Cultural Dissent in the 1950s: The Beat Generation

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Cultural Dissent in the 1950s The Beat
Generation Today we will look at postwar
literature, focusing on the work of Jack Kerouac.
We will continue to contemplate the following
question Are literature, intellectual work, and
the arts "the most intense expressions of an
age"? We will look at how postwar literature, and
particularly the work of the Beats, resisted
dominant cultural conventions of the postwar
moment. We will look both at contemporary
responses to On the Road and at the novel itself.
Criticized for its irresponsibility and lack of
structure, the novel is actually carefully
structured around the friendship of Sal and Dean
and the understanding of "good-and-evil" which
Sal's shifting impressions of Dean afford.
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The Beats-especially the literate and literary
Beats-strenuously cling to an adolescent outlook
which regards discipline or concentration as
repressive and intelligence as a general
nuisance. James Scott, "Beat Literature and the
American Teen Cult"
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Beat Generation A. Characteristics of Beat
literature 1. Kerouac's concept of "beat" a.
"beat" as rhythm b. "beat" as being broken down,
pushed to the margins of existence c. "beat" as
religious experience, as beatitude Link to
biographical information on Kerouac
http//www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/kerouac.h
tml
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"Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" a. attacked the
concept of revision and denied the artist's
traditional selectivity b. compared the writer to
a jazz saxaphonist Explaining the influence of
jazz and "bop" on his work, Kerouac wrote Yes,
jazz and bop, in the sense of, say, a tenor man
drawing a breath and blowing a phrase on his
saxaphone, till he runs out of breath, and when
he does, his sentence, his statement's been made
. . . that's how I therefore separate my
sentences, as breath separations of the mind. Are
there passages of On the Road that clearly
exemplify this statement?
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3. Ginsberg's "Howl" (1956) exemplifies attack on
the concept of revision and denial the artist's
traditional selectivity a. moves from intense
assertion of personal identity to a merger with
larger forces of the universe b. obsessive quest
for experience similar to Kerouac's On the
Road c. Ginsberg's formal breakthrough the long
line
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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 Arkansas 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 . . . --Ginsberg, Howl
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4. relation of Beat literature to postwar
American values a. seeks to retain the ability to
feel in numbing times b. insists on a
transcendent social vision c. stresses
spirituality in opposition to materialism The
valueless abyss of modern life is unbearable.
--John Clellon Holmes, The Beat
Generation Question for discussion What is
IT? How is "IT" significant to Sal's quest in
On the Road?
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The Beats vs. the Lost Generation on
spirituality Only the most bitter among them
would call their reality a nightmare and protest
that they have indeed lost something, the future.
But ever since they were old enough to imagine
one, that has been in jeopardy anyway. The
absence of personal and social values is to them,
not a revelation shaking the ground beneath them,
but a problem demanding a day-to-day solution.
How to live seems to them much more crucial than
why. And it is precisely at this point that the
copywriter and the hot-rod driver meet, and their
identical beatness becomes significant, for,
unlike the Lost Generation, which was occupied
with the loss of faith, the Beat Generation is
becoming more and more occupied with the need for
it. As such, it is a disturbing illustration of
Voltaire's reliable old joke "If there were no
God, it would be necessary to invent Him." Not
content to bemoan His absence, they are busily
and haphazardly inventing totems for Him on all
sides... --John Clellon Holmes, The Beat
Generation
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Discussion Question In what ways were the Beat
writers a "generation"? What does John Clellon
Holmes say about this in "This Is the Beat
Generation"?
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B. Critical opinion of Beat literature in the
1950s 1. characterization of Beat movement as
undisciplined and irresponsible 2. extent to
which contemporary criticism reflects cultural
anxieties about youth . . . the Beats' rebellion
is not merely a temporary evasion of
responsibility. Rather, it is a way of art and
life which permanently consecrates the pose and
gestures of adolescence. For though most
full-fledged Beats are well beyond teen-age . . .
, their patterns of behavior often reveal
adolescent traits, such as the use of special
speech and dress as badges of identity and status
or the compulsive hostility to authority, which
causes all questions of value to be referred to
the judgment of a selfish peer group. James F.
Scott, "Beat Literature and the American Teen
Cult," American Quarterly (1962) \
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Discussion Question In 1958, the critic Norman
Podhorets wrote The spirit of hipsterism and
the Beat Generation strikes me as the same spirit
which animates the young savages in leather
jackets who have been running amok in the last
few years with their switchblades and zip
guns. How do you react to this statement?
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C. Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) 1. structure
of the narrative 2. narrative structure offers
rhetorical alternative to postwar culture of
consensus 3. theme of novel is freedom Kerouac's
writing style was "the vehicle for this freedom's
expression and vision" (Omar Swartz, 1999)
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Kerouac challenges conventional notions of
selfhood, of good and evil, and of time
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I woke up as the sun was reddening and that was
the one distinct time in my life, the strangest
moment of all, when I didn't know who I was--I
was far away from home, haunted and tired with
travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen,
hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak
of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps
upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked
that the cracked high ceiling and really didn't
know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.
I wasn't scared I was just somebody else, some
stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life,
the life of a ghost. I was halfway across
America, at the dividing line between the East of
my youth and the West of my future, and maybe
that's why it happened right there and then, that
strange red afternoon. (17)
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It suddenly occurred to me that this was my
mother of about two hundred years ago in England,
and that I was her footpad son, returning from
gaol to haunt her honest labors in the hashery. I
stopped, frozen with ecstasy on the sidewalk. I
looked down Market Street. I didn't know whether
it was that or Canal Street in New Orleans it
led to water, ambiguous, universal water, just as
42nd Street, New York, leads to water, and you
never know where you are . . . I was delirious. I
wanted to go back and leer at my strange
Dickensian mother in the hash joint. I tingled
all over from head to foot. It seemed I had a
whole host of memories leading back to 1750 in
England and that I was in San Francisco now only
in another life and in another body . . . And for
just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy
that I had always wanted to reach, which was the
complete step across chronological time into
timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness
of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death
kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom
dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a
plank where all the angels dove off and flew into
the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent
and inconceivable radiances shining in bright
Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling
open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. (173)
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catalyst for Kerouac's vision of freedom is Neal
Cassady (Dean Moriarty) Discussion
Question Many critics suggest that the
relationship between Sal Paradise and Dean
Moriarty structures the narrative of On the Road.
How does their relationship evolve over the
course of the novel?
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All my other current friends were "intellectuals"
. . . or else they were slinking criminals . . .
. But Dean's intelligence was every bit as formal
and shining and complete, without the tedious
intellectualness. And his "criminality" was not
something that skulked and sneered it was a wild
yea-saying overburst of American joy it was
Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains,
something new, long prophesied, long-acoming . .
. . Besides, all my New York friends were in the
negative, nightmare position of putting down
society and giving their tired bookish or
political or psychological reasons, but Dean just
raced in society, eager for bread and love... A
western kinsman of the sun, Dean. (10)
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The night was getting more and more frantic, I
wished Dean and Carlo were there--then I realized
they'd be out of place and unhappy. They were
like the man with the dungeon stone and the
gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid
hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I
was slowly joining. (54) Just about that time a
strange thing began to haunt me. It was this I
had forgotten something. There was a decision
that I was about to make before Dean showed up,
and now it was driven clear out of my mind but
still hung on the tip of my mind's tongue. I kept
snapping my fingers, trying to remember it. I
even mentioned it. And I couldn't even tell if it
was a real decision or just a thought I had
forgotten. It haunted and flabbergasted me, made
me sad. It had something to do with the Shrouded
Traveler. (124)
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Before I knew it, once again I was seeing the
fabled city of San Francisco stretched on the bay
in the middle of the night. I ran immediately to
Dean. He had a little house now. I was burning to
know what was on his mind and what would happen
now, for there was nothing behind me any more,
all my bridges were gone and I didn't give a damn
about anything at all. I knocked on his door at
two o'clock in the morning. (182) Dean, ragged
in the motheaten overcoat he bought specially for
the freezing temperatures of the East, walked off
alone, and the last I saw of him he rounded the
corner of Seventh Avenue, eyes on the street
ahead, and bent to it again. (308)  
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Kerouac privileges life at the margins a.
idealizes Dean Moriarty's madness b. idealizes
racial otherness "wishing I were a Denver
Negro..."
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I looked back east and sighed. We had no money. .
. "Where are we going to stay?" We wandered
around, carrying our bundles of rags in the
broken streets. Everybody looked like a
broken-down movie extra, a withered starlet
disenchanted stunt-men, midget auto racers,
poignant California characters with their
end-of-the-continent sadness, handsome, decadent,
Casanova-ish men, puffy-eyed motel blondes,
hustlers, pimps, whores, masseurs, bellhops--a
lemon lot, and how's a man going to make a living
with a gang like that? (170)
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At lilac evening I walked with every muscle
aching among the lights of 27th and Walton in the
Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro,
feeling that the best the white world had offered
was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life,
joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night. I
stopped at a little shack where a man sold hot
red chili in paper containers I bought some and
ate it, strolling in the dark mysterious streets.
I wished I were a Denver Mexican, or even a poor
overworked Jap, anything but what I was so
drearily, a "white man" disillusioned. All my
life I'd had white ambitions . . . . (180)
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A gang of colored women came by, and one of the
young ones detached herself from motherlike
elders and came to me fast--"Hello Joe!"--and
suddenly I wasn't Joe, and ran back, blushing. I
wished I were Joe. I was only myself, Sal
Paradise, sad, strolling in the violet dark, this
unbearably sweet night, wishing I could exchange
worlds with the happy, true-hearted, ecstatic
Negroes of America. The raggedy neighborhoods
reminded me of Dean and Marylou, who knew these
streets so well from childhood. How I wished I
could find them. (180)
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Discussion Question How does Kerouac represent
women in On the Road? Would you characterize On
the Road as a misogynistic novel? In Hearts of
Men, Barbara Ehrenreich sees Kerouacs writing as
part of a broader flight from commitment on the
part of white American men. Do you see the novel
as a reaction against the dominant construction
of postwar masculinity? What do you think
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Lets look at the final passage in the novel and
reconsider the narrative structure of On the
Road -- offers rhetorical alternative to postwar
culture of consensus -- theme of novel is
freedom Kerouac's writing style was "the vehicle
for this freedom's expression and vision" (Omar
Swartz, 1999)
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So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on
the old broken-down river pier watching the long,
long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw
land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge
over to the West Coast, and all that road going,
all the people dreaming in the immensity of it,
and in Iowa I know by now the children must be
crying in the land where they let the children
cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't
you know that God is a Pooh Bear? the evening
star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler
dims on the prairie, which is just before the
coming of complete night that blesses the earth,
darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the
final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's
going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn
rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I
even think of old Dean Moriarty the father we
never found, I think of Dean Moriarty. (309-310)
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III. Other Topics A. The Beats and jazz
expression B. The Beats and drug use C. The
Beats' relationship to youth culture in the
fifties and sixties (Neal Cassady as a
transitional figure) D. Relation between
Kerouac's notion of "spontaeous prose" and
Pollack's notion of "action painting" E. Kerouac
and Pollack as countercultural figures of the
postwar era