Kerouac & the Beats Class Review

Although I was a little confused at the beginning of the semester because Beat writers have the tendency to write obscurely, I was able to make connections to their messages with their behavior thanks to the class lectures. This is my review of the beats generation:

  

Kerouac is innovative in that he can write endlessly without pausing which some view his book ON THE ROAD as a masterpiece because of the never-ending expressions of run on sentences and no paragraph breaks (try saying supercalafragalisticexpialadocious for several lines in a reading). If I remember clearly, he used a scroll to avoid having to pause his thoughts. How is this even writing? This is more typing and no writing! Regardless, I think its brilliant! The fact that it cut time in half to produce makes it less appealing but more genius. Kerouac, like many other beat writers use a lot of recursion in their work to add emphasis to sex, drugs, and music with a whole lot of madness and not enough time to do them. Music was the Beat Generation’s inspiration that gave them conviction to stand out and stand tall against the censorship of artistic expression.

The Beat Generation were an alienated artistic group of writers that were shunned by mainstream society due to thinking outside the box. Their writings reflect exemption from a world they did not connect with. Their behavior was self-destructive; they lived to satisfy their desires and were viewed as outlaws. Jazz music gave them a temporary mental escape. They were controversial in their lifestyles and their art was rejected. Their view of America was tainted because they understood it to be superficial and more self-destructive than their own lifestyle.

The readings demonstrate a recycling of life through renewal. This was made through connecting with nature and how vulnerable they were to their desires. They traveled extensively celebrating their momentary satisfactions. Their behavior was experimental and exploitative which I viewed as egotistical and selfish. They were reckless and rebellious believing that life is meant to be lived unrestrictedly. 

I learned that the Beat Generation is a movement that screams freedom. It is a movement that depicts an oppressed minority group that wanted to express their art without censorship. They struggled for independence wanting to write freely without having to be criticized or judged. They viewed conformity as a way to control society and tried to find a means of escape through people, drugs, and music.

They felt a strong connection to Jazz music and viewed it as an expression of love reaching their souls profoundly. I am currently taking a class on Jazz & Politics and understand Jazz to be an expression of emotion; a cry (happy or sad) for social change. Because prejudice and cruel disparagement were acceptable at the time, so was status and category. The fact that there has been racial and gender inequality for centuries provides evidence of social oppression and it is through music that has proven effective in social change.

The music during that time was a result of the environment. Jazz bands were used and created as a form of expression that went beyond race as the World War I changed the economy, tyranny, and segregation. Social movement transformed Jazz because it no longer served as a hopeful resolution bringing us to other forms of musical expression. Jazz and the Beat Generation have similar experiences because it is through their art of expression that they try to expound their messages. It was a movement that transformed both music and literature becoming the backbone of influential expression of art. Jazz and the Beat Generation both serve as precursors to a movement that has shaped society creating a landmark of creative expression. I would like to learn more about the entire trials and tribulations that existed outside of the Beat Generation writings to understand more about society at that time and their perception of the Beat Generation in raw text; there is always two sides to every story!

Female Beat Writer

Wow, finally a female “beat” writer and she represents herself as a successful poet who has gone through many ups and downs and yet has left an impression on American society as an exemplar. She is not only a “revolutionary activist” but she’s a female too! 

Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages and she has received the National Endowment for the Arts grant, Lifetime Achievement in Poetry for the Arts award from the NPA . . . Master Artist/Poet, awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree, a finalist for the Poet Laureate of California but was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco, among many other notable titles she earned for her hard work, and dedication. I can go on and on about Di Prima’s founding and co-founding success, however, I only want to write about works that have been introduced to me in class. So here it goes:

“what I ate where”

di drima has an interesting approach because her writing contains no capital letters at the introduction of her paragraphs nor does she use them when referencing names. this section of my blog will illustrate her work in order to capture some of the elements in this particular reading. using this technique gives the appearance of a diary, which is exactly how I used to write mine when I was around eight years old. another noticeable element is how conversational and informal it is making the reading easier to follow, until I hit the third line where she describes a food she remembers eating; it’s called “menstrual pudding,” which immediately caught my attention.

THANKSGIVING, 1955

She begins this poem with the list of items in lowercase and the shopping list in all caps. As she begins to write her GUEST LIST she is more formal in her writing as she capitalizes appropriately, which she find necessary for the occasion. However, after a huge gap she mixes both informal and formal writing style which gives emphasis to what she capitalizes.

As she progresses into her story, she no longer eats “menstrual pudding,” which by the way happens to be mashed potatoes and tomato sauce; she gradually goes from eating that to going on an Oreos bing which she says is fattening...REALLY? She gradually adds to her menu French bread, peanut butter, Lipton soup, and then she finally enjoys the finer things in life like blue cheese, caviar, Swedish bread, smoked ham, and sour cream. She uses descriptive imagery with lots of humor which I find to be one of the elements that lacked in other beat writers.

Her poetry in prose is much like the other beat writers. Like Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs, she provides her own prospective of what life was like for the many struggling artists that came and went having to share everything with the exception that she is more optimistic and much less gloomier. Her reading seems to be more grounded and less mediocre because her poems are heartfelt. Her reflective moments were recounted as food which I believe comforted her.

She desired to have a baby without being in a relationship but regardless, makes the best out of the circumstances and is compelled to write odes to her child which is beautifully written. Unlike her beat counterparts previously mentioned, Di Prima is nurturing, selfless, and although she imitates Kerouac’s style of writing, she is innovative in her own way. 

     The Etiquette of Freedom focuses on living in the natural world. Snyder felt it was important to stay connected to nature as a way of preventing what he believes is a phenomenon of “cultural extinction” (167). He focuses solely on the importance of being grateful for the aesthetics of the natural world and becoming part of a whole by preserving it. He defined “nature” as not being a place that one visits but the home. He defined it into two different meanings using the “two headed calf” as a metaphor because of the definition being interconnected; the first meaning the faculties of the mind and second, everything that is the outdoors. It seemed to be contradictory at first but I understood this to mean that the product of what we create with the faculty of the mind is the result of what we use to either create or destroy our natural surroundings. In this case, what we occupy or populate is the result of what we create through the faculty of the mind.  

     Since we have a survival instinct, he refers to it as the “wild” and the “wilderness” which Snyder says is the essence of belonging (169). The “bodies wild” is explained as self-regulating which is constantly flowing because the mind is something we have no control over when it comes to keeping track of it. Although there is a strong contrast between the civilized and the wild, we must first share what is biologically common in our existence before emphasizing on the differences. Snyder’s figurative use of analogies can be construed as literal as well; I think that is why I'm so drawn to the way he expresses his concepts in this particular piece.  

Language is determined by the way we behave and the intrinsic nature should be naturally ethical. Compassion, simplicity, and humility should be natural pursuits, intentionally attempting to preserve the aesthetics of culture in order to “preserv[e] the germ” (173).

     He uses these same uncompromising ideas in his book of poems titled “Axe Handles” which describes a craftsmanship of culture, family, the past and the present, and how his vision depicts location, discernment, and life cycles. Very similar to Kerouac and Whitman’s view of nakedness and renewal through experience, Snyder’s poem “River in the Valley” touches briefly on the cycles referring to both his sons Gen and Kai using the descriptions of nature to denote how water is never ending or recurring; it is something that one of the boys asks where it comes from because it flows continuously. He emphasizes a repetition of a life cycle in “For/From Lew” with a reference to recalling the memory of Lew Welch. This honorable mention inspired Snyder to remember the importance of teaching our offspring all the cycles of life because “that’s what it’s all about” (6). Like water, it is ever flowing and trickles with constant recurrence. One thing I find pretty interesting is his constant reference to chills and goose bumps, is this a way of making a self-discovery of some sort of epiphany in his life that he seems to be retracting back to a former time? I was hoping maybe someone can elaborate a little on this particular aspect of his poems.

Kerouac's Use of Literary Devices

I must say that “The Railroad Earth” by Jack Kerouac was an interesting read. The story has so many literary elements and his language is so reflective I began to almost empathize with the narrated experience. His descriptions were so playful and nonconforming and yet you find the entire passage full of literary devices. At first I found a few errors and then realized that they were left there on purpose. Life is full of unexpected surprises and his writing emulates that effect.  I had a hard time keeping pace with his fluctuating expressions and thought processes since the entire passage tickles the brain with streams of consciousness. Kerouac endlessly writes run on sentences expressing an entire thought streaming into the mind at levels that literally create a mindscape (escape from reality) of inner feelings as if to have a conversation with himself, like an interior monologue.

Some of the key factors in this particular work have obvious literary devices while he simultaneously freewrites. I thinks it’s interesting that his freewriting is incorporated to create patterns in his thought process. This is where I see the literary elements and his spontaneity. He originally writes long sentences using just the basic quotes and periods to separate his thoughts but then he causally begins to add caesuras. This literary device is commonly used in poetry or music and his story is full of them; they are the dashes that create pauses to a thought. For example, on page 42 in my ebook he uses it to end the sentence “‘eat or get out-t-t-t-‘—“ which not only stops the thought but specifically puts emphasis on the pronunciation of the word “out” adding yet another literary device; onomatopoeia, which is used to mimic the sound it is describing. 

In this case he describes his walks up Harrison with sound emphasis saying “the boom-crash of truck traffic” putting the mind into yet another depth of his interior monologue. Kerouac imitates sounds throughout the text entertaining the reader through his stream of thought. I liken his writing to the flashes of light that peak through the windows of a train passing through the tunnel because you only get glimpses of what he tries to express and then the reader tunes out until he imitates some form of sound bringing the reader back into his stream of consciousness.

As his writing fluctuates, his expressions and thought process leave the reader to contemplate on the next journey of what seems to be a detour. Kerouac serves as a tour guide that maps your mind into what seems to be a detour of culdesacs (streets with no exit) that does not relate to the next thought but brings you to a whole new road map like a tree with limbs. One of my favorite lines is as follows and serves as an example of his abstract thinking:

                I put the light out on the sad dab mad grub

                little diving room and hustle out into the fog of the flow,

                descending the creak hall steps where the old men are

    not yet sitting with Sunday morn papers because still

    asleep or some of them I can now as I leave hear begin-

    ning to disfawdle to wake in their rooms with their

    moans and yorks and scrapings and horror sounds, I’m

    going down the steps to work, glance to check time of

    watch with clerk cage clock.— (48)

The words seem to have a rhyme at one moment and then the next they contain alliteration repeating not the word but the same sound of the word making the reading a little frustrating but interesting. Kerouac is playful in describing the context of the story not only in his expressions but the figurative meanings as well. I found it a little frustrating to keep up with his abstract thinking but this is how he manipulates the mind; highlighting the journey into his stream of consciousness allows the reader to mindscape which is a way of temporarily escaping reality in his interior monologue. He is both creative and innovative in this particular work which I thought is the best I've read so far from his collections. Thankfully it was a shorter piece. 

Dutchman + the Slave by LeRoi Jones

I wanted to review a few definitions and references of some important factors that contributed to my review of the Dutchman and the Slave. The term “Dutchman” doesn’t just mean a person of the Netherlands or native Germanic peoples which happens to be the first definition listed under the term; however the second term seems to fit the word quite nicely in respects to the play. The second meaning listed says “a device for hiding or counteracting structural defects” which to me can refer both to the setting of the play as well as a specific character, in this case Lula the protagonist.

I found it interesting how all of the beat literature we have been going over in class rarely sheds any light to the existence of women. Since the beginning of the semester in the article ‘This Is The Beat Generation’ by John Clellon Holmes he refers to the “eighteen-year-old California girl” in his article, not as her, or she, or even as an adjective but repetitively uses “it” to describe the girl. The article reads “its soft eyes . . . it was a face . . . it looked up” and similarly in Jones’ play he does the same thing. At the setting of the play it describes the woman as “it” again by denoting that “it realizes that the man has noticed the face, it begins very premeditatedly to smile” (4). I also notice that Jones sets the Lula’s role to insinuate a negative appearance making the reading aware of a cunning role her character will play. I draw this conclusion because for a person to smile “premeditatedly” means that they have some cruel intentions which to me set the stage for the entire play.  

So all this time women have been in the shadows of the public domain and finally in the Dutchman they are in the spotlight. However, this spotlight has a degrading presence. This woman, Lula, gets to play the lead role in beat literature and the role she gets is a scheming sexual snake of a woman who enjoys eating “apples” and uses her sexuality to demoralize a slave passenger on the train named Clay. So the allegorical use of the apple and the name Clay are used as a modern folktale using the idea of seduction and oppression. The apple that seems to signify temptation alludes to the personification of clay which seems to be a molding of God’s creation which suggests alteration. Apples have a way of revealing a symbolic meaning is stories. The legendary apple traces back to the forbidden fruit that Eve ate giving in to her curiosity and temptation being misled by coercion of the original serpent. 

From the first original account of sin came many folktales that use the apple to represent temptation, knowledge, distrust and immorality. Clay’s character shows how beaten he was in society’s portrayal of black segregation. This play seems to take place during the Civil Rights movement, which I interpret as a metaphor to the train in motion in the play. The train’s movement to me is a suggestion of time transcendence and is used as a means of connecting the past, present, and future of events. I think the play uses the elements of symbolic folktales by incorporating Lula as a Jezebel, the apple as a temptation device who represents white society, the name Clay as an oppressed and progressively changing slave, and the train as the movement of societal role changes. 

Video Review's of Burroughs & Kerouac

Cats and the Beats

As I watched the first video of “A Junky’s Christmas” I couldn’t help but notice how profound the message is given when presented in film using model clay forms as characters. What stood out at the onset of the film was the cat that jumped out of the closed gift box. This registered as something of importance to Burroughs. After a curiosity trail of questions in search for answers, I found an article that I felt gave me the answer I was looking for. There is no doubt that many of us in class understand Burroughs to be in search for something and pin point it to be either, love, freedom, desire, acceptance, or even a sense of belonging. The article (The Cat Offers Itself) stresses how Burroughs’s “cat fancy” brought him to a form of redemption in his search of love through his feline fetish. He viewed them as a gift, exactly how he portrayed it at the beginning of the film.

The Junky Who Gave it All

In this video, I see Danny the protagonist searching for a fix because of his physical and psychological struggles of withdrawal. He finds himself alone, searching, stumbling across inanimate objects hoping to get an opportunity to make a sale and earn that buck that will bring him closer to the score. The video provides a better understanding by the use of facial expressions the characters are molded to create. What I enjoyed was how the music became the cue for presenting the different emotions and moods that gave meaning to a specific circumstance; thus creating some form of connection with the viewer. For me, the climax of this mini film was when Danny was shown levitating to portray his high. His high was not because he consumed the drug, but because he did a good deed. He felt a form of satisfaction by using the pill the doctor gave him to aid a helpless young boy in excruciating pain. It helped me understand that this junky was not merely consumed with his own desires but actually found satisfaction and relief in caring for someone else in greater need. To actually have a moral to the story was unexpected; this junky had a heart of gold. At the video’s conclusion, there is merriment of feasting with Burroughs surrounded by his beloved guests in a celebration like gathering which I find to be a reflection of Danny’s delight, but of course in a different level.

Pulling My Daisy

 (Pull My Daisy) is a video with a different taste of the beat life. It's a clear take of 

a microcosm of a world inside the apartment. “Early morning in the universe” is the first thing Kerouac says to describe the world inside of the apartment as he narrates the entire mini film. The music used in this video segment captures the essence of the beats as it is arranged throughout. As the camera pans through the apartment showing the elements that make a home and yet are questioned by Ginsberg to the Bishop as being holy. This film captures the beats under a different “light” because they are trying to connect their thoughts through poetry but have no grasp of what to write. Questioning and imagining are a constant. 

As the camera pans, you see a glimpse of the guys on the sofa acting like little boys always talking about writing poems. An outside look from the window is always gloomy and distant. The camera shows at close proximity the laps of two individuals sitting side by side; feeling an awkward stare the girl adjusts the skirt. Then Kerouac says “ignorance is rippling up the latter.” What does he mean by that? Is he talking about the guests or about the beats? Kerouac talks about the things in the apartment as the camera pans through glimpses of the maniacal imagery of “madness” the guys portray in their looks and momentary visual fixtures (not only on each other but with the girls in the room). This film created a birds-eye view of the beat life; adding the jazz beats was a means of inspiration and their curiosity of holiness on the objects surrounding them gave me an understanding that they were trying to expand on their knowledge of life for the poetry they constantly congregated about. This was similarly presented in the way he described his book, leaving the reader or viewer to draw conclusions through their interactions.

William S. Burrough's Review

Kerouac vs. Burroughs

     Kerouac and Burroughs search for the same things in life: freedom, and purpose.  In my opinion, they both give a sense of mental instability. Kerouac, who seems to be in his friends shadows throughout his novel, demonstrates questionable behavior. He describes what he saw when Cassidy was having a sexual encounter with the same sex as “non-plussed” (307). I understand this meaning to denote confusion. Rather than find this to be repulsive or offensive (the way society would); he was just in a state of confusion, like an innocent inexperienced little boy. “I hid in the bathroom and listened. It was insane” shows Kerouac to be in a mental state of immaturity peeking through as if to experiment without actually partaking. On page 345, he dreams that he was Neal Cassidy, and then on page 349 he writes “We clasped hands and agreed to be friends forever” which leads me to believe that he searched for identity and purpose through Cassidy’s hands-on experimentation in an awkwardly immature way. Without Cassidy, he would have no sense of direction or purpose in life, kind of like a child who is still growing and learning about his identity and purpose in life and clinging on to his mentor. Kerouac relies heavily on Cassidy to feel existent. William Burroughs can be likened to Kerouac but mirrors Cassidy’s behavior more than anything. Burroughs becomes indignant to life’s relationships as he describes his connections to “Junk” and “Queer” in his short stories. He is consumed with nonconforming desire in the many forms associated with an unquenchable cure for junk and sex with little boys, which I find to be a neurosis of immaturity. It seems they condition themselves to a rebellious mental state of boyish curiosity as a coping mechanism for the adult world they somehow seem to not want to face. 

                                                         Junky without a Cause

     Burroughs provides an interesting perspective of a drug induced lifestyle that creates conflict within his own nature of existence in his Prologue of short stories.  Very similar to Ginsberg, Burroughs is also faced with some form of mental psychosis, Schizophrenia. He subjected himself to psychoanalysis which he said “removed inhibitions and anxiety” in order to live the way he wanted (49). He became a jack of all trades working odd jobs and living on the edge of life. After a car accident he describes as miraculously surviving, he changed his outlook on life and began a way of life through a “symbolic system” which after a brief period of fascination, died off into the world of insatiable desire. Which desires you may ask?

     He succumbed to drug addiction and pederasty. He would live life through the attachment of scoring a fix and scoring sex with young boys. This behavior is similar to that of Kerouac's but through a different lens. Both seem to have a sense of attachment and belonging to something or someone. Preying on little boys seems to be a disturbing factor for me and believe that his preference for such young flesh is due to the idea that he believes he can act on his desires however he pleases like a little kid. Burroughs believed that his drug addiction induced his desire and wanting for a fix; Kerouac’s fix was being in the presence of Cassidy and being on the road together. Both Kerouac and Burroughs developed a “real need for money” which I find to be more conforming that they would like to admit. Like the professor mentioned in our class discussion, they both lived in pursuit of money in order to survive what plagued them. Like young boys, the money they seeked only satisfied them momentarily having no plan for the future. They both lived in the now, which is again immature behavior. Burroughs has a way of objectifying his purpose in life. He believed that his ordinary life stopped growing which to him it meant “you start dying.” He believed that junk “teaches the user facts of general validity” insinuating that this form of “pleasure is relief” (50). 

     In the following interview he states that his perception of reality is “lessened” with junk. Can anyone explain to me what he means when he says that junk “is a way of life” if it lessens life's reality? Is there any purpose in 'seemingly' celebrating a drug addiction and extending this addiction to young boys? His work only portrays his experience in Tangiers as the Sodom and Gomorrah of his lifestyle, nothing I find deemed of expressing through literature.