the beats - c or d?

Dud for encouraging X number of pseuds. X=very big number.

what was bad that they gave us - spontaneous prose, restricted consciousness and cut-ups. ('After free verse people started writing poetry and stopped reading it.') What was totally unbearable - pretended futures that're actually steps back to romanticism, abandonment of historical awareness, me generation, alienation of future generations from the simplicity of tradition. What was good about them? Proles who misunderstood what they were talking about and used their new freedom to make fascist psychedelic music, music that spoke to the mass instinct, to the anti-individual. Go those Flower Children.

Don't know too much about them, to be honest. But I thought 'On The Road' was bleedin' awful... almost unreadable, in fact. I can't understand why it's regarded as one of the major books of the last century. Henry Miller's 'Tropics' books completely blew my mind; 'On The Road' is like sixth-form toss in comparison.

There's a lot I dislike that they helped to legitimise.

Therefore, dud.

Burroughs & Ginsberg = OK by me

The others = indie before indie was indie = soon old Best beats in a movie: Ric Ocasec and Lena Zavaroni (?do I mean LZ?: brane fuct) in HAIRSPRAY...

Oops. b = p somewhere under all that

yeah I wanted to mention how great the beats in that movie were too. great, weren't they? but the writing of the Beat Gen is NOT what I would call 'classic' - except Ginsberg's ok and Burrough's 'Junky' is good. ironically 'junky' seems to have been the only book he wrote in flat, naturalistic prose. I agree with that guy who said 'On the Road' - good - huh? and it's so awkward that in eng 101 the lecturers will say to you 'ok now you can write an essay on any topic you like. even the BEAT POETS or PATTI SMITH or LAURIE ANDERSON.' Those writers don't get closer to my experiences than Shakespeare does - or Skelton.

I heard the poet Lyn Hejinian, who is round about the same age as some of the beat poets and was on the periphery of that scene when she was young, say that she never identified with them and didn't really see that many women of her generation could have, purely in terms of logistics - the ideals of endless travel and irresponsibility not only weren't so open to her, but didn't entirely appeal. And that's without taking into account the strangely macho homosexuality of the scene.

wasn't the other beat in Hairspray Pia Zadora?

Yes: sigh. Brane = fukt... (At least I knew that something wasn't right: Pia, Lena and !Bonnie Langford! all kept in same info- drawer in my head — why?)

OK, I will stick my neck out for Gregory Corso, too, when he wasn't trying to be an existential badass. Some great, awkward, moving poems about getting married ('Penguin dust!') and stuff.

Beyond the quality of the writing though (and Pynchon claims that 'On the Road' is the great American picaresque novel), the gift of the Beats is THE POSE. Who cares if the kids who read them inherit some snotty attitudes, develop unsavoury romanticisms and write some dubious bop prosody? They've been inspired to, you know, think about going hitch-hiking, travel around a bit, see some of the country. Which is more than they would have done stuck at home in their suburban bedrooms listening to, erm, weezer records.

Listening to Weezer records in suburban bedrooms is way better than hitchhiking, fuck that.

Hitch-hiking's shit, but listening to Weezer records is even worse.

I thought 'Junky' was great: really tight and concise. I've not gotten too far with his other stuff though.

I love hitch-hiking, travelling around, and seeing as much of the country as I can, but it wasn't the Beats who inspired me to do it, and I can't imagine that they could.

I've read very little 'beat' stuff, probably because of THE POSE i.e. it's now become so absorbed into the culture that you can absorb its good effects and reject it at the same time.

But, I do think that late Burroughs, post cut-up - which is the only Burroughs I've sat down and read - has a lucidity, elegance, sadness, wit and anger which outweighs the possibility that what is being said is complete nonsense.

I did think the writing on On the Road was not as good as I wanted, but at points it definitely had a certain kind of energy to it that I've not found elsewhere. It's a shame that some of the impact of the book is lost to readers today who don't understand what the US was like then. A friend of mine's read some of Kerouac's other novels, and he found them to be more accomplished and interesting - I believe him too. I enjoyed Kerouac's little book of "pomes" - especially the "American haiku" which seemed to me to capture the right spirit of haiku without the asinine syllabic restrictions - but I haven't read much of his other work.

I've never read Burroughs except for Naked Lunch, which I can't really say did much for me. But I'm glad he did what he did.

Some of the less-famous Beats like Corso and Snyder wrote some nice poetry. And then there were more academic people involved like Ferlinghetti, who also did worthwhile things.

I was reading an essay the other day on Kerouac's Mexico City Blues that argued that most critics never really appreciated the depth of his Buddhism and the role it played in his poetry, probably due to their own superficial understandings of eastern philosophy. That's an idea I'm willing to countenance.

Pynchon's endorsement of beat WRITING always strikes me as weird: or at least, at odds with what TRP is going to go on to be and to do ie Lot 49 = exactly NOT "spontaneous bop prosody", surely. The elements in V which are beat-ish are surely the most bogus? Years since I read R.Fariña, and of course they were BUDDIES, so sentiment intrudes, but I was *totally* disappointed with [forget name and have lost copy], because it was all pose and no prose (tht I, aged 22, anyway). I can see how this wuz a generation freed by an idea of a freedom (and why TP miught be fond of the fan enthusiasms of his long-ago yoof), but I can't find the fact of the freedom in the work (Burroughs' power comes from his refusal to believe n the possibility of freedom, of course, in the face of addiction and need: he's no more a beat than all the poor wives were beats; he was a bed partner to a beat or three, is all...)

No: in Ginsberg I can find it.

Not totally irrelevant point: the beat understanding of bebop is of course bollocks.

Burroughs, fascinating. Kerouac, deathly dull. I have never been able to get past page 15. Its something you feel you should read when travelling, yet your John Grisham's seem to sell better at airports... Wonder why.

(My main problem used to stem from the character Sal, as I could not work out what name this could be short for. I have been presented with a a large number of alternatives everything I bring this argument up, and now even work with someone called Sal - yet I still cannot read On The Road).

On The Road is like the gossip column in some upmarket publication: the same free-structured prose, and the same lists of people you know nothing about doing things that really aren't that exciting. That or someone's Interrail diary ("Rome: got thrashed! Met a girl. Naples: got really trashed! Met a girl"). My dad, incidentally, hitchhiked his way round the US in '58 without having any idea of who Kerouac was, or being a real gone hopped up cat in any way. His account is considerably more insightful and entertaining, largely because unlike Kerouac, he was genuinely interested in the people and places he came across...

Sal = Salvador?

Farina's book = Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. Started it, didn't finish it. Read On the Road aged 17; liked its "spirit" but Kerouac's prose too plodding and loose = boring. Miller's Tropics (pre-beat, obvsly) = big impact, esp. opening section of Capricorn, despite some REALLY BAD purple patches (too many big words saying nothing + unhealthy obsession with word "fecundating"). Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, little I've read, blah. Burroughs okay in bits only; not a fan. Bukowski (peripheral beat?) good, one-trick but good, tho' haven't read in years. Berets = dud. Beret + sideburns combo = double dud.

Berets worn a la Benny Hill = classic

Benny Hill: more artistic merit than all beats combined? Being chased around a park in triple-speed by women in lingerie armed with umbrellas while "wacky" music plays = classic.

"Rattling at the gate..."

Re: Pynchon's endorsement of On The Road. If I was in his position I would probably endorse something crap, it makes my book look better when people go read it. (This works really well for indie bands too - yeah, we love The Fall).