You really had to be there. Epithets about the beats risk a sort of Forrest Gump revision of history. There's no doubt about the overt male chauvinism of some beats. What that speaks to, IMHO, is the ambivalence that beats had toward the dominant patriarchal culture and the difficulty of "being different" in the face of an oppressive conformism. The beats can be condemned for not living up to their own as yet inarticulate, tentative and sometimes contradictory yearnings for sexual liberation and -- by implication -- sexual equality. Beatniks were women, too and it's no accident that much of sixties feminism emerged from a bohemian/left milieu. I suspect the diminutive "beatnik" says much about the fascination and unease the beats inspired in late Eisenhower Amurica. Sputnik was launched in October 1957, just as the first major post-war recession was shaking Amuricans' confidence in an era of perpetual prosperity. Forty years later, the traumatic impact of the news of the Sputnik launch is hard to imagine. One way of dispelling some of the anxiety was to appropriate the suffix 'nik' and apply it as a term of derision/endearment to just about anything. Beatnik was one neologism that stuck. Beats were ambivalent about Amurican culture and squares were ambivalent about beats. On the one hand, beat was a harmless, ridiculously goatee'd satellite of the dominant culture. On the other hand, beat signaled the propulsive possibility that could carry a deadly payload into the insular heart of conformist, consumer culture. Today's "lifestyle" marketing could be mapped as a kind of Strategic Defense Initiative against the explosive possibility of an un-commodified cultural resistance. The practice is to sniff out whatever inchoate pockets of "subversive deviance" erupt and build an industry around it -- hip hop, pomo, world beat, queer, whatever -- it's disarmed as soon as you can build a boutique. I remember where I was when I first heard about the beats, camping near the Russian River in northern California. I can't remember the year, it must have been 1960 or 1961. It could have been at a place called Camp Cazadero, a sort of tent-cabin resort run by the City of Berkeley. The beats, civil rights sit-ins, blues and folk music, and protests against the House Un-Amurican Activities Committee fuse in my memory as a glimmer of something other than the sheer all-consuming boredom of tv re-runs, commercials and back-to-school sales. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The TimeWork Web: HTTP://WWW.VCN.BC.CA/TIMEWORK/
