things up. For a while there, he was
a player.

Our paths crossed once, although
I didn’t get to talk to him. [ was out
one October evening in 1968 at the
University of B.C, campus, where !
had been invited to give a reading
from a just-published novel of mine
titled Erebus.

The professor who'd set up the
reading had promised me 4 full

* house, since these were his students. .

1] 1 got the impression they had to

STRICTLY PERSONAL

JERRY RUBIN deserves to
be saluted, despite everything
‘he did.
“us He was reviled in the media in
the Iate ‘60s for being an anarchist
pinko. Yippie freak, and was reviled
in the media’ again in the ‘80s when

he ‘reappeared as'a networking yup-
pic venture banker. He died afer

‘being sun down'by.a car as he- A ;

rossed the road to his new penty;.
house ‘in Hollywood. The unfajmess-
of iti ‘matched only by the pitiless

‘ come. Still, when I climbed on stage, _

dt was to look out over a barely half-
» full auditorium. The prof, I could
:sec, was furning. Me, | just wanted .
, to.die.:

Of course, I heroically forged on,
trying not to let my hypersensitive
writer's ego cause me to burst out
crying in public, and read from the
most outrageous, controversial part
of the book.

No one really blinked. ‘But there
was polite applause. Afterwards, as
promised, the professor and a few
other academics took me out for
drinks — at, you guessed it, the -

Faculty Club.

All the way over, the prof apolo-

gized for his students’ failure to
“show en masse. He couldn't figure it
out. Had some kind of rebellion bro-
ken out? Indeed, it had.

The expressions on the profes-

‘irony, Which I'm sure he would have ‘sor’s and his colleagues’ faces when

ppreciated, had the situation: ,
“involved someone other.than him,»
“Thad no ‘problem y with Jerry’ s

areer path course-corrections. | me

“don" tthink he ever, betrayed any.

‘cause he espoused by abandoning it’ :

' "and | going over to the other side, a as
é lefties claimed after he'd,
switched. from, anti-war, protests to
rarketing, ‘Rutritional drinks.
The war he had opposed was .
long sisice over, and what's wrong’
“with: selling nutritional drinks?
erty accomplished what he
wanted to accomplish.’ He helped |

d,the Vietnam war. ignominously, | .

plenty of people will ‘argue: But he ;
definitely, had his Andy Warhol. *
Moment, ai and he used it to 0 shake:

we entered the building were won-

. derful to behold, First, there was the
music, with the speakers tumed up

- full blast. And-then there was the
cfowd, made'up mainly of scruffy,
long-haired students. The cloud of
pot smoke, was so thick that one
risked secondary THC reactions just
by being there.
The professor's dismay turned to

rage when he realized where most of

_ his students had been when they ~
were supposed to be in the auditori-
um listening to me read. -

A gang of excited, stoned stu-*.
dents, including some of “his.” .
--charged up to the professor and told
him gleefully: “We've liberated the’
> Faculty Club! Your days are num-

vIn 1968, Jean- Claude Killy |
: brought home three Olympic
* gold medals. In 1992, Killy,
led the effort to bring the
Winter Olympiad home to ©
N the Savoie, “I don't think I'l
ever want to slow down,” he
says: Which is why both on
the slopes and off Killy
"wears a timepiece he can
rely on. Rolex.

as in in skiing, timning is everything”

’ Oyster: Perpetual
Datejust

Jean: Claude Killy

Oyster Perpetual
GMT. Master

SWEDISH
JEWELER

. Park Royal South 922 2255: ©
Pacific ic ‘Centre Atrium/Upper Level 682- on 1

bered, Enemy of the People!"
Hiturned out Jerry Rubin had led
about 1,000 students across the cam-
pus and invaded the Faculty Club.
He had been making an appear-
ance, draped in a North Vietnamese
National Liberation Front flag. at the
invitation of a student-power group.
He was at his peak asa media
star, The Youth International Party,
which he'd founded along with
Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner, .
had been instrumental that summer’
in organizing the anti- Vietnam
protests outside the Democratic

‘National Convention in Chicago,

which led to the famous trial of the ”
Chicago Seven, Rubin being one of
the main defendants,

Let's just say the Can/Lit prof
booked me for a reading on a bad
day, Still, I thought the party was
great. The truth is, Lkind of related
to the students. The Faculty Club
was the embodiment of smug acade-

Sunday, December 18, 1994 ~ North Shore News - 7

mic elitism and privilege, A little bit
of a shaking up wouldn't hurt,

I was still under 30 at the time,
you see, And it was, indeed, Jerry
Rubin who had coined the phrase,
“Never trust anyone over 30."

[Uscemed tike some kind of
badge of identification at the time. so
you could tell your soldiers from the
other side's. This did nol make my
30th birthday any casier to endure
when it inevitably arrived afew.”
yeurs later, 1 consoled myself, in my
bitterness at having passed over the
great generational divide, with the
thought that, psychologically, it must
have been even worse for Rubin, ©
who was actually a couple of years
older than me, and had hit the wail
first.

It was what he did with his life
after his moment of media glory that
strikes me as the must interesting
part. He might easily have gone the
way of his old buddy, Abbie ‘

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Hoffman, who couldn't stand not
being the centre of attention, and
eventually umed to standup came-
dy. When he couldn't bear to live
with his diminished stature any
longer, he committed suicide,

Jerry Rubin may have tumed into
the definitive yuppie, but you have to
give him points for having had the
chergy to reinvent Mt himsell.

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