Rimbaud was pretty cool during the period in which he lived as a poet. But, of course his life got substantially less interesting after he stopped writing and went to Africa.
Kerouac's story ends similarly. He lived the carefree beatnik writer's life for a good 20 years, and then after he got famous he spent the rest of his life as a fat Catholic racist drinking himself to death in his mother's living room.
Agreed, Desolation, Kerouac essentially evaded responsibility all his life and I think that inability to face up has alot of kudos in this definition of "cool".
Somebody mentioned Doctor Sax earlier, and I have to agree that was a dreadful novel. I think that was the last one I ever read by Kerouac.
Satori in Paris was one he wrote in the mid 60s when he was well into his alcoholic phase and it made no sense to speak of, either. A "satori" is supposed to be an illumination, a life-changing moment, and I kept waiting for this satori to happen but i soon realised that there was no such moment coming. It was just drink-sodden nonsense.
What are regrets? Just lessons we haven't learned yet - Beth Orton
When thinking about Kerouac and Miller I can't help but be innundated w/ a certain sense of depravity. Is that an obligatory aspect of coolness?
http://unidentifiedappellation.blogspot.com/
I read On The Road, I wasn't really that impressed by it to be honest. I wondered what all of the fuss was about & I still do. I am obviously not 'cool'.
docendo discimus
No, depravity is certainly not an obligatory aspect of coolness, not should depravity generally be respected. With some figures, the coolness just overrides the depravity.Originally Posted by Brad Coelho
In Miller's case, I tend to think of him as literature's equivalent to the Rolling Stones. It doesn't matter how depraved or morally bankrupt their lifestyles are, even when those lifestyles are heavily incorporated into their art, they're just cool no matter what. The funny thing is, I'm actually not very fond of overt sexuality, yet Miller remains one of my favorite and most admired writers.
Interesting take. I too adore Miller's deconstructed expression of literature (much like I do Burroughs) and am paradoxically uninterested in the realm of the ribald. I like the Rolling Stones comparison.
http://unidentifiedappellation.blogspot.com/
Cool is negated the moment one is making a conscious movement toward being cool. For mine, many of the beats are thus not cool. I think Kerouac salvaged his coolness by drinking himself to death in his mother's living room. That level of indifference wins you big points. Ginsberg was demonstrably insecure, very Jewish, and wrote a truck load of terrible poetry. Not cool. Burroughs could never muster enough sustained talent to be cool. Plus he shot his wife in the head and killed her. Uncool.
Last edited by sixsmith; 12-29-2009 at 07:52 PM.
'Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.' - Groucho Marx
Ah, so that's the secret...
In his defence, among the slightly dodgy homo-erotic wish fulfilments & his rather naive politics, there was the occasional spectacular use of imagery.
I have only ever read Naked Lunch & to be honest I couldn't make top nor tail of it. It seemed to be full of promising ideas that were never actually realised. What really impressed me about the 'banned edition' however was the appendix of the letter to the British Journal of Addiction (Vol 53, No 2) where he seems to be incredibly insightful & prophetic about the way governments exploit the fear of drugs &/or drug abuse for their own tendentious propaganda purposes.
docendo discimus
I saw a 'Original Scroll' version of On the Road today. It said that it was the 'uncensored manuscript'. Has anyone read both and is there much of a difference?
"...You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?..." E. A. Poe
I don't know how much censoring there was, but the original scroll was not ready for the press; it required massive rewriting. I wonder if the original was ever published in its original wording.
I just looked and learned that Viking Press published On the Road: The Original Scroll in 2007. I haven't seen this, but it appears to be available on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Original-.../dp/067006355X
Last edited by PeterL; 01-27-2010 at 04:51 PM.
Hmmm…
Maybe Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir in a kooky European ugly way!
Sartre was ****ing cool.
“Ho, ho, ho! Well, if it isn’t fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou!”
Alex deLarge, A Clockwork Orange
The "rest of his life" part above sounds more interesting to me than the cliche "rebel" "experiment" "hedonist" 20-something f**king story that every college kid tries to some extent before settling down to become a suburbanite slob (cliche phase-2)
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