The Beat Generation

The Dharma Bums made the list of “100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library” over at The Art of Manliness, which calls itself “a blog dedicated to uncovering the lost art of being a man.” Whatever that means. I just like the cover they chose.

An idealistic vision from the man who fueled the Beat Generation, a life on the road without concern for wealth or even stability, rather an enjoyment of surroundings, whatever they may be. This is a great book for reminding us to get away from technology, at least for a day, to appreciate nature and some of the more simple pleasures of life. Don’t feel inferior to the beatniks if you still like driving your car…don’t ever let hipsters give you guilt trips.

[The Art of Manliness]

John Leland at the NYT’s Weekend Book Review has this to say of Harvey Pekar’s new graphic novel The Beats: A Graphic History:

Some of the history is off. Jan Kerouac was not shown by a blood test to be Jack’s daughter (the test was inconclusive), and Pekar scrambles the chronology of some of Kerouac’s books and stylistic breakthroughs. Nancy J. Peters, a part owner of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, was unwisely tapped to help write the chapter on the store, which includes lines like “City Lights is not only a bookstore and publisher, it’s a historic public space and an international cultural center,” and “Today, City Lights has come to symbolize the American spirit of free intellectual inquiry.” Here, nonobjective history gives way to plain self-promotion, and not even cool self-promotion.

Leland is a Kerouac scholar, and while I understand Pekar’s intention with the book, it’s sort of disappointing that I agree with him. Leland’s holding Pekar accountable, as people are wont to do when something they hold very near becomes a little tainted. Leland doesn’t want people to get the wrong idea of what the Beats were all about just because they got some bogus information from a book they only bought because they saw American Splendor after they had already seen Sideways.

I wanted a perspective to compare to Leland’s, so I consulted Twitter. My rationale was such that I was sure at least one or two of our more than 300 followers (Thanks, everyone, by the way.) would have read it, and also that they would want to tell me what they thought about it. User tijean47 had this to say:

I bought it, read it and gave it away. As an ardent Kerouac advocate, I was not impressed. Great idea-bad execution.

That’s two strikes, and both from Kerouac aficionados. I’m still recommending that people pick this up (Amazon), if only for the fact that Pekar’s generally astute and can be revelatory in his observations; and even if he can’t draw he’s still one hell of a great writer when he isn’t taking his cues from a part owner with a vested interest in bolstering her own bookstore.

The Mad Ones [The New York Times]

In 1953, Kerouac wrote Maggie Cassidy, a mostly autobiographical account of his relationship with Mary Carney (Kerouac’s publishers made him use fictitious pseudonyms) in Lowell, Mass. from 1938-39.

Jack Kerouac’s New Year in 1939:

(photo by jaycobs)

In what may be one of the most amazing things I’ve stumbled upon all week, Think for Yourself; Question Authority is a collection of essays by Arno Ruthofer that deal with all sorts of psychedelia—from ancient conceptions of psychoactivity to Timothy Leary, the Beats and Cyperpunk.

Leary argues that the millions of Americans who experienced the awesome potentialities of the brain via LSD certainly paved the way for the computer society we now live in. According to Leary, many of the people who were involved in the development of the personal computer got their inspiration from psychedelic drug experiences. He suggests that without the psychedelic revolution in the 60s, the personal computer would have been unthinkable.

[4.2. Countercultures (the Beat Generation, the hippies, the cyberpunks/ the New Breed)]

Gregory Corso has always been—and for whatever reason, will always be—the belabored and underappreciated poet way out on the fringe of what once was the Beat mainstream. The simple fact that he was never acknowledged as being important isn’t likely to change, even after reading this first-person narrative by Oscar Back taken from the long and gone, gone, gone Eat it Alive:

I guess in the Sixties they called them happenings. As it happened, a friend of mine, Charlie Ross, managed to get the Blue Note to open its doors on a Sunday night, July 12, 1981. The scheduled event was a reading by Gregory Corso, with Allen Ginsberg and the Shambala Glass Chicken Rock and Roll Band. What did happen was the result of the fashionably tardy half-hour delay, a crowd left to warp in the rain, and several poets in search of an audience.

   Charlie met my friend Tom and I at 6:30 P.M. so we’d have time to set things up before 8:00, when the doors were scheduled to open. Advance tickets had been selling for $2 apiece, and by the time of the show about a hundred were sold according to a last minute phone tally. In the alley behind the club we pounded on the steel door. Tom, a Michigander versed in cloud augury declared, “Looks like rain.” The manager, dressed in contractual black and white, opened the door and apologized to us for not having the lights on. The switch was thrown and the manager enlightened Charlie as to how the club would handle the gate, absolutely no one under 21 would be admitted, refunds for advance holders would be given out of the till, don’t wreck anything. Charlie, nodding like a foreigner being given directions to Bisbee, Arizona, assented with a final, “Okay. Whatever you say.” He then appointed me Technical Advisor in Charge of Crowd Placement. “You’re the boss,” I said as I took the chairs down from the table tops.

   ”Not quite, big fella,” admonished the manager. “I’m the boss.”

The Best Minds of My G-g-g-g-generation: An Evening with Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg [International Forum for Literature and Art]