Big Sur, California, hugging the Pacific coast, is wreathed in fog and mystery. It seems like if you’re going to die there, it’s not a bad place to be. Novelist Dennis Murphy did not die–though the Fresno Bee did erroneously report his death–but he was stabbed in a most unusual way in a parking lot fight in 1963 with artist Jay Kipp.
Long story short: Big Sur sculptor stabs Big Sur writer nine times. Neither want to say anything much to the police. The author ended up with 9 stab wounds in his chest and neck. But the sculptor concocted the bizarre story that the author either “fell” or “threw himself” onto the knife. Nine times, you remember.
Jay David Kipp, born July 23, 1929 in San Francisco, was a Big Sur potter who was part of that loose group of artists and writers who have mingled in that seaside community since the 1920s. Alan Watts, on August 24, 1959, describes a visit to Big Sur and his meeting with Jay Kipp, saying
Yesterday we went further south to the Bay of Lucia, where Camaldolese Benedictines have just set up a hermitage. It’s the most idyllically Mediterranean place on the coats. We were visiting a most gifted potter, Jay Kipp, who lies on a promontory where there was once a noble mansion, long since wrecked by an earthquake. He lives with wife and baby in the old servants’ cottage, surrounded with the overgrown gardens–jacaranda trees, oleander, eucalyptus, potato vines, pampas grass–all hanging above the bay. There was a light rain which had cleared the atmosphere, giving us the rarity of a visible horizon. Jay’s pottery is very much in the finest Zen tradition and somehow, if I can possibly manage it, I will try to get you a piece. Jay is gone on Subud, has done a jail sentence for growing marijuana, and was really pumping me about LSD. Oh, it’s a strange world–this great quest for ecstasy.
Dennis Murphy, who died in 2005, was a writer of minor note. Upon Murphy’s death, SF Gate reported:
Mr. Murphy, who spoke fluent French, started the “The Sergeant” while a student at Stanford University. Before graduation, however, he enlisted in the Army and served in France, where he spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, apparently gathering material. He later finished the novel in Ajijic, Mexico.
