The Beats

[Alexander III]

The beat generation is something which is not discussed much on these forums, so I though I would give them a thread.

Kerouac and Ginsberg are the main fathers but there are a whole bunch of others.


I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkan-
sas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes
on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in
wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt
of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or
purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and **** and
endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind
leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunk-
enness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring
winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of
mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy
Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain
all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat
through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the
crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue
to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire
escapes off windowsills of Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and
anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with
brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous
picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of
China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wonder-
ing where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward
lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah
because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels
who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural
ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse
of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or
soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but
the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in
fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts
with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incompre-
hensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze
of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and
undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and
wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before
the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for
committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and
intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof
waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be ****ed in the *** by saintly motorcyclists, and
screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of
Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of
public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whom-
ever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind
a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to
pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew
of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the
womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ***
and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom.
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a
package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued
along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with
a vision of ultimate **** and come eluding the last gyzym of con-
sciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and
were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of
the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C.,
secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy to
the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner
backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or
with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings
& especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys
too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a
sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams
& stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks
waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-
heat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hud-
son under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy
bottom of the rivers of Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions
and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to
build harpsichords in their lofts,

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the
tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in
the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming
of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and
were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were
growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue
amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regi-
ments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertis-
ing & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down
by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked
away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown
soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window,
jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the
street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph
records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whis-
key and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears
and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to the each other's
hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you
had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver
& waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver
is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salva-
tion and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a
second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals
with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang
sweet blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha
or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with
their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently
presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with
shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instanta-
neous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity
hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & am-
nesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table,
resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and
fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns
of the East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the
echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to
stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the
tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 a.m. and the last
telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room
emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper
rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary,
nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination--
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the
total animal soup of time--
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash
of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the
vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images
juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual
images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of
consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens
Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before
you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet
confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his
naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here
what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow
of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love
into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered
the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies
good to eat a thousand years.


Part One of Howl by Allen Ginsberg

[Alexander III]

In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai Shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA

Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to send to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Mai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief's brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train
Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA

The policeman's name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence's U.S. aid

The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA

He got so sloppy and peddled so loose
He busted himself and cooked his own goose
Took the reward for the opium load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & wench
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till opium flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

The whole operation fell in to chaos
Till U.S. intelligence came in to Laos

Mary Azarian/Matt Wuerker I'll tell you no lie I'm a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosavan

All them Princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA

And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran the Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng's bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars

It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA

All through the Sixties the dope flew free
Thru Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshall Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting comfiture for President Thieu

All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA

Operation Haylift Offisir Wm Colby
Saw Marshall Ky fly opium Mr. Mustard told me
Indochina desk he was Chief of Dirty Tricks
"Hitch-hiking" with dope pushers was how he got his fix

Subsidizing the traffickers to drive the Reds away
Till Colby was the head of the CIA


Another of Ginsberg

[Alexander III]

10th Chorus

The great hanging weak teat of India
on the map
The Fingernail of Malaya
The Wall of China
The Korea Ti-Pousse Thumb
The Salamander Japan
the Okinawa Moon Spot
The Pacific
The Back of Hawaiian Mountains
coconuts
Kines, balconies, Ah Tarzan-
And D W Griffith
the great American Director
Strolling down disgruntled
Hollywood Lane
- to toot Nebraska,
Indian Village New York,
Atlantis, Rome,
Peleus and Melisander,
And

swans of Balls

Spots of foam on the ocean


4th Chorus

Roosevelt was worth 6, 7 million dollars
He was Tight

Frog waits
Till poor fly
Flies by
And then they got him

The pool of clear rocks
Covered with vegetable scum
Covered the rocks
Clear the pool
Covered the warm surface
Covered the lotus
Dusted the watermelon flower
Aerial the Pad
Clean queer the clear
blue water

AND THEN THEY GOT HIM

The Oil of the Olive
Bittersweet taffies
Bittersweet cabbage
Cabbage soup made right
A hunk a grass
Sauerkraut let work
in a big barrel
Stunk but Good



241st Chorus

And how sweet a story it is
When you hear Charley Parker
tell it,
Either on records or at sessions,
Or at offical bits in clubs,
Shots in the arm for the wallet,
Gleefully he Whistled the
perfect
horn
Anyhow, made no difference.

Charley Parker, forgive me-
Forgive me for not answering your eyes-
For not having made in indication
Of that which you can devise-
Charley Parker, pray for me-
Pray for me and everybody
In the Nirvanas of your brain
Where you hide, indulgent and huge,
No longer Charley Parker
But the secret unsayable name
That carries with it merit
Not to be measured from here
To up, down, east, or west-
-Charley Parker, lay the bane,
off me, and every body

[Alexander III]

No beatnik love ?

[breathtest]

There is definitely beat love from me. The beat writings are some of the most distinct and original pieces that you can read. I especially love howl and Kerouacs mexico city blues poems.

Desolation angels is the best piece of writing in literature today, or one of them.

I hope more people join this thread and get a discussion going, as you say Alexander III, the beats are a neglected bunch on these forums!!!!!!

[Pryderi Agni]

Heyyyy....

If you guys wanna know about the formative period of the Beats, read A Blue Hand by Deborah Baker; it's the perfect biographical account.

Oh, and BTW: Peter Orlovsky died (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/04/peter-orlovsky-obituary) a few days ago. Just thought you guys should know, if you haven't already.

[laymonite]

You've certainly elicited Beat love from me, too. In fact, I just finished my master's thesis on Jack Kerouac. The Beat Generation is, to me, the third major assertion of American literary nationalism, after Emersonian Transcendentalism and the modernism of 30s Faulkner, Hemingway, etc. Uniquely, however, the Beats represented a breakthrough in American literature on its own terms. That is, unlike Emersonian Transcendentalists, the Beats broke away from the conventional English prose forms, arguably due to time passing since being a part of Great Britain; and, unlike the Lost Generation (Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerlad, et al.), the Beats wrote about American in America--not comfortably from a wrought-iron street-cafe in Paris, though that's not to deride those who did write from there. Anyway, in my usual incoherent fashion (nod to Norman Mailer), I've tried to convey my love for the truly unique, ground-breaking Beat Generation! Rexroth, Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac, Cassady (who never was able to stick with writing his book), and so on!

Thanks for starting this post, Alexander III!

[stlukesguild]

Desolation angels is the best piece of writing in literature today, or one of them.

Today? The book is over 40 years old.:confused5: Not exactly contemporary literature at all. By the way... I actually quite like Ginsberg's Howl... I even have an edition he signed at a bookstore some years back... but he rarely ever hit the mark to the same extent again.

[Alexander III]

Yes well I think it can be agreed upon that Howl was his magnum opus, and a rather fitting one it was, as it along with Kerouak's On The Road helped establish what the beat generation was.

[breathtest]

'Today? The book is over 40 years old. Not exactly contemporary literature at all. By the way... I actually quite like Ginsberg's Howl... I even have an edition he signed at a bookstore some years back... but he rarely ever hit the mark to the same extent again.'

stlukesguild - contemporary literature is literature written after world war 2, so yes, it is one of the greatest pieces of contemporary literature.

Oh my god, i can't believe Peter Orlovsky has died. That's quite sad, i never knew

[LitNetIsGreat]

Tut, tut, breathtest :nono: you’re not listening to Neely, listen to Neely.


Desolation angels is the best piece of writing in literature today, or one of them.

it is one of the greatest pieces of contemporary literature.

I’ll assume then that you have read and critically evaluated all the novels written in English in the last 40 odd years (or at least have read a huge amount of what is on offer) and have extensively read and assessed the wider critical academic consensus on contemporary literature. I’ll assume that you only take Desolation Angels as the best English text, unless you have extensive language skills and have consulted a number of leading texts in various languages and cultures too. Really, what you mean is that you really enjoyed this novel, which is great, but you are promoting it beyond its status I am sure - again. Of course you might be right, it might be the best written text of the last 40 or 50 years, but I don’t know, I’ve not read them all and I would seriously doubt it.

It is even arguable that Desolation Angels is even Kerouac’s best novel, let alone one of the best novels in the last 40 years written by anyone in any language. For me it is questionable, unless I have the dates mixed up, that this novel is somewhat self-plagiarised from his other work anyway – such as the Dharma Bums which features the scene of Desolation Peak first.

Granted, Kerouac is better than Bukowski, and I went through a four/five week period of intensively enjoying Kerouac – swept away by the musicality of some of his language, (reads very well half-drunk - flows) but that enjoyment soon faded and after it had passed I felt a little silly, like a teen at a party which abruptly ends and everyone goes home a little embarrassed having suddenly sobered up.

That’s not to say that I think he is a bad writer, just distinctly somewhat average with touches of good lines, but with plenty of holes in the text, and right now, I wouldn't particularly want to read him ever again.

[Alexander III]

I am going to have to disagree with the latter part of your post Neely, I think Kerouac is a good writer with touches of great lines. I shall admit his plots can be iffy, but then again most of his works are memoirs, so the plots cannot be judged in the light of a novel plot. His writing style is good, I personally like it, though from a technical point of view there is better, this is no doubt due to his decision to never edit anything after he had written it. However what is great about his books is his characterization, he makes them so real and vivid that by the end of the book you feel you know them perfectly and you feel a powerful empathy for them. It is his skill at characterization which is in my opinion genius, it is this and his ability to portrayals a his world, as well as his life as a form of tragic hero, that will ensure his survival in posteriority.

The only other works I have read with characters as well defined as in Kerouac's novels are Les Miserables and Don Juan, though that may say more about me than the individual works.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Oh no -not the "g" word again - stop it!!!:hat:

That's OK you can disagree with my brief assessment perfectly. I just felt that any strength to be found in Kerouac was to be found in the occasional flashes of language, as opposed to anything along the lines of characterisation or plot, but even those for me are too few and far between to ever want me to pick one up again.

I think he will survive because of On the Road and all the fuss that it kicked up for a while, but I don't think that was due solely to the strength of the writing anyway.

[breathtest]

Well Neely, i did say 'one of them', and that's gotta count for something, right? It's a loose term and it could mean anything.

[Jassy Melson]

Beat poetry was an aberration. It died forty years ago. People read it now and laugh

[Alexander III]

Beat poetry was an aberration. It died forty years ago. People read it now and laugh

Im sorry but how is this statement and more valid or intelligible than :

The beat poetry is the greatest poesy the world has ever seen, Howl is much better than Hamlet, The Iliad, Childe Harold, Orlando Furioso and La Comedia Divina.

?

If you say something like that please back it up with some more concrete views, there is no point in being in a literature DISCUSSION forum if ones posts are "sorry this sucks, end of thread" or "best thing ever, any other opinion is wrong, end of thread"

[stlukesguild]

stlukesguild - contemporary literature is literature written after world war 2, so yes, it is one of the greatest pieces of contemporary literature.

I will grant you the fact that some anthologies categorize anything after WWII as "Contemporary Literature" (although Post-War Literature would seem to be a far better term) but "Contemporary Literature" is far more commonly used to define literature by living writers... usually writers who have actually produced something of merit in the last 10-20 years. By this standard... or by the standard of what you actually said:

Desolation Angels is the best piece of writing in literature today...

Kerouac is far from being "contemporary". As for the superlative "greatest"... one would assume that prior to having made such a claim you would have read a vast percentage of the contemporary literature in existence to make such a comparison... or at least the majority of those writers repeatedly mentioned among the strongest writers post-WWII. Thus I assume you've read Italo Calvino, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Julio Cortazar, J.L. Borges, Carlos Fuentes, Paul Celan, Gunter Grass, Yves Bonnefoy, Georges Perec, Adam Zagajewski, Tomaso Landolfi, Amoz Oz, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, John Barth, Donald Barthleme, Jose Saramago, Alejo Carpentier, Samuel Beckett, Heinrich Boll, Friederich Durrenmatt, Max Frisch, Cees Nooteboom, Seamus Heaney, Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill, Charles Wright, Saul Bellow, Yehuda Amichai, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Tournier, Octavio Paz, Homero Aridjis, Don DeLillo, Anthony Burgess, John Ashbery, Thomas Pynchon, Dylan Thomas, W.S. Merwin, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, etc... etc... And these barely scrape the surface of Post-War writers. JBI could surely lead you to any number of truly talented Canadian and Chinese writers; others to Indian, Japanese, African, or Middle-Eastern writers. I personally cannot imagine choosing a single favorite living writer... let alone presuming that my favorite is also the "greatest".

Oh my god, i can't believe Peter Orlovsky has died. That's quite sad, i never knew...


I'll need to rush to my shelves and pull out my copy of Clean A**hole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs!

[Jeremydav]

Beat poetry wasn't an aberration...plenty of good poetry came out of that era and they were a group of guys who really loved the English language. A lot of junk too, but that occurs with any movement of literature.

[Jassy Melson]

My statement requires no concrete views to back it up. All you have to do is read the Beat poets.

[breathtest]

That's OK you can disagree with my brief assessment perfectly. I just felt that any strength to be found in Kerouac was to be found in the occasional flashes of language, as opposed to anything along the lines of characterisation or plot, but even those for me are too few and far between to ever want me to pick one up again.


I think those occasional flashes of language were more than occasional personally, but i see what you mean. But i think with regards to his characterisation, what Kerouac liked to do was portray the individuality of each character, and to show them reacting with one another in hectic circumstances, with all the travelling and meeting up with people across america. He tried to show the life of people who were intensely creative within literature.

[Pryderi Agni]

My statement requires no concrete views to back it up. All you have to do is read the Beat poets.

Precisely the kind of statement one would expect from someone who views poetry as a fashion or a trend, something that dies as time passes.

Listen:


However one views their chaotic lives and groundbreaking artistry, there is no escaping the beauty of their friendship.
--nj.com (http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/index.ssf/2010/07/jack_kerouac_and_allen_ginsber.html)


Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, central figures of the Beat generation, were social and literary pioneers, experimenting tirelessly with literature, drugs and sexuality. Ginsberg’s Howl (1956) and Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) inspired a generation of youth culture in mid-twentieth-century America, and liberalised permanently what could and could not be published.
--Granta (http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Kerouac-Ginsberg-the-letters)


"Howl" (1956) and "On the Road" (1957), two works that helped define a time, sprang from two wildly fired, independent imaginations.

There has been as much interest in the style, lives and scenes as there has been in the thinking and the writing.
--latimes.com (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-kerouac-ginsberg-20100718,0,6040928.story)

All of these are from reviews of the recently-published correspondence between Ginsberg and Kerouac. Read the articles; they'll tell you that the Beats are certainly not dead.

[Bastard Child]

Granted, Kerouac is better than Bukowski

What? That's a matter of actual fact? I'm sorry, I must have missed that discussion, to say nothing of the verdict...
I mean, contextually, Kerouac's cultural importance isn't under consideration so much as this nebulous claim to his being "better" - the meaning of which, for me at least, has yet to be established. Better? How exactly?
I believe Kerouac's writings to be fine, his story-telling abilities excellent, his mastery of the English language (understandably) decent, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading him and pondering his opinions. Is that to say I've enjoyed Bukowski less? Why? Because he was a simple blue-collar booze-hound? Because he kept no adherence to any conventional form? Should we then compare Burroughs to Ginsberg and say perhaps Ginsberg was "better" because, though not exactly classical per say, he'd not explored the deconstruction of language as far as Burroughs, or rather, that Burroughs was a "lesser" writer for having broken language down further than Ginsberg? Can't both have merit with their respective achievements, without such arbitrary comparisons?
That Bukowski consciously chose to adopt a more simplistic (some might say a more honest) approach to writing, a less pompous or pretentious one, than many another contemporary writer should not be held against him but lauded as another achievement in literature against stifling conservatism, whether or not the attempt is to be seen as a failure...

[Alexander III]

What? That's a matter of actual fact? I'm sorry, I must have missed that discussion, to say nothing of the verdict...
I mean, contextually, Kerouac's cultural importance isn't under consideration so much as this nebulous claim to his being "better" - the meaning of which, for me at least, has yet to be established. Better? How exactly?
I believe Kerouac's writings to be fine, his story-telling abilities excellent, his mastery of the English language (understandably) decent, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading him and pondering his opinions. Is that to say I've enjoyed Bukowski less? Why? Because he was a simple blue-collar booze-hound? Because he kept no adherence to any conventional form? Should we then compare Burroughs to Ginsberg and say perhaps Ginsberg was "better" because, though not exactly classical per say, he'd not explored the deconstruction of language as far as Burroughs, or rather, that Burroughs was a "lesser" writer for having broken language down further than Ginsberg? Can't both have merit with their respective achievements, without such arbitrary comparisons?
That Bukowski consciously chose to adopt a more simplistic (some might say a more honest) approach to writing, a less pompous or pretentious one, than many another contemporary writer should not be held against him but lauded as another achievement in literature against stifling conservatism, whether or not the attempt is to be seen as a failure...

In my opinion the sole purpose of any art is the creation of beauty, that is why keroac is regarded far above Bukowski, Kerouac's prose is beauty, Bukowski's is not so much, the argument could be made the Bukowski was merely using a simpler style alla Hemingway, but the difference is hemmingway's prose has its own distinctive beauty, I find Bukowski lacks this. Of course I have only read one novel of Bukowski's but his writing style seems pretty clear to me.

Kerouc's prose is lyrical, in a revolutionary sense is is the music of jazz, as the music changes from classical to jazz, his prose reflect that and capture the beauty of it, his prose is very poetic, his novels could easily be described as epic prose poems. Bukowski I find, just writes, in the way a journalist or lawyer might, Kerouac writes poesy.

[Bastard Child]

In my opinion the sole purpose of any art is the creation of beauty

One must be very careful with opinions, they're perfidious and fickle and too often anchor down for ship a barge. I mean, your present belief (which may or may not change as you grow older, though past a certain year in any man's life old is old is immutable) may change and that quite drastically; but also, what you now consider as beauty and what you may someday come to consider as beauty - be it even tomorrow - may differ not only from each other but from the notion of any other person. Perhaps that's why art is so vast and diversified...

[Alexander III]

Should have specified, its natural that my opinions will change, opinions which don't change are faulty, but what I am saying is that throughout history the achievement of beauty has always been the greatest achievement of art, unless you think a novel or poem can have a higher purpose than beauty ?

[Bastard Child]

Like social upheaval? Or shock? Or propaganda? Or everything ugly and base and mean? I don't like categorization and I hate limitation.
When I first read Notes From Underground, for example, I felt for the first time like someone was writing for just such a person as myself. It isn't beautiful, not in a conventional sense, it isn't pretty; yet it evokes emotions akin to those beauty evokes. It wasn't beautiful then, not as beauty had until then been known, but was it not perhaps a redefinition of the beautiful, if only to be admitted as art? It could be; it became; it is so today.
So then, NO, is the answer to your question. Beauty is the purpose of art. But this purpose, could it not also be repulsive, frightening, base and terrible, just as beauty itself can be? Just as well. Is beauty horrifying? Sure. Can Ugliness inspire one to awe? Of course. Wherefore this whole 'beauty' thing leaves me uninspired. Beauty? This ultimate purpose of art? What is it? Undefinable at best. Most that can be said of beauty is that it inspires an emotional response...
How about this: The ultimate goal of art is to achieve some emotional reaction, any such reaction, including disgust, awe, fright, trepidation, swooning, things leading to death even... if anything I ever do may kill any person flat, I will consider myself a master of my craft and retire a proud man, let all of mankind despise me for it...

[Alexander III]

That is because you limit your notion of beauty, Note From The Underground is a beautiful novel, by beauty I do not mean a limited notion of beauty as the common person might have it, I mean a true beauty an almost sublimity to the work.

"How about this: The ultimate goal of art is to achieve some emotional reaction, any such reaction, including disgust, awe, fright, trepidation, swooning, things leading to death even... if anything I ever do may kill any person flat, I will consider myself a master of my craft and retire a proud man, let all of mankind despise me for it..."

Thats the dangerous road the visual arts have taken with now a signed urinal and a can of **** being hailed as great art, it is art merely for shock value, there is no beauty in it, beauty ages like wine, only getting better with each new listen, view or read. Once the initial impact of the can of **** is gone, there is nothing left... the poetry of Byron however continues to inspire countless generations well 200 years after his death.

[Bastard Child]

the poetry of Byron however continues to inspire countless generations well 200 years after his death.

Perhaps you forget or are ignorant of the fact that, essentially, Lord Byron was locked up on obscenity charges for his obvious "sexual deviancy"... His words were not "beautiful" in the understood sense, but "mad, bad and dangerous", as described by close friends...
As for your notion that I may be somehow close-minded, I'll leave the claim to your own further meditation. A whole "Whether it be nobler in the mind" kind of deal... sure, beauty for you is a sacred and unassailable divinity - and it may be so for each one of us - but some are more flexible than others...
I just so happen to consider certain things beautiful which you yourself might find abhorrent; is it to be made null then by your understanding that what I may value as beautiful is **** ? By your standards? Hm... well then, thanks for setting me straight and may the future of man and art be damned should it find favour with me, or glorified otherwise...
As for this whole shock value thing: what truly has little merit is all too often and easily called out and is but seldom admired or copied for long, so that a lasting trend can but barely be ascribed to that category - unless you feel up to the task of proving me wrong? Examples?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Originally Posted by Neely
Granted, Kerouac is better than Bukowski

What? That's a matter of actual fact? I'm sorry, I must have missed that discussion, to say nothing of the verdict...

The discussion is around somewhere - you can read it if you want, however I have absolutely no interest in spending my Sunday thinking about Bukowski so you'll forgive for not commenting further.

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49061&highlight=bukowski

[Eiss]

Beat is defeated, postwar western culture meeting oriental tradition - how did the Japanese recover from nuclear attack? Lack of ideological orientation made the minds drift like bums through human mental history to bring forward beatniks.

[Jassy Melson]

That's why Beat Poetry didn't last very long

[shortstoryfan]

Today, if I walked into my university bookstore, and any bookstore within a two mile radius, I would find that a large majority of the poetry sections are still Beat Poetry. It is probably the most predominant genre here besides regional work. The younger generation seems fascinated with this era, and the poetry that came out of it. I've never really been too interested in the Beat Poets, though I did buy a volume of Bukowski's Selected Poems, and I have Howl on my bookshelf. I see the influence of the Beat Poets in a lot of other poetry, like the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, the New York School, and Flarf. I find these movements interesting (or in the case of Flarf) odd and entertaining, but enjoy them most when they have a dedication to lyricism. But for all the wonderful things that the Beats influenced, I still wonder if it's not more about the counterculture.

It's interesting to appreciate the offspring of a movement more than the actual movement. I have heard people say they hate certain poets over and again. Emily Dickinson. Sylvia Plath. But if you look at the influence these people had, and have, even today, I think you can still find something to appreciate.

[stlukesguild]

Today, if I walked into my university bookstore, and any bookstore within a two mile radius, I would find that a large majority of the poetry sections are still Beat Poetry.

Somehow I highly doubt this. While Bukowski admittedly has far more books than are his due on most book store shelves, one might suppose that his poetry largely attracts those with limited experience reading poetry let alone an appreciation of good poetry... and in this manner he is not unlike Maya Angelou... or the poems by pop stars like Jim Morrison or Jewel. In spite of this, Pablo Neruda, Rilke, Rimbaud, Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Poe, Shakespeare, Milton, T.S. Eliot... to say nothing of the Romantics: Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc... all add up to a great deal more than the space taken up by the Beats. Ginsberg's oeuvre is usually limited to Howl and a collected poems, and there are few other beats beyond Ginsberg or Bukowski who ever even show up in most stores. Gregory Corso? Lawrence Ferlinghetti? Peter Orlovsky?

I agree that the Beats remain attractive to young readers. There is a seductiveness in the poetry of writers largely ignored by most teachers... especially when the young readers discover the heady mix of sex, drugs, rock-n-roll and rebellion that infuses much of this work. The young readers are also likely to be seduced by what they imagine is the formal innovation of these poets. As one reads more and discovers the artistic merits of such iconoclasts as Rimbaud, Baudelaire, William Blake, Coleridge, Whitman, etc... one may likely find that the Beats are less rebellious, less inventive, and less than brilliant in most instances by way of comparison.

[Desolation]

Kerouac and Ginsberg were nothing if not very flawed, but they remain among my favorite writers, especially Kerouac. Jack Kerouac was my first literary love, and there's a lot to be said for that. If not for Jack, it's likely that I would have never touched a book by "more talented" writers such as Dostoevsky, Proust, Joyce, Henry Miller, Rimbaud, or Nietzsche (all of whom he regularly raves about in his novels).

[stlukesguild]

I never feel hard for the Beats... probably because I never really read them until after I had already read a great deal of other poets. The French Symbolists... especially Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme, and Gautier... but also Huysmans, Nerval, Valery, and Comte de Lautréamont... among others... were perhaps the first poets who seduced me... in part because they were writers I had discovered on my own. Kerouac and Ginsberg didn't have much to offer against the likes of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. There is certainly something to be said for coming upon a writer on your own. Herrick, Spenser, and Traherne remain favorites among the earlier English writers in part because they were personal discoveries. The same is true of Holderlin, Paz, Borges, Italo Calvino, Montale, and many others. My admiration for other writers, such as Whitman, T.S. Eliot, and Dickinson owes far more to my personal readings than it does to what I experienced in my formal studies. Dickinson was almost ruined for me by grade school teachers who presented her as the naive virginal Puritan poet and college professors who attempted to convert her into an icon of feminism and lesbianism. It was only reading her later on my own that I discovered her strength.

[Desolation]

I strongly believe that you have to read Kerouac in high school, or early on college, to "get" him. On the Road is one of those books, like Catcher in the Rye that appeals to a certain emotional stage. I don't mean to say that either book is juvenile, it's just hard to get into them if you don't pick them up at the right moment in your life, which usually coincides with a yearning for teenage rebellion. You gotta strike while the iron is hot, or some other such cliche.

I can't really judge where he stands in the grand poetic scheme, as I am most certainly NOT a fan of poetry. However, I've always thought of Jack, despite his prose talents, as a somewhat mediocre poet.

Also, come to think of it, I DID read Rimbaud before Kerouac...I bought his complete works when I was first getting big on Bob Dylan and thought that I liked poetry...and, I bought Flowers of Evil at the same time, because I liked the title, although it would be almost 2 years before I got around to reading it.

[Bastard Child]

however I have absolutely no interest in spending my Sunday thinking about Bukowski so you'll forgive for not commenting further. ]

To Neely: Then, I'm quite sorry to be the one to have to say it, you really should complain to whoever has invited you. Never should one blame the host or any guest for having stumbled into a party to which one really doesn't belong.
I mean, I'm just saying...
But good for you that you feel you have something to share, though it communicates nothing and means less...

[breathtest]

I think it is worth mentioning that Kerouac and many other of the beats were not intending to be rebellious, anti-government, there was never intended to be a beat mutiny or anything of the sort. Kerouac states in one of his novels that he was completely apolitical. when the press got hold of the term 'beat', which Kerouac used once not really intending it to mean much, they blew it out of proportion and used phrases like 'beat insurrection', even though kerouac defined the word 'beat' as meaning only 'sympathetic' in one of his interviews.

Granted Ginsberg was very politically active, but the beats were about peace and empathy and sympathy and passion. being true to their desires and trying to live without harming others.

[Alexander III]

Actually I find the beet were about the rediscovery and the value of an individual in the 50's when America was becoming a very com formative state especially with the whole red scare issue. They didn't want to convert the country in their ways however, this is explicitly clear, they just wanted to live their lives as individuals finding life and not being forced into the misery of what they perceived as the forced ordinary life's of others.

[LitNetIsGreat]

To Neely: Then, I'm quite sorry to be the one to have to say it, you really should complain to whoever has invited you. Never should one blame the host or any guest for having stumbled into a party to which one really doesn't belong.
I mean, I'm just saying...
But good for you that you feel you have something to share, though it communicates nothing and means less...

You're rather an abrupt fellow aren't you? :rolleyes5:

I detailed why I disregarded Bukowski in the other thread; I don't see why I should have to repeat myself again. I've read his work, I think little of it and I gave the reasons why.

I'm sorry that you felt that my great wisdom communicated nothing and meant less to you (if you even read it), but frankly dear, I don't really give a damn...

[breathtest]

Actually I find the beet were about the rediscovery and the value of an individual in the 50's when America was becoming a very com formative state especially with the whole red scare issue. They didn't want to convert the country in their ways however, this is explicitly clear, they just wanted to live their lives as individuals finding life and not being forced into the misery of what they perceived as the forced ordinary life's of others.

Yeah i agree, a lot of people who dislike the beats tend to argue that they were trying to convert people and to change the way things were and to cause disruption in society, even though they weren't.

[Pryderi Agni]

I don't know if you've noticed, but somewhere along the way a discussion of the Beats has become a discussion on the beets. Somehow, I don't think that's a euphemism.

[Bastard Child]

You're rather an abrupt fellow aren't you?

I just don't sugar-coat my ****; if it's meant to stink, by all means let it stink. My main gripe here is that my experience with you has led me to the conclusion that you are the sort to nuzzle your way into topics with the sole intent of poisoning them, and I find that reprehensible. You have proven yourself among that special class of socio-phobic parasites, the neo-socialite, a weird hybrid creature that needs to cyber-fart his notice upon entering a room and again upon leaving it, all with the purpose of gaining some feeling of new and exciting self-worth to counter-balance the old, worn-in and somewhat comforting derision of his peers...
A word of advice then, all so courteously done: If you have nothing to add to an ongoing conversation or debate other than to provide the occasional derogatory comment, you should have the courtesy to know your place and gracefully return whence you came, unobserved.
Anyway, this now really is the last I shall reply on this thread.:banghead:
This streak is done.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I just don't sugar-coat my ****; if it's meant to stink, by all means let it stink. My main gripe here is that my experience with you has led me to the conclusion that you are the sort to nuzzle your way into topics with the sole intent of poisoning them, and I find that reprehensible. You have proven yourself among that special class of socio-phobic parasites, the neo-socialite, a weird hybrid creature that needs to cyber-fart his notice upon entering a room and again upon leaving it, all with the purpose of gaining some feeling of new and exciting self-worth to counter-balance the old, worn-in and somewhat comforting derision of his peers...
A word of advice then, all so courteously done: If you have nothing to add to an ongoing conversation or debate other than to provide the occasional derogatory comment, you should have the courtesy to know your place and gracefully return whence you came, unobserved.
Anyway, this now really is the last I shall reply on this thread.:banghead:
This streak is done.

Oh dear, oh dear!!! :hand:

You don't know anything about me - it is clear (and clear to anyone who "knows" me) that you are talking utter nonsense. It's also rich that you should accuse me, Neely, of derogatory comments considering your use of language!!!

Really, this forum is not about attacking other people in the way you clearly do with me and others above.

It is hoped, that if this is your attitude, it is not just to this thread that will be your last post, for this sort of rubbish is not welcome on Litnet. Go and be abusive elsewhere.

[sadparadise]

I am a huge fan of the beat generation. I have met Allen Ginsberg and visited Lowell (Kerouac's much written about home town) on two separate occasions. The beats hit a very special chord with me.
However, its been 15 to 20 years since I have read any of Jack's books and only occasionally do I listen to any of the audio recordings of beat poetry. I find it nostalgic, but I would not say that it is great literature. It is nice to look back on these writings every once in awhile. But there will come a time when young readers who entertain reading the beats move on.

[Bastard Child]

It is hoped, that if this is your attitude, it is not just to this thread that will be your last post, for this sort of rubbish is not welcome on Litnet. Go and be abusive elsewhere.

Sadly - Oh! - going against my own rule here:
It is strictly because this site needs a person like myself, and never the other way around, that I am here, my dear, dear friend...
For every one of my kind there bubbles forth a thousand of these failed literature sites, every one of them boasting so many great minds, such great talent, such true inspiration - and deliver nothing but pulp and broken promises and noise, casting into oblivion as many failed writers and poets in their fall as they promoted when they rose... :reddevil:
No... This site needs people like me that we may challenge and inspire it to better itself and its members, even should it cast us aside eventually...
In the meantime, it cannot do without me or mine - hell, it cannot do without anyone! You've surely seen the numbers? Pathetic! Your average village street corner sees more hits in a day!
So you might just have to learn to live with me...:yikes: