Michael John Fles

Michael John Fles
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Born	(1936-11-11) November 11, 1936 London, England
Occupation	poet, editor, musician, film personality
Nationality	American
Period	1959-1995
Genre	poetry, fiction, nonfiction
Notable works	Beyond the Beat Generation
Relatives	Barthold Fles, George Fles, Louis Fles Bart Berman, Helen Berman Thijs Berman, Giorgio van Straten

Michael John Fles (born November 11, 1936), known both as John Fles and Michael Fles, is an American poet, editor, musician and film personality. Professor David James referred to him as "the single most important promoter of underground film" in Los Angeles, California.

Biography

Michael John Fles was born to a Dutch father, George Fles, and a British mother, Pearl Rimel. As conscious communists, his parents had moved to the Soviet Union, where his father fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. The mother, pregnant with Michael John, left the Soviet Union to give birth in London. Mother and son later emigrated to the United States, where Pearl Rimel found employment in the aircraft industry. Michael John grew up in Los Angeles and Ojai, California, where he graduated from the Ojai Valley School in 1951.

Beat poet and editor

Fles studied at the University of Chicago, but did not graduate. While a student, he became the managing editor of the Chicago Review. In 1959 Fles was involved in the founding of the influential literary magazine Big Table. Later he was the editor of The Trembling Lamb, a one shot literary magazine which published Antonin Artaud's "Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society", LeRoi Jones's "The System of Dante's Inferno", and Carl Solomon's "Danish Impasse". In 1960 and 1961 he was a managing and contributing editor of Kulchur. During all these years he published his poetry far and wide.

Film personality and musician

In 1963 he founded the Movies Round Midnight program with Mike Getz. He ran the program until 1965. From 1962 and into the 1980s he wrote over a dozen movie scripts, usually with co-authors.

Over the last several decades, Fles has been active as a musician. He lives in Trinidad, California.

Bibliography

Books

Poetry

• 1957 - Arrow-less Alleys (Three Penny Press)
• 1957 - Beat and Beatific, with Gene Maslow (Three Penny Press)
• 1958 - Testament (Three Penny Press)
• 1959 - Lawrence Lies Crucified (Three Penny Press)
• 1964 - Doon Glyn, Summer 1963 (self-published)

Screenplays

• 1958 - The Man Who Lived Underground (unpublished), with John Evans after a story by Richard Wright

Nonfiction

• 1964 - Seeing is Believing (self-published)

Articles

• 1960 - "The End of the Affair, or Beyond the Beat Generation", Village Voice 6 (8) (Dec 15): 4, 12.
• 1960 - "The Root", Kulchur 1960 (Spring): 39-40
• 1961 - "The Great Chicago Poetry Reading", Swank 8 (1) (March) 65-68.
• 1961 - "Uncle Bill Burroughs' Guided Tour: Naked Lunch", Swank 8, (3) (July): 50.
• 1964 - "Are Movies Junk?", Film Culture 29.

Book chapters

• 1995 - "Sound Wave Mirror", chapter 11 in Kenny CB (editor): Listening, Playing, Creating: Essays on the Power of Sound. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.