Interview

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In the spirit of full disclosure, yes, I am good friends with -Richard Prince, and, no, he never gave me more than four strokes a side. Actually we became friends quickly because in the '80s there weren't too many congenial bohemians a guy could play a round of golf with. We belonged to the same club once, Hampton Hills, on Long Island, and I remember the day we were on the first green putting when a guy came zooming up to us in a golf cart and said that Richard couldn't play in the black, paint-splattered jeans he was wearing. Richard offered to take them off, but that wasn't legal either, so he went all the way back to the clubhouse, bought a pair of shorts, put them on, came back to the green on the long par four, and sank the putt for a birdie. Years later we were sitting by Richard's pool in Bridgehampton, New York, watching a huge plume of smoke rise from the Central Pine Barrens, where thousands of acres were aflame, and we both said at once: "I hope Hampton Hills is on fire."
Today Mr. Prince plays at the Bridge in Bridgehampton, where he has curated the great contemporary art collection in the clubhouse. Until recently, he was club champion. I remember we were walking up a fairway there when he told me a secret: that he was collaborating with Marc Jacobs. "If this works," he said, "I can retire." That's one of his jokes that won't wind up on a painting. Some people, like him, could never retire. Sometimes I sense he thinks that the art is getting in the way of the golf and the beach, but, hey, a guy has to make a living. He's making a living, all right. In the last decade the world has discovered what his foursome knew all along: In golf, he's good; in art, he's a grand master. For a while he held the record for the highest amount ever paid for a photograph-for his photograph; he wasn't the buyer. I have to point that out because, among other things, Richard Prince is a fierce collector. If you said that he has elevated collecting to an art form, you would be accurate. You can see it in the galleries, in his plinths of stacked first editions arranged to create a certain esoteric resonance. If you know him you may have seen it in his extraordinary personal library, the building where much of his collection of books, manuscripts, art, and ephemera is housed. Like Andy Warhol, Richard Prince loves art so much he not only makes it, he buys it too.I interviewed Richard at Gagosian Gallery in downtown New York, where he showed me his new Rasta paintings. (With his Massachusetts accent, Rasta ends in r.) Richard said it was the first time he'd set foot in the gallery. Was he kidding? You got me. Sometimes you don't know. While we were talking, his friend Leonardo DiCaprio showed up and also got his two cents in here along with a sandwich.

GLENN O'BRIEN: So what have you been collecting?

RICHARD PRINCE: Well, I'm still collecting books. John McWhinnie tracked down Carolyn Cassady-she's living in England-so we got a whole bunch of what was on her shelf. I got Neal Cassady's copy of On the Road, which is pretty exciting.

GO: Is it dedicated?

RP: No, I think it's just the copy that Jack [Kerouac] gave him. Cassady wrote his name in it and read it cover to cover and made some marginal notes. But it's getting to the point where I need to almost separate myself from the book collection because it's becoming too much of a responsibility. I just got hold of Neal Cassady's original manuscript for The First Third. He wrote it in '53, and then he corrected it for, like, 10 years. I also just acquired Kerouac's original typed scroll for Big Sur. Everybody knew that he did scrolls for On the Road and The Dharma Bums, but nobody knew that he did it with Big Sur.

GO: Big Sur might be the most depressing book I've ever read.

RP: Well, the scroll was twice as depressing because it's twice as long. It might even be three times as long as the -finished book-they edited it completely. What they ultimately -published is about one third of the scroll.

GO: Did Kerouac's estate just have that? Or where was it?

RP: It came from the Sampas estate [which controls Kerouac's estate]. John McWhinnie and Glenn Horowitz [of John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller and Art Gallery in New York] are very good at locating things. They got me one of the draft manuscripts of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It was the same thing with Hunter S. Thompson-they got me his manuscript for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I've also got a lot of Timothy Leary stuff. I've become very interested in Timothy Leary recently. I didn't realize he escaped from jail. So I have Leary's original little map that he made of how he escaped and where he went.

GO: Wasn't Leary in the same jail as Charles Manson for a stretch? They were, like, neighbors on the cellblock.

RP: Leary was jailed, escaped, traveled across America and went to Europe, was eventually caught, and put back in jail, for a time in the same one as Manson.

GO: I interviewed Timothy Leary once in his house in -Beverly Hills.

RP: Before he died? I mean, obviously, but . . .

GO: Yeah, I interviewed him before he died. [Prince laughs] It was actually a few years before he died. He seemed to be . . . drinking a lot. He was really a hustler. A networker. It was funny because he reminded me of Jerry Rubin. I met Jerry Rubin [Yippie and Chicago 7 defendant], too, after he went from being the ultimate hipster, a very underground person, to being like, [enthusiastic] "Hi, I'm Jerry Rubin!" He was then totally into networking and throwing yuppie mixers at Studio 54. He'd become a total suit and tie. Leary seemed like he was sort of going in that direction-marketing.