Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
He was a very, very smart guy, different from Huncke in a lot of different
ways. He knew so much about the Greek classics and poetry. He knew Greek
mythology backwards and forwards.
But sometimes I'd just go over to his place and we'd watch football.
DIMITRI MUGIANIS
One time, Corso was kidding around with me.
“Hey Dimitri, you're Greek. You're supposed to know something about the
ancient Greeks! You don't know crap about the ancient Greeks, and you're
Greek!”
So Ramón, the Puerto Rican drug dealer, asks Corso, “What's that mean?
He's Greek, so what? What's that mean?”
“You don't know?” Corso asks Ramón. “You don't know the ancient
Greeks?”
“Nah,” Ramón says, irritated, as if it was obvious he wouldn't know such
things.
Now Corso's shtick was that there's not much to know, that there were only
about five things about the world that everyone should know. And one of them
was the ancient Greeks.
“I'm going to break it down for you, Ramón,” Corso said. So Corso went
home and wrote Ramón a history book! It's got an inscription in it.
Corso was an intimidatingly brilliant man, and all self-educated.
Later, I told Ramón, “Listen Ramón, you hold onto that book. That book's
worth all the gold you own.”
“Really?” Ramón was incredulous. “From
this
guy?” Ramón just stumbled
onto these Beat guys. He had no idea who they were.
“Yeah, bro,” I said. “Really.”
According to Ginsberg's biographer Barry Miles, Corso—who had next to no formal edu-
cation—learned everything he knew about ancient Greek and Roman literature by reading
theclassicsinprison.Theoldconvictsadvisedhimaboutprisonlife:“Don'tservetime,let
time serve you.”
But being an impressive autodidact doesn't mean you're not sometimes a jerk.
ROBERT CAMPBELL
Gregory Corso used to hit on my girlfriend, Carol, and be really abusive in a
verbal way.
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