John O’Kane

 

John O’Kane is a short story writer, novelist, essayist, journalist, poet, and publisher of AMASS Magazine, best known for his literary explorations, both fictional and nonfictional, of Venice, California. A key focus has been its association with the Beat movement and broader counterculture…and the often-contentious relationship between its community of artistic free spirits and those engaged in the push toward gentrification. He has also written extensively on such topics as class, race, gender, the economy, politics, and foreign policy, contributing essays and articles to various online platforms and publications.

 

Early Life

Born in Laurel, Nebraska, O’Kane spent his early years in Sioux City, Iowa, the eldest of four siblings. His family hailed from a long line of sharecroppers and laborers. In high school he excelled in baseball. After college, he played for one year in a semi-pro league. Following this brief athletic career, he pursued higher education, obtaining a master’s degree in political science from the University of Nebraska in 1984 and a doctorate in literature from the University of Minnesota in 1996. From the 1980s onward he taught at various institutions of higher learning, including USC, UCLA, and MIT. Currently, he teaches writing at UC, Irvine.

 

Writing Career

The publications to which O’Kane has contributed include Salmagundi Magazine, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, the LA Weekly, Huffpost, CounterPunch, In These Times, Jump Cut, Emergences, Rethinking Marxism, Cultural Studies, Socialist Review, Bennington Review, Screen Magazine, and Left Curve. His poetry has also been published in Empty Mirror, the Argonaut, the Free Venice Beachhead, the Santa Monica Mirror, and Left Curve once again.

 

In the 1990s, O’Kane began to develop a lifelong interest in the work of Charles Bukowski. His review of Bukowski’s novel Hollywood was anthologized in Contemporary Literature Criticism, edited by Debbie Stanley. A lively correspondence ensued along with the publication of many of Bukowski’s poems in AMASS Magazine. Additional works by Bukowski were later published in the magazine, and O’Kane’s growing involvement inspired him to move to the writer’s beloved San Pedro. A lengthy interview was planned but he passed before it could be completed. He published a piece on BUK and the bar culture in San Pedro shortly after moving there himself, titled “Joints.” It was published by Empty Mirror Books. O’Kane’s forthcoming novel, The Accidental Jesus (Europa Books), contains a character based on Bukowski.

 

Early in the present millennium, O’Kane developed an interest in the Beat cultural tradition as it thrived in Venice, California. As a long-time resident of the city, he came into contact with many who had been part of the 1950s Beat scene, some of whom he’d read about in Lawrence Lipton’s 1959 book, The Holy Barbarians. He interviewed survivors and tracked their influence on Venice’s current cultural scene, profiling such writers as Philomene Long, Stuart Perkoff, Michael C. Ford, and John Haig, while discussing the Beat sensibility in spaces beyond words on the page—coffee houses, cafes, art scenes, and everyday lifestyles. The fruits of his research appeared in Venice, CA: A City State of Mind, his book of literary journalism released in 2013. From his contact with Venice’s alternative lifestyles while researching the book, he experienced this city’s varied and colorful culture of street life and began to write about it. His first publication on this topic was in KCET’s History and Society series, titled “Mining the States of City Minds.” The focus was to extend the research conducted for the 2013 book, since a good deal of this research toward the end came from street people. Using the same title, he developed a thirteen-part series of literary journalism stories on Huffpost. A novel that germinated from this writing, The Easy Rider Fan Club, is currently circulating.

 

Following the financial crisis of 2008-09, he began to write op-eds about this and many related political, social, economic, and cultural issues of the day. He published many of these on Huffpost as well, expanding some into chapters for a book published in 2015, A People’s Manifesto. Since then, he’s penned op-eds on the evolving issues of the day in Huffpost, CounterPunch, and Musing the Masses. In the months before the 2020 election, he published a book on the cultural debates following that moment’s spike in “woke” consciousness, Toward Election 2020: Cancel Culture, Censorship, and Class (2020). His op-eds spawned two collections of essays, The Unmaking of the President, 2020 (2021); and Democracy and Authority (2022). This was followed by a collection of short stories, A Venice Quintet (2022), which was reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books (Modiano, Richard. “Openness to Place: John O’Kane’s A Venice Quintet.” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 25, 2022.). Reviewer Modiano describes the book as “a solid collection of diverse and interesting stories.” A year later, an expanded and revised version appeared, titled A Venice Sextet (2023). O’Kane’s first novel, The Accidental Jesus, is scheduled for publication in mid-2024.

 

AMASS Magazine

 

In 1988, John O’Kane established AMASS Magazine. The publication known as “ENclitic” at the time of its inception at the University of Minnesota in 1976, initially focused on literary and cultural criticism, often with a decidedly European slant. Among the many prominent contributors during this period were Jacques Derrida, Yve-Alain Bois, Marie Claire Ropars, and Louis Marin.

 

Over time, the magazine evolved into an interdisciplinary forum encompassing culture and politics. Contributors during this period included such literary luminaries as Nat Hentoff, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Hubert Selby, Jr., Paul Krassner, Harry Shearer, Dave Alvin, Greil Marcus, Kate Braverman, Richard Meltzer, Wanda Coleman, Jack Hirschman, Amy Gerstler, Erika Rothenberg, Charles Bukowski, and Mike Davis.

 

In 2000, the name of the publication was changed to AMASS Magazine to reflect its populist orientation. The name change signaled its focus on the urgent social, political, economic, and cultural issues of the day. It now publishes straight journalism, op-ed journalism, investigative journalism, essays, fiction, and poetry. The magazine tries to forge an alternative consensus by exposing the limits of liberal and conservative positions while transcending them. It prints critical perspectives on the crisis of political and economic institutions, the increasing inequality gap, the AI controversy, the healthcare crisis, the war in Ukraine, climate change, the limits of corporate media, race, class, and socially engaged fiction and poetry.

 

Some of the more prominent contributors since the name change include Erwin Chemerinsky, Arianna Huffington, Philomene Long, Harry Northup, Noam Chomsky, James H. Kunstler, S.A. Griffin, Lionel Rolfe, Bill McKibben, Chris Hedges, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, David Sirota, John Pilger, Naomi Wolf, Tom Hayden, Joseph Stiglitz, Nomi Prins, Andrew Bacevich, Medea Benjamin, Ellen Brown, Dean Baker, and Matthew Specktor.

 

The magazine’s stated purpose on the website (amassmagpress.com) is to increase awareness of these ideas and expand citizenship, the basis for an improving democracy, an idea central to its name, which is indebted to two publications from the early twentieth century: The Masses, and The New Masses. Both focused on issues of mass society, especially the degree of alienation and isolation that such a society brings about, deficiencies that can victimize individuals with forms of groupthink. The meaning of the name, visualized in the logo, encourages citizens to counter these forces, to act and bring together the bodies and ideas that can lead to an expansion of democracy through the crafting of new alliances.

It is distributed internationally and subscribed to by major libraries in the US and abroad.

 

Works Published (www.pw.org)

“Francis Ford Coppola: Hollywood and Synthetic Realism,” Wide Angle, 5,2, pp. 87-93.

“Ideology, Style, Deep Focus in Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning,” ENclitic, #10/11, pp. 120-25.

“Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Art Cinema and the Politics of Culture,” Bennington Review, #15, Summer 1983, pp. 56-64.

“Existential Narrative and Theories of Film and Media,” ENclitic, 6,2, pp. 21-28.

“A Critique of Film Theory: Henderson’s Search for a Method,” Wide Angle, 6,1, pp.68-74.

“Framing the Sixties,” ENclitic, #14, pp. 24-34.

“Theory and Cultural Politics: Althusser’s Intervention,” Thesis Eleven, #10/11, pp.250-57.

“Althusser, Ideology and Oppositional Practice,” ENclitic, 7,1, pp. 104-16.

“The Career of Rainer Werner Fassbinder,” in Directors/Filmmakers, ed. Christopher Lyon and Susan Doll (Chicago: St. James Press, 1984), pp. 167-71.

“La Lecture Dans tous Ses Etats,” by Christian Prigent, ENclitic, #12, pp. 44-50 (translation).

“Marxism, Deconstruction and Ideology: Notes Toward an Articulation,” New German Critique, #33, pp. 219-48.

“Postmodernism, History, Cultural Politics,” ENclitic, Spring/Fall 1984, pp. 4-12.

“History and the Production of Memory,” Critical Arts, 3,3, pp. 53-57.

“History, Performance, Counter-Cinema: Alexander Kluge’s The Patriot,” Screen, 26,6, pp. 2-17.

“Cultural Pessimism and Cultural Studies: American Anti-Intellectualism,” Salmagundi, #67, pp. 171-82.

“In the Tracks of Realignment: The Future of Cultural Studies,” the minnesota review, #27, pp. 132-43.

“Confessions of a Poor White Hipster: La Loca and Media Culture in LA,” ENclitic, #20, pp. 67-82.

“To Deny and Revise the Past: Vietnam on Trial,” LA Weekly, April 16, 1987, pp. 29-30.

“Satirical Realism, Political Cabaret and Consciousness Expansion: Paul Krassner and Experimental Media,” ENclitic, 11,1, pp. 9-27.

“Don De Lillo’s Libra: A Novel of Subversion and a Subversion of the Novel,” In These Times, 12,41, pp. 20-21.

“The Metaphysics of Baseball: Spectator Sports, Mass Media and Popular Culture in America,” ENclitic, #21, pp. 86-94.

“JFK: Image Superman,” LA Weekly, October 28, 1988, pp. 42-43.

“Manufacturing Consent: Chomsky’s Theory of Mass Media,” In These Times, January 26, 1989, pp. 18-20.

“Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Anarchism and the Poetry Revolution,” ENclitic, #22, pp. 47-58.

“Reaganism: Crusading For Nostalgia,” Left Curve, #16, pp. 9-19.

“Tabloid Talk: Talk Radio and the Media of Illiteracy,” ENclitic, 11,2, pp. 25-33.

“Schizo-Activism: At the Edge of Bohemian Populism,” Socialist Review, 22,2, pp.141-46.

“Bucharest Winter,” Left Curve, #18, pp. 63-67.

“Horror: The Pleasure of Insight into the Forbidden,” Boston Globe, June 6, 1993, pp. B44-45.

“Brattle Stays Eclectic and Refreshing,” Cambridge Chronicle, July 15, 1993, pp.L1,L4.

“Class Struggle, Diversity and the Politics of Optimism,” Left Curve, #22, pp. 128-34.

“The Boulevard of Broken Dreams: How a Media Blitz Made James Dean a Giant,” Boston Globe, July 7, 1994, pp. 33-34.

“Out Through the In Door: Harry Shearer and Alternative Radio in LA,” Jump Cut, #41, pp. 85-92.

“Adventures in Totalization: Jameson’s Search For A Method,” Rethinking Marxism, Fall 1998, Vol. 10, #4, pp. 52-78.

“Contradiction, Overdetermination and Dialectical Surfaces,” Socialist Review, Winter 2000 (Vol. 27, #3/4), pp. 107-46.

“Class, Liberal Pluralism and Counterhegemony,” Cultural Studies, Spring 2001 (15, 2), pp. 295-325.

“Antitheses of Cultural Marxism,” Left Curve, #23, Spring 1999, pp. 14-20.

“Bukowski’s Hollywood,” in Contemporary Literature Criticism, edited by Debbie Stanley (Detroit: Gale Research, 1998), pp. 87-91.

“Cultural Politics, Political Economy and the Impossible Society,” Left Curve, #25, Winter 2001, pp. 98-109.

“Capitalism, Culture and Socio-Economic Justice,” Rethinking Marxism, Summer 2002, pp..1-25.

“Globalization, Anarchy, Radicalism,” AMASS, Summer 2002, pp.84-87.

“Trading Terror, Making Democracy,” Left Curve, #27 Winter 2003, pp.87-105.

“Welfare, Value, Empire,” Emergences, Spring 2003, pp.273-284.

“Venice Speculations,” AMASS, Spring 2003, pp.73-82.

“Postmodern Negative Dialectics,” in Doug Kellner and Sean Homer eds., The Jameson Reader (New York: MacMillan Press, 2004), pp.142-168.

“Can Democracy Be Popular?”, AMASS, Spring 2004, pp.75-80.

“Popular Dream, Party Logic, American Nightmare,” Santa Monica Mirror, 2/10/05, pp.22-23.

“Tears and Frothing in Las Vegas,” AMASS, Fall 2005, pp.87-88.

“The Doors to Syllogism,” Beachhead, #299, 8/06, P.9.

“Capital, Culture and the Breeding of Power,” Left Curve, Spring 2006, pp.134-50.

“New World Ordure,” Beachhead, #300, 9/06, p.9

“Legends of Truth,” The Irvine Progressive, June 2006, p.13.

“Art Attack: Interview With Robbie Conal,” Beachhead, #301, 10/06, pp.1-7.

“Beatress Beattitude,” AMASS, Fall 2006, pp.57-69.

“As the Escrow Flies,” Beachhead, #302, 11/06, p.9.

“An Immoveable Feast,” Beachhead, #303, 12/06, pp.1, 6-7.

“Ghostory Lesson,” Beachhead, #304, 1/07, p.9.

“The Mourning After,” The Irvine Progressive, February 2007, p.8.

“Patriotism,” AMASS, Winter 2007, p.55.

“FREE,” The Irvine Progressive, April 2007, p.15.

“The Soft Parade,” AMASS, Spring 2008, p.42.

“Exstacey,” Beachhead, #310, 8/07, p.9.

“If a War is Good,” AMASS, Summer 2008, p.31.

“The Day the Muse Died,” Left Curve, Winter 2008, pp.85-86.

“San Pedro Progress: Interview with Janice Hahn,” AMASS, Summer 2008, pp.35-6.

“Joints,” AMASS, Fall 2008, pp.36-38.

“Return to Sender,” AMASS, Fall 2008, p.31.

“Generation Gapped,” The Public Record, February 15, 2009.

“Illuminescence,” AMASS, Winter 2009, p.32.

“Unbranding Obama,” The HuffingtonPost, March 9, 2009.

“Irishry,” AMASS, Spring 2009, pp.34-37.

“The Filter Up Effect,” The HuffingtonPost, April 20, 2009.

“Port Pedrogon,” AMASS, Summer 2009, pp.37-40.

“Freedempire,” The HuffingtonPost, June 27, 2009.

“Blowback,” AMASS, Summer 2009, p.14.

“Brokering the Bailout,” The HuffingtonPost, September 8, 2009.

“Black Habits,” AMASS, Fall 2009, p.22.

“Media Muddle,” The HuffingtonPost, December 2, 2009.

“Situations,” AMASS, Winter 2010, pp.34-35.

“Who’s the Enemy,” The HuffingtonPost, January 18, 2010; anthologized in Information Clearing House, January 20, 2010.

“The Glory Days,” AMASS, Spring 2010, pp.32-38.

“Ideallergy,” The HuffingtonPost, March 2, 2010; anthologized in Information Clearing House, March 4, 2010.

“Tea Party Fantasies,” The HuffingtonPost, May 4, 2010.

“Unmelting Pot,” The HuffingtonPost, June 6, 2010.

“Imperfect Game,” The HuffingtonPost, July, 10, 2010.

“Rebirth,” AMASS, Fall 2010, pp.28-31.

“Distention Deficit,” The HuffingtonPost, November 23, 2010.

“Blowback,” The HuffingtonPost, November 26, 2010.

“Gravity’s God,” AMASS, Spring 2011, pp.28-36.

“The Easy Rider Fan Club,” Verdad, May 2011.

“Art Haunts,” AMASS, Summer 2011, pp.32-36.

“Counter Cycles,” AMASS, Fall 2011, pp.22-23.

“Notes From Aboveground,” AMASS, Winter 2012, pp.34-38.

“Penance,” AMASS, Spring 2012, pp.34-37.

“Space, Time and Controllable Substances,” AMASS, Summer 2012, pp.28-31.

“Beyond the Evil of Mass Murder,” The HuffingtonPost, July 31, 2012.

“Everybody Loves a Winner!” AMASS, Fall 2012, pp.24-29.

“Profane Illumination, Street Surrealism, and Venice, California,” The Creosote Journal, December 1, 2013, pp.1-7.

“Desiree’s Place,” AMASS, Winter 2013, pp.36-38.

“Sowing the Spirit,” AMASS, Spring 2013, pp.36-40.

“What Does Equality Mean?” The HuffingtonPost, August 7, 2013.

“Guardians of the Sand,” AMASS, Fall 2013, pp.32-35.

“Illuminescence,” EmptyMirror Magazine, January 11, 2014, pp.1-2.

“Can Obama Escape the Right-Wing Frame?” The HuffingtonPost, October 14, 2013.

“Joints,” EmptyMirror Magazine, February 10, 2014, pp.1-6.

“Occupy, Progressives and Democracy,” The HuffingtonPost, November 24, 2013.

“Escape from Edge City,” AMASS, Winter 2014, pp.30-35.

“Pushing the Positive, Nay-Saying the Negative,” The HuffingtonPost, February 14, 2014.

“Eroticon,” AMASS, Spring 2014, pp.36-41.

“A City State of Mind,” Departures (KCET Column), April 23, 2014.

“Street Life,” AMASS, Summer 2014, pp.32-36.

“The Venetian Mind,” Departures (KCET Column), August 27, 2014.

“Halfway House,” AMASS, Fall 2014, pp.32-35.

“Irishry,” EmptyMirror Magazine, September 21, 2014, pp.1-7.

“Survival Streams,” AMASS, Winter 2015, pp.34-35.

“The Glory Days,” HuffingtonPost, March 23, 2015.

“Slumming for Jesus,” AMASS, Spring 2015, pp.24-27.

“The Glory Days: 2,” HuffingtonPost, April 23, 2015.

“The Glory Days: 3,” HuffingtonPost, May 27, 2015.

“Awakening,” AMASS, Summer 2015, pp.28-31.

“The Glory Days: 4,” HuffingtonPost, June 29, 2015.

“Venice, CA: A City State of Mind,” HuffingtonPost, September 28, 2015.

“Fumes,” AMASS, Fall 2015, pp.26-31.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 1,” HuffingtonPost, October 26, 2015.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 2,” HuffingtonPost, January 1, 2016.

“Mindfield,” AMASS, Winter 2016, pp.26-33.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 3,” HuffingtonPost, February 16, 2016.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 4,” HuffingtonPost, April 5, 2016.

“Nun the Wiser,” AMASS, Spring 2016, pp.20-33.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 5,” HuffingtonPost, June 21, 2016.

“Exhumation,” AMASS, Summer 2016, pp.28-35.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 6,” HuffingtonPost, October 5, 2016.

“Retro TV,” AMASS, Fall 2016, pp.33-37.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 7,” HuffingtonPost, December 27, 2016.

“Faceoff,” AMASS, Winter 2017, pp.29-30.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 8,” HuffingtonPost, April 24, 2017.

“Alchemy,” AMASS, Spring 2017, pp.32-40.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 9,” HuffingtonPost, July 2, 2017.

“Toasting Rockfish,” Salmagundi, Summer-Fall 2017, #195-196, pp.264-69.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 10,” Huffpost, September 2, 2017.

“Exhumation,” in Goose River Anthology, 2017, November 2, 2017, pp.87-95.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 11,” Huffpost, November 10, 2017.

“Two Angles on Matthew Specktor,” Huffpost, December 2, 2017.

“Mining the States of City Minds: 12,” Huffpost, December 20, 2017.

“Rebirth,” in Goose River Anthology, 2018 (September).

“Crash Talk,” AMASS, Spring 2018, pp.22-23.

“911 Debt Free,” AMASS, Fall 2018, pp.38-40. Van Every.

“Drops and the Dropped: Diversity and the Midterm Elections,” CounterPunch, 12/19/2018. Reprinted in AMASS, Winter 2019, pp.22-25.

“Demonizing the Few to Alienate and Sway the Many,” CounterPunch, 4/26/2019.

“Altz House,” AMASS, Spring 2019, pp.26-29.

“The Bush Leagues: The College Admissions Scam,” CounterPunch, 5/31/2019.

“Citizen Shane,” AMASS, Summer 2019, pp.8-15.

“America First and Diverse,” CounterPunch, 7/9/2019. Reprinted in  AMASS, Fall 2019, pp.20-23.

“Reparations and the Student Debt Wars,” CounterPunch, 8/6/2019.

“Supreme Nihilism: The El Paso Shooter’s Manifesto,” CounterPunch, 8/19/2019. Reprinted in Information Clearing House, 8/20/2019; and in The International News, 8/21/2019.

“A Lottery of Equality Dispenses Dystopia,” CounterPunch, 11/1/2019. Reprinted in AMASS, Winter 2020, pp.26-29.

“Peytch’s Place,” AMASS, Spring 2020, pp.8-11.

“The Obama Legacy: Reform Versus Revolution,” CounterPunch, 1/22/2020. Reprinted in AMASS, Winter 2020, pp.20-23.

“Joe Biden’s Opinion-Shaping Machine and Race,” CounterPunch, 3/25/2020.

“Remove the Boomer Virus and What Virus Remains?” CounterPunch, 4/9/2020.

“Bernd!,” CounterPunch, 5/1/2020.

“Alchemy,” Storylandia, December 2020. Contracted.

“Trump Is Not The Problem,” CounterPunch, 6/9/2020.

“Progressive Pulses Among The Ruins of Riot,” CounterPunch, 7/2/2020. Reprinted in AMASS, Spring 2020, pp.24-33.

“Systemic Racism and Progressive Reconstruction,” CounterPunch, 7/31/2020.

“Authoritarian Anarchism Meets Autocratic Soul Searching,” CounterPunch, 9/2/2020.

“Community Investment Must Supplement Racial Integration,” CounterPunch, 10/23/2020.

“Reverb of the Repressed: Race and Classlessness,” CounterPunch, 12/4/2020. Reprinted in AMASS, Summer 2020, pp.10-17.

“Expats, Expatriots, and Utopia,” CounterPunch/Reddit, 1/8/2021.

“Insurrection or Menacing Mashup of Misrecognition?” CounterPunch, 2/5/2021. Reprinted AMASS, Fall 2020, pp.12-17.

“Red Capital, Red Baiting, Yellow Peril,” CounterPunch, 5/28/2021.

“Critical Race Theory in Practice,” CounterPunch, 7/2/2021. Reprinted in AMASS, Spring 2021, pp. 14-21.

“Ibram X. Kendi and Democratic Debate,” CounterPunch, 9/7/2021.

“Endless Enemies and the Permanent War Economy,” CounterPunch, 10/14/2021.

“Mobbing Logic,” CounterPunch, 12/31/2021.

“Democracy, Literacy, and Authoritarianism,” Musing the Masses, 3/5/2022.

“Imperial Blowback,” Musing the Masses, 4/2/2022.

“Fear Mongering, Resource Scarcity, and Replacement Theory,” Musing the Masses, 7/12/2022.

“The Wake,” AMASS, Fall 2022, pp.34-37.

“Granny’s Orgone Accumulator,” AMASS, Winter 2023, pp.26-33.

“Whose Democracy Was Protected in the 2022 Election?” Musing the Masses, 3/12/23.

“Freaking-Out Delirious: Surrealism to Venice Beats,” BeatNotBeat (Moon Tide Press), 4/10/23.

“Snookered Calculus,” Musing the Masses, 6/30/23.

“Fertilizing the Wasteland: A Retroactive Conversation with Philomene Long,” BeatNotBeat (Moon Tide Press), 11/27/23.

“Five Minutes of Peace and Love,” Musing the Masses, 3/2/24.

Books

 

A Venice Sextet: Six Stories by John O’Kane (2023)

A collection of short stories depicting various aspects of life in Venice, California, as its colorful artistic, off-beat characters confront gentrification and its consequences.

 

A Venice Quintet: Five Stories by John O’Kane (2022)

A precursor of the collection that later appeared in revised and expanded form as A Venice Sextet.

 

The Unmaking of the President, 2020 (2022)

This collection of opinion-editorial essays, previously published in multiple sources, provides in-depth commentary on topics tied to the post-2018 midterm election cycle. The essays present diverse perspectives with the stated purpose of facilitating meaningful discourse among readers.

 

Democracy and Authority (2022)

A collection of op-eds originally featured in CounterPunch, ICH, Huffpost, Musing the Masses, and AMASS Magazine that comprise a running commentary on the controversies of the day that erupted after the 2020 national election.

 

Toward Election 2020: Cancel Culture, Censorship and Class (2020)

The op-ed essays in this book comprise a running commentary on issues related to the national election cycle that began just after the 2018 midterms. They came about through a series of conversations with everyday, enlightened citizens of San Pedro and Long Beach, small business owners and workers whose views about the state of the nation played a defining role in the election of 2020.

 

A People’s Manifesto (2015)

This book discusses what ordinary citizens, those with limited power and resources, think about the recession of 2008 and its aftermath. It further investigates how these non-experts and outsiders without access to the “facts” made sense of the crisis and used their opinions to catalyze others to understand and act.

“Venice, CA: A City State of Mind” (2013):  examines the history and character of Venice. As part of his research, he conducted interviews with individuals who had been part of the 1950s Beat scene in Venice, chronicling their influence on the contemporary cultural landscape. As part of his research, O’Kane conducted interviews with key progenitors of the 1950s Beat scene on the contemporary cultural landscape of Venice.

.

Comments and Reviews

O’Kane’s Venice, CA: A City State of Mind all about the fragile state of mind of Venice by the sea. It’s a state of mind that exists in many minds, but our minds are frail. We all have a tenuous hold on reality—yet the hold of a vision that has molded the city state of Venice is still potent, as this book shows.

-Lionel Rolfe, the author of Literary L.A., Huffpost, June 28, 2013.

 

O’Kane’s passion for Venice, and his knowledge of its history, which is the result of the ten years of research he did for his book, are evident as he waxes without pause about the cultural nuances and class distinctions of the city’s gentrification. [Channing Sargent LA Weekly, :

                  –Channing Sargent , “Author John O’Kane Chronicles the Decline of Venice’s Bohemian

Lifestyle,” LA Weekly, January 31, 2014

 

In the new book Venice, CA: A City State of Mind, long-time alternative publisher John O’Kane collects the cultural history of one of America’s most distinctive counterculture locales: Venice. Its artificial canals once hosted a theme park and the neighborhood, popular with figures like Charlie Chaplin, was dubbed “The Coney Island of the West.”

–Creosote Journal, December 1, 2013.

                  

In setting out to tell the tale of alternative past, present, and possible future of the Venice Beach community of California, author John O’Kane has set a daunting task for himself, while also creating a fascinating read for anyone interested in this city by the sea. O’Kane takes the reader on a tour of an amazing community, that for a short time, was run by its artists, and can’t quite let go of the reigns, but also can’t quite marshal its forces to fight its impending doom,

-Carlye Archibeque, “Book Review: Venice, CA: A City State of Mind,” Free Venice

                        Beachhead, September 1, 2013.

 

Awards and Prizes 

Professional Development Grant, AMASS Magazine, UC, Irvine.

Fellowship, Center for the Humanities, Northwestern University.

Fellowship, Literature Department, UC, Berkeley.

Fellowship, Interdisciplinary Program in History and Popular Culture, UC, Berkeley.

Fellowship, Program in Writing and Media, University of Minnesota.

Fellowship, European Studies Program, UC, Berkeley.

 

Linked Writings

booklocker.com/books/6955.html

booksamillion.com/p/Venice-CA/John-OKane/9781626464001

amazon.com/Venice-CA-City-State-Mind/dp/1626464006

barnesandnoble.com/w/venice-ca-john-okane/1116048996

http://www.randomlengthsnews.com/an-elusive-utopia-by-the-sea/

http://www.altweeklies.com/aan/an-elusive-utopia-by-the-sea/Story?oid=7200906

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lionel-rolfe/an-elusive-utopia-by-the-_b_3665471.html

http://freevenicebeachhead.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/some-will-never-be-gentrified/

http://freevenicebeachhead.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/book-review-venice-ca-a-city-state-of-

mind-by-john-okane/

http://creosotejournal.com/2013/12/profane-illumination-venice-ca

http://www.venicebeachhead.org/Resources/Beachhead%20-%20September%202013web.pdf

http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/a-city-state-of-mind/venice-ca-a-city-state-of-

mind.html

http://www.laweekly.com/publicspectacle/2014/01/31/author-john-okane-chronicles-the-decline-

of-venices-bohemian-lifestyle

https://webmail.uci.edu/uci/src/download.php?startMessage=31&passed_id=16307&mailbox=IN

BOX&ent_id=2&passed_ent_id=0 [investigate this]

http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/a-city-state-of-mind/mining-the-states-of-city-

minds.html

https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/john_okane

https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/a-venice-quintet-five-stories-by-john-okane/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/an-elusive-utopia-by-the_b_3665471

https://www.laweekly.com/author-john-okane-chronicles-the-decline-of-venices-bohemian-

lifestyle/

 

Spouse / Partner

Karen Tranel (m. 1978; div. 1983)

Carole Mak (partner, 1999-2005)