "Freedom is just another prison"?
Gawd.

Starting with "Virginia Dare," and "Will She Understand," Fielding Dawson has moved away from the first-person(al) autobiographical prose he became famous for towards what he calls his "social-focus writing." In those collections, and now finally with "The Orange in the Orange," he has relied on his experiences as an instructor in prison-writing programs to create a new emerging fiction; one not only from personal experience (and no longer using the first-person narrator) but from listening to others. Dawson sees this as an expansion of his art, extending beyond himself, out to other people and their stories. The newest entry in this expansion is "The Dirty Blue Car," (Wake Up Heavy, 1999), a knock-out story that fluidly merges his past and present styles.

Starting with "Virginia Dare," and "Will She Understand," Fielding Dawson has moved away from the first-person(al) autobiographical prose he became famous for towards what he calls his "social-focus writing." In those collections, and now finally with "The Orange in the Orange," he has relied on his experiences as an instructor in prison-writing programs to create a new, emerging fiction; one not only from personal experience (and no longer using the first-person narrator) but from listening to others. Dawson sees this as an expansion of his art, extending beyond himself, out to other people and their stories.

Fielding Dawson, American writer and painter (1930-1/5/2002)
Obituary by Wally Dobelis
A prominent book editor stopped me on the street to comment, bitterly, that no one in the big press had seen fit to remark on the passing of Fielding Dawson, a local NYC resident and one of the last survivors of the literary era that is associated with Black Mountain, the Beats, and their contemporaries in other forms of art, Pop, Shaped Canvas, as well as early Rock.

I knew Fielding as one of the stalwarts of Max's Kansas City, the legendary artists' hangout from 1965 to 1974, as a short story writer and baseball fan. He was the pitcher for Max's softball team, and he had a pitch for me too, to support The Shortstop, a literary journal he was trying to resuscitate. Fielding knew small press publishing; he had written and drawn illustrations for such literary journals of the era as Jonathan Williams's Jargon, Sparrow, Kulchur, Caterpillar, El Corno Emplumado, Joglars, Rockbottom, Mulch and The Zealot. The names bring back the flavor of the era. We talked a lot, in the company of the Old Curmudgeon, a prominent lawyer friend. OC fondly remembers traveling with Fielding to the Cedar Bar on University, and to Lion's Head on Christopher Street, two prominent watering places for artists and writers.

In 1930, after the birth of a son in New York, the Dawson family moved to the mother's home town, Kirkwood, Mo, near St. Louis, where dad found a job in journalism, and young Fielding acquired a taste for drawing and writing. In 1949 he joined the legendary Black Mountain College in Lake Eden, NC, to study painting under Franz Kline and writing under Charles Olson.

Black Mountain College was founded in 1933 as a community of students and teachers, to live and work together, by John Andrew Rice of Florida. It gained strength with the arrival of Joseph and Anni Albers, fleeing Germany after the Bauhaus was closed. Poet Charles Olson mentored a group of students later known as the Black Mountain Writers that included Charles Creeley, Robert Duncan, Joel Oppenheimer, Ed Dorn and Fielding Dawson, several of whom came back to teach. Among the 300 people who taught at BMC before the school closed in 1956 were also John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Buckminster Fuller.

The school experience shaped Dawson's life. After being drafted in the Army in 1953, as a conscientious objector, and experiencing military service in Heidelberg, Germany, where he was a cook, he came to New York. Here Franz Kline was setting the world of art on fire. The old (before the fire) Cedar Bar on University Avenue was home to Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and, occasionally Jackson Pollock, and Dawson wrote about them all. The recognition gained with his memoir of Kline, published in 1967 (the artist died in 1962), freed him of the drudgery of a service manager's job at Bon Marche on 6th Ave, and he could concentrate on writing and design (he created collages and artwork for a number of magazines), and teaching. And he wrote and continued to publish short stories.

Fielding Dawson taught writing to prisoners at Sing-Sing and Attica, near Buffalo, the site of the bloody 1971 uprising. His first creative writing class in 1984 changed his life and gave him a purpose, a commitment to facilitate self-discovery for convicts. Not an easy thing, violent men came to his classes with an attitude, and he had to learn how to criticize, all over again, in an environment of threat.

Recognizing his commitment, Larry McMurtry, then president of the American PEN, appointed Dawson to chair their languishing Prison Writing effort, with volunteers helping. He also had a radio program on WBAI, 1996-2000, reading prison inmates' writings on the air.

Of Dawson's recent books, "No Man's Land," (Dec. 2000) was a fictionalized account of his teaching, and "Land of Milk and Honey" (Fall 2001) was a collection of short stories. A review in the New York Times, described his style as loose, almost bebop. That was the way his generation wrote. Creeley and other reviewers have described it as fast shifts, doubling back and reversing, a way of telling a story that immediately convinces.

Of the historiographers of Black Mountain College, Fielding Dawson was the only one who actually studied there, and his eponymous 1970 book, revised and reissued in 1990, is in print. .

His 22 books were written over a nearly 50 year period, on a range of subject matter. Most are collections of short stories ( his mother bought him a typewriter at 15, remarking " we could use a new Saroyan.") There are also biographies, criticism, poems and novels. The title of the novel Penny Lane gave birth to Two and Three Penny Lane.

Black Sparrow Press, a recognized publishing house of many important poets of the era, took him on in 1969, with "Krazy Kat," a collection of short stories. This press was organized in 1966 by businessman John Martin to print the poems of Charles Bukowski, and took on a life of its own, as the flagship venue for Diane Wakoski, Clayton Eshleman, also Paul Bowles, Ed Sanders, William Everson and Tom Clarke.

Fielding Dawson had lived in this East Midtown- Gramercy neighborhood for 38 years, in the same house, sharing it for the past 25 with his wife, Susan Maldovan, a free-lance editor, and frequently traveling to prisons and universities to lecture on writing and on the literary period of which he was an integral part.

He was a periodic visitor at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO, and lectured at the University of Alabama in Montgomery and Wayne University in Indiana. They were active locally, as members of the Union Square Community Coalition and the Samuel J. Tilden Democratic Club. He died suddenly, on January 5, 20002, after returning home from a stay in the Beth Israel Hospital, where he had been fitted with a pace maker.

The survivors include a sister, Cara Fisher, of Canyon City CO. There will be a memorial service on Sunday, March 3, 3-7 PM, in the Parish Hall of St. Mark's Church In The Bowery.

Distributed with permission from Town & Village weekly newspaper (Hagedorn Communications).

Dawson's mysognious brattle is as unimaginative a blue urinal cakes. He lacks the humanity & humility of a solid writer, choosing instead to wander aimlessly & listlessly through tired topics and long-dead themes. Bury this book & buy something else.