Literary Movement Series: Beat Generation

"...Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.'s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles' free booze. They're only Beat, y'know, when it comes to work..."

And so the term beatnik was born.  Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote this in an April 2, 1958 article, combining the name of Russia's Sputnik with the Beat Generation, and implying they were "far out of the mainstream society" and "possibly communist."

But these were not the original Beats.  These were the offshoots, the visible and physical elements of the Generation that outsiders could grasp.  They were lazy, sloppy and, for the most part, parodies of the message Beats were trying to convey.  (In New York in the 60s, you could Rent-a-Beatnik, just look in The Village Voice.)

So we go back to the beginning...In the 1950s, the original Beat writers met in NewYork, and later in San Francisco where they pushed the San Francisco Renaissance, which encouraged this city as the center of American avant-garde.  Those central figures were Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (not a part of the San Francisco meeting), Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso.  Between them, they pushed the boundaries of acceptable literature and lifestyle: openly discussing "drug use, sexuality (in particular homosexuality) and criminal behavior without condemnation, and sometimes with approval" (source).

The first work to bring the Beat Generation to the public was Ginsberg's Howl.  The graphic sexual language led to an obscenity trial, but the form took like wildfire.  Ginsberg utilized a no-restrictions, spontaneous style that took on the experiences of his friends and, in particular, a mental patient named Carl Solomon (also a writer, Report from the Asylum: Afterthoughts of a Shock Patient).  Through Solomon, Ginsberg attempted to take on, albeit indirectly, his own mother's schizophrenia and lobotomy.

The Howl obscenity charges were actually brought against the domestic publisher--Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran City Lights Bookstore.  Freedom of speech won out when Judge Clayton Horn ruled the poem was of "redeeming social importance."  And the publicity helped further the reach of the Beats.

Note for film lovers: Southern Mystery Cities' favorite James Franco plays Allen Ginsberg in the 2010 film Howl, directed by Rob Epstein.  Anyone who saw Franco in Milk or the TV movie James Dean knows he can jump into someone else's skin with ease.


But from where did this new generation of bucking the norm come?

Following the world wars, popular society seemed to need order, but a strong intellectual undercurrent revolted and the Beats were part of this revolt.  The improvisational elements of jazz were a huge influence (think spontaneous riffs and Kerouac's spontaneous prose), as were the elite-attacking elements and performance art aspects of Dadaism and Surrealism (think action paintings of Jackson Pollock and the montage element of Dadaist Hannah Höch).

"For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in."  Hugo Bell, leader of Zurich Dada movement

So, while the Beats certainly bucked the norm, they weren't alone.  They had their influences and they had their predecessors.  Tuesday, we discussed how Romanticism came from the postwar era and post-revolution minds of Europe and North America.  So did the Beats stem from the buttoned-down post-war culture, fighting the constraints of society and releasing the forbidden passions.

I can't get into all the Beat writers here.  Burroughs' Naked Lunch speaks to the BG's nonlinear style, while Kerouac's On the Road shows stream of consciousness and breathing in literature via the connecting dash.  Think about journaling, and ad breathtaking imagery and a view into the subconscious.

We end with the words of modernist poet William Carlos Williams, who spoke of Ginsberg's ability and effect:

"...He proves to us, in spite of the most debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith--and the art! to persist."

Photo info:
First, centered: Ginsberg and Kerouac, from this site, click and see artists' renditions of the BG
Second, right: City Lights Bookstore
Third, left: William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso, 1980, San Francisco Art Institute

Next...
Monday: author Elizabeth Spann Craig
Tuesday: Realism
Wednesday: The Lost Generation
Thursday: Modernism
Friday: author Stephen Tremp

Note: I apologize for the late-morning posting.  Struggling with Blogger's autopost system.