Jody Scott: October 2015

During the late 40's Jody lived in Berkeley with George and Nancy Leite. They ran daliel's bookstore on Telegraph Ave. and published Circle Magazine. Both influential precursors to the birth of the Beat movement.

Jody and George co-authored as Thurston Scott the novel CURE IT WITH HONEY. Here is an entry in Jody's journal from Monday, Aug 30, 1948:

"Day as usual. G. in fine mood. All go to SF at 6 to De Angulo opening, then to A. Nin's, then to Italian restaurant, then to Mona's. Spend total of 1 fin. All somewhat sad. Bed late."

George and Anais Nin at book signing at daliel's

photo by Daliel Leite

Inside daliel's looking toward Telegraph Ave.

photo by George Leite

Jody circa 1950's

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_Magazine]

Praise For Jody Scott:

Russell Banks: “Wonderful time travel and voice.”

Robert Coover: “Marvelous characters. I nominated you for a Guggenheim.”

Theodore Sturgeon: “Huge enjoyment of Scott’s vitriol, hilarity, action and excitement.”

William Burroughs: “Many thanks…To be stuck in this body until I die…”

Samuel Delaney: “Scott is a superb social satirist.”

Bastei Lubbe (German publisher on book jacket): “A Woody Allen flavor.”

Seattle Times: “Sharp and entertaining. You must read carefully for she can point a caustic finger with a single throwaway line, but underneath, there is the sense that Scott loves humanity with all its weaknesses.”

Ian Watson: “Vigor, verve, vivacity, with some vital things to say about our shlock society.”

Michael Shea: “A hot, combustive English, an alembic wherein Raymond Chandler and Ms. Wollstonecraft-Shelley undergo an unholy and hilarious merger and a new Frankenstein’s Monster is born.”

About Jody Scott:

b. 1923 – d. 2007

From Jody's old site:

"Jody Scott, or Joann Margaret Huguelet as it says on her birth certificate - Mr. Scott came later closely followed by Mr. Wood, two characters out of P.G. Wodehouse (if Wodehouse had happened to marry Jean Genet) - was born in Chicago of an old-settler family of Fort Dearborn (as the toddlin' town was once called) with loose ties to the underworld.

"Ms. Scott attended Daniel Boone grammar school, Senn High, North Park College, Northwestern U. and U.C. Berkeley before crying out in clear, ringing tones: "Enough of this crap. If you wanna be a writer never, NEVER go to college or you'll come out a brainwashed zombie who offends nobody but writes like everyone else or as Monty Python used to say: 'Dull, dull, dull!' - the L's sounding like W's." Our subject then worked as a sardine packer, orthopedist's office assistant, Circle Magazine editor (knew Henry Miller and Anais Nin), artist's model at Art Institute Chicago, factory hand, cabbage puller (in Texas where I was arrested with my buddy Don Scott for hitchhiking and slapped around then thrown in jail for eight days; how stupid can "The Law" be? Its reasoning was: my gay friend {close pal of Leonard Bernstein and Tennessee Williams} had long hair, therefore we must be criminals), blue movie maker, headline writer for the Monterey Herald (that's where I got my spare, lean style), bookstore/art gallery owner, vacation land salesman and at many other fascinating trades, spent six months in Guatemala (in Antigua enjoyed a night alone with Gore Vidal at his house both madly talking) and [lived] in Seattle in a falling-apart house choked with ivy and blackberry brambles a stone's throw from Puget Sound and is the winner of the America's Ugliest Couch contest upon which I write every day from 9 AM to 2 PM Pacific time."

The Beginnings of the Beat Generation