Johathan Lethem - news on Paul Williams

Paul Williams is one of the most important chroniclers of my generation. For me Rolling Stone never came close to rivaling the content of Williams' Crawdaddy. And that was just one of his many accomplishments.

I picked up this up on Tor.com and it was picked up from Boing Boing--Jonathan Lethem


POSTED THURSDAY APRIL 02, 2009 02:21PM EDT
Family of Paul Williams Needs Help
MANAGEMENT SERVICES
Via BoingBoing:
Jonathan Lethem sez,

Paul Williams, the legendary creator of Crawdaddy! Magazine, fell off his bicycle in 1995 and suffered a traumatic brain injury, which has led to early onset Alzheimer’s. His family’s having difficulties with his care, and so a few of Paul’s friend have set up a website both as a tribute to his life and work and in order to make an appeal for help.

Apart from being a true Founding Father of ‘rock writing’, and Philip K. Dick’s literary executor, Paul should be of special interest to Boing Boing readers for his place at the crossroads where the science fiction fanzines of the ’50’s gave rise to an empowered and self-aware music-fan subculture—and helped create what we now know as ‘the ’60’s’. For anyone with a curiosity about the formation of world-changing subcultures through grassroots media, Paul was there when blogging was a twinkle in a mimeograph eye.

The difficulties Paul’s wife, the singer Cindy Lee Berryhill, and his son Alexander, now face due to Paul’s need for full-time care are an opportunity for crowd-sourcing at its best. This is a rotten time to be hitting anyone up for contributions for anything, but it is simply the case that if everyone who acknowledged how Paul changed their life by his music-writing and editing—or by his efforts propagating the writings of Phil Dick back into prominence—were to give even five or ten dollars it would transform a very unfortunate situation. (If everyone whose life had been changed by Paul’s work but didn’t even know his name were to contribute, they’d build his family a castle.)

Short of donating, just visit the website and glimpse some of Paul’s many cultural legacies. The “Writings” section contains a lovely cascade of testimonials from people like Peter Buck, Lenny Kaye, Johan Kugelberg, Michaelangelos Matos, David Fricke, and others, some nice links to material like the original two-years run of Crawdaddy, and his legendary Rolling Stone interview with Phil Dick., as well as a guide to every book Paul ever wrote.

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