Outside of beat artists, there was a movement in the 1950s that some term as rebel art, or abstract expressionism. This movement began in the 1940s in New York City, and like the beat poetry of the time, was full of spontaneous expression–escaping traditional and conventional art forms and applying different styles of painting (both content and surface qualities of the paint). The paintings meant quick and fluid strokes on large canvases and seemed chaotic–but, in fact, much like beat writings, this art was very conceptual if not planned.

What evolved after the 40s and 50s, similar to the avenues from bop to hip, were pop artists reflecting the San Francisco 60′s scene: just like Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady bounced down another tangential path, so did other artists. One was Michael Bowen, whose art goes back several decades. He is described as a “youthful member of the abstract assemblage group in the early fifties in Los Angeles, [who] traveled to the east coast and Europe in the early sixties, and completed four world art tours between 1969 and 1988″ (from www.beatscene.com).

The North Beach of the Beat Generation quickly filled up with poets, writers, musicians and artists. They came from all over America and all parts of the world. There were black white, brown yellow and red Beats. -www.beatscene.com.

Another person to pay attention to is multimedia artist Bruce Conner, whose 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II exhibit has been running at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.

[Old brief review] Recently, I got to meet a recent JACK Magazine contributor, Eddie Watkins, when he flew to Los Angeles to hang out some. I drove up and met him at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) to see 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II. MOCA called this exhibition the “first major survey of the artist’s career.” It was pretty amazing, and not having been too familiar with Conner’s work, I was pleasantly overwhelmed and surprised. From the material collages to the movies (I saw A Movie, Take the 5:10 to Dreamland, and Looking For Mushrooms), to his inkblot series–all the art was unique but at the same time a unified collection. I thought of this exhibit from the perspective of the sixties, as in back then Conner was a real groundbreaker. We especially liked A Movie, and I thought the music accompanying Looking For Mushrooms was perfect for that trippy sensation. My favorite series were the Angel ones, and the Dennis Hopper One Man Show (I was trying to find Hopper’s face in all the pictures). Also on display was the deck of cards that Conner and Michael McClure had created, which I thought was pretty cool.

Other Galleries

I put together two galleries for Michael Rothenberg’s Big Bridge site: Robert La Vigne and Ira Cohen. I’ve also worked with Larry Keenan and Gordon Ball on their online galleries for Beat News/Jack.

John Sokol’s Art

Left: Oil painting of William Burroughs
Right: Word-portrait of William Burroughs as “Junky,” with words from Junky written on his   face

This artwork is by John Sokol, who is a writer and painter living in Akron, OH. His poems have appeared in America, Antigonish Review, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Georgetown Review, New Millennium Writings, The New York Quarterly, and Quarterly West, among others. His short stories have appeared in Akros, Descant, Mindscapes, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Redbook, and other journals. One of his stories has been translated into Danish, and, another, into Russian. His drawings and paintings have been reproduced on more that thirty-five book covers. His chapbook, “Kissing the Bees,” winner of the 1999 Redgreene Press Chapbook Competition, is available through Amazon.com.

Oil painting of Allen Ginsberg

by Adrien Begrand

Okay, here are my picks for the definitive Beat video experience:

Pull My Daisy: Need I say more? If you only see a couple minutes of it, it has to be Kerouac’s ‘cockroach’ riff!

What Happened To Kerouac?: The best Kerouac doc, bar none. At ninety minutes, it’s longer than the inferior “Kerouac” film, and doesn’t have those bad re-creations. The interviews were all done at the 1982 On The Road celebration at the Naropa Institute. Best moment: Burroughs saying it took him years to shake that trust fund Kerouac thrusted upon him in his fiction, debunking the myth of Kerouac’s quoteunquote “great memory.” Truth is, Kerouac tended to exaggerate at times.

Kerouac On Firing Line: Sixty tragic and often funny minutes of Jack pouting, sipping booze, and sporadicaly waking up to say something absolutely hilarious to the great Ed Sanders, a dimwitted sociologist, and the king of all assholes, Buckley himself. Best moment: Kerouac’s famous verbal attack on Sanders, and his comment on how the Vietnam War was a ploy by the North and South Vietnamese (“cos they’re both cousins”) to get more jeeps.

Kerouac on Steve Allen: Jack’s shy during the interview, very shy…but when the music kicks in, he’s in his element, and delivers his greatest reading of all. Pure magic.

Kerouac’s Road: A Franco-American Odyssey: A Canadian NFB film examining the influence of Kerouac’s Quebec roots. Has annoying docudrama stuff, but it’s kept to a minimum. Best moment: the ultra-rare interview at CBC Montreal. This is the only film that examines Kerouac’s French Canadian roots, and it does so very effectively.

The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg: The best of all the Beat docs. Totally wonderful portrait of Allen. Best moment: Allen’s recitation of “Song” at the very beginning.

Poet on the Lower East Side: A Docudiary of Allen Ginsberg: Ninety minutes of footage videotaped by a friend of Ginsberg’s Hungarian translator over three days in 1996. Shows the side of Ginzy some people didn’t like: the business side. At his age, Allen never stopped for very long, always doing something. Best moment: Allen & Peter’s visit to Allen’s stepmother’s, Allen’s visit with the squatters.

Burroughs: The Movie: The definitive Burroughs film…This one’s a doozy. Has Bill touring his old St. Louis neighbourhood, reading at the Nova Convention, getting silly with Ginsberg (rehashing their routines they used to do during the Columbia days, quite precious), showing off his weapons…along with that is extremely rare footage of his son Bill Jr. right before he died, Lucien Carr (very rare again), Brion Gysin, and his famous appearance on Saturday Night Live, in its entirety. It covers his entire life right up to his moving to Lawrence in 1979…this one is worth having.

Commissioner of Sewers: A sixty-minute Burroughs doc, featuring interviews and readings. Best moment: Bill’s “Advice For Young People.” Covers Burroughs’ life in the 80′s, right up to The Western Lands.

Towers Open Fire: Buroughs & Gysin’s failed film cut-up experiment. Though very annoying to watch at times, it has its moments. Best moment: The “Towers” short at the beginning.

The Coney Island of Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Wonderful, amusing profile of the ebullient Ferlinghetti done by photographer Chris Felver. Like Ginzy, he’s always doing something. Best moment: His showing how he uses the meditation pillow Ginsberg gave him for taking naps down in Bixby Canyon. A playful jab at Allen.

Renaldo and Clara: Four hours of monotony, bad acting, cool concert footage, monotony…all this for the film’s three best offstage moments, all involving Ginsberg: his singing Blake poems and reading Kaddish in front of the old people, the famous visit with Dylan to Kerouac’s grave, and the cute q&a between Dylan, Ginsberg, and the kids in the playground.

Tons of stuff to watch, but it’s required viewing for all Beat Freaks!

POSTSCRIPT

Also see Henry Ferrini’s films Lowell Blues and Polis is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place.

by Mary Sands
4/5/00

(Also published in the Keroauc Connection, issue #30)

Wow. A most synergetic performance just happened, and it oughtta go down in history, if for no other reason than it’s the first time the Doors (or 2/3′s of what’s left of them) have been back at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, on Sunset Boulevard, since the Doors got fired (over twenty years ago) by the manager of the club for Jim’s “improvisation” of “The End.”

I missed the first few minutes of the show, but Ray Manzarek is up there, still looking very fine, telling the crowd about the meaning of what it’s all still about–what the Doors was about–and part of that is to go against the destruction of our natural surroundings. Ray goes on to retell the story about an incident in Jim Morrison’s childhood–where his family came across some American Indians, hurt at the side of the road, and how everyone just passed them by. Ray is very enthused about why we have to save what’s left of who we are, and where we are, and everything around us.

Ray’s energy superimposes everything as he tells about their old shows at the Whiskey. It is like walking down memory lane, after having been quite into the Doors for years and knowing their history–to see Ray up there, talking about their beginnings at the club and how they used to play second to the “big” bands back then, like Them, Buffalo Springfield, Love, the Turtles, and Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention.

Then he narrows in on a story of the last Thursday night that the Doors played at the club. The band was all there, except for Jim, and it wasn’t their turn to play yet, so the manager Fred was yelling “Where is Jim?,” until finally John Densmore, Robby Krieger, and Ray Manzarek headed out to find him. They knew he’d been staying at the Tropicana, and so they headed up there. They knocked on Jim’s door, room 114. No answer. They knocked again. Finally, the doorknob turned, and Jim opened the door wearing only underwear and a cowboy hat. “His eyes were like lasers!,” Ray recalls. Jim had tried to share his acid with everyone: a drawer full of vials of purple acid that, as Ray now says, shone with a weird light.

The band finally got Jim back to the Whiskey, and Ray is retelling this story with a lot of humor and “man!” expressions. Jim had been peaking, and into their third song that night at the Whiskey, Jim insisted on doing “The End.” Ray tells this story with a great amount of sentiment and bedazzlement that seems to still get his goat. They began playing the song, and when Jim started in with “The killer awoke before dawn,” halfway through the song, this was something the rest of the band hadn’t heard–but Ray knew that “took a face from the ancient gallery” was parallel to a “Greek drama mask,” so by the time Jim had “walked on down the hall,” the rest of the band knew about the reference to the Greek play Oedipus Rex, and of course what might come next from Jim.

Ray doesn’t hold back in yelling the infamous lines “Father, I want to kill you” and “Mother, I want to fuck you” into the Whiskey-A-Go-Go crowd this night of April 5, 2000. He must have gotten a kick out of this, knowing he wouldn’t be fired. Ray tells how back in the sixties, during that “one” performance of “The End,” the crowd was hypnotized. The go-go dancers stopped dancing. The bartenders and waitresses got quiet. Everyone was mesmerized and didn’t literally move again until after Jim had screamed out those Oedipal lines–whereupon everyone came alive again. By the end of the show, everyone was exhausted. Back stage, the band hugged Jim, telling him that was the most amazing performance ever–until in comes marching their manager Fred, yelling: “Morrison, you filthy motherfucker!” and fires the band. Robby piped up that it was only Thursday night, and so the manager let them play at the Whiskey through the weekend–and what did it matter, anyway, The Doors had signed on with Elektra two days earlier.

Ray tells this story, much to the delight of everyone; they’re all whooping it up and yelling “yeah, yeah, man!”–and then Ray goes on to talk about good energy and synchronicity.

He then breaks into a beautiful and somewhat bittersweet version (piano only) of “Crystal Ship,” which has been one of my Doors’ favorites for years. This rendition of the song just almost made me cry–watching Ray’s head move back and forth, as he pounds on the keys, thinking of the years and years of hearing that song, circumstances surrounding those times, the associations that come rumbling up–only, this time, it’s a wonderful, moving piece that is like, to me, a classic by now, played like a swansong tribute, but still kicking ass at the same time.

Ray then takes a drink, takes off his jacket, and plays another piece that he says is based on Bill Evans, which Ray had wanted to play in the background of Jim’s poetry. This tribute to Jim is certainly there to the biggest degree. Ray ends the smooth (at times), chaotic-jazzy (at times) piece with “That was for Jim.”

Then, as he teases the crowd on and off with some more piano and bits of “Light My Fire” and “Moonlight Drive,” he tells the story of talking with Jim at Venice Beach, when Jim showed him the lyrics to “Moonlight Drive,” and they talked about forming a band–and how Jim thought they oughtta be called “The Doors,” after William Blake’s, and Aldous Huxley’s, “Doors of Perception.” They did form the band, and here they were trying to come up with the music for Robby’s song “Light My Fire” (you see, Ray has a deft way of playing a little of the song and telling everyone about the song’s formation: an inclusion of Robby’s folksy influence, John’s Latin input, Jim’s weird and amazing lyrics like “love becomes a funeral pyre,” and adding Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” but doing it in 4′s, etc.), so that when Ray finally quits teasing and actually plays “Light My Fire,” the crowd erupts.

Next, Ray talks about his and Michael McClure’s collaboration on “The Third Mind” video, and he says that William Tyler Smith, director, is awesome and to watch out for him, because he’s going to do great things. Finally, Michael McClure is introduced and comes up to read part of “Civil Disobedience,” by Henry David Thoreau. This part really moves, with Ray on the piano–but Michael’s next reading, of Rebel Lions, and Ray’s jazzy accompaniment of it (bluesy, too, reminiscent of “Back Door Man”), really rocks the house. “Oh yeah. No. Yes. Oh, yeah!… Bandaids. Feeling so bad…Our bodies in agony for 40 million years…I’m on the beach, watching chipmunks….There’s a bloody war outside…It’s a good life!…Does Mama love you? Does Mama love you? Does Mama love you? Can the salmon drown?”

After Michael steps down, the crowd goes wild again when Robby Krieger comes up to the stage and jams with Ray, while Perry Farrell (of Jane’s Addiction) comes up and does an outstanding tribute to Morrison. It starts off soft, and gets heavy with stuff like “I can make the earth stop in its tracks. I can make the blue cars go away” (Robby’s guitar shrieks in the background.) “I’m the lizard king. I can do anything.” (Crowd yells, “yeah!”) Perry starts to dance around a little and chant, like Morrison used to do, and there’s this American Indian feel about it. “Hey-yay-yay-yay,” without any drums, even. “Stranger. There’s strangers on the edge of town.” Perry’s tribute ends lovingly: “This is for Jim, written by Jim…Jim, Jim, take off your shirt…C’mon down, Jim, to the Whiskey, where you belong. Where you came from…” He chants, sings, and dances. Ray and Robby clash smoothly along, just as they improvised in the Doors. “My conclusion, darling. Let me repeat. Let me repeat…. We miss you and we love you so much…”–a wonderful way to speak that far-out language so that Jim might “hear” it.

Next, Robby and Perry leave the stage, but Ray calls Robby back–and the audience is chanting, “Robby, Robby, Robby.” Robby moseys back up to the stage and says “Guess I’ll stick around,” in his typical humble, nonchalant, soft way. Then, John Doe (of the band X, whose first album “Los Angeles” was produced by Ray back in 1980) joins the musicians in singing “Riders on the Storm.” There’s some great jamming going on here, and John’s voice is similar to Jim’s at times, enough to make you feel like this is the Doors all over again.

After that song, Ray is like “Is Danny [Sugerman] coming up next?” And, “This is how we used to do it in the Doors, huddle up, and decide what to do next.” But then all of a sudden, Robby starts belting out “Love Me Two Times,” and Ray laughs and starts playing the piano. John joins in singing, sounding much more like Jim during the shrieking parts of the song. I constantly realized, while hearing this stuff, that the Doors really never died–and that newer artists, poets, and musicians are right there with them. It’s kind of one of those insights you have that leaves you feeling that everything is as it should be.

John and Robby leave the stage, and I guess by this time, they’re expecting Danny Sugerman to go up and read something. But he doesn’t come up yet, so Ray calls John, Michael, Perry, and Robby back up (and everyone is chanting “Robby, Robby, Robby” again). So, there, they all go back up to the stage–and Ray says they’re going to take pictures–and there’s some hugging and real celebration there. They all start jamming and singing “L.A. Woman,” another of my Doors’ favorites. It’s an amazing scene to see. The crowd joins in singing, too, so it’s all a kindred effort. At the end of the song, I notice that Robby is smiling really big. And no wonder.

Finally, Danny Sugerman, who co-wrote No One Gets Out of Here Alive at age 22 (how many years ago was that?), comes up and reads his new intro to the book–and it’s a good retrospective of 20 years later, and how Jim’s impact is so alive (as is evidenced tonight, for instance). “I think he’d be pleased that you people know his poetry,” Danny says as part of the new intro to the book. And it’s true: Jim Morrison was stretched every which way, and gave so much of himself to his audience–yet, he really wanted people to know his poetry. And now they do.

The final act is Perry coming back up to sing-say forcefully: “When I was back there in seminary school, they put forth the proposition that you can petition the Lord with prayer…..You CANNOT petition the Lord with prayer,” following with a recording of the Doors’ “Tell All the People.”

I kept expecting an encore of “The End,” but it was not to be. This was truly a kicking show, though–and perhaps we best let “The End” at the “Whiskey” be a Morrison-only moment in history–and the rest of us can go on and continue honoring that, and The Doors and all the poets and words and music that have come “from” The Doors.

*This concert, beyond being a tribute to the Doors and Jim Morrison, was also an effort to promote Ray Manzarek’s book Light My Fire.

We were lucky to have both Ginsberg and Snyder read here in the past few years. Ginsberg’s reading drew over 1,000 people, and Snyder offered unasked to sit in on my honors course on the Beats, where stunned students found themselves face to face with one of the writers they were reading.
-Steve Wilson, Southwest Texas State University

My interest in Beat Generation courses goes back to when I was an English major, wondering why my university did not teach about what I felt was a valid literary movement whose own auspicious roots, such as Whitman and Blake, were readily covered in literature courses. I felt at the time, as now, that perhaps the Beats were considered too avant-garde to be included in academic study. However, Beat writings such as those by Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg have evolved through almost half a century of controversy and growing acceptance to become widely read. These Beats’ cultural and literary icon-hood has been settled. Probably the most-read Beat book, On the Road, by Kerouac, made two 100-top-books lists last year, along with other literary classics. And, forget the pop culture, or mainstream acceptance: the Beat Generation made a deep impression on literature and culture, and has influenced everything from punk rock to later “movements.” The Beats were gems set in the bracelet of other jewels, before and after them. So, why didn’t the academic world teach about these authors, too?

Years after college, having become familiar with today’s Beat thoughts in a few online forums, such as the Subterraneans mailing list and the alt.books.beatgeneration newsgroup–as well as through personal correspondence with friends across the country–I kept seeing the question arise, “I’m going to teach a course about the Beats; how do I organize it?” This brought me back to those college days when I craved taking a good Beat class, and had scoured through reading materials, recordings, and films to come up with a syllabus that I thought would be ideal. And suddenly, it pleased me to no end that the Beats were actually being taught.

With the “how to organize a Beat class” question still in mind, years after my college days, I wrote to English departments around the country, asking whether or not they offered a Beat course, and if so, would they be willing to share their experiences and outlines. What I found was a diverse approach when teaching about the Beats. As with any subject, there is no “right” way to pass on something historical. A creative angle from someone who is well-read and knowledgeable about the subject is necessary, though–as is an interest from students.

Beat Classes

Steve Wilson (who has an article on Kerouac in the Spring 99 issue of Midwest Quarterly), from Southwest Texas State University, hinted of a growing interest in Beat classes. He said that his university first offered a Beat class five years ago. Later they added a summer course, and then an honors seminar. Wilson is now proposing that they also offer a class focusing on Kerouac, available to high-achieving English majors only. He said that the Kerouac class should be added within a year.

Universities that do offer Beat courses acknowledge that organizing such a class depends on the following:

• Type of course, such as a seminar, credit course, or independent study.
• Focus of the course, such as on the Beat Generation, only Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman and the Beats, etc.
• Whether the course is introductory or advanced.
• The instructor’s personal knowledge and approach.
• The university’s agenda and department’s objectives.
• Student interests.

Brooke Horvath, from Kent University, explained:

Perhaps the most successful part of the class (a junior-level course) was the push away from critical essays. Assignments included sketching the beginnings of a screenplay for Naked Lunch (no one had seen the movie or Burroughs’ videos: we watched part of the former and a couple of the latter), making collage posters to illustrate visually the world/work of Bob Kaufman, having each student perform for the class (with whatever props and performance style each thought appropriate) poems by various minor beats, and making the final project a “creative” one, something that reflected what they understood to be a beat aesthetic/sensibility: Someone turned in a CD of original songs recorded with her band; someone illustrated Howl in the manner of Blake’s illustrated poems; several turned in poetry or fiction chapbooks, or wrote memoirs of hitchhiking or whatever.

Others relied more heavily on texts, reading, and essays. Rob Latham, of the University of Iowa, was also interested in doing a survey class. He said:

I offered an independent study class on the Beats. It was not a regularly scheduled course: I offered it because a handful of students I knew fairly well said they wanted it. I do plan to teach a regular survey class on the Beats sometime in the next couple of years. Our reading list was geared towards the students’ particular interests, so it is not exactly a survey of the subject.

With so many resources to chose from when coming up with a class agenda, it might be hard to select the “best” materials. Sometimes, it’s a trial-and-error process. Brooke Horvath used lots of handouts and said:

[I] Also used several films and videos (McClure live, Shadows, Pull My Daisy, etc) and sound recordings (Dylan, Lenny Bruce, etc), books on the visual arts (Beat Culture and the New America, for instance), etc. Too much stuff; would drop Di Prima in favor of Cassady memoir (had wanted Joyce Johnson’s, but it came up out of print), and would drop the anthology next time.

Almost always, the Portable Beat Reader, edited by Ann Charters, is used as introductory material–as well as for the many excerpts, which provide the scholar with an understanding of the Beats and their writings. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, is another favorite class text, since it is one of Kerouac’s most popular works, as well as gives an “overview” of memoirs while Kerouac was on the road with other Beats such as Ginsberg, Cassady, and Burroughs.

Ginsberg’s “Howl,” “America,” and “Kaddish,” are often read, as are Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Junky. Poetry by Ferlinghetti, McClure, Snyder, Corso, Whalen, and others can be offered via handouts and/or the Portable Beat Reader. John Clellon Holmes’s Go and “This is the Beat Generation” are also great for discussion.

Along with these texts, many also focus part of the course on Beat women, being sure to cover Hettie Jones, Diane Di Prima, Carolyn Cassady, Joyce Johnson, and many others. While a “Beat Women” section is often separated as a focus, it should be integrated in with the rest of the outline as well.

The Beat environment should be covered as well: most notably the socio-economic, post-war setting; the literary roots that inspired the Beats; the jazz/bebop ties; the Buddhist and other philosophical realms surrounding the Beats; the milestones of published works and poetry readings and other renaissance developments; and what evolved after the fifties, such as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the new Beats, and the continuing lives (or impacts of deaths) of the “original” Beats.

From there, many more texts and films and sound recordings should be used. Mike Racine, from the alt.books.beatgeneration newsgroup, suggested some interesting branches, including:

Try to hit on Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, and Michael McClure. You will find a lot of poetry on the environment. McClure feels in many ways that the Beats started the current environmental movement.

There are so many avenues to take. Regardless of the outline or approach, instructors remarked overwhelmingly that they, and their students, came away with a renewed appreciation of the Beats.

The Students

Those teaching Beat courses want their students to be seriously interested in the subject, not just there for an easy A. For that reason, the subject is offered, at times, as a seminar or an independent study, such as with Latham’s handful of interested students. When offered as a credit course in an English Department, there are guidelines and sometimes prerequisites for taking the class.

James Tanner and James Baird, of the University of North Texas, add an extra incentive in their course objective:
The ultimate goal, then, as it ought to be for every academic encounter, is personal insight and self-discovery. The course should enrich the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual lives of students and teachers.

Michael Skau, University of Nebraska at Omaha, gave a rather detailed synopsis of his experience with students–and his expectations:

I have set it up so that the course does not satisfy any of the requirements for the English major: this demands that any English majors in the course are there because they really want to study this material, and it also ensures that the course is not dominated by English majors who might intimidate other majors. As a result, my class is filled with students from almost every imaginable major. In fact, my best students have frequently been philosophy and art majors.

The set-up of the course has not eliminated all problems, however. Students sometimes tend to assume that a course titled “Beats and Hippies” will be a “puff” course, and they are disconcerted to discover that I have rigid expectations for the course and high standards for their performance. The course has gained a kind of underground (if possible for a course taught at a university) notoriety, and those who learn of the course by word-of-mouth are usually aware that it is demanding. This helps to weed out slackers.”

Bob Fox, of Southern Illinois University, added that:

Most of the students did quite well and a majority of them rated the course as “excellent” in their evaluations. I was particularly pleased with their essays and even their final exam. A number of them wrote movingly about how they were moved by the material; some even did creative work clearly inspired by the writers we read. All in all, my appreciation for these writers deepens as a result of teaching them, although we do try to subject them to a rigorous (but loving) criticism. At least they took risks with their work–which of course means risking failure, or risking being misunderstood.

Rigid expectations or not, what results from teaching such a course is often a pure delight. Gary Eddy, of Winona State University said:

The student response was extraordinary. Class discussions were a joy. One of the students, a non-trad a few years older than myself, told stories of hitchhiking across the country with five bucks in his pocket, NY to SF, and arriving with 37 bucks that drivers had given him along the way! The response from younger students was also exciting: many of them interviewed their parents on their own responses to Kerouac and their youthful adventures. Big fun. The connection these students found to Kerouac was very instructive and encouraging. The Beat spirit lives on. Even in Minnesota.

The Beat Spirit Does Live On

It’s ironic that universities stick to traditional courses in liberal arts, but are dynamic when educating us in technological fields, such as the sciences. While there’s no harm in still teaching Shakespeare or Chaucer, however, it helps also to recognize recent literary history, its movements, and its impact.

The Beat “movement” was defiant in the least, and some evaluated it as mutinous. While the Beats were not exactly loose cannons, they do retain a reputation of being somewhat seditious. How can one pass on this phenomenon in an academic setting (students might justify skipping class)–and won’t the administration be skeptical about this teaching material?

Steve Wilson tackles the first part of this question, with this statement in his course objectives:

It goes without saying that a course on the Beats–anti-establishment to the core–must challenge our sense of “academics,” but this doesn’t mean we have to rely on shoddy thinking as we confront the issues the Beats present. I still expect scholarly, logical thought–even on the most illogical philosophies. I expect creativity, but with sound foundations. Remember that the Beats, far from being uneducated fools, were some of the most well-read writers and thinkers of their time.

As for opposition to teaching this subject, Elden Kurt Phaneuf, Jr., from SUNY Oswego, noted that there was some initial resistance to a course at his university. Past that stumbling block, his class is popular and doing well these days.
Many professors and instructors are true innovators. Rob Latham is one such person. He excels in the field of postmodern literature and culture. See his Web site at http://www.uiowa.edu/~c008171/robspage/roblath.html. You’ll find such course descriptions as “Seminar in Cultural Studies: Cyborg Culture” and “Narrative and the Cinema: The Road in Postwar Culture.” The inclusion of these types of classes today gives a certain hope. Academic study that reflects recent literary culture, no matter how “underground,” offers an important view about what has shaped us individually and socially.

Beat popularity isn’t just a United States phenomenon. Steve Wilson added in his testimonial that he taught a course on the Beats while he was a Fulbright scholar in Romania. He said that this class was the first of its kind to be offered there, and added:

Reactions to Beat ideas from those who had never even heard of them was wonderful. I particularly remember the Romanian students not understanding all that interest in cars in On the Road!

An article by the New York Times, written in 1997 by Dorren Carjaval, describes how Beat popularity is growing. Publishers note the highest Beat-related sales ever, and new editions of Beat books are constantly being slated. The article states: Kerouac thought it would take about 25 years to regain his popularity, said Amburn, who despaired himself when the writer’s books slowed in sales during the 1960s. “He knew he had a message of enlightenment and freedom for people. Kerouac believed that people needed to be liberated from their anxieties and worries and connect with what he saw as the universal mind.

There’s a reward here, when teaching about the Beats. As Elden Kurt Phaneuf put it:

I’d long dreamed of the chance to teach Kerouac, Burroughs, Corso, Bukowski, Baraka, and many of my other literary “idols” in a fecund, energizing setting, and found the culmination of that dream to be extremely satisfying…Arguably the finest moment during the Beat class: a spontaneous group reading of Ginsberg’s “Howl” (I had the good sense to throw John Coltrane’s “Live at the Village Vanguard” disc in the player to provide appropriate musical accompaniment.) To say the moment was liberatory and sublime is a gross understatement.

Yes, it appears that nearly 50 years after the literary explosion of the Beats, they live on.

Syllabus/Resource Links

What follows are links to actual syllabi and outlines being used. This is only a small sampling to provide ideas and direction for those interested in teaching Beat courses. [Note, I was only able to salvage some of these, not all.]

Independent Study Reading List: Beat Literature and Culture. Instructor: Rob Latham, University of Iowa.
Beat Generation course book list. Instructor: Brooke Horvath, Kent State University.
Writers of the Beat Generation. Instructors: Elden Kurt Phaneuf, Jr., and Don Masterson. SUNY Oswego.
The Beat Generation; Mythology: The Beats & Origins of American Myth (two courses–two outlines). Instructor: Steve Wilson. Southwest Texas State University.
Walt Whitman and the Beat Generation: Instructors James Tanner and James Baird, University of Northern Texas.
Figures in Literature: Jack Kerouac. Instructor: Gary Eddy, Winona State University.
Beats and Hippies: Instructor: Michael Skau, University of Nebraska at Omaha (four outlines).
Southern Illinois University: Instructor: Bob Fox.
William Burroughs and The Beat Generation: Instructor: James Liddy, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

POSTSCRIPT NOTES

CFP: The Beat Movement and Mexico (6/1/01; PCA, 10/18-21/01)
CALL FOR PROPOSALS AND PANELS AND PAPERS:
THE BEAT MOVEMENT, MEXICO, AND DIONYSIAN ART

The Fifth Congress of the Americas is being held at University of the Americas-in Puebla, Mexico, on October 18-20, 2001. The program and panels are both multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary.

This area will explore the Beat Movement and Mexico. Topics might include presentations on particular Beat writers and their works, for example Kerouac or Burroughs with emphasis on cross-cultural analysis; the Beat Movement as represented in media; the drug culture of the Beats; jazz and the Beats, and other Dionysian strains of the movement. The Beats were attracted to Mexico as an alternative culture where Cold War repression was lacking–where drugs were plentiful, and the booze was cheap. In many cases the hallucinogenic elements of Beat Art were identified with the Mexican and Latin cultures.

See the web page at www.udlap.mx/congress for additional information about the congress, the charming city of Puebla, and registration. You may register online. The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2001. Please submit a 150-200 word abstract via email to Deborah Carmichael.

College Literature’s Teaching Beat Literature is out now (Special Issue 27.1 Winter 2000). The book’s numerous essays contemplate the beat aesthetic, academic study of the cultural movement by the Beats, and the idea of teaching the Beats in literature. Each essay is a well-written and fairly in-depth discussion of some aspect of the Beats, including the following: Kerouac’s Poetics of Intimacy, by Ann Douglas; Jack Keruac and the Postmodern Emergence, by Ronna C. Johnson; A White Man in Love: A Study of Race, Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Jack Kerouac’s Maggie Cassidy, The Subterraneans, and Tristessa, by Nancy McCampbell Grace; Undermining Language and Film in the Works of Williiam S. Burroughs, by Douglas G. Baldwin; Intersection Points: Teaching William Burrough’s Naked Lunch, by Timothy S. Murphy; Allen Ginsberg’s Urban Pastoral, by Terence Diggory; Gary Snyder and the Nature of the Nature of Nature, by Robert Kern; Triangulated Desires and Tactical Silences in the Beat Hipscape: Bob Kaufman and Others, by Maria Damon; Chicanismo’s Beat Outrider? The Texts and Contexts of Oscar Zeta Acosta, by A. Robert Lee; Brinkmann, Fauser, Wondratschek and the Beats, by Anthony Waine and Jonathan Wooley; Allen Ginsberg, Simon Vinkenoog, and the Dutch Beat Connection, by Jaap van der Bent; Beating the Academy, by Oliver Harris; and A Compact Guide to Sources for Teaching the Beats, by William Lawlor. Also are two review essays: The Women Who Stayed Home from the Orgy, by Cornel Bonca and The Beat Generation is Now About Everything, by Regina Weinreich. For more information, write to collit@wcupa.edu.

American Authors Seminar: Whitman and Ginsberg. Professor: Tony Trigilio, Columbia College, Chicago. Spring semester syllabus.

Horst F. Spandler’s Beat Literature Site. Horst taught beat literature at the University of Augsburg (in southern Germany) in 1994. Currently he teaches in a school similar to our high school, and read On the Road with his students. Click here for more on Horst’s teaching agenda and materials used.

Because the beat classes article went over well, and people have written in wanting more resources about teaching the beats, I added this link, which will grow in time, to guide you to online resources that you might find helpful when teaching about the beats–as well as literature in general.

Beat writings are not just rebellious statements about the times; beat fiction and poetry also reflect academic learning and ideas on prosody, technique, and style. The beats’ style was labeled a “new vision” as the beats were trying to define their non-mainstream authorship in the 40s and 50s. The beats eventually became a major movement in our literary history. Steve Wilson said that his graduate course on the beats (for Spring/2000), at Southwest Texas State University, filled up within 45 minutes of registration!

Credits and Acknowledgments

• James Baird and James Tanner at the University of Northern Texas
• Daniel Barth, writer and beat scholar
• Gary Eddy at Winona State University
• Bob Fox at Southern Illinois University
• Brooke Horvath at Kent State University
• Rob Latham at the University of Iowa
• James Liddy (also Michael Noonan and Laura Chambers) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Elden Kurt Phaneuf, Jr., and Don Masterson at SUNY Oswego
• Mike Racine, Naropa Institute student and jazz festival producer
• Michael Skau at the University of Nebraska-Omaha
• Phil Wedge at the University of Kansas
• Steve Wilson at Southwest Texas State University

These professors and instructors have generously offered their course outlines and syllabi as well as their experiences when teaching Beat courses. I thank you all for contributing to this article. I am sure that I’m not alone in applauding your teaching efforts of a subject that has proven to be a great movement in our literary culture. Thanks also to the students who helped steer me in the right direction.

…see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, …all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures. -Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums) 1958

Rucksacking, or backpacking, wasn’t just a physical workout for beats such as Jack Kerouac; it was a spiritual workout that often flew the mind to great appreciation for the natural surroundings. To explain this better, I’ve chosen some quotes from The Dharma Bums (Kerouac, 1958, Viking Press).

The wind was whipping now. Yet that whole afternoon, even more than the other, was filled with old premonitions or memories, as though I’d been there before, scrambling on these rocks, for other purposes more ancient, more serious, more simple. (Ray Smith, climbing the Matterhorn with Japhy and Morley.)

Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said “God, I love you” and looked up to the sky and really meant it. “I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.” (Ray Smith, on Desolation Peak.)

On the Road and Up the Mountains

In simple form, Kerouac and buddies traveled a lot, often with rucksacks on backs as they crossed the USA or dipped into Mexico. They’d hike through cities and towns, or hitch rides with strangers (the country seemed friendlier back then) or on trains with open boxcars. And many times, they just drove their cars. Hiking to the mountains was another rucksack event, and to prepare for these events, the following items seemed necessary:

-Clothes, jackets, boots, tarps, sleeping bags, cooking pots and utensils–from places like Goodwill or the Salvation Army.
-Cans of beans or “lighter” food like dried veggies that could be mixed with water and bacon fat.
-Red wine unless it was up to the mountains. As Kerouac noted, at higher elevations, you lose your taste for alcohol.
-Coffee
-Matches
-Hershey’s almond bar!
-Sneakers (until your feet blister, and then you change to hiking boots)

Recently I heard from Gary Snyder about planning a trip up the Matterhorn (which I plan to do next summer). He said: “If you look up the Matterhorn in the Sierra Club climbing guide you’ll get a good description of how to do it. It’s not particularly dangerous but the last few hundred feet are 3rd class. (I’m talking about the easiest route, which is the one I use.) It’s a long hard hike from Twin Lakes though, camping part way up Horse Creek Canyon. Go with a friend.”

Kerouac Saloon

Here’s my idea of a diner, inspired by many of Kerouac’s travels and Snyder’s works, including trips to the Desolation Peak lookout, climbs up the Matterhorn, Big Sur experiences, and many other tales of on the road. It would be a cabin type lodge, with wooden beams on the ceiling and burlap walls. On the walls would be paintings and portraits of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder (etc.), as well as artsy posters and book cover prints and even poems. It would be a dim place, with a cozy hearth, candles on oak tables, and lots of bookshelves lining the walls–for patrons to read and skim over during their stay there. This “saloon” would be in Big Sur, or Cambria, somewhere overlooking the Pacific. But not a schmancy-fancy place, because it would appeal to bums and poets and everyone driving up Pacific Coast Highway, wanting some grub or drink or reading or company. There would be poetry readings (planned and open mic), and the atmosphere would be laid back–with memorabilia everywhere, but not overkill. You’d get a feel of the 1950s as well as an art environment as well as a rugged lumberjack sense of the outdoors. The place would serve poorboys of red wine, and other assorted beverages (tea, coffee, beer, etc.). You could order pork pies (like Kerouac’s mom made), stews and soups. There’d be chunks of cheese, cortons, crullers, pork meatball stew, beef jerky, beans and weanies, apple pie ala mode, Joyce Johnson’s eel stew (or is that a myth?), Carolyn Cassady pizza (is there such a thing?), big diner dinners–like on the road–and great bread to munch on. And hotcakes with sausage and bacon, etc. The ideas are endless. This is making me hungry. Oh, and there’d be some Slim Gaillard, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, etc. piping through. Updated diner thoughts: see March news, and the Jack Kerouac diner menu.

Excerpt from the introduction to The Americans (Kerouac, from Good Blonde & Others):

“The raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass–orangebutted west lands of Arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and gopher–the level of the world, low and flat: the charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route, fabulous plots of landowners in green unexpecteds, ditches by the side of the road, as I look. From here to Elko along the level of this pin parallel to telephone poles I can see a bug playing in the hot sun–swush, hitch yourself a ride behind the fastest freight train, beat the smoke, find the thighs, spend in the shiney, throw the shroud, kiss the morning star in the morning glass–madroad driving men ahead. Pencil traceries of our faintest wish in the travel of the horizon merged, nosey cloud obfusks in a drabble of speechless distance, the black sheep clouds cling a parallel above the steams of C.B.Q.–serried Little Missouri rocks haunt the badlands, harsh dry brown fields roll in the moonlight with a shiny cow’s ass, telephone poles toothpick time, “dotting immensity” the crazed voyager of the lone automobile presses forth his eager insignificance in noseplates & licenses into the vast promise of life. Drain your basins in old Ohio and the Indian and Illini plains, bring your Big Muddy rivers thru Kansas and the mudlands, Yellowstone in the frozen North, punch lake holes in Florida and L.A., raise your cities in the white plain, cast your mountains up, bedawze the west, bedight the west with brave hedgerow cliffs rising to Promethean heights and fame–plant your prisons in the basin of Utah moon–nudge Canadian groping lands that end in Arctic bays, purl your Mexican ribneck, America–we’re going home, going home.

STARVING HYSTERICAL NAKED

Starving Hysterical Naked is the story of a close group of young friends who formed the core of the most influential “youth” generation of the last fifty years. The main characters of are based on the people who were the nucleus of Beat Generation — Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady. In the colorful world of New York and San Francisco in the late 1940′s and ’50′s, these bohemian friends embarked on a long odyssey to escape middle-class respectability and ultimately revolutionized modern literature. Using a “frame” of a 1957 Jazz and Poetry reading at the Hungry i nightclub, the story is told by the various characters in chronological vignettes that collectively paint a complete picture of their lives and times.

STORY

A handsome, muscular, intelligent man with brooding features, Nick is an aspiring writer who comes to New York in search of adventure. He falls in with a pack of young writers and artists, who, as a group, explore the wilder side of the young life: they party, they listen to bebop jazz, they experiment with open sexuality and drugs, and most importantly for them, they formulate their theories of art and writing. Andrew Spector, seen as an intense, earnest, 18-year-old, arrives in New York to attend college and quickly falls in with Nick and his young bohemian crowd. Julian Hall, 19, is a smart, smug, world-weary bohemian. As one of the leaders of the group of poets, Julian introduces Andrew to the San Remo bar and unrestrained lifestyle of his group who gathers there. Julian life comes crashing down around him when he kills a man in self-defense and lands him in jail.

All their youthful idealism is ultimately shattered after the murder. Their early wild days come to a tragic end and they are forced to go their separate ways. As a consequence of the murder, Andrew has a breakdown and ends up in a mental institution. His psychoanalyst convinces Andrew that he really is crazy, but, as a writer, Andrew concludes, “maybe this sanity business is overrated.” Later, reunited with the crowd, Andrew vacillates between the wild, experimental artist’s life and respectability.

A lanky, highly intelligent man, Davis Leland likes nothing more than hold forth on matters of philosophy with his band of devoted followers, whose number includes aspiring writers Nick and Andrew. About as nonconformist as one can reasonably get, Davis is an avid drug user whose sexual preference is very flexible. Although he’s primarily gay, Davis marries his partner in addiction, Jannie, and together (in very odd, but loving way) they embark on a dangerous, self destructive path of continual experimentation with drugs and lifestyles. Their marriage proves a very rocky experience, one that comes to a tragic end when Jannie, suffering a delusional break in the streets of Greenwich Village, climbs a church steeple and dies in an accidental fall.

Feeling lost, Nick buses across the country to San Francisco where he meets a handsome hustler named Bret Nealson. A friend of Andrew’s, Bret becomes fast friends with Nick. A strapping, sandy-hair Marlboro Man type, Bret is a loose cannon–a wild and explosive hedonist who cares nothing for society’s rules and regulations. Full of devil-may-care attitude, he shows Nick the sights of San Francisco while impressing Nick with his unconventional outlook on life. The wildly energetic Bret forms a brotherly bond with the ever-searching Nick and they agree to share everything in their lives. Their friendship grows tighter when they drive all the way back to New York to get Andrew out of the mental hospital. Their crazy, non-stop car trip across country has them picking up girls, popping Benzedrine, singing jazz, driving fast, and happily celebrating the unbridled spirit that keeps them speeding over the highways.
Later on, the eve of their fame in 1957, a group of young writers and poets gather to give a reading of their works at the Hungry I nightclub in San Francisco. Nick Constantine reads his story of how he falls in with a pack of young bohemians that includes, Davis, Andrew and Julian.

As Nick struggles to establish himself as he writer, he takes all of his edgy experiences and attempts to write about them in a new, modern style that will change the nature of contemporary literature. Years later, after serving his jail term then living in Japan, Julian is reunited with his old friends. He is now a student of Zen Buddhism and their new time together greatly influences Andrew and Nick. Andrew becomes a college professor., but academia gives him no peace of mind, and instead leads him to a life-changing epiphany and his true calling as a groundbreaking poet. The film ends back at the Hungry i Jazz and Poetry reading where all are reunited through their stories, poetry, and lives that will ultimately change the entire culture of America.

CAST

NICK CONSTANTINE (based on Jack Kerouac)
ANDREW SPECTOR (based on Allen Ginsberg)
DAVIS LELAND (based on William Burroughs)
BRET NEALSON (based on Neal Cassidy)
JULIAN HALL (based on Lucien Carr / Gary Snyder)

Why “STARVING HYSTERICAL NAKED?”

Why do you want to make a movie about the Beat Generation?

Because their story is one of the most important and exciting stories of our contemporary culture. As the first post-war youth generation, they were the original wild ones. They inspired everything that our youth oriented culture has become. Whether you like or approve of them and their behavior (and lots of people don’t), they directly influenced everything that is current today — from fashions (Levi’s, khaki slacks, T-shirts) to the arts (poetry readings, rock n’ roll, rap) to lifestyles (free-sex, drugs).

Do you really think a contemporary audience can relate to them?

If the movie is made properly — if it conveys the excitement, the sense of discovery and the hardships of growing up — an audience today will not only relate, but also see themselves on screen. Youth is eternal. The restless, wandering, experimental spirit of youth has never been more evident than in its raw form of its originators – the Beat Generation.

What is the story about?

Simply, it’s a story of young people who are passionate about their lives and art. It’s a story of how they push lifestyle boundaries in search of their truths. And it’s a story of how they inspire, fight, love, and prod each other toward greater artistic heights. The key to the whole movie is told right in the beginning, when the main character, Nick, says: “The adventure of my life began with the intersecting web of other lives, unlikely lives that were to crash together like meteors, sending a shower of sparks across the sky and setting the holy heavens on fire.”

Why have you fictionalized the characters?

People fictionalize real events to create a “higher truth.” Jack Kerouac wrote about this same group, and wrote in fiction, even though most of it was true. It gave him the freedom to create the “higher truth.” The script of “Starving Hysterical Naked” follows Kerouac’s tradition. The main characters are based on the real people of the Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady. Ninety percent of the incidents portrayed in “Starving Hysterical Naked” actually happened. But fictionalizing it allows the story to be more true to the real spirit and people of the Beat Generation than a “docu-drama” could ever be.

If the vitality of the real characters is portrayed properly, if the story conveys excitement and drama, it doesn’t matter what the characters are named. Most of the audience only vaguely knows the names of the real Beats. Like the fictionalized characters in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” the real attraction is the freedom, guts, passion and fun of the people that inhabit the story. Ultimately, that is what an audience cares about.

Haven’t there been other movies about the Beat Generation?

There have been a few pictures that have focused on isolated incidents of the Beat story. Unfortunately, they have all fallen very short. This has everything to do with their approach to the material, and nothing to do with the subject matter, which is rich with character and drama.

One of the main reasons the other movies have failed is that they tried to tell their very limited stories in traditional ways — totally ignoring the experimental ethic of the Beat culture, totally ignoring the excitement of the times, totally ignoring the rhythms (jazz) and the youthful energy of the people.

How will “Starving Hysterical Naked” be different?

“Starving Hysterical Naked” will not be a “straight” telling of the Beat story. It will be a Beat film. It’s purpose is to try and put the audience into the characters lives; to make the viewer feel the excitement of what it was like to be twenty years old in New York City in the early 1950′s.

What will make it a more authentic “Beat” movie?

While “Starving Hysterical Naked” is traditional storytelling in that it follows the characters chronologically from how they met, what they did to inspire each other, and how they ultimately found their own paths to success, the story is told in a “Beat” way. It uses the different narrative methods of the Beat Generation (chronicle, poetry, song, journals, letters) to constantly surprise the viewer and take the audience into the “Beat world.”

The music score will be all jazz from the period, re-recorded by current jazz players to recreate the heat and excitement of the music. The jazz score is essential to the feeling of the film and will accentuate the rhythms of the scenes and sequences.

Similarly, the cinematography will try and capture the feeling of the youthful era. There will be lots of long tracking masters, often hand-held, following the characters. This will provide a free, fluid feeling that reflects the hip looseness of the times. It will also allow for a more realistic and authentic flavor.

What do you hope to accomplish by making “Starving Hysterical Naked?”

Basically, tell an important story with great characters in a unique and exciting way.