JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

http://thebandchoice.com/thrumpton-hall?no_redirect=true “The Answer” is the title John gave to “a series of brief articles” outlining what he then (1967) thought was the answer to the UFO enigma.

I hesitated about posting it, since, after all, John said it was not for publication. That reservation, though, was based on his conviction that he had uncovered “the most important event in the history of Mankind”–which, as he later realized, he hadn’t. So, I see no problem with posting it after all these years, with my own caveat that it doesn’t represent John’s later views.

As he notes on the cover, the material is derived from his “Special Cases” file, which I posted earlier. Readers of this site will remember that it was largely devoted to the claims of contactees, particularly Jaye Paro, who inundated him with wild stories, and to the information he received from “Mr. Apol,” a purported alien (although not necessarily an extraterrestrial; Apol was always vague about his origins). As far as I know, John never met or spoke directly with him, and all communication was through Jaye Paro. “The Answer” summarizes and synthesizes this material, much of which he apparently accepted.

This is a strange document in many ways, both for its content and its backstory, and obviously very important to John at the time. Please read it for its insight into John’s development and character, not as evidence for a hostile Android invasion. It shows him losing his bearings at the start of his research, and, characteristically, driving ahead at full throttle.

I don’t know quite what to make of this document. I find it fascinating, but rather troubling. I assume it is what it says: an outline of John’s privately-held beliefs about the UFO phenomenon, as of October 1967. I say “privately-held,” because he stipulates that the material not be published or discussed. That indicates that he sent, or meant to send, these pages to other researchers; there are several copies in the folder. He also elaborated on them in another longer document, called “The Answer.”

According to this, John believed the UFO occupants were real, and hostile, and he details their plans in disturbing detail. As he says at the end, capitalized for emphasis, “This is NOT SPECULATIVE.”

An important part of John’s personality was his love of magic. As he used to say, “Magic is my thing.” Along with that went a love of secrecy; he had secret affairs, secret projects, and a variety of pseudonyms. This is the part of his research that he kept secret. He also abandoned many of these conclusions later, but they provide insights into what lay behind his public material from that time. You’ve been warned; read on!

Here’s another of John’s articles for the North American Newspaper Alliance. This one comes from November 28, 1966, and reports on some of the criticisms of, and rumors about, the newly-formed Condon Committee. This group, headed by Dr. Edward Condon at the University of Colorado, undertook a scientific study of UFOs, and received a decidedly mixed reception. I think the title “Air Force ‘A'” refers to its designation as an “A staff,” outside the Air Force organization, but I could be wrong. At any rate, here it is:

John Keel died twelve years ago, on July 3, 2009. His books are still read, his ideas are still discussed, and many people still miss him. Rest in peace, John!

(John used to hand out these buttons at conventions in the late ’60s. His ambition was thwarted by the Constitution.)

Here’s another article from the same file of carbons as the last few posts. John wrote this on January 23, 1967, presumably for the North American Newspaper Alliance. He’s strictly a journalist here, compiling the significant sightings of the past year. There are two oddities. One is that he was fooling around with a cipher in the second paragraph; I assume it has no connection to the article itself. The second is that he refers to James Moseley, with whom he had a long-running feud, as an “expert”!

Incidentally, John kept a sample of a “fragile silvery substance” collected in Point Pleasant in 1966. I posted a picture of it here.

From the same file as those last few posts, here’s an article from Jan. 25, 1967, written for the North American Newspaper Alliance. John reports on a curious subset of MIB reports, imposters in military uniforms, and discusses the reactions of Colonel George Freeman of Project Bluebook and the experiences of two UFO photographers, Rex Heflin and Joe Perry.

And here’s the second part of John’s article on the 1965 Virginia flap, picking up from the bottom of page 4. As usual, we get UFO sightings, creature reports, hoaxes, questionable confessions, and general confusion.

I’d like to note the death of Timothy Green Beckley, who died on May 31 in Manhattan at the age of 73. He was. of course, a noted polymath: not only an indefatigable publisher of forteana, but the producer of such cinematic gems as Barely Legal Lesbian Vampires. I only met him a couple of times, but he struck me as a hard-working entrepreneur who enjoyed life. John was astonished at his ability to go out partying every night. Here’s a picture of John giving him the prestigious Falling Frog Award, and here’s a letter from him about a number of investigations from 1967.

Here’s an interesting little article about a Virginia flap from 1965. John wrote it in 1967. I think it appeared in the second issue of the Dell magazine Flying Saucers: UFO Reports, under the title “Occupants: Yes or No?” I haven’t been able to check a copy; maybe some of the Keel fans out there know. The article is eight pages; here are the first four.

As a supplement to the last post, and, I hope, a treat for Jadoo fans, here’s one of the first stories John sent to Alex Jackinson. As I mentioned, he bound all the stories he wrote that year in a volume he just labeled “1955,” with all sales and prices noted. The first entry is dated January 16, and, as the scrawled “Shelved!” indicates, didn’t sell. “Creeping Death of the Nile” is plainly fiction (John was not, in fact, planning to go big-game hunting in South Africa), and as pulpy as it gets. In the course of it, John and Jock escape from a flooded pyramid, only to end in a ruined temple swarming with scorpions. As you can imagine, they barely escape with their lives. He hadn’t caught the formula yet, but four days later, he wrote another one, “End of the Hunt,” which he sold to Sport Life for $200.

Here’s the beginning of “Creeping Death of the Nile,” which is probably sufficient!

As John said in the letter I posted last week, he was mentioned in several books, including Cocktail Party for the Author by Alex Jackinson. Jackinson’s book is a memoir of his ten years as a literary agent, published by Challenge Press in 1964. He was John’s agent in the ’50s; he advised John on writing for men’s magazines, and eventually sold Jadoo to Julian Messner. I found a copy of the book (it’s not rare) and read it. He devotes the third chapter to John, heading it with a question that must occur to many readers of Jadoo: “How True Are the True Adventures?” The answer, not surprisingly, is rather complicated.

Jackinson seems to have been an interesting character. He came from a Russian Jewish family, who emigrated to the Bronx in 1913. His father was a garment cutter; his uncle, Morris Terman, was an editor and writer active in left-wing politics and Yiddish literature. Young Alex became a cutter like his father (he specialized in furs), but was inspired by his uncle’s literary interests. He wrote (and sold) work in many genres: poetry, song lyrics, romance and detective stories. He opened a literary agency in 1953, and was particularly sympathetic to small publishers and young writers. He began by helping his fellow poets to write commercially.

John contacted Jackinson in 1954, fresh from the army, and determined to travel and write. Jackinson thought John’s travel articles weren’t polished enough for the slick magazines like Post or Collier’s, and that he needed “an apprenticeship in the lesser books. For him that meant the men’s group.” There was, he told him, a ready market “for authentic and exciting first-person adventure yarns, so that armchair-tied clerks might turn into Lowell Thomases.”

John was willing, asking, “How much must be true? How much can be invented?” Jackinson replied “with what knowledge I had. Nothing must be offered which could be proven wrong. Each adventure had to read as though it might have happened.”

John set to work, writing and rewriting. “Keel caught the ‘formula’ very ably, and there is most definitely a formula involved. Because he wrote in a way that generated excitement, and because he was meeting a market need, editors were ready to meet him halfway.” After several pieces had been published, Jackinson suggested a book, which John first called Pattern for Adventure. An early pitch went nowhere; a year later, Jackinson felt he had “something submittable,” and set up a meeting with Howard Goodkind of Julian Messner.

Goodkind was interested, but asked, “How do we know this guy isn’t lying?” He was understandably wary; some popular books had turned out to be hoaxes, much to their publishers’ embarrassment: the memoirs of Joan Lowell and Trader Horn, for example. Jackinson explained that John mixed fact and fiction: “No incident is invented, just built dramatically from something that happened.” Goodkind decided to take the book, adding, “I’ll say this–he’s certainly a good writer.”

Jackinson stresses, “Keel achieved in months what most writers do not achieve in years,” although, of course, John had been writing seriously for much longer.

When John returned to NY, Jackinson set up lunch with Goodkind, who was surprised that the supposed swashbuckler was quiet and “skinny enough to be compared to a banana.” Goodkind returned to the question of the book’s veracity.

So, the percentage of Jadoo that is true is either sixty or eighty per cent; take your choice. But the other per cent is the embroidery; he really did have those adventures. Jackinson also reveals how much money Jadoo made. Comparing it to his other clients’ books, he says: “Jadoo did much better, but far short of expectations. With all the extra [magazine] sales, total income for Keel was around three thousand.” In the last chapter, he sums up John’s career after that: his subsequent dry spell, his plans to travel to Timbuctu or Yemen, and his work for television. His interest in UFOs was yet to come.

John himself wrote about this period in his article “Bosoms, Blood, and Baloney.” He also kept a binder labeled “1955,” in which he kept all the stories he wrote that year, with notes on the magazines that bought them and what they paid, as well as feedback from editors. Here’s a note from Jackinson about “The Men with the X-Ray Eyes,” which had been rejected by True. John rewrote it, and did eventually sell it to Man’s Challenge for $150. As Jackinson notes about John’s success in the book, “It was not easy. Nothing pertaining to writing is.”