FAMOUS FOR NEVER

A STORY OF FAME AND MISFORTUNE

BY

PETER NOLAN SMITH

Rome wasn’t burnt in a day. – James Steele

MANGOZEEN BOOKS 2024

In the 1970s city politicians launched countless projects to stem the tide of ‘white flight’. None of the doomed programs achieved their goals and the population of the Lower East Side shriveled from 120,000 to 60,000, never hitting zero, because cheap rents, proximity to the subways, and minimal police presence proved irresistible to malcontents disenchanted with the morality of the Silent Majority War and a diverse smattering of gays, drifters, artists, musicians, and addicts reversed the flow from the smoldering desolation.

Soon stutterers read poetry without ridicule to NYU coeds. Bums squatted derelict buildings without fear of landlords. Teenager girls denied cheerleader destinies were offered opiated ballerina gigs at sordid go-go bars. Graffiti artists painted heaven on toppled walls with spray cans. Hell portrayed itself without any artistic endeavors.

Jean-Michel Basquiat appeared out of nowhere. Andy Warhol recognized the young Haitian’s genius. His paintings sampled the history of black as if the icons were sampled by a hip-hop DJ, however his mania was cursed by fame and he said he wish he was nobody like me. Heroin was his pay day. Junkies normally only care about heroin, but Jean-Michel was blessed by an eternal desire to paint through his ever-tragic fame.

I knew Jean-Michel.

He once painted my refrigerator.

FAMOUS FOR NEVER recounts the opposite poles of fame and failure.

I saw him a week before his death.

The summer of 1988 at my apartment.

He left me a gift.

I wished he was still alive, but he emulated Nick Tosches’ first line of THE DEVIL AND SONNY LISTON.

“Sonny Liston was a man born to die.”

And that is the awful truth

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