Elizabeth and I, Lower East Side kids with a penchant for truancy, found ourselves wandering through the city one crisp autumn day in 1986. Our aimless tour led us to a vintage shop, Unique Boutique, where we twirled in pink prom dresses under the watchful eyes of a clerk. From there, the Village beckoned, and we drifted westward, pausing at gemstone shops to admire hematite. The biting wind whipped through my ripped jeans and Liz’s leggings as we sought refuge in a bookstore, a haven of warmth and inviting silence.
Being with Liz in any store meant keeping a watchful eye for her shoplifting tendencies, a habit that blurred our identities as we often dressed alike – mostly in black, my hair a vibrant “Violet,” hers a striking “Vermillion Red” from Manic Panic. Ironically, Tish and Snooky’s sacred space was safe from Liz’s sticky fingers. It was in this literary sanctuary that a book cover snagged my attention: The Basketball Diaries. The title, with its sporty implication, initially repelled me. I returned it to the shelf, my gaze falling instead on its neighbor, Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries. This title resonated with a promise of something deeper, something illicit. I bought it, despite Liz’s casual encouragement to liberate goods without payment, and devoured it that night.
The pages transported me to a gritty, enchanting New York of 1971-1973, a city before the mass exodus of the “Great White Flight” and the looming financial crisis of the late ’70s. It was a New York I could only experience through words, populated by figures both iconic and enigmatic: Andy Warhol in his Factory, Larry Rivers flinging art into the Harlem River, Patti Smith at the Chelsea Hotel, and Salvador Dali’s taxi escapades. Carroll’s prose painted vivid, Polaroid-esque pictures. I discovered his work at a crucial age, a time when self-discovery felt paramount. His writing unveiled a literary landscape where transgression was not only possible but celebrated, where no subject was taboo, and anything, especially in poetry, was permissible. This literary world became a personal “Petting Place,” a safe space to explore edgy ideas and unconventional narratives.
Years later, in 1995, the scene shifts to my time as a junior at Eugene Lang College, interning at the Poetry Project. Mondays were for setting up chairs, Wednesdays for office work, amidst the quirky humor of Ed Friedman, Jo Ann Wasserman, and Brenda Coultas. Sparrow, a figure already legendary in the small press world, would drift in and out. The office buzzed with literary gossip and the everyday dramas of the downtown scene.
One Wednesday, Eleni Sikelianos’s arrival in town coincided with a local tragedy – the shooting of the Second Avenue Deli owner. Brenda, with a dramatic air, recounted the “nerd boy poets flocking around her like flies.” Jo Ann, in her playful voice, wondered aloud about Sikelianos’s allure. The office, a hub of creative energy and personal dramas, felt like another kind of “petting place,” a space where literary ambitions and anxieties mingled.
Another Wednesday, an invitation to help with a reading transformed into an unexpected encounter. Tasked with picking up food for a benefit at Triangle’s and East Village Cheese, I found myself in the church kitchen surrounded by cheese, crackers, and wine. Then, Allen Ginsberg walked in. Small, gray, and unassuming, the genius behind Howl was a stark contrast to the Byronic ideal I had imagined. He softly requested “Cheeeezzzz,” sampled a sliver of Swiss with a contented “Mmmmmmmm…,” and moved on.
That evening, guarding the buffet table from the legendary Gregory Corso became my “very specific job.” Corso, in a stained Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, seemed both vulnerable and unpredictable. As Ginsberg began to read, Corso, initially content, broke the hushed reverence with a booming, nasal cry: “AAAAlllennn…!” The playful, absurd exchange that followed – Corso’s insistent interruptions culminating in “NO ONE EVER FUCKIN’ INTERRUPTED ME!!!” – highlighted the raw, untamed energy of the downtown literary scene, a vibrant, chaotic “petting place” for poetic egos and impromptu performances.
Later, collecting money at the door during Alice Notley’s reading, Jim Carroll himself walked in. There was an awkward moment about payment, quickly resolved. During the break, he praised Notley’s new book, his voice marked by the telltale quiver of past heroin use. He was still striking, his red hair conspicuous, his presence carrying the weight of his literary legacy. I had seen him read before, at NYU, at the Poetry Project, at Summer Stage. He was a fixture of the New York literary landscape, a familiar face in this “petting place” of words.
Carroll’s reading included excerpts from his long-gestating novel, The Petting Zoo. He described it as a work in progress, a story of Billy Wolfram, an artist grappling with anxiety and isolation. The excerpts he shared, including a bizarre scene of Billy urinating in a Snapple bottle and another involving veal and masturbation, were raw, unflinching, and darkly humorous. These glimpses into The Petting Zoo offered a sense of the novel as a different kind of “petting place,” an exploration of the messy, uncomfortable corners of the human psyche.
Is The Petting Zoo a failure, as some might argue? Perhaps. But even in its imperfections, the novel holds a certain fascination. It’s a sprawling, ambitious work, wrestling with themes of artistic crisis, loneliness, and the weight of expectation. It may lack the focused energy of Carroll’s earlier poems and diaries, but it offers a different kind of intimacy, a sprawling, sometimes messy, “petting place” for Carroll’s anxieties and obsessions.
The novel tells the story of Billy Wolfram, a painter who achieves early success but then spirals into an existential and artistic crisis after his mentor’s death. He isolates himself in his loft, engages in a strange, sexless relationship with his assistant Marta, and becomes increasingly detached from the world. The narrative, divided into three parts, begins with Billy’s anxiety attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he hallucinates a “petting zoo,” leading to a breakdown and hospitalization. The novel delves into Billy’s past, his artistic development, and his struggles with sexuality and connection. While The Petting Zoo might be flawed, it remains a compelling, if imperfect, “petting place” to encounter Carroll’s later artistic concerns.
Comparing The Petting Zoo to Forced Entries, the latter shines with its vivid, immediate portrayal of 1970s New York. The Petting Zoo, set in a more ambiguous 1980s New York, lacks the same grounding detail. It feels like a world inhabited by a protagonist afraid to fully engage with his surroundings. Yet, despite its flaws, and perhaps because of its sentimental exploration of artistic struggle, the novel retains a certain appeal. It remains a unique, if overgrown, literary “petting place”.
Years later, at the Brooklyn Book Festival in 2007, I encountered Aaron Cometbus. We laughed about the “Jim Carroll women” lining up for his panel, a testament to Carroll’s enduring, almost cult-like appeal. The panel itself, featuring Joe Meno and, in absentia, Gloria Naylor, was a somewhat chaotic affair. Carroll’s rambling introduction, his lost pages, and his impromptu song showcased a different, perhaps more vulnerable, side of the enfant terrible. His microphone being cut short felt symbolic of a disconnect between the intimate, forgiving atmosphere of the Poetry Project and the more structured, less forgiving world of literary festivals.
Brenda Coultas later reminded me of Carroll’s long, rambling phone calls to the Poetry Project office, his captivating storytelling. He thrived in the nurturing, informal “petting place” of the Project, a stark contrast to the impersonal scale of the Brooklyn Book Festival. The incident at the festival underscored a shift in context, a loss of the intimate connection he once enjoyed with his audience. Ultimately, while a writer’s identity might be intertwined with a particular book, like The Petting Zoo for Jim Carroll, life, and literary legacy, are far more complex and nuanced than any single event or work. The literary world, in all its forms – from bookstores to poetry readings to the pages of a novel – remains a vital “petting place” for the human spirit, a space for exploration, comfort, and connection through words.
