ContentsScope and Contents of the Collection
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Raymond Mungo PapersFinding AidFinding aid prepared by Dex Haven.2009
Administrative InformationRelated MaterialFor related materials, see other collections in the Famous Long Ago Archive, including: Processed by Dex Haven, May-June 2010. Preferred CitationCite as: Raymond Mungo Papers (MS 659). Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst. The collection is open for research. Return to the Table of Contents Historical NoteRaymond Mungo, 1967Born in a "howling blizzard" in February 1946, Raymond Mungo became one of the most evocative writers of the 1960s counterculture. Through more than fifteen books and hundreds of articles, Mungo has brought a wry sense of humor and radical sensibility to explorations of the minds and experiences of the generation that came of age against a backdrop of the struggles for civil rights and economic justice, of student revolts, Black Power, resistance to war, and experimentation in communal living. Raised in a working class family in Lawrence, Mass., and a product of Roman Catholic schools, Mungo emerged as a fully-fledged radical as an undergraduate at Boston University. From the time of his arrival in 1963, he was drawn headlong into the cultural and political ferment, seemingly a step ahead of his peers. A "violent Marxist" as a freshman, and a "friend of the working class," as he later wrote, he was introduced to drugs as a sophomore, and as a junior, he became a leader in the antiwar movement, working with East Coast Resistance to drive the ROTC from campus and traveling nationally to urge resistance to war. It was as a writer, as much as an activist, that Mungo gained wide renown. As editor in chief of the Boston University News during his senior year, he became a constant irritant to the university administration, feeding the newspaper on a steady radical diet, and newspapers and writing soon took an even more prominent role in his life. Although initially intending to continue his studies at Harvard, thanks to a substantial fellowship, Mungo's connections with another young journalist and agitator, Marshall Bloom, led him down another path. During the summer of 1967, Bloom was slated to become Executive Director of the U.S. Student Press Association, but after denouncing its parent organization, the National Student Association, for accepting funds from the CIA, he was voted down. In response, and "because we had nothing else to do," Bloom, Verandah Porche, and Mungo formed the Resistance Press Service, soon renamed the Liberation News Service (LNS), as a radical alternative to the Associated Press. Seeking to create links among anti-establishment presses and provide reliable news for the Movement, the LNS issued semi-weekly packets of hard news and opinion pieces, poetry, photographs, and artwork, covering liberation struggles at home and abroad and a variety of other events that were typically overlooked or distorted by the "straight" media. They were an instant success. From their offices in Washington, D.C., the LNS soon had over 800 subscribers, including many in the underground and college press. When the LNS relocated to New York during the early summer of 1968, however, the simmering (though sometimes overstated) tensions between "politics" and "culture" in the organization came to a head, and by the end of the summer, Mungo wrote, "our glorious scheme of joining together the campus editors, the Communists, the Trots, the hippies, the astrology freaks, the pacifists, the SDS kids, the black militants, the Mexican-American liberation fighters, and all their respective journals was reduced to ashes" By August, the "Virtuous Caucus" led by Bloom and Mungo had split from the "vulgar Marxists" in New York and headed to communal lives in rural New England. Worn out by the rancor and divisions, Mungo, Porche, and eight others traveled north to found a commune on 90 acres at Packer Corners, near Guilford, Vermont. In mid-August 1968, Bloom followed his associates northward, taking funds raised from a screening of the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour to buy a farm in nearby Montague, Massachusetts, lugging the LNS printing press with him, and for over a year, the LNS factions in Montague and New York both produced news packets. The farms at Montague and Packer Corners -- Total Loss Farm -- were tightly connected from the outset, socially and politically, and both became centers for a remarkable number of writers and poets, artists and activists. Within a year of arriving at Packer Corners, Mungo wrote two important memoirs about his experiences. Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service (1970) was "a revealing parable of the split in the psyche of the new left between the fun-loving, fiercely individualistic life-stylers and the ideology-bound collectivists, and all that" according a review in the Village Voice. Appearing only a few months later, and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Total Loss Farm, which offered a year in the life look at the commune. Both were acclaimed and highly popular, and both have remained in print for decades. Following the success of his first two books, Mungo left Total Loss Farm and by early 1970, he settled in California to continue writing, spending several years in San Francisco and Carmel before moving to Los Angeles. In a single year in Carmel, 1972, he completed the only screenplay of his career, Between Two Moons, a Technicolor Travelogue as well as his only novel, Tropical Detective Story: The Flower Children Meet the Voodoo Chiefs. His later books, mostly non-fiction, have covered a wide terrain, though all remain true to the essential countercultural values acquired in the 1960s. Among his books are San Francisco Confidential: tales of scandal and excess from the town that's seen everything (1995) and Palm Springs Babylon (1993), a satirical look at the corrupt lives of the film set; Cosmic Profit: How to Make Money Without Doing Time (1980) and No Credit Required (2004), a primer on "how to buy a house when you don't qualify for a mortgage"; Confessions from Left Field: A Baseball Pilgrimage (1983); and three books on becoming a writer. Mungo has also written two memoirs, Return to sender : or, When the fish in the water was thirsty (1975) and Beyond the Revolution: My Life and Times Since Famous Long Ago. In his own words, his literary output has sometimes been more successful, sometimes less, but he has "managed nonetheless a 30 year career in which he never held a 'real' job." In 1997, Mungo completed a master's degree in counseling and became a social worker in Los Angeles, tending principally to AIDS patients and the severely mentally ill. He and his husband, Robert Yamaguchi, still live. Return to the Table of Contents Scope and Contents of the CollectionConsisting of the original typescripts and manuscripts of ten of Raymond Mungo's books, along with corrected and uncorrected galleys and a small number of letters from publishers. Among the other materials in the collection are thirteen photographs of Mungo taken by Clif Garboden and Peter Simon during and immediately after his undergraduate years at Boston University; a DVD containing motion pictures of life at Packer Corners in 1969 and 1977; and an irate letter from a writer regarding the status of poems he had submitted to Liberation News Service. Return to the Table of Contents Search TermsReturn to the Table of Contents Series 1. Manuscripts 1970-1993Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times With Liberation News Service 1970 7 foldersFamous Long Ago (manuscript), p.1-50 1970Famous Long Ago (manuscript), p.51-100 1970Famous Long Ago (manuscript), p.101-150 1970Famous Long Ago (manuscript), p.151-200 1970Famous Long Ago (manuscript), p.100-215 1970Famous Long Ago (galley proofs) 1970Famous Long Ago (page proofs) 1970Total Loss Farm: A Year in the Life 1970 6 foldersTotal Loss Farm (manuscript), p.1-50 1970Total Loss Farm (manuscript), p.51-100 1970Total Loss Farm (manuscript), p.101-150 1970Total Loss Farm (manuscript), p.151-173 1970Total Loss Farm (galley proofs) 1970 July 14-20Total Loss Farm (galley proofs) 1970 Aug. 11Between Two Moons: A Technicolor Travelogue 1972 13 foldersBetween Two Moons (manuscript draft), part 1 1972Between Two Moons (manuscript draft), part 2 1972Between Two Moons (typescript draft) 1972Between Two Moons (setting copy), p.1-50 1972Between Two Moons (setting copy), p.51-100 1972Between Two Moons (setting copy), p.101-144 1972Between Two Moons (master proofs), scenes 1-16 1972Between Two Moons (master proofs), scenes 17-end 1972Between Two Moons (author's proofs), scenes 1-7 1972Between Two Moons (author's proofs), scenes 8-end 1972Between Two Moons (production set), scenes 1-7 1972Between Two Moons (production set), scenes 8-13 1972Between Two Moons (production set), scenes 14-end 1972Green Mountain Post, no. 4 1972 SummerTropical Detective Story: The Flower Children Meet the Voodoo Chiefs 1972 8 foldersTropical Detective Story (proposal and outline) 1972Tropical Detective Story (manuscript), p. 1-50 1972Tropical Detective Story (manuscript), p. 51-100 1972Tropical Detective Story (manuscript), p. 101-150 1972Tropical Detective Story (manuscript), p. 151-200 1972Tropical Detective Story (manuscript), p. 200-241 1972Tropical Detective Story (galley proofs), start-Book 1 1972Tropical Detective Story (galley proofs), Book 2-end 1972When the Fish in the Water Was Thirsty 1975 4 foldersWhen the Fish in the Water Was Thirsty (manuscript), Chapters 1-6 1975When the Fish in the Water Was Thirsty (manuscript), Chapters 7-11 1975When the Fish in the Water Was Thirsty (manuscript), Chapters 12-end 1975When the Fish in the Water Was Thirsty (correspondence) 1975 June 15Cosmic Profit: How to Make Money Without Doing Time 1980 9 foldersCosmic Profit (manuscript), p.1-50 1980Cosmic Profit (manuscript), p.51-100 1980Cosmic Profit (manuscript), p.101-150 1980Cosmic Profit (manuscript), p.151-180 1980Cosmic Profit (manuscript copy), p.1-50 1980Cosmic Profit (manuscript copy), p.51-100 1980Cosmic Profit (manuscript copy), p.101-150 1980Cosmic Profit (manuscript copy), p.151-180 1980Cosmic Profit (correspondence) 1981 July 21A Fan's Dream: Confessions From Left Field 1982 8 foldersA Fan's Dream (manuscript), p.1-50 1982A Fan's Dream (manuscript), p.51-100 1982A Fan's Dream (manuscript), p.101-150 1982A Fan's Dream (manuscript), p.151-172 1982A Fan's Dream (manuscript), p.1-50 1982A Fan's Dream (manuscript), p.51-100 1982A Fan's Dream (manuscript), p.101-150 1982A Fan's Dream (manuscript), p.151-172 1982Confessions from Left Field: A Baseball Pilgrimage 1982 8 foldersConfessions from Left Field (manuscript), p.1-50 1982Confessions from Left Field (manuscript), p.51-100 1982Confessions from Left Field (manuscript), p.101-150 1982Confessions from Left Field (manuscript), p.151-185 1982Confessions from Left Field (manuscript, edited), p.1-50 1982Confessions from Left Field (manuscript, edited), p.51-100 1982Confessions from Left Field (manuscript, edited), p.101-150 1982Confessions from Left Field (manuscript, edited), p.151-172 1982How Many Roads: My Life and Times Since Famous Long Ago 1990 12 foldersHow Many Roads (manuscript), p.1-50 1990How Many Roads (manuscript), p.51-100 1990How Many Roads (manuscript), p.101-150 1990How Many Roads (manuscript), p.151-200 1990How Many Roads (manuscript), p.201-250 1990How Many Roads (manuscript), p.251-300 1990How Many Roads (galley proofs), p.1-50 1990How Many Roads (galley proofs), p.51-100 1990How Many Roads (galley proofs), p.101-148 1990How Many Roads (author's galley), p.1-50 1990How Many Roads (author's galley), p.51-100 1990How Many Roads (author's galley), p.101-148 1990Beyond the Revolution: My Life and Times Since Famous Long Ago 1990 9 foldersBeyond the Revolution (galley proofs), p.1-50 1990Beyond the Revolution (galley proofs), p.51-100 1990Beyond the Revolution (galley proofs), p.101-121 1990Beyond the Revolution (galley proofs), p.1-50 1990Beyond the Revolution (galley proofs), p.51-100 1990Beyond the Revolution (galley proofs), p.101-121 1990Beyond the Revolution (revised galley proofs), p.1-50 1990Beyond the Revolution (revised galley proofs), p.51-100 1990Beyond the Revolution (revised galley proofs), p.101-121 1990No Credit Required: How to Buy a House Without a Job 1992 4 foldersNo Credit Required (manuscript), p.1-50 1992No Credit Required (manuscript), p.51-100 1992No Credit Required (manuscript), p.101-150 1992No Credit Required (manuscript), p.151-218 1992Palm Springs Babylon: Sizzling Stories from the Desert Playground of the Stars 1993 3 foldersPalm Springs Babylon (manuscript), p.1-50 1993Palm Springs Babylon (manuscript), p.51-100 1993Palm Springs Babylon (manuscript), p.101-145 1993Series 2. Correspondence and graphic materials 1966-2008Ben-Ami, M. E. letter to Raymond Mungo 1969Regarding his poetry submitted for publication to Liberation News Service. A Year in Packer Corners and Other Short Films from Long Ago 2008Films from 1969-1977. "First time on DVD in celebration of the 40th reunion of Packer Corners Farm, Guilford Vermont, 2008." Photographs: Boston University 1966-1967 8 itemsBoston University News staff. L to r., Joe Pilati, David Chandler, Steve Sluiter, Ed Siegel, Ray Mungo 1966-1967Boston University News staff. Clockwise from left: Steve Davis, Joe Pilati, Clif Garboden, Ray Mungo, Peter Simon. Photo taken (with Peter Simon's camera) by a runaway kid staying at the LNS house in Washington, D.C. The staff were mugging for the camera as "angry young men," echoing how some pundit had recently described Mungo. 1968 JanuaryRay Mungo at his typewriter (probably at his apartment or the LNS office in D.C.). Photo of Howard Zinn on wall 1967Ray Mungo, Liberation News Service Office, Thomas Circle (14th and M), Washington, D.C. 1968 Jan.Ray Mungo and Peter Simon, Liberation News Service Office, Thomas Circle (14th and M), Washington, D.C. 1968 Jan.Author Richard Schweid at Boston University News office 1967Verandah Porche (back row, 3rd from left) with Richard Schweid (far left) and Richard Wizansky (far right in row): Bay State Poets for Peace (taken on the porch of the Liberation News Service house in Washington, D.C., on the morning of the 1968 march on the Pentagon). Photo by Clif Garboden 1968Ray Mungo at peace rally, Boston University 1967Ray Mungo speaking at Boston University peace rally 1967Ray Mungo speaks at antiwar rally, Boston University 1967Photographs: Liberation News Service and Packer Corners 1967-1969 4 itemsRay Mungo on LNS road trip, somewhere in Nebraska 1967Verandah Porche and Ray Mungo in Berkeley, CA, on LNS road trip 1968Ray Mungo, Verandah Porche in background, outside the LNS farmhouse, Montague, MA 1968-1969Bareass Ray Mungo diving into the beaver pond at Total Loss Farm, Guilford, VT 1969 |
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