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Rod McKuen Was the Bestselling Poet in American History. What Happened? (2022)
He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.
“He is not afraid to name and write about sorrow or grief or love or excitement or loss or fear.” In the ’60s, Chasar continued, “he offered a different model of masculinity to people, about how they could feel the world in ways that weren’t necessarily publicly available.” Hentoff witheringly describes the crowd at Carnegie Hall as “contingents of thirtyish women who might have come from the airline offices, the telephone company, innumerable typing pools.” Future Hollywood writer Nora Ephron wrote a McKuen takedown in Esquire, called “Mush,” that observes the audience at a D.C. show: “You won’t see any of your freaks here, no sir, any of your tie-dye people, any of your long-haired kids in jeans lighting joints. As early as 1977, for example, Richard Hell released the seminal New York punk track “ The Blank Generation.” Careful ears might notice that it sounds exactly like Rod McKuen’s 1959 beatnik satire “ The Beat Generation.”
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