Off the Shelf Grapefruit

uncounted pages; $3.50

FROM TWO ISLANDS, off each of the rims of Eurasia, from England and Japan, came John and Yoko together in union. The mighty figuring in their alliance of the images of east-west yin-and-yang accounts for much of the couple's hold on the consciousness of what has been called "our generation."

An extension of the vin-and-yang imagery is easily made to the cover of Yoko Ono's Grapefruit published this winter. It is a sunny book, almost square in format, though a little wider than long (a la Peanuts). The jacket is chiefly a bright yellow, though at its base is black lettering which claims that the "works and drawings [are] by Yoko Ono," and that the "introduction [is] by John Lennon." A large disc is cut from the yellow, and there in its place is a portrait of Yoko Ono. Black-and-white photograph, it has Yoko's grey face in the center, around that her black hair and shroud (which fall to the edge of the disc). and over that a white semi-halo. Across Yoko's black frontis are the magnificent gold letters g-r-a-p-e-f-r-u-i-t. But returning to yin-and-yang, what strikes one so about the portrait is that Yoko looks so strangely man-woman, so ambiguously east-and-west.

To find yin-and-yang everywhere is to err with the man who knowing that computers thought in only two positions (on/off, light dark, 1/0). concluded that all the world thought in complement. (The computer counts in binary, whereas we do it by decimals: anyone who doubts the superiority of the human mind may wonder. at this fact.) So let us drop the theme of vin-and-yang, except to quote the frontleaf and the backleaf:

Burn this book after you've read it

This is the greatest book I've ever burned

Within this interchange lies the problem of Grapefruit : is it good, or bad?

MY ROOMMATE, who is crazy and has done no thinking for better than a year, said of Grapefruit : "It's nothing, so incredibly nothing." A person whom I respect even more said of the book that only someone famous could get away with writing it. In general. then, it squirts. And Grapefruit's problems can mostly be laid on its orientation, which is definitely (almost exclusively) to those of us who are often stoned. Being obviously the work of someone who "must have been stoned" (often). it invites the reader to do likewise and rather effectively excludes the reader who doesn't. That is the tragic flaw of Grapefruit : that it is not for everyone, that it fails to embrace all men.

Grapefruit is, rather, the droppings of a group of freshmen sitting one night around an ash tray. They are stoned and each now and then utters things which are astounding in their insight. OH-WOW's abound; each is fascinated with each one's wit; life becomes a trip of insights. In Yoko's book, these insights are called pieces; they are grouped into sections ; and, small wonder, the sections together are termed Grapefruit . Moreover, each piece is of the type so common to stone sessions: the instruction . The instruction is the message one pens to oneself when stoned. It is invariably a great, creative, insighful idea which requires execution. (For sample: "Go from one room to another / opening and closing each door. / Do not make any sounds. / Go from the top of the building / to the bottom.") While stoned, one lacks the energy needed to put the idea into action: one jots it down for the morning after hoping then to be equally impressed by its brilliance.

Get stoned often enough, and you, too, can write a Grapefruit . The true achievement, by contrast, is to write a "Golden Book," one of those Simon-and-Schuster productions of our childhood, those books that everybody understood. Head books are best when, like the OZ books, they are written not with heads in mind. Straight things ought always to be preferred by heads; and those things consciously stoney, like black lights and day-glo or the present music of the Doors, ought ever to be shunned. Yoko is stoned, all through her book, and one wishes quite often that she would think, instead, in the world's terms.

STILL, Yoko is acknowledged as a wit, and we must acknowledge what it is that makes her great. (1) Originally, she was, like you and me, a nobody. But she happened to realize early what you and I are realizing now: something, you know, about how the world's freaky, and feed-your-head, and expand-your-mind, and you-too-can-be-creative, and just-get-stoned-enough-and-you'll-be-stoned-all-the-time. (2) In 1963, the year Kennedy died, the Beatles burst on the scene. We thought they were going to be just another rock group, though they would last a little longer and be remembered a bit more often. (3) But someone turned them on to drugs, and they led a global mind-revolution. (4) It was time for Yoko Ono to pack her bag and meet John (somewhere over Eurasia). (5) They symbolize it all. (6) The Beatles gave us an apple similar to that for which we were thrown out of Eden, and the problem, now, is to decide which one we prefer. (7) It all made Yoko and the Bearles very, very rich, richer than you or I will ever be, so much so that they have been elevated beyond the struggle with pain and "NO" which you and I shall always face. (8) This all made them great.

When John and Yoko met over Eurasia, they attempted to knell the death of rational thought. Our small minds are fearful of forfeiting that thinking, because we are the proletariat and are still so much at the mercy of the world that we wish to continue thinking in its terms. When told to change our heads, instead we insist on worrving about our bread. The Beatles and Yoko are into something that only a fool won't envy, but somehow the Stones are closer to recognizing the realities which box all but a lucky few. Before concluding that you like Grapefruit , ask yourself whether you would dare to give it to a worker riding the subway in the early morning. Recognize that the richness and formalism of Grapefruit's format in publication, reflected in its price, is the luxury allowed only to thoughts without cares. After the revolution, no one will pay for another's creativity.