> From: "James Michael Craven" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [PEN-L:11616] "The Beats"
James,
> At the risk of alienating even more people and in response to the
No risk there; if you're beat you're already alienated.
> euologies on Burroughs and previously on Ginsburg, my personal
> opinion is that the so-called "Beats", revealed themselves through
> their writings and lifestyles to be largely: self-indulgent,
> pretentious, arrogant, narcissistic, petit-bourgeois, phillistine,
> ultra-individualistic, superifcial, elitist...
Self-indulgent: no more than the rest of us.
Pretentious: I don't see that; they were more reclusive than not.
Arrogant: never saw a trace of this; more self-effacing
Narcissistic: in the sense of self-involved, yes, like most artists
Petit-bourgeois: this covers a broad area. The beats were not in
hot pursuit of money, a leading p-b pastime; certainly not p-b
in terms of morality; more communal than individualistic, I
would say. It's hard to imagine a Beat with a house, mortgage,
and kids, much running a business (unless it's a book/record
store or a coffee house).
Philistine: not sure what this means; the Beats were a reaction
against mass culture, and elitist in this sense
Individualistic: not quite; covered this above.
Superficial: not at all to my way of thinking
Elitist: not really. a better accusation could be romanticizing
the lumpen-proletariat, a subtle type of elitism in the sense of
reverse snobbery
> Historically, anarchists have done very little for anybody or
> any just causes; often they have served repressive powers-that-be as
> wreckers obsessed with their own self-centered concepts and states of
> "Liberty". Sure some of the poets have used metaphors and symbology
Don't disagree in general, though there are different sorts of
anarchists, as MIKEY notes. The problem here is not so much
beat but art and the whole art is a weapon debate, which can
simply be resolved as, 'sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't.'
> to decry various forms of oppression but generally from detached,
> self-centered and elitist lofty heights of "culture" detached from
> concrete struggles and sacrifices of their subjects--oppressed people
> who generally will never read nor "truly understand" their esoteric
> poetry and literature.
This sounds like English professors, not at all like the beats.
> In Germany many of the anarchists were instrumental in wrecking
> united fronts against fascism and easily came over to the side of
> the Nazis and cut their own Faustian Bargains; the S.A. in particular
> was full of them. More often than not when they called for personal
> liberty, they meant for themselves personally rather than a
This is unfair in respect of the beats, whose brand of
anarchism was more communal and especially anti-
violence. Ginsberg and of course Leroi Jones/Amiri
Baraka have been quite active politically. Baraka is
a full-blown M-L but never severed his ties with the
Beats.
> generalized condition which must be fought for with organization,
> discipline, focus, sacrifice, determination, compromise to build
> unity, humility, etc.--all qualities and capabilities that anarchists
> and libertarians (one version of anarchism) are not generally known
> to exhibit.
Here you're basically knocking them for not being M-L
revolutionaries, which is true but has no bearing on the
value of their art.
> Of course there were some exceptions, but generally the Beats wrote
> for themselves or narrow circles of the faithful sycophants who fawned
> all over them, gave narcissistic/theatrical readings of their crap in
> cloistured "coffee houses"...
Beat literature was always been circulated on a relatively low-
cost basis, though more recently it has been commercialized
to some extent. Coffee houses were always open places, in my
experience, and public reading is a communal act not unlike
declaiming from a soap box against the yoke of Capital. Moreover,
poetry readings tend to be democratic -- unlettered, unpublished
authors are typically able to participate.
Jim D. mentioned male chauvinism. Burroughs had a
mysogenistic streak but I recall no animosity towards
women in Ginsberg, Corso, or Ferlinghetti. Bukowski
and Neal Cassidy are another matter, but I would
characterize them more as glorifying the pastime of
promiscuous screwing than objectifying women in
particular. They would not expect women to be any
more faithful than they were.
Bottom line: all of these guys (plus Diane Di Prima, among
others) are still worth reading and will inspire some young
people to incline towards the left.
Cheers,
MBS
"People say I'm arrogant, but I know better."
-- John Sununu
===================================================
Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute
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Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views
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