B.N. Duncan, 1943-2009
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-07-30/article/33429?headline=B.N.-Duncan-1943-2009
By Ace Backwords
Thursday July 30, 2009
Telegraph Avenue legend B.N. Duncan died in June at the age of 65. I
first met B.N. Duncan in 1979 at Krishna Copy on the corner of
Telegraph and Dwight. He was xeroxing copies of Tele Times, a little
homemade magazine he published. And I was xeroxing copies of Ass
Backwards Comix #1. So we were on the same page, literally, from the
word go. Geez, I must have been 23, so Duncan was 36. He looked like
a weird old man with his disheveled hair and thick horn-rimmed
glasses and ratty old clothes. He looked like your weird uncle that
you kept in the basement out of sight. He was the arachetypal weirdo artist.
At the time he lived in a dusty little hotel room on the fourth floor
of the Berkeley Inn. His room was just beginning to clutter up with
his boxes of artwork. He had one or two friends who were just as
weird and alienated as him. Aside from that, he had almost no social
life. Duncan spent his whole life on the fringe of society, a
lifelong SSI recipient. I figured we were both a couple of losers who
would spend our lives xeroxing 20 copies of our latest cartoons and
mailing them out to an indifferent world. "Outsider art" he called
his work. In fact, he had a strong identification with Van Gogh, and
figured his work would never be fully appreciated in his lifetime.
In the late 1960s he had gone completely nuts. He was completely
alienated and couldn't find any place to fit into society He'd hear
voicessix distinct characters who would carry on private
conversations in his head. He ended up getting locked up in a mental
institution. The head psychiatrists told him he was a hopeless case
and would probably have to spend the rest of his life in the nut
house. So that shows you how far he came to have the magnificent life he had.
He published the first 20 issues of Tele Times"Telegraph's Tight
Little Monthly"in relative obscurity, with print runs of about 100
copies. In truth, Duncan probably lost money on every single
publication he ever put out by himself. He was one of the first
publishers to focus on homeless street people and so-called ordinary
people, treating them the same way that most mainstream publishers
treated celebrities. Then he began coreseponding with famed
underground cartoonist R. Crumb. They immediately clicked. Crumb
recognized a fellow traveler, calling Duncan "the quintesssential
underground cartoonist." And Crumb should know. Duncan published an
interview with Crumb and his wife in Tele Times, and that opened up
whole new worlds for Duncan. For Duncan was an artist's artist.
Though his work was vastly under-appreciated by the general public,
he was revered by many of the greats in the cartooning field; people
like Kim Dietch, Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge, and Harvey Pekar. Maybe
with guys like Duncan, who are so weird and unique, it just takes
time for the world at large to catch up with them.
In 1989, on a whim, I got the crazy idea to publish a photo calendar
of Berkeley street people. I wanted to take the raw and quirky work
Duncan was producing with Tele Times and put a bit of a commerical
sheen on it. It was an immediate local hit. And for the next 15
years, from 1990 to 2004, we would annually publish the Telegraph
Avenue Street Calendar. We got written up in all the local newspapers
and Dan Rather did a national feature on it. So Duncan began getting
some long-overdue recognition.
"When I was the manager of Comic Relief in Berkeley I used to see
Duncan a lot," said Kristine. "Frankly, initially he gave me the
creeps. A half-dozen conversations later and I was looking forward to
his next visit. He was the first person to show me Dick Briefer
Frankenstein and that alone puts him in the pantheon. Later, when he
asked to borrow some money, I thought, 'Well, there's $10 I'll never
see again,' and mainly was concerned that he wouldn't come by the
store any more. He repaid me within a week. I regularly lent him
money and always got it back, usually with a nice note on a xeroxed
page of awesome cartoon art. What a sweetheart. He taught me not to
judge people by their crusty tan corduroy jackets, and I'm grateful."
(But watch out for most of those guys in crusty corduroy jackets;
Duncan was the one-in-a-thousand exception to the rule.)
And in a way, I thought that was the secret of why Duncan struck a
chord with so many people. Duncan was so obviously weird. The rest of
us are probably just as weird, we just try to hide it. And by the end
of his life, Duncan's social circle included people from all walks of
society, from successful lawyers and famed artists to bums on the
street, and everyone in between.
Our working relationship was akin to Laurel and Hardy. Duncan was the
skinny guy and he'd always screw up ("Gee, Ollie..."). And I was the
fat guy and I'd always rage and bluster at Duncan ("This is another
fine mess you got us into, Stanley!") and screw things up even worse.
But we always forgave each other afterwards. I used to say about our
friendship: "Duncan, you're one of the few people strong enough to
withstand me." And after every joint success no matter how great or
smallwhether it was producing yet another artistic masterpiece or
merely scrounging up enough dough to buy the next pack of
cigaretteswe'd always high-five and say: "Yet another successful
Backwords and Duncan collaboration!"
His last few years were spent in failing health. Forty years of
smoking and drinking had finally caught up with him (Basic 100s and
Old English malt liquor, natch). In his last week they had him in the
cancer ward at Alta Bates hospital. So I knew it was trouble. The
last time I saw him, I knew it was just about over. I sat there in
his hospital room and cried and cried. For 30 years Duncan had always
been out there on Telegraph Avenue whenever I was there. But now it
hit me for the first time that he would never be out there again. I
went from giving him pep-talks about "Hang in there! Hang in there!"
to "Let it go! Let it go!" You know? "God loves you, and you're going
to heaven," and all that crap. But while I sobbed and weeped, Duncan
laid there on his hospital bed and he was stoic the whole time. He
always admired tough guys. And I always thought he was doing Humphrey
Bogart and James Cagney in his head. ("I never met a dame who didn't
understand a good slap in the face!") And in a way, that was the
secret of our artistic chemistry. I supplied the emotional and Duncan
supplied the intellectual. Though in truth, we both had plenty of
both sides. Duncan was no cold-blooded intellectual, he had plenty of
heart. And I could talk a line of intellectual BS with the best of
them, in between my emotional tantrums. But we were both strong where
the other was weak. Duncan was like an anthropologist of the gutter.
And he studied the Berkeley street people, and all of life, like a
scientist would study an exotic tribe in New Guinea. Duncan would
place his latest artistic specimen under his microscope and study it,
as if looking for clues. He'd hold the slide up to the light and say
to himself: "Hmmm. Now what does this tell me about this cock-eyed
human life of ours?"
Duncan was one of the most relentlessly creative people I've ever
met. For the 30 years that I knew him, he was constantly working on a
new artistic project. And unlike so many artists, when he got an
idea, he almost always saw it through from beginning to completion.
Even on his death bed, when he could barely speak, gasping and
hacking for air, Duncan talked excitedly about three different
publications that would be publishing his work: "I'm gonna get a
review in the next issue of Mineshaft. And Claire Burch is putting
out a book of my writing from Street Spirit. And Terri Compost is
going to publish some of my photos and drawings in a book about
People's Park!"
And his last words to me before he drifted off into a fog of morphine
were: "Every day is a triumph!"
.
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