He was also a gifted musician, playing two-part inventions with two recorders simultaneously, and playing duets with Laurence M. Janifer at the Cafe Rienzi.
He subsequently moved to San Francisco during the Summer of Love. Having bought a mimeograph with his second royalty check from The Butterfly Kid,[3] Anderson and Claude Hayward were the founders of the Communications Company (ComCo), the publishing arm of the anarchist guerrilla street theater group The Diggers.[4] Through ComCo, Anderson circulated a number of his own bitter broadside polemics in Haight-Ashbury, including "Uncle Tim's Children," with its infamous, often-quoted line, "Rape is as common as bullshit on Haight Street."[5]Joan Didion described the role Chester Anderson and ComCo played in Haight-Ashbury in her 1967 essay, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem."[6]
In 1968, Anderson co-founded Entwhistle Books with Paul Williams, David G. Hartwell, and Joel Hack.[7] After his stint with Crawadaddy! Anderson was connected for a brief period with the underground newspaper Tuesday's Child and with Peace Press, a small movement print shop in Los Angeles.
He published two works, both of them thinly disguised memoirs (one, Puppies, published under the name "John Valentine," about sexual excess in the 1960s) with Entwhistle Books. (Several scenes in Puppies were set in the offices of Tuesday's Child, where Anderson slept in a back room while putting out the paper and cruising the nearby Sunset Strip.)
He lived for a number of years in Mendocino, California, where he collaborated with local artist Charles Marchant Stevenson on their proto-graphic novelFox & Hare: The Story of a Friday Evening (also published by Entwhistle Books). A number of science fiction and publishing personalities, including Norman Spinrad and Lou Stathis, posed on location for the illustrations in this book, which attempted to recreate a particular evening in Greenwich Village in the 1960s.[citation needed]
Anderson died in 1991 in Homer, Georgia, where he was living with relatives, at age 58.[8]
(poems) Colloquy (San Francisco: Bolerium Books, 1960) — Handset and printed at The Bread & Wine Press by Harvey Wilder Bentley, San Francisco; self-published by the poet
(poems) A Liturgy for Dragons and 17 Other Poems: 1953-1961 (New York: Chas. P. Young Company, 1961)
^"The Godfather of Rock Criticism: Paul Williams". RockCritics.com. Interviewed by Pat Thomas; Christoph Gurk. August 2001. Pat Thomas: I guess you effectively "sold" Crawdaddy! to someone else? Paul Williams: Well, in theory.... I sold it, but I never got paid. And I brought in my friend Chester Anderson to take over as editor, and he did another four or five issues after I left, and then the people who were bank-rolling it gave up or ran out of money.
"Chester Anderson". Contemporary Authors Online. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale – via GaleNet.
Anderson, Chester (1967). "Foreword". The Butterfly Kid. Pyramid Books. Archived from the original on 2011-07-08. Retrieved June 17, 2010 – via Stolen Apples - Arts Blog.
Dryer, Thorne (October 30, 2007). "Les marchands". Anarchisme et Non-violence (in French) (11–12). La Presse Anarchiste (published January–February 1968). Archived from the original on Jul 23, 2011. Retrieved June 17, 2010.