Jamie Russell

The Pocket Essential

THE BEAT GENERATION

www.pocketessentials.com
 First published in Great Britain 2002 by Pocket Essentials, 18 Coleswood Road,
Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1EQ

Distributed in the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing, PO Box 257, Howe Hill
Road, North Pomfret, Vermont 05053

Copyright © Jamie Russell 2002

Series Editor: Paul Duncan

The right of Jamie Russell to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1-903047-85-4

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 To Julian and William, for being such great friends
To Louise, for so much happiness

Acknowledgements

As always my thanks go to the following people who helped

keep me sane and solvent while pacing the library and pounding
the keyboard: John and Anna Maria Groombridge, Brian Hol-
mes, Jon and Helen Macmillan, Ling Eileen Teo, David Whit-
taker. Special thanks to Nev Pierce for sharing the secrets of his
trade with me and keeping me freelance. Thanks to Colin and
Doreen Whitehouse for all their support and interest and to
Mum, Gran and Gigo for all their love.
 CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Rebirth Of Cool....................................7

Origins, Influences And The Beat Scene

2. Lonesome Traveller: Jack Kerouac ........................20

Biography And Works

3. The Howling Poet: Allen Ginsberg .........................34

Biography And Works

4. The Third Mind: William S Burroughs ....................45

Biography And Works

5. The Beat Generation Movement .............................58

Nelson Algren, Carolyn Cassady, Neal Cassady, Gregory
Corso, Diane DiPrima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Brion
Gysin, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Huncke, LeRoi
Jones, Norman Mailer, Gary Snyder, Hunter S
Thompson, Alexander Trocchi

6. Beats At The Movies ................................................73

The Wild One, Rebel Without A Cause, The Blackboard
Jungle, Pull My Daisy, Shadows, The Beat Generation,
Bucket Of Blood, The Subterraneans, Thee Films,
Chappaqua, Heart Beat, Drugstore Cowboy, Naked
Lunch

7. Reference Materials .................................................86

Books, Films and Webpages
 1. Introduction: Rebirth Of Cool

Never in the history of literature and literary movements has so much

been owed to so few. Three men—Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and
William S Burroughs—became the core of a literary and social phe-
nomenon that (to borrow Burroughs’ comments about Kerouac’s most
famous novel) ‘sold a trillion pairs of Levis and a million espresso cof-
fee machines, and also sent countless kids on the road.’
The Beat phenomenon transformed American society. Not only was
it the first expression of what we would now dub youth culture—paving
the way for the hippies, punks, grungers and ravers as well as a thou-
sand and one other styles—but it was also the first moment in Western
culture when literature, music and film became cool. In other words, it
was totally opposed to the boring adult world of work, money and
responsibility.
These days the Beats are part of the establishment. Kerouac, Bur-
roughs and Ginsberg can be found on all kinds of college and school
reading lists. (There’s a great photo of American military cadets sitting
in class reading Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’—how the world changes!) What’s
more, the Beats are big bucks. Reprints of their books, academic cri-
tiques, T-shirts, CD recordings and posters are everywhere. The princi-
pal characters in the Beat saga (all of them now dead and buried) have
become mythical figures whose continuing status as visionaries, rebels
and hipsters guarantee their various estates a regular (and very large)
income.
Yet in spite of this acceptance into the mainstream, the Beats are still
considered cool. What makes the Beat phenomenon unique is the way
in which it has remained so popular with each successive generation of
young rebels. While 1960s acid culture has generally been disowned
and mocked, the Beats and the literature that they spawned remain as
much a symbol of youthful rebellion today as they were back in 1957.
Reading On The Road, ‘Howl’ or Naked Lunch has become a rite of
passage. It doesn’t seem to matter that these books were written almost
half a century ago, they’ve still got what it takes, Daddy-O.
Perhaps this isn’t all that surprising. Back in the 1950s, the Beats
were obsessed with exploding society’s taboos, from drugs to sex to
censorship. At the dawn of this new millennium these issues still seem
as relevant today as they did back then. Things may have changed since
1950, but we still seem a long, long way from the kind of open, inclu-

7
sive society that the Beats dreamt of. Drugs are still demonised, homo-
sexuality is still frowned upon, hetero sex is only permitted if it’s selling
something and the censor still guards us like an overbearing nanny.
The Beats are still as relevant today as they were fifty years ago.
After all, why else do the American broadcasting authorities still ban
readings of ‘Howl’ on the radio before midnight?

Before The Beats

1945. The closing stages of World War Two. As the Third Reich col-
lapsed, American infantrymen withdrew from the battlefields of Europe
and returned home to their native soil. Some of them were elated,
flushed with the adrenaline of victory. Others were in a state of despair,
having witnessed a catalogue of atrocities that neither peacetime nor
their military training had prepared them for. Few of them were
ready—emotionally or physically—for the shock of returning home.
The social impact of World War Two stretched far beyond the simple
realities of warfare. During the years that followed Pearl Harbour an
unprecedented mobilisation of human resources took place, and it was
in this upheaval that the seeds of the Beat Generation were sown. As
men and women from all across the United States were thrown together
by the war, the fabric of American society was torn apart. People from
different walks of life began to exchange ideas, opinions and lifestyles.
Whites suddenly met the country’s minorities first-hand, women were
given the opportunity to prove that they could carry out traditionally
‘masculine’ jobs in the absence of America’s men and the draft gave
everyone first-hand experience of the power of the state over the indi-
vidual.
By the time the war was over, America had irrevocably changed. As
the veterans returned they added their own experience to the mix, bring-
ing a restless energy back with them, an energy that laid the foundations
for the discontented youth movements that soon emerged.
Nelson Algren, one of America’s foremost novelists of the period,
summed up the sense of post-war social unrest in his books. Talking
about The Man With The Golden Arm (1949), his classic story about
heroin addicts in the slums of Chicago, Algren claimed: ‘I was going to
write a war novel. But it turned out to be the Golden Arm thing. I mean,
the war kind of slipped away, and those people with the hypos came
along and that was it.’

8
 Junkies were big news in the late 1940s. Many veterans had returned
with drug habits that they’d picked up after being wounded and given
shots of morphine. Meanwhile, on the home front, the war had meant
that stolen drugs were frequently available on the black market, fuelling
a sudden rise in morphine and heroin addiction that continued well into
the 1950s (and beyond). The media were obsessed with junkies—their
lifestyle, criminal activities and depraved sexual acts.
But it wasn’t just junkies who emerged from the upheaval of the war
years. Suddenly, outlaw subcultures were springing up everywhere.
Packs of thrill-seeking motorcyclists had begun to prowl the highways
of the West Coast, terrorising the patrons of remote bars as they roared
up on their Indians and Harley Davidsons. Ex-GIs who hadn’t been able
to settle down after returning home, these outlaw motorcyclists (who
would eventually become the Hell’s Angels) seemed to herald the com-
ing of a new lawlessness. Meanwhile, in the cities, a new breed of crim-
inal—the juvenile delinquent—had appeared. These poor,
predominantly working-class children ran riot through the streets,
unafraid of their parents or the police.
In the conservative eyes of the media these different gangs were a
new threat to the Land of the Free—an enemy within. What was worse,
these wild groups seemed to be encouraging America’s other minorities
to become equally vocal. African-Americans, immigrants and homo-
sexuals were suddenly demanding rights and freedoms. Was it a Com-
munist plot against American democracy? And where would it end?

Going Underground: Subterranean Adventures

The history of America in the years after World War Two is a history
of subcultures. From junkies to bikers, gays to juvenile delinquents, and
African-Americans to immigrants, America’s population was split
between the normal majority and the deviant minority. Academic soci-
ologists (like the Chicago School of Albert Cohen, Milton M Gordon
and others) catalogued these different groups by writing about their
habits, language and behaviour. Delving into the subterranean worlds of
America’s underbelly, these academics tried to understand the political,
economic and social reasons why the members of these groups felt cut
off from mainstream society.
This interest in the forbidden underworlds wasn’t just limited to a
bunch of academics, though. The men and women who would form the

9
first wave of the Beat Generation were similarly excited by the prospect
of experiencing the kicks that could be found in the ghettos and poor
neighbourhoods. Living amongst what Herbert Huncke called the
‘dikes, faggots, a certain so-called hip element, the swish places and the
she-she places’ of New York, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs were
all obsessed with life on the edges of society. It was a characteristic that,
in later years, their critics would mock. As Norman Podhoretz (a fervent
hater of the Beats) wrote at the height of Beat fever in 1958: ‘The spirit
of … the Beat Generation strikes me as the same spirit which animates
the young savages in leather jackets who have been running amok in the
last few years with their switchblades and zip guns.’
Yet, by taking bits and pieces of each of these subcultures, the Beats
began to create a new lifestyle that rejected mainstream I Love Lucy
American culture in favour of the restless energy of the underworld.
Experimenting with drugs, crime, sex and jazz, the Beats tried to shatter
every taboo that the straight world held.

Hip, Beat Cats

As with most literary movements, there isn’t a birth date for the Beat
Generation. No one ever issued a manifesto or printed off a pamphlet
announcing the arrival of the Beats, it simply happened. Ginsberg, Ker-
ouac and Burroughs met in New York in 1944. They were introduced
through a series of mutual friends, liked one another and began to hang
out together. The three of them formed the central hub of the Beats and
around them grew a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, the Beat
Generation itself.
Legend has it that Jack Kerouac was the first to call himself, Gins-
berg, Burroughs and their acquaintances ‘The Beat Generation.’ John
Clellon Holmes made a note of the phrase and used it as the title of an
essay in the New York Times Magazine in 1952, ‘This Is The Beat Gen-
eration.’ But ‘Beat’ was a term that existed long before this casual use
by Kerouac. It had a rich heritage with many links to the subcultures
that these writers were so enamoured with. The word ‘beat’ had been
used in African-American jazz circles for years to mean exhausted or
broke. The Times Square world of petty thieves, junkies and prostitutes
that William Burroughs worked his way into—after meeting one of its
true denizens, Herbert Huncke—also had the word in its vocabulary,
with a similar kind of meaning. But on the lips of excited young men

10
like Kerouac, Holmes and Ginsberg, beat came to signify something
else—a combination of both exhaustion and empowerment. Kerouac’s
vision of beat relied on a definite shift in meaning from earlier usage. If
something was beat it wasn’t simply downtrodden by life in post-war
America, it also rejected the oppressive world around it, transforming
exhaustion into defiance and reaching towards religious transformation
(‘beatitude’). As John Clellon Holmes remarked, ‘To be beat is to be at
the bottom of your personality, looking up.’ Like the ‘hipster’ who Nor-
man Mailer glamorised (with much offensive racist nonsense) in his
famous essay The White Negro, the Beat hero throws himself into the
subcultures of American life and tries to find an alternative to the boring
realities of the nuclear family. But, unlike the hipster, whose main qual-
ity is a knowing coolness, the Beat hero is characterised by desperation
in his search for kicks, wearing himself out in his attempt to live life
large and experience a spiritual rebirth.

The Ace In The Hole

The one thing that characterises all the Beat writers is their willing-
ness to throw themselves into the underbelly of American society in
search of kicks. Being cool meant finding an alternative to the main-
stream and, in the 1940s and 1950s, the alternative lifestyles were to be
found in the cities’ bars, ghettos and downtown clubs. Rejecting their
bourgeois family values (particularly Burroughs, a Harvard graduate
whose family had once been heir to the Burroughs Adding Machine for-
tune), the Beats began to experiment with everything that 1940s and
1950s America classified as illegal: drugs, crime, gay sex, racial inte-
gration.
Burroughs felt most comfortable in the hustler world of Times
Square and teamed up with authentic petty thief Herbert Huncke to
score for drugs while funding his habit through a combination of his
family’s $200 a month allowance and ‘working the hole’ (robbing
drunks on the subways). Kerouac experimented with a variety of stimu-
lants and eventually became addicted to Benzedrine inhalers (bennies).
Ginsberg, with the help of Neal Cassady, discovered the extent of his
homosexuality.
Such forays outside of polite society brought their own problems,
though. The first bout of serious trouble that struck the group was in
1944 when Lucien Carr, a handsome blond boy who looked like Arthur

11
Rimbaud, murdered Dave Kammerer. Carr had been responsible for
introducing the principal Beats to one another and, although he never
published anything worthy of his peers, he has remained a key compo-
nent in the Beat Generation’s history ever since. Dave Kammerer, who
knew both Carr and Burroughs from St Louis, had followed the golden-
haired, angelic boy up to New York as he attended classes at Columbia.
He was obsessed with Carr, even though there was a clear lack of recip-
rocation. Those who witnessed their strange relationship claimed that
Carr often seemed to encourage the older man, enjoying the level of
power he held over him while never giving him exactly what he wanted.
Eventually, as the obsession became increasingly desperate, Kam-
merer’s adoration turned into violence.
According to Carr, on the night of 13 August 1944 he had met Kam-
merer during a drinking bout. In the early hours of the next morning, as
they sat on the riverside, Kammerer made ‘an indecent proposal’ to
Carr, who rejected it. A fight ensued and the older, heavier Kammerer
would have won, but Carr stabbed him twice with his scout pocket
knife. Binding Kammerer’s hands and feet together with his shoelaces
and belt, Carr dumped the body into the river. A few hours later he con-
fessed to Burroughs (who advised him to turn himself in and claim self-
defence on the basis of a homosexual advance). He then woke up Ker-
ouac and confessed again. Together they disposed of the murder
weapon and then spent the day drinking, watching a movie and visiting
a gallery. Later that afternoon Carr turned himself in to the District
Attorney.
When the body was found Carr was arrested along with Burroughs
and Kerouac as material witnesses. Burroughs’ father made the long
journey up to New York and bailed his son out, returning with him to St
Louis. Kerouac’s father disowned him—“No son of mine ever got
mixed up in a murder”—and it was left to the parents of his girlfriend
Edie Parker to bail him out, on condition that he first marry their daugh-
ter. The press dubbed the killing an ‘honour slaying,’ playing up the
Kammerer’s homosexual proposition and Carr was given a sentence of
1-20 years, but was released after serving just two.
Five years later, in April 1949, the dangers of consorting with the
underworld became apparent as Ginsberg, Huncke and two petty
thieves (Vicki Russell and Little Jack Melody) were arrested after
crashing a stolen car. Of the four it was Huncke, an old-time thief and
junky, who bore the brunt of the courts’ wrath, receiving a five-year

12
prison sentence. Ginsberg escaped with nothing more than a spell in a
psychiatric institute after his Columbia professor, Lionel Trilling, spoke
in court on his behalf.
Both of these incidents are typical of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Bur-
roughs’ infatuation with those who lived on the margins of American
society. While all three wanted to experience the authentic lifestyles
they saw around them, they were also in a position to step out of—or be
rescued from—those lifestyles at any time by playing the ace in the hole
(their middle-class families) that acquaintances like Huncke couldn’t
lay claim to.

The Best Minds

It wasn’t just brushes with the law that the Beats had to cope with.
They also had to deal with the fact that most of their peers and elders
thought they were stark raving mad. Stepping outside the realm of nor-
mal behaviour in post-war America was likely to get you thrown into a
straightjacket. As Ginsberg wrote in ‘Howl’—‘I saw the best minds of
my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...’
Kerouac’s early experiences with the Navy during World War Two
are a case in point. Fed up with the boring regimes of naval life Kerouac
cultivated a misfit reputation, breaking various petty rules, brawling
with his superiors and finally (in what was considered a shocking dis-
play of insubordination) putting down his rifle in the middle of drill
practice and walking off. Hauled before naval psychiatrists and asked to
identify himself by name and rank, Kerouac told them “I’m only old
Samuel Johnson” (an allusion presumably to his literary pretensions).
Hinting that he might be homosexual—an unpardonable sin in the
1940s American Navy—Kerouac was discharged after being diagnosed
as a schizophrenic.
Just as Kerouac bamboozled the psychiatrists in his evaluation by
referring to a literary figure they had never heard of, so William Bur-
roughs confounded his doctors in Bellevue by name-dropping Van
Gogh. After his affair with bisexual hustler Jack Anderson ended badly,
Burroughs cut off one of his fingers with a pair of garden shears. His
shocked psychoanalyst put him in Bellevue where he impishly told doc-
tors that he’d been trying out a ‘Van Gogh kick.’ Sadly his Bellevue
doctors had never heard of the Dutch painter and so failed to grasp Bur-

13
roughs’ point. They thought Van Gogh was just a figment of his imagi-
nation.
But it was Ginsberg who really had first-hand knowledge of the head
doctors. As a child he had watched his mother’s mental breakdown.
Naomi Ginsberg was a schizophrenic and received years of electric
shock therapy to little avail before being given a prefrontal lobotomy.
Ginsberg wondered if he had inherited some of her mental instability
since, as a young man, he had his own psychotic episode (he heard the
voice of the eighteenth-century poet William Blake reading to him).
Overwhelmed by this vision, which he claimed gave him an insight into
the oneness of the universe, Ginsberg felt he was on the verge of mental
collapse.
After the stolen car incident, Ginsberg committed himself to the
Columbia Psychiatric Institute for treatment and evaluation. But he
didn’t find any help there. Instead he met Carl Solomon, another mid-
dle-class boy who’d decided that normal society wasn’t all it was
cracked up to be. A big fan of the French philosopher Antonin Artaud
(who claimed that normal society was itself mad), Solomon shaved his
head and arrived on the steps of the asylum demanding a lobotomy.
Needless to say, the doctors instantly committed him.
As well as these visits to the nuthouse, Ginsberg and Burroughs
underwent hours upon hours of psychoanalysis to cure their homosexu-
ality. These sessions with analysts eventually convinced them that psy-
choanalysis was simply a means of controlling those who were too
bright, too visionary or too difficult to fit comfortably into normal soci-
ety. Burroughs finally turned his back on the whole profession, claim-
ing: ‘Analysis is an instrument of tremendous possibilities but, like
most every thing else at the present time, is in the hands of cowardly,
weak, stupid and vicious men.’
Madness, or at least the idea of finding an alternative to the boring
world of normality, was an integral part of the Beat Generation’s mind-
set, prompting Kerouac to write in On The Road: ‘The only people for
me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to
be saved, desirous of saying everything at the same time, the ones who
never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabu-
lous roman candles...’ Rejecting normal society, the Beats searched for
ways of seeing the world differently from the rest of the herd. Madness,
drugs, sex and crime all offered ways of finding a new vision of life and
a new way of living.

14
 The Need For Speed
One product of too many (chemical) stimulants, mental instability
and the never-ending search for kicks was the general sense of restless-
ness that characterised both the writers and their works. Speed domi-
nated the Beat aesthetic, a need for constant motion that sent Kerouac
and Ginsberg travelling across the United States and urged Burroughs to
become a professional expatriate, moving from New York to Texas to
Mexico and then finally overseas for almost four decades. Glamorising
motion in a manner that was reminiscent of the Futurists (an early twen-
tieth-century avant-garde movement that was obsessed with industrial
society’s technology of speed), the Beats tapped into the kinetic energy
inherent in jazz, bebop and amphetamines, criss-crossing the United
States in Greyhound buses, cars and railroad trucks.
Neal Cassady, the man Kerouac called ‘a new kind of American
saint,’ embodied this obsession with restless motion. A teenage joyrider
who fixated on automobiles and sex, Cassady was the driving force
behind Kerouac’s journeys across America’s developing highway sys-
tems. Burroughs, who wasn’t much enamoured with Cassady, summed
up this unrelenting need to be on the move: ‘Neal is, of course, the very
soul of the voyage into pure, abstract, meaningless motion. Wife and
child may starve, friends exist only to exploit for gas money. Neal must
move.’
Speed became an attempt to reach some altered state, a movement
that might offer some freedom from boring normality—the creation of a
private world on the road—and the chance to discover America at a
grass-roots level. The journey itself was the destination, and for Cas-
sady the road became a symbol of total freedom: ‘You spend your
whole life of non-interference with the wishes of others... and nobody
bothers you and you cut along and make it your own way... What’s your
road man?—holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road,
any road. It’s an everywhere road for anybody anyhow.’

15
 Cool, Crazy, Far Out!
Only a blink of an eye separated the time between the emergence of
the Beat Generation as a literary movement and their commercialisation
into a fashion or fad. No sooner had the Beats arrived then the media
tried to make them into a craze. Before 1957, the Beats were shadowy
figures. Hollywood had picked up on the youth movement and the vari-
ous youth subcultures in a variety of sensationalist films—like The Wild
One (1954), Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and The Man With The
Golden Arm (1955)—but they hadn’t been able to find a catch-all term
for the youthful discontent that seemed to be brewing everywhere. The
Beat Generation would serve that purpose perfectly.
The Hollywood films that were released before the Beats paved the
way for the public’s understanding of the Beat Generation since they
gave the population of the United States their first contact with the hip-
ster and the Beat drop-out, whether it was James Dean’s tortured ado-
lescent angst in Rebel Without A Cause or Brando’s surly existentialism
in The Wild One. (Indeed, Brando’s posturing came, in many ways, to
be the epitome of Beat cool on the silver screen during the 1950s.)
When Johnny in The Wild One is asked “What are you rebelling against,
kid?” the answer is pointedly confrontational: “Whatcha got?” A whole
generation of teenagers and parents sat through these movies about
gang wars, juvenile delinquents and drug addicts. As a result, when the
Beats arrived they were quickly accepted as yet another bunch of crazy,
no-good kids.
The Beats first emerged in 1952, when John Clellon Holmes pub-
lished his article ‘This Is The Beat Generation’ in the New York Times
Magazine. Although he was a friend of Kerouac, Holmes was never
much more than a bit player in the Beat drama, an observer on the
touchlines who had a habit of jotting down his friends’ conversations in
the hope of turning them into a novel—which he eventually did in Go
(1952). Living vicariously through Kerouac, Ginsberg and their circle,
Holmes secured the Beats’ first moment of media fame.
But it wasn’t until October 1955 that the Beat Generation really
emerged, at the Six Poets at Six Gallery reading in San Francisco. Dis-
creetly billed as a ‘charming event’ with ‘no charge, small collection for
wine and postcards’ the evening became an historic moment in twenti-
eth-century American poetry. The six poets (Allen Ginsberg, Philip
Lamantia, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder and Philip

16
Whalen) brought the house down with an impassioned reading that bore
little relation to whatever ‘charming event’ the audience might have
expected. Kerouac, who was present in the audience, held a collection
and returned with several gallon jugs of wine. As the alcohol took hold
of the poets and the audience, the reading began to possess the improvi-
sational energy of the bop scene with members of the audience shouting
“Go! Go!” as if they were at a jazz club. Ginsberg’s reading of ‘Howl’
defined the evening as a momentous occasion in American literature.
His epic sledgehammer of a poem, full of insight, emotion and debauch-
ery created, in the words of one audience member, “an orgasmic occa-
sion.” Poetry would never be quite the same again. But the ‘Howl’
reading was a literary event, restricted to an audience of about a hun-
dred. While it would mark out Ginsberg and the fledgling Beat Genera-
tion as the vanguard of America’s literary scene, it never became front-
page news. That honour was left to Kerouac’s second novel, On The
Road (1957).

The Beats Have Landed

By the end of the 1950s, the Beats were the new stars of the media,
applauded and loathed in equal measure. Thousands of column inches
in the press were devoted to them and it soon became impossible to
avoid their names and faces. This media feeding frenzy was the result of
just one book: Kerouac’s On The Road. While ‘Howl’ caused a sensa-
tion in Bohemian literary circles and Naked Lunch would later be the
centre of lengthy censorship battles in the courts, On The Road
achieved the kind of popular fame that sent cash registers ringing across
America.
There are certain novels that capture the Zeitgeist, occasionally to
such an extent that they become milestones for a decade. On The Road
is just such a book. It was a hymn to the American dream of self-reli-
ance, individualism and freedom that came to epitomise the Beat Gen-
eration and, importantly, laid the foundations for the counter-culture of
the 1960s. After the novel was published Kerouac became a celebrity,
often to such an extent that he felt as though the novel were his curse.
Reporters swarmed over him, wanting to hear his comments on the Beat
Generation (“Is America going to go Beat?” “What kind of society are
we going to have in two years time?”) and eager to have him explain the
novel’s autobiographical aspects (many wrongly believed that Kerouac

17
was Dean Moriarty, when actually it was Cassady who inspired the
novel’s restless speed-freak character). Kerouac’s own self-mythologis-
ing didn’t do much to stave off the press. Claiming that he’d written the
original manuscript in a three-week burst of (Benzedrine-fuelled) cre-
ativity on a single roll of paper 120 foot long, Kerouac played directly
into the media’s search for a story, leaving him to complain naively:
‘Wasn’t there a time when American writers were left alone by person-
ality mongers and publicity monsters?’
As the Beats were dragged into the mainstream they were rebranded
the Beatniks. The Russian launch of the Sputnik satellite gave the press
the ‘nik’ suffix. The additional letters underlined middle America’s
fears that the Beats might not be working in the best interests of the
American Way and could well be as dangerous as the ‘reds under the
bed’ who had previously threatened Mom and Apple Pie earlier in the
decade. The backlash against the Beats had begun within minutes of
their being lauded as the ‘new generation.’
The major magazines of the period were saturated with Beatnik style.
In Life magazine a reporter quoted a local police officer’s definition of a
Beatnik as someone who “doesn’t like work [and] a vagrant.” Mothers
were told to lock up their daughter in case the evil Beatniks sold them
into drug-addled sex slavery. Meanwhile, the streets of Greenwich Vil-
lage were overflowing with smoky cafés full of bongo-playing, goatee-
sporting drop-outs whose vocabulary consisted of little other than repet-
itive bursts of “cool,” “crazy” and “Daddy-O.” Bookshops stocked hun-
dreds of Beat cash-ins including The Beat Generation Cookbook that
contained recipes for Beat fare such as—would you believe it?—Gins-
burgers. The irony was that it wasn’t the Beats themselves who’d sold
out—they’d been totally railroaded by the media.
It wasn’t long before Hollywood picked up on the new trend in mov-
ies like The Beat Generation (1959), The Rebel Set (1959) and, inevita-
bly, The Beatniks (1960). In fact, Hollywood showed such scant regard
for the real Beats that when one of Jack Kerouac’s novels actually made
it onto the screen—The Subterraneans (1960) with George Peppard as
the hero—the novel’s interracial love affair was completely white-
washed and rewritten as an affair between a white American and a
white French woman.
By the beginning of the 1960s, mainstream Beat culture was at its
lowest ebb. As with all fads, the public had quickly lost interest in the
rebellious bongo players and had begun to search for new titillating sub-

18
jects. The real Beats continued to write, but the faddish Beatniks slowly
disappeared back to their suburban homes, with their bongos tucked
under their arms. But, as the 1950s drew to a close the Beat movement
itself proved to be far from over. Across the ocean in Tangiers and Paris,
Burroughs had missed the media circus that had engulfed his friends
and, closeted in junky seclusion, had produced a novel that Ginsberg
would tout as ‘the masterpiece of the century.’ This sprawling, chaotic
book, entitled Naked Lunch, would be the third and final work that
would secure the Beat Generation’s literary and cultural success. Prov-
ing that the Beats were more than the media-fuelled youth movement
that had fallen out of fashion, Naked Lunch joined On The Road and
‘Howl’ as one of the defining pieces of twentieth-century American lit-
erature and proved, once and for all, that the Beats were more than just a
bunch of ragged Beatniks. They were here to stay.

19
 2. Lonesome Traveller: Jack Kerouac

Biography

Jack Kerouac was born on 12 March 1922 in the town of Lowell,

Massachusetts. The son of job printer Leo Kéroak and housewife
Gabrille L’Evesque, Ti Jean (Little Jack) was baptised Jean Louis Leb-
ris de Kerouac in respect of his French ancestry. Growing up in Low-
ell’s French-Canadian neighbourhood, Ti Jean only began to learn
English when he started school.
As a child Kerouac was something of a loner. He filled the days of
his Depression era youth by relying on his imaginative ability. Using
the Saturday matinees and pulp magazines of the time as source mate-
rial he wrote novels and short stories and even published his own horse
racing newspaper.
By adolescence, Kerouac had gained a High School football scholar-
ship and a reputation as ‘a fleet-footed backfield ace.’ His skill on the
sports field got him accepted to Columbia University in New York. But
luck was against him. Shortly after arriving he broke his leg during
training and dashed his hopes of sporting fame.
Disheartened, Kerouac decided to drop out of college. After working
in various odd jobs (from gas station attendant to sports reporter) he
joined the US Marines. As soon as he signed up he realised he’d made a
terrible mistake. Panicking, he skipped town and signed up as a seaman
on a merchant ship.
Returning to Columbia after this spell at sea, Kerouac considered
recommencing his studies and restarting his sporting career but decided
instead to join the Navy. Six months of naval discipline convinced him
he wasn’t cut out for life in the armed forces and he feigned mental
instability to secure an honourable discharge.
The restlessness of these early years—an uncertainty of purpose that
would continue for some time longer—took him back to Columbia
again. Mixing with the new members of the campus, Kerouac was intro-
duced to Lucien Carr and through him met Ginsberg and Burroughs.
Throughout 1944 Kerouac’s friendship with these men and the rest of
the circle of friends and contemporaries who would become the Beat
Generation (Carr, Dave Kammerer, Herbert Huncke, Edie Parker, Joan
Vollmer) grew. When Kammerer and Carr’s unorthodox relationship
came to a violent climax on 13 August 1944, Kerouac was close enough

20
to the events to be arrested as a material witness to Kammerer’s murder
and was bailed out by the parents of his girlfriend, Edie Parker.
Kerouac’s first sustained literary effort began in 1946 as he started
work on what would eventually become his first novel, The Town And
The City (1950). During this period Kerouac met Neal Cassady, a joy-
riding tearaway who would become his muse. Under Cassady’s guid-
ance Kerouac started travelling and developed a passion for life on the
road that would be second only to his love of writing.
Through December 1948 to January 1949, Kerouac and Cassady
travelled on a (rather purposeless) journey across the States, criss-cross-
ing back and forth with Cassady at the wheel. These impromptu jour-
neys became punctuation marks that broke up the long writing spells
that Kerouac spent at home with his mother.
By the time that The Town And The City was published in 1950, Ker-
ouac had already begun work on the manuscript that would grow into
On The Road. But stylistic issues were a problem. He wanted to find a
method of spontaneous writing that would allow him to capture the
speed and immediacy of his travels. Having married a second time (to
Joan Haverty), Kerouac worked as hard as he could to finish the novel
while also playing with other literary projects.
After a brief sojourn with Burroughs in Mexico City, where Kerouac
stayed high on the cheap local marijuana and wrote Doctor Sax, he
returned to New York. The Beat Generation was developing into a
media phenomenon. John Clellon Holmes had received a $20,000
advance for his novel Go and its publication had been greeted with
favourable reviews. Frustrated by his own lack of success, Kerouac was
furiously jealous of Holmes, particularly since he had been little more
than a peripheral member of the Beat group and had used Kerouac,
Ginsberg, Burroughs and the rest of their circle as the cast of his novel.
In 1953 Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans in a three-night amphet-
amine-fuelled burst of creativity. The novel was based on his brief affair
with an African-American girl whom he had met amongst the Green-
wich Village hipsters. The affair didn’t last long, though, since ‘Mar-
dou’ was sexually frigid and Kerouac was unwilling to commit to a girl
who was so (racially) different.
With the continuing rejection of his manuscripts and the absence of
his close friends (Ginsberg and Burroughs were both abroad, his rela-
tionship with Cassady was becoming strained), Kerouac became
increasingly depressed. The years of restless wandering, partying and

21
writing had begun to take their toll on his health. When his ex-wife Joan
Haverty brought a paternity suit against him, Kerouac’s bedraggled
appearance in court was enough to convince the judge that he was
unable to pay child support. His exhausted mental and physical state
and the continuing phlebitis in his legs (a symptom of excessive Benze-
drine use) clearly rendered him unfit for work (although Kerouac
denied being the father, he would later admit to Allen Ginsberg that
Haverty’s daughter looked just like him).
During 1954 Kerouac became interested in Buddhism, finding par-
ticular solace in Buddhism’s first law: All life is suffering. Although he
never renounced his Catholicism, Kerouac fervently studied Buddhism,
bolstering his depression and exhaustion with dreams of spiritual
renewal.
In 1955 Kerouac received an advance from Viking Press for On The
Road with the proviso that he revise extensive chunks of the manu-
script. With money finally in his pocket, Kerouac hit the road again, vis-
iting Bill Garver, an old-time junky and friend of Burroughs in Mexico
City. While he was there he had an affair with a local Mexican woman,
a junky and prostitute, who would be the inspiration for his story
‘Tristessa.’ Returning to the United States later that year Kerouac vis-
ited Ginsberg on the West coast and attended the famous Six Gallery
poetry reading where Ginsberg read ‘Howl’. Meeting the literary play-
ers of the West coast scene—Philip Whalen, Kenneth Rexroth and Gary
Snyder—Kerouac expounded his Buddhist theories, only to discover
that almost all of Ginsberg’s Berkeley friends were students of Oriental
literature and philosophy.
During his visit Kerouac became good friends with Gary Snyder,
who took him into the mountains on an extended hike. Kerouac’s
romantic daydreams of living in the wilds were shattered by the reality
of the arduous trek. Halfway up the mountainside he developed vertigo
and never made it to the summit, earning himself the nickname ‘the
Buddha Known as the Great Quitter.’ Snyder shared his knowledge of
the backwoods with Kerouac and told him about working as a fire-
watcher in the Washington State mountain range. In the summer of
1956 Kerouac took Snyder’s advice and spent several months alone on
Desolation Peak as a fire-watcher. He had planned to use the solitude to
write, but the loneliness sapped his creative energy: ‘no liquor, no
drugs, no chance of faking it but face to face with ole Duluoz Me.’ The
experience would form the basis of Desolation Angels.

22
 Shortly before On The Road was published Kerouac and Ginsberg
visited Burroughs in Tangiers. They found him engaged in writing
Naked Lunch and helped him organise and type the pages before they
returned home. No sooner had they reached America than Kerouac was
engulfed by the overnight success of On The Road.
On The Road was the literary event of the 1950s. The media were
obsessed with the Beats. But rather than embracing this fame as the suc-
cess that he had been searching for, Kerouac found the attention wear-
ing. Journalists and reporters descended on him, wanting his opinion on
a range of issues, but rarely treating him as a serious writer. Drinking
heavily, Kerouac tried to retreat from it all, buying a house for himself
and his mother and giving her increasing power over his life as she
restricted which friends she let have access to her Ti Jean (she even
wrote to Ginsberg threatening to report him to the FBI if he attempted to
visit). The fact that On The Road had become a popular (as opposed to
highbrow) success continued to bother Kerouac. Truman Capote
famously mocked Kerouac’s bursts of non-stop writing claiming that
they were more akin to typing than writing. Lauded as ‘King of the
Beatniks,’ Kerouac felt seriously undervalued, even as his publishers
hurried to release the various novels that he had been working on over
the preceding years.
Exhausted, paranoid and suffering the effects of alcoholism and
depression, Kerouac lived out the 1960s relatively quietly, trying to
downplay his celebrity status. He moved back to his childhood town of
Lowell and nursed his mother after she had a paralysing stroke. He mar-
ried local girl Stella Sampas and became a regular patron of the town’s
bars and clubs. Dismayed by the counter-culture of the 1960s—which
Cassady was to be a vital part of until his death in 1968—Kerouac felt
increasingly out of step with the times. Finally, in the autumn of 1969,
he died at home at the age of forty-seven from abdominal haemorrhag-
ing.

The Town And The City (1950)

Summary: The focus of the novel is the life of the Martin family
(comprised of five sons and three daughters) from Galloway, Massa-
chusetts. The plot is a typical family melodrama that deals with the
impact of the pre-war and war years on the family as the children grow
up and move from the town (Galloway) to the city (New York).

23
 Subtext: Like many of Kerouac’s novels, The Town And The City
uses autobiographical material to flesh out its characters. Each of the
Martin children possesses something of Kerouac’s personality, although
it is Peter Martin (the athlete who wins a football scholarship) who is
most closely based on his creator’s experiences. Peter’s departure for
New York is a reflection of Kerouac’s own movement from Lowell to
Columbia. In addition to these autobiographical elements, The Town
And The City relies upon Kerouac’s circle of friends for character mate-
rial. Peter’s New York associates are clearly based on the fledgling Beat
Generation: Kenneth Wood is Lucien Carr; Leon Levinsky is Allen
Ginsberg; Will Dennison is William Burroughs; and Waldo Meister is
Dave Kammerer. The Town And The City also replays the Carr/Kam-
merer incident, although the murder is tactfully revised into a suicide.
Behind The Beat: Kerouac’s first novel was a modest success on pub-
lication in 1950, earning a handful of favourable reviews. He claimed
that it was written ‘according to what they told me at Columbia Univer-
sity’ and, considering the manner in which it constantly strives to imi-
tate the Great American Novel, it’s easy to see what he meant. The
novel’s conflict between the rural town of Galloway and the city is
fairly conventional, as are its themes: the corrupting influence of the
city and the destruction of small town life and values in the turbulent
war years. The influence of Thomas Wolfe, one of the novelists whom
the young Kerouac particularly admired, can be seen in the plot and
subject matter (the novel is reminiscent of Wolfe’s Look Homeward
Angel) and Kerouac quite openly admitted that his desire during the
early 1950s was to be follow in Wolfe’s footsteps.
Hip Or Square?: Minor Kerouac and not very Beat, but an impres-
sive first novel. 2/5

On The Road (1957)

Summary: The narrator (Sal Paradise) joins freewheeling, speed

freak Dean Moriarty on a journey across the United States. Searching
for the freedom and self-reliance that once existed on the American
frontier, these latter-day cowboys desperately want to rediscover an
America that—as Sal slowly realises—has long since disappeared.
Subtext: On The Road belongs to the picaresque tradition of litera-
ture. Like Don Quixote or The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Ker-
ouac’s novel is structured as an episodic sequence of events, held

24
together only by the narrator, Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s alter ego). Criss-
crossing from the East to the West coast, Sal Paradise and his travelling
companion Dean Moriarty (who was based on Neal Cassady) are on a
quest into the heart of the American Dream.
Behind The Beat: The novel that became Kerouac’s best-selling
work, and secured his status as one of the most famous American writ-
ers of the twentieth century, has a suitably exciting history. Although
Kerouac began On The Road in 1948 it took him until April 1951 to
find the right tone for the story. Three weeks later, on 27 April, after a
marathon typing session fuelled by copious amounts of stimulants, Ker-
ouac had completed a first draft of the novel. Obsessed with the need to
be able to type non-stop, Kerouac had taped sheets of paper together
and fed them into the typewriter. The final manuscript was a 120-foot
long roll of paper typed as a single-spaced paragraph. When On The
Road was first published it achieved instant success. Yet, for many
years it was given short shrift by academics, critics and other writers,
many of whom disliked its improvisational style. In addition, many
readers have questioned Kerouac’s romanticisation of life on the road
and, more importantly, have expressed their dislike of Kerouac’s treat-
ment of ethnic minorities in the novel. Certainly, some of Sal Paradise’s
gushing descriptions of African and Mexican Americans are insultingly
stereotypical.
Hip Or Square?: Love it or loathe it, On The Road is where the Beat
begins. 5/5

The Subterraneans (1958)

Summary: The novel’s storyline is a fictionalised version of Ker-

ouac’s relationship with an African-American girl in which Kerouac
quite frankly highlights her sexual frigidity and his sexual jealousy.
Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg both have roles in the novel’s cast,
with Corso’s character eventually seducing the girl.
Subtext: The real impact of The Subterraneans comes from the
novel’s language. Kerouac tried to create a distinct style in the novel, a
prose that would reflect the rhythms of bop. As a result of this experi-
mentation the novel’s prose tries to build up a structure like that of jazz,
offering a central theme or image and then improvising around this, cre-
ating echoes, additional branches and counterpoints before returning to
the original point. Much of this experimentation emerged from Ker-

25
ouac’s interest in what he called ‘spontaneous prose.’ Later he outlined
this literary method in an essay in The Evergreen Review, claiming that
the kind of writing that he wanted to produce was like ‘jazz and bop, in
the sense of, say, a tenor man drawing a breath, and blowing a phrase on
his saxophone, till he runs out of breath.’ This madcap, improvisational
attempt to push further and further ‘out there’ into breathlessness is in
keeping with Kerouac’s own amphetamine-fuelled prose riffs that try to
push the written word to the limit, running off as many phrases as possi-
ble, desperately trying to capture the moment on the page before it
becomes lost again.
Behind The Beat: Allen Ginsberg first introduced Kerouac to the
group of Greenwich Village hipsters dubbed ‘The Subterraneans’ in
1953. Hanging out in Fugazzi’s bar, the Subterraneans were prototypes
of the Beats, a group of druggy jazz lovers. Kerouac had little in com-
mon with these urbane hipsters, appreciating their style but not really
feeling part of it. Yet he had a brief (two month) affair with one of their
outer circle, an African–American girl named Alene Lee. After they
broke up Kerouac sat down at his typewriter and typed out The Subter-
raneans in a three-day Benzedrine-aided session. By the time the novel
was complete Kerouac claimed he was as ‘pale as a sheet and had lost
fifteen pounds and looked strange in the mirror.’ With typical myopia
Hollywood chose this novel as the first of Kerouac’s books to hit the
screen, losing the experimental quality of the prose and replacing the
African-American heroine with a (far less controversial) white French
girl.
Hip Or Square?: The Subterraneans stands as one of Kerouac’s most
impressive achievements. It is an experimental novel that tries to dis-
cover a new, Beat style of prose writing. 4/5

The Dharma Bums (1958)

Summary: Ray Smith goes into the mountains with his friend Japhy
Ryder in search of adventure and spiritual awakening.
Subtext: Like Kerouac’ road novel, The Dharma Bums is focussed on
the relationship between Kerouac (here called Ray Smith) and one of
his friends. In place of the Dean Moriarty/Sal Paradise relationship Ker-
ouac substitutes Japhy Ryder/Ray Smith, using the same format as the
earlier novel: narrator Smith follows, watches and learns from his friend
Ryder. The Japhy Ryder character is based on Gary Snyder. In compari-

26
son with Kerouac’s self-taught Buddhism, Snyder had been an ardent
student of the ‘Zen Lunatics of China’ for many years, adopting an
ascetic life of poverty and poetry that was a stark contrast to the wild
madness of Kerouac’s other muse Neal Cassady. Through Snyder, Ker-
ouac not only deepened his understanding of Buddhism but was also
introduced to the joys of the wild. Snyder was a competent trekker who
was quite used to living in the woods and, in Kerouac’s eyes, he symb-
olised a kind of rugged, self-reliance that the American Transcendental-
ists (Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson) had made so attractive in the mid-
nineteenth century.
Behind The Beat: After On The Road, The Dharma Bums is Ker-
ouac’s best-known novel. During the 1960s it was one of the main
handbooks of alternative culture, a how-to novel whose vision of a great
rucksack revolution sent countless kids off into the wilds just as On The
Road had seduced them onto the highways. The Dharma Bums is a
novel about the search for dharma (the Buddhist concept of the true
meaning of life) through being a bum (dropping out and living in the
peace of the wilds). Unlike the outlaw craziness of Kerouac’s road
novel, The Dharma Bums is more concerned with a search for peace,
self-acceptance and contemplative understanding. It’s a quest that car-
ries its own risks and fears (see, for instance, Smith’s terrified experi-
ence on the mountain peak when he first goes trekking), but it promises
to offer the kind of contemplative insight that the wandering Buddhist
monks sought when they undertook their own cross-country journeys.
Hip Or Square?: Reviewers scorned Kerouac’s vision of a rucksack
revolution, but the 1960s proved him right as thousands of hippies
dropped out and, brandishing little other than a rucksack, love beads, a
pocket full of pot and Kerouac’s novel, took off into the backwoods. 4/5

Doctor Sax (1958)

Summary: Described as Faust Part Three, Doctor Sax is part gothic

fairy tale, part myth of puberty. It’s a surreal story about a boy’s
involvement with the exotic title character as he battles the forces of
evil.
Subtext: Doctor Sax possesses a strange hallucinatory quality that
clearly stems from Kerouac’s liberal use of drugs while writing. Its fan-
tastic narrative, closer to Burroughs than anything in the rest of Ker-
ouac’s work, mixes various sources from Aztec mythology to the pulp

27
fiction of Kerouac’s childhood (Weird Tales and The Shadow particu-
larly), Kafka, Goethe and even The Wizard Of Oz (which Kerouac
watched at a cinema while staying in Mexico).
Behind The Beat: Kerouac claimed that Doctor Sax was the favourite
of all his books. ‘It’s the greatest book I ever wrote, or that I will write,’
he proclaimed. It began as an hour-long, tape-recorded monologue
about Kerouac’s life in Lowell as a young teenager. More was added to
the story when Kerouac visited Burroughs in Mexico City in 1952, dur-
ing which time Kerouac hid out in Burroughs’ toilet smoking dope and
scribbling in his notebooks. Burroughs himself has something of a star-
ring role as the inspiration for the mysterious Sax. Kerouac described
the novel’s style as a search for what he dubbed wild form, a kind of
prose that’s ‘the only form that holds what I have to say—my mind is
exploding to say something about every image and every memory.’
Hip Or Square?: Proof that too much marijuana makes you loco. 2/5

Maggie Cassidy (1959)

Summary: Set in Kerouac’s home town of Lowell, Massachusetts, the

novel tells the story of a bitter-sweet romance between Jack Duluoz and
Maggie Cassidy.
Subtext: On its own terms, Maggie Cassidy is an interesting novel
that not only offers an insight into what Ginsberg would call Kerouac’s
‘adolescent woe-time’ but also offers an emotional portrait of Kerouac’s
feelings of loss and rejection. The love affair between Jack and Maggie
is torn apart by Jack’s restlessness, his need to escape the small town for
the city. Love cannot survive this desire to experience life beyond the
confines of the local community, nor the destructive impact of time. The
novel’s framing narrative, in which Jack returns from the city in an
attempt to seduce the virginal Maggie, is particularly poignant. Not only
has Jack’s ambitious flight to the city ended with him getting a job as a
garage man—suggesting that he’s been foolish in his choices—but he’s
also changed so radically that Maggie rejects him. The novel’s final
scene, in which Jack tries to force himself on Maggie, ends with nothing
but ridicule and sadness: ‘she laughed in his face, he slammed the door
shut, put out the lights, drove her home, drove the car back skittering
crazily in the slush, sick cursing.’
Behind The Beat: Jack Duluoz is based on Kerouac as an adolescent
and Maggie is supposed to be based on Kerouac’s own first love from

28
High School, Mary Carney (she later said that the novel’s depiction of
their relationship was three-quarters accurate). Written as early as 1953,
Maggie Cassidy was Kerouac’s attempt to write a mainstream, sellable
novel that would encompass the kind of autobiographical themes that
interested him. These autobiographical elements are particularly impor-
tant since this novel is the first to introduce Jack Duluoz as the author’s
alter ego. Duluoz, meaning ‘louse’ in French-Canadian, became a self-
mocking tag that Kerouac applied to himself, building up the autobio-
graphical, chronological Duluoz Legend across his work: Visions Of
Gerard and Doctor Sax (childhood), Maggie Cassidy, Vanity Of Duluoz
and The Town And The City (adolescence), On The Road, Visions Of
Cody, The Subterraneans and Lonesome Traveler (Beat Generation
years), Tristessa (Mexico trip), The Dharma Bums (Buddhist interests),
Desolation Angels (period spent fire-watching), Big Sur (fame and its
aftermath), Sartori In Paris (last trip abroad in search of his ancestry).
Hip Or Square?: One of Kerouac’s most mainstream books, but still
worth checking out. 3/5

Lonesome Traveler (1960)

Summary: A collection of short, non-fiction articles connected by the

theme of travelling. As Kerouac says in the introduction, the articles
encompass ‘Railroad work, sea work, mysticism, mountain work, las-
civiousness, solipsism, self-indulgence, bullfights, drugs, churches, art,
museums, secrets of cities, a mishmash of life as lived by an indepen-
dent and penniless rake going anywhere.’
Subtext: As an introduction to Kerouac’s writing these short, easily
digestible, pieces are superb. They capture the freewheeling excitement
of On The Road, growing out of the same restless wandering that
fuelled so much of Kerouac’s fiction. Shifting from travelogue to snap-
shots, to essays on the American Hobo, Kerouac blends fact and opin-
ion to create a series of entertaining vignettes.
Behind The Beat: Some of the best pieces started life as magazine
articles. ‘The American Hobo’ tells the story of the bums and panhan-
dlers who travelled across the USA in the decades before the young kids
of the 1950s discovered the joys of the open road (and so acknowledges
the Beats’ debt to this underclass of wanderers). ‘New York Scenes,’ a
portrait of the Beat Generation in New York, began as ‘The Beat Night-
life Of New York’ for Holiday magazine and was the product of Ker-

29
ouac’s spontaneous composition experiments. Kerouac wrote the piece
with the help of Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, getting
them to chat about the city while he took notes, in an attempt to capture
the energy of New York’s nightlife (its jazz joints, poetry readings, par-
ties and Chinese restaurants). Kerouac also had the help of these friends
while writing the American Hobo article, splitting his original magazine
fee with them (Ginsberg and Orlovsky used their $500 to buy passage
on a ship to India, while Corso characteristically gambled his away at
the local racetrack).
Hip Or Square?: An excellent introduction to Kerouac’s work. 5/5

Big Sur (1962)

Summary: Big Sur is an autobiographical account of fame, (mis)for-

tune and alcoholism, a mid-life crisis novel in which Kerouac takes
stock of himself and his accomplishments through an alcoholic haze of
beer and spirits.
Subtext: Big Sur is certainly one of Kerouac’s most moving books,
offering proof that publication and fame—the very things Kerouac had
always wanted prior to 1957—didn’t bring happiness or contentment
but instead left him as confused and restless as he’d always been. It’s a
startlingly honest portrait of alcoholism, beginning with Kerouac dead
drunk on Skid Row and concluding with the call for yet more drink. As
if to prove his point Kerouac celebrated the novel’s completion by
ordering a case of cognac. The barely-remembered two-week spell of
drinking that followed put him in hospital.
Behind The Beat: In Big Sur Kerouac writes ‘My work comprises
one vast book like Proust’s except that my remembrances are written on
the run instead of afterwards in a sick bed.’ Such self-conscious com-
ments are typical of Big Sur’s attempt to face up to the media and celeb-
rity legend that was Jack Kerouac, aka ‘King of the Beatniks.’ Kerouac
was never able to deal with the celebrity status that On The Road
bestowed upon him. Treated as a lowbrow, popular novelist by the
press, who couldn’t see past the rip-roaring Dean Moriarty character,
Kerouac yearned to be treated as a serious writer. He was tortured by
the fact that it was writers like JD Salinger and Philip Roth who were
earning the critical plaudits while, in Kerouac’s own words, his only
readers were ‘kids who steal my books in bookstores.’ Bouts of depres-

30
sion and binge drinking followed. Big Sur was a product of this despair
and a glimpse into the man behind the Kerouac myth.
Hip Or Square?: Big Sur marks the end of Kerouac’s period of great
work, a final creative burst, typed during a ten-night session on a roll of
paper (just like On The Road) before the rot set in. 3/5

Desolation Angels (1965)

Summary: Desolation Angels follows Jack Duluoz from 1956 to

1957, offering a portrait of the Beat scene of the time and Kerouac’s
desperate attempts to find happiness and a sense of self-worth.
Subtext: Desolation Angels is full of Kerouac’s Buddhist stud-
ies—even its storyline owes much to the Buddhist search for Enlighten-
ment. The novel is also packed with autobiographical detail: Kerouac’s
time spent on Desolation Peak as a fire-watcher (which gives the novel
its title); the Beat Generation scene of parties and readings; and his trav-
els through Mexico, New York and Tangiers (where he and Ginsberg
met up with Burroughs in time to help him type up the manuscript of
Naked Lunch for publication). But without a Dean Moriarty or Japhy
Ryder character as the focus, Desolation Angels is reliant on Duluoz
alone and the effect isn’t quite the same. As a result of this absence of a
foil for Kerouac’s character, the novel didn’t excite many reviewers or
readers.
Behind The Beat: By 1965 the majority of reviewers were writing off
Kerouac’s novels as soon as they were published, declaring him a
washed-up has-been and cruelly punishing him for having once been so
applauded and famous. Many of them took exception to Desolation
Angels’ sombre tone. There’s a great sadness in the novel, a kind of star-
ing into the void and getting maudlin sensibility that’s slightly adoles-
cent. But instead of offsetting this tone against the book’s search for
spiritual growth, many of Kerouac’s original critics just used it as an
excuse to tear him down to size. A response that was mostly born out of
jealousy.
Hip Or Square?: A solid entry in the Kerouac canon. A little maudlin
perhaps, but so was Kerouac himself by 1965. 3/5

31
 Visions Of Cody (1973)

Summary: A companion piece to Kerouac’s most successful novel,

Visions Of Cody continues his obsession with Neal Cassady and can be
read, as Allen Ginsberg claimed, as ‘an in-depth version of On The
Road.’
Subtext: During the 1950s Cassady made several attempts, with Ker-
ouac’s encouragement, to write his autobiography but found that he
wasn’t much of a writer—always too frantic to actually finish the sen-
tence he was writing before moving on to the next. In the light of Cas-
sady’s difficulties, Kerouac’s Visions Of Cody is the best testimony of
Cassady’s Beat Generation status as a new kind of American saint.
Behind The Beat: Although excerpts from this ambitious, experimen-
tal novel were published during Kerouac’s lifetime, it was only after his
death (and once his reputation was finally established) that any pub-
lisher was willing to undertake the risk of publishing it in full. Unlike
On The Road’s fairly linear structure, Visions Of Cody eschews a
straightforward narrative in favour of a series of sketches that have no
linking story apart from the Kerouac/Cassady relationship. During the
1950s, when Kerouac was first working on Visions Of Cody, he devel-
oped a prose technique described as ‘sketching.’ Carrying a pocketbook
and pencil around with him at all times, Kerouac found he was quickly
able to render a scene, conversation or event on paper, sketching it in
words like an artist’s drawings and capturing the immediacy of the
experience. Sketching forms an important part of Visions Of Cody, as do
monologues, soliloquies and tape-recorded conversations with Cassady,
many of which Kerouac transcribes verbatim in order to pinpoint the
nuances of his friend’s speech patterns. As a result of this incessant
shifting between different styles Visions Of Cody came to be regarded
(by Allen Ginsberg at least) as ‘a holy mess’ and was consistently
turned down by publishers. In more recent years, however, the novel
has gained a reputation as an important volume in the Kerouac canon.
Hip Or Square?: Kerouac’s biographer, Gerald Nicosia, claims that
Visions Of Cody is one of the best-organised works in American litera-
ture since Thoreau’s Walden. High praise indeed. 3/5

32
 Miscellaneous Works

Written as early as 1951, Pic (1971) is a novella about the adventures

of a ten-year-old North Carolina boy called Pictorial Review Jackson.
The novella is told by Pic in the first person and is most notable for Ker-
ouac’s attempts to mimic the speech patterns and rhythms of African-
American, North Carolina dialects. Sartori In Paris (1966) is an
account of Kerouac’s final trip abroad in search of his French ancestry.
The trip itself was far from successful, particularly since Kerouac was
constantly drunk. The haze of alcohol affects both his experiences in
France and the telling of the story. Preceded by The Subterraneans and
Maggie Cassidy, Tristessa (1960) is the story of Kerouac’s involvement
with an Indian girl in Mexico. Kerouac tried to save her from a life of
prostitution and drug addiction by offering her money to keep her from
the streets, but he refused to actually commit anything other than his
American dollars. A maudlin response to the death of Kerouac’s older
brother Gerard in 1926, Visions Of Gerard (1963) possesses a strong
religious theme (with Gerard as a martyred saint). In Vanity Of Duluoz
(1968) Kerouac wrote the final instalment in the Duluoz Legend, basing
the novel on his teenage, high school years when he still had hopes of
becoming an all-American football hero. Kerouac also published sev-
eral collections of poetry—the best of which is Mexico City Blues
(1959)—some Buddhist pieces and Book Of Dreams (1960).

33
 3. The Howling Poet: Allen Ginsberg

Biography

Allen Ginsberg was born on 3 June 1926 to Louis and Naomi Gins-
berg, second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants. Ginsberg’s parents
were both left-wing radicals with an enthusiastic interest in everything
that was modern: Marxism, vegetarianism, nudism and feminism. Louis
was a successful poet whose work regularly appeared in a variety of
well-respected publications such as the New York Times Magazine.
The most important moment in Ginsberg’s childhood was his
mother’s mental breakdown. In 1935 Naomi began to experience a vari-
ety of maladies (hypersensitivity to light and sound, confusion, anxiety)
that the doctors were unable to explain. This was followed by a pro-
longed period of mental imbalance that would today be diagnosed as
paranoid schizophrenia. After spending some time in a State mental
hospital, Naomi was allowed to return to her family. However, the delu-
sions and ravings continued to occur with increasing regularity, putting
immense strain on Louis Ginsberg and his sons Eugene and Allen. After
a breakdown in which she told Allen that there were “wires in [the] ceil-
ing,” she was committed and eventually given a prefrontal lobotomy.
As a child, Ginsberg was bookish and shy. Although he guessed that
he was different from other children because of his homosexual feel-
ings, he never voiced them or acted upon them until he was in his twen-
ties. On attending Columbia University in September 1943 Allen met,
and fell in love with Lucien Carr, ‘the most angelic kid I ever saw’ (it
was a love that would never be reciprocated in any terms other than the
platonic). Carr’s fearsome intellect and worldliness made quite an
impression on the young Ginsberg and his new friend introduced him to
the Greenwich Village world of bars, gay clubs and jazz sessions. Carr
was also responsible for introducing Ginsberg to several other disrepu-
table influences, including William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.
The Columbia years of the 1940s were a pivotal period in the history
of the Beat Generation. Not only were the principal protagonists intro-
duced to one another, but they also began the exchange of ideas and
visions that would influence their work. Fascinated by the French poet
Arthur Rimbaud, the Beats adopted his belief in ‘the derangement of all
the senses’ as their unofficial motto.

34
 William Burroughs was a major influence on Ginsberg during this
period. Much older than the young undergraduate, Burroughs possessed
a formidable knowledge of literature, history and anthropology and
became Ginsberg’s mentor. Another influence on Ginsberg was Neal
Cassady. Cassady’s amazing sexual appetite, which rarely distinguished
between girls and boys, helped Ginsberg to face up to his homosexual-
ity. The relationship was far from happy, though, with Ginsberg forced
to compete with various girls (including Neal’s long-suffering wife Car-
olyn Cassady) for his beloved’s attention.
Ginsberg’s involvement with the Beat circle caused its fair share of
problems. Although his Columbia English teachers generally respected
him as an excellent student, the questionable reputation of his friends
was frowned upon. After he was discovered (fairly innocently) in bed
with Kerouac in his student accommodation, Ginsberg was suspended
from the campus. Tensions with the Columbia authorities came to a
head when Ginsberg was arrested in April 1949 along with three petty
thieves who were part of the Beat circle: Herbert Huncke, Little Jack
Melody and Vickie Russell. Pulled over by a police officer while driv-
ing a stolen car, the gang tried to escape but Little Jack crashed the car,
overturning it. Ginsberg, Russell and Huncke escaped, but were arrested
at their apartment after the police found the address on papers that Gins-
berg had left in the car. While Huncke bore the brunt of the sentencing,
Ginsberg was able to convince the judge that he had only been present
in the car as an onlooker gathering material for a story on criminals.
As a result of this incident, Ginsberg was sent to the Columbia Psy-
chiatric Institute for evaluation and treatment. He had been suffering
from various mental traumas for quite some time. In addition to his
unresolved conflicts about his homosexuality, Ginsberg had experi-
enced a strange episode in May 1948. Lying in bed in his East Harlem
apartment, he was reading William Blake’s Songs Of Innocence And
Experience when he began hallucinating. He heard Blake’s voice read-
ing to him and had a vision of the unity of the universe and his place in
it. Seeing God, Ginsberg was thrown into rapturous turmoil. It was to be
a defining point in his life and in his career as an artist and it was this
Blake vision that would later encourage him to experiment with various
psychedelic drugs, yoga and meditation.
Ginsberg met Carl Solomon in the Columbia Psychiatric Institute
and it was through their friendship and Solomon’s family ties to the
publishing world that Ginsberg would later be able to get Kerouac and

35
Burroughs published. After eight months of treatment Ginsberg was
released. He was convinced that he needed to reject his homosexuality
and embarked on a lengthy period of heterosexuality that, for a while,
was remarkably successful.
Once free of the Psychiatric Institute, Ginsberg rejoined the growing
Beat circle, meeting young poet Gregory Corso, experimenting with
peyote and throwing himself into the New York subculture of bars and
parties. His poetic breakthrough came in the early 1950s when,
exhausted and depressed, he typed out several pages of prose from his
journals as poetry stanzas and sent them to his mentor William Carlos
Williams. Williams was ecstatic, claiming that Ginsberg had finally
found his voice.
The turning point of Ginsberg’s career came in 1955 with ‘Howl’.
Reading the poem at the San Francisco Six Gallery Ginsberg electrified
the audience and secured a reputation as one of America’s foremost
young poets. After the reading poet and publisher Lawrence Fer-
linghetti sent Ginsberg a telegram parodying Emerson’s famous
remarks to Walt Whitman a century before: ‘I greet you at the beginning
of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?’
In May 1956 Ginsberg’s mother died. Instead of attending the funeral
he signed onto a ship sailing to the Arctic Circle so that he could spend
some time alone. It was the first of many trips that he would make
across the world during the next few years. After returning from this
Arctic voyage he set out to visit Burroughs in Tangiers and then trav-
elled through Italy, France and England. He was accompanied on his
travels by Peter Orlovsky, a poet and artist’s model who he had met in
1954 (they would remain life-long lovers).
Returning to America in 1958, Ginsberg suddenly found himself ele-
vated to the position of Beat Generation spokesman (largely because
Kerouac’s alcoholism was making him increasingly erratic and incoher-
ent). After the widely-publicised legal battle over the publication of
‘Howl’, Ginsberg found himself involved in the infamous Chicago
Review/Big Table censorship battle (a dispute that occurred because the
Chicago Review owners had objected to the editors’ inclusion of
‘obscene’ material by Beat writers).
Throughout the 1960s, Ginsberg became an important member of the
burgeoning counter-culture and its international ambassador. Travelling
through India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Russia, Czechoslovakia
and England, Ginsberg met various poets and artists and spread his

36
counter-cultural vision of free love, drugs and poetry (often facing
police harassment and extradition for his trouble). Various poetry col-
lections were published, including Reality Sandwiches: 1953-1960
(1963) and Airplane Dreams (1968). He returned to America again in
1967, strengthening his links with the counter-culture and becoming a
central figure along with Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey of the psyche-
delic movement. He also became increasingly politically active, taking
part in the 1968 Chicago demonstrations, forging links between the
Hell’s Angels and the hippies, visiting the aftermath of the Stonewall
riots of 1969, as well as participating in numerous political rallies.
During the 1970s, Ginsberg expanded his Buddhist interests. A
devoted follower of guru Chögyam Trungpa, despite the teacher’s ques-
tionable reputation, Ginsberg played an important role in the foundation
of the Naropa Institute and the Jack Kerouac School Of Disembodied
Poetics. At the same time he continued to maintain his role as a counter-
cultural spokesman (touring with Bob Dylan) and as one of the leading
lights of American literature (receiving various prestigious honours,
including membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters).
In the 1980s and 1990s Ginsberg continued to build upon his reputa-
tion as a cultural figure, pursuing a hectic schedule of readings, collabo-
rations (with artists such as John Cage) and support for political causes,
despite his growing ill health. There were plans for a MTV Unplugged
performance (with luminaries such as Johnny Depp, Bob Dylan and
Paul McCartney) but after being diagnosed with liver cancer Ginsberg
was forced to curtail his torturous schedule. He died on 5 April 1997.

Empty Mirror, Early Poems (1961)

The Gates Of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948-51 (1972)

The poetry of these two collections is fairly typical of Ginsberg’s

output during the birth of the Beat Generation. Although it lacks the
energy, anger and power of his later, better-known work, the early
poetry is still essential to an understanding of Ginsberg’s development
into the poet of ‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish.’
There’s a definite sense of self-consciousness about this early poetry,
including a particular obsession with poetic forms and conventions that
sucks the majority of the verse dry of its vitality. ‘A Very Dove’ is typi-
cal of this kind of limitation. Its standard images of doves, hawks and
nightingales are little more than poetic window dressing.

37
 The young Ginsberg was swamped by the classics. Many of the
poems echo the Elizabethan verse that Ginsberg was reading for his
English BA course at Columbia (especially the work of Marvell, Donne
and Marlowe). A brief glimpse at the titles in these collections shows
the extent of this influence: ‘Metaphysics,’ ‘Epigram Of A Painting Of
Golgotha,’ ‘Psalm I & II,’ ‘Hymn.’ Yet, among these dry verses the
spark of Ginsberg’s future genius can be found.
Two things stand out in these early collections—an obsession with
visionary states and an awareness of the need for poetry to get involved
with the nitty-gritty of daily life. Ginsberg’s Blake vision had occurred
in 1948. As he lay in bed in his Harlem apartment, reading Blake’s
poetry and masturbating, Ginsberg heard Blake’s voice reciting poetry
from Songs Of Innocence And Experience. The universe crumbled
around him and he glimpsed into the void, infinity, Heaven and Hell. It
was a turning point in Ginsberg’s life and career. The first poem to
address the experience was ‘The Eye Altering Alters All’ and its failure
sums up the problems that Ginsberg encountered in trying to deal with
his vision in his poetry. Instead of offering us an insight into the vision-
ary event, ‘The Eye Altering Alters All’ tries to recapture the nature of
the vision. The result is a poem that’s little more than a confused jumble
of imagery.
It was through the help of William Carlos Williams, who acted as the
young poet’s mentor, that Ginsberg overcame these difficulties. Follow-
ing Williams’ famous dictum ‘No ideas but in things,’ Ginsberg began
to understand the need to cut down on his reliance on flowery conven-
tions in favour of facing reality head on. Several poems in these collec-
tions result from this new method, the best of which is ‘The
Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour.’ Ginsberg took the poem from his journal,
transforming the story from prose into poetry by breaking up the sen-
tences into stanzas.
This success taught Ginsberg that poetry could embrace real life
without sacrificing the truth of the experience of living that life, and it
was this knowledge that enabled him to commit his visions to paper in a
far more direct way than he had managed in ‘The Eye Altering Alters
All’. 3/5

38
 Reality Sandwiches: 1953-1960 (1963)

As the title hints, the poems in this collection are the result of Gins-
berg’s attempts to make his poetry deal with real life. Embracing reality,
however, was always going to be problematic. The Beats’ lifestyle was
so far removed from the conventions of middle-class America that any
attempt to transform the world of pimps, drugs and sex into poetry
would inevitably shock. But most dangerous of all, circa 1953, was the
homosexual content of Ginsberg’s verse. ‘The Green Automobile’ and
‘Love Poem On A Theme By Whitman’ are more than frank about the
nature of their author’s sexual desires, a brave subject to commit to
paper during the years of Senator McCarthy’s witch-hunts against com-
munists and sexual subversives.
‘The Green Automobile’ is a fantasy about Neal Cassady. The poet
imagines taking Cassady from his wife and children out onto the open
road for a cross-country excursion. Transforming the journey into the
search for (sexual) freedom that Kerouac would rely on in On The
Road, the heroes explore the downtown pool rooms, jails, brothels and
jazz clubs as well as each other’s bodies. The poem’s fantasy structure
ends with both of its characters safely back in their respective
homes—but the damage has already been done—American family life
has been well and truly bulldozed by Ginsberg’s fantasies.
This rejection of mainstream American life resurfaces in ‘My Alba’
in which Ginsberg laments the years he spent working in dull offices.
The contrast between this Manhattan world of work and the possibilities
of other ways of living to be found in ‘Siesta In Xbalba’ and ‘Havana
1953’ is striking, and the poet’s belief that the American order of dollars
and dimes is crumbling offers one of the first indications of Ginsberg’s
howling critique of American capitalism. 5/5

Howl And Other Poems (1956)

The original edition of Howl And Other Poems, published by Law-

rence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Press, took its epigraph from Walt
Whitman: ‘Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors them-
selves from their jambs!’ It’s impossible to think of a better quotation to
begin Ginsberg’s masterpiece of angry discontent. ‘Howl’ is a poem full
of biblical energy. Its Old Testament rhythms produce a thunderous
indictment of 1950s America, capitalism and consumer society. First

39
unleashed on an unsuspecting public at the Six Gallery in San Francisco
in 1955, ‘Howl’ became an overnight success.
It’s definitely a poem designed to be read aloud—the long lines are
just the right size to fit within the scope of a single breath—and it was
this, coupled with Ginsberg’s impassioned readings, that led at least one
critic to describe Ginsberg as ‘Poet of the New Violence.’ As a howl,
this epic poem is like the wailing madhouse screams that Ginsberg had
heard during his stay in the Psychiatric Institute (a reference made clear
by the dedication to Carl Solomon).
In his preface to the poem, William Carlos Williams warned Gins-
berg’s readers about the nature of the work that awaited them, famously
declaring: ‘Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going
through Hell.’ As journeys into the inferno go, few artists have man-
aged to paint such a terrifying picture of physical, emotional and spiri-
tual collapse.
The poem is comprised of four sections. The first gives an overview
of the suffering of the best minds of Ginsberg’s generation (with refer-
ence to a host of Beat artists and muses, such as Cassady, Solomon,
Huncke and others). The second section attributes the blame for the suf-
fering of these figures, indicting American capitalism (Moloch). The
third section declares solidarity with Carl Solomon’s self-inflicted suf-
fering in the madhouse after he had arrived on the steps of the Psychiat-
ric Institute with a shaved head, requesting a lobotomy. The fourth
section forms the ‘Footnote to Howl’ and ends the poem by arguing that
the world and the flesh are divine and do not deserve to be treated with
anything but tenderness and love.
Ginsberg’s poetry was greatly influenced by the American Transcen-
dentalists. Transcendentalism was an East Coast literary movement in
the mid-nineteenth century that was an offshoot of German Expression-
ism. The main writers associated with the movement were Ralph Waldo
Emerson (in particular his essay ‘Nature’ (1836)) and Henry David
Thoreau (who attacked American materialism in his book Walden
(1854)). Rejecting organised religion in favour of recognising the divin-
ity of each individual person, Transcendentalism was associated with
self-reliance, reform, slavery abolition, feminism and utopian idealism.
The work of Emerson and Thoreau had a significant impact on Walt
Whitman and his poetry in Leaves Of Grass (1855). Openly homosex-
ual, yet also ruggedly masculine, Whitman’s poetry unabashedly cele-
brated free love and liberal individualism, while maintaining a religious

40
(in the broad sense of the term) tone. Ginsberg’s poem ‘A Supermarket
In California’ acknowledges his Whitmanic debt, updating the Tran-
scendentalist’s disgust with materialism to 1950s America. 5/5

Kaddish And Other Poems: 1958-1960 (1961)

In May 1956, Ginsberg’s mother died from a cerebral haemorrhage.

She had been institutionalised for several years after being diagnosed as
what today we would call a paranoid schizophrenic, and had been so
mentally disturbed that her doctors had lobotomised her. Ginsberg did
not attend the funeral—he was in San Francisco when news of her death
arrived—and so was particularly upset when he heard that the service
was so small that there weren’t enough male mourners present for the
rabbi to read the Jewish funeral elegy, the kaddish. Promising to make
up for this omission, Ginsberg wrote his own version of the service for
his mother. The resulting poem, ‘Kaddish: Proem, Hymmnn, Lament,
Litany And Fugue,’ proved to be Ginsberg’s most mature and involving
work.
‘Kaddish’ is an amazingly personal poem, so personal in fact that it
challenges the conventions of how much personal detail poems should
possess. Ginsberg resurrects his mother (minutely detailing her life and
suffering) in order to finally lay her to rest. The poem’s great achieve-
ment is in being as joyous as it is upsetting—Ginsberg’s purpose is to
celebrate her life as well as mourn her death. On seeing ‘Kaddish,’
Ginsberg’s father proclaimed it ‘a magnificent, heart-wrenching poem’
and said that he had read it ‘with tears.’
The other poems in the collection are less emotional than ‘Kaddish,’
though several of them remain very personal. Most interesting are Gins-
berg’s drug poems—‘Mescaline,’ ‘Lysergic Acid’ and ‘Laughing
Gas’—which are vast, rambling and kaleidoscopic glimpses into the
void in search of God. Just as Ginsberg’s Blake vision brought him to
the highs and lows of rapture and despair so his experiments with hallu-
cinogens produced similarly paradoxical reactions. Yet Ginsberg con-
tinued to experiment with states of altered consciousness, becoming
closely involved in Timothy Leary’s LSD research program in his
attempt to rediscover the ‘total consciousness’ of his Blake vision. He
also experimented with verse forms that would allow his readers to
share these altered states. Much like Burroughs’ use of the cut-up tech-
nique, Ginsberg sought a form of poetry that would offer ‘a series of

41
vowels which if you pronounce them in proper sequence with the
breathing indicated by the punctuation… will get you high physiologi-
cally.’ A legal buzz that no cop could bust you for! 4/5

Planet News (1968)

The most eye-catching poem in Planet News is ‘Television Was A

Baby Crawling Towards That Deathchamber.’ It’s a great title. So great
in fact that the poem itself has a hard time living up to it. Hurtling off in
all directions, it is by turns funny, angry and sad—a Cold War vision of
the world’s craziness, filtered through the nuclear age, conspiracies,
paranoia and the CIA. It’s a vision that crops up again in ‘Who Will
Take Over the Universe?’ where Ginsberg, writing in 1961, predicts the
American Revolution that would soon take hold of the nation’s youth.
Considering the date of its publication, Planet News is a timely col-
lection, full of the mystic-revolutionary madness of the hippie move-
ment and the anti-war demonstrations. The collection includes
references to many of the key events of the counter-cultural years. In
‘First Party At Ken Kesey’s With Hell’s Angels,’ Ginsberg turns the
historic intersection of the LSD freaks with the bikers into a strangely
gentle snapshot poem, while modestly making no mention of his role in
forming an alliance between the violent, reactionary Angels and the
hippie counter-culture.
‘Wales Visitation’ is a poem written under the influence of acid—a
kind of Wordsworthian confrontation with nature while tripping. In
‘Uptown’ Ginsberg captures the prevailing antagonism between straight
and hippie culture, with the story of the pro-war citizen who threatens to
cut off the poet’s long hair and ship him out to Vietnam. The war resur-
faces again in ‘Wichita Vortex Sutra’ with Ginsberg quoting McNa-
mara’s infamous ‘bad guess’ about the number of American troops who
would be required to fight in Vietnam.
But the best expression of 1960s radicalism is ‘Pentagon Exor-
cism’—a poem that sets its sights on the symbol of the military/indus-
trial complex’s secretive power. Ginsberg’s attack on the Pentagon
mind-control machinery is as funny and pointed as the hippies’ attempts
to levitate the building during demonstrations in the late-1960s. 3/5

42
 Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977-1980 (1982)

‘Plutonian Ode’ opens with a photograph of Ginsberg, Peter Orlo-

vsky and ‘friends of the Rocky Flats Truth Force’ meditating on rail-
road tracks just outside a plutonium bomb trigger factory in Colorado.
This peaceful protest took place on the day that Ginsberg wrote the
poem and succeeded in halting a train carrying nuclear waste. It’s a
striking way of opening the collection but it inadvertently illustrates the
problems that Ginsberg’s poetry was experiencing after the end of the
1960s.
In the 1950s Ginsberg had perfected his poetic craft, producing a
wide range of work that would secure his reputation as one of Amer-
ica’s most important literary voices. In the 1960s he had continued his
poetic development but had also begun to use his position in American
society as political leverage, becoming heavily involved in radical poli-
tics and playing the role of elder statesman for the hippies.
The effect that Ginsberg’s political activism had on his poetry was
devastating. His commitment to marches, campaigns and demonstra-
tions sapped his poetic voice, as ‘Plutonium Ode’ demonstrates. It’s an
earnest but totally lacklustre protest poem. It is more specific in its poli-
tics than ‘Howl’ but about as persuasive as a moan.
There’s no denying that Ginsberg was a first-rate, completely com-
mitted activist. His political influence covered a range of issues (from
gay rights to environmentalism) and continued up until his death.
Despite its negative influence on his poetry Ginsberg remained commit-
ted to this activism. In fact, in ‘Ode To Failure’ he laments the fact that
he hadn’t been able to change the world more by trading poetry for pol-
itics. The only glimmer of Ginsberg’s previous glory in this collection is
the light-hearted ‘Birdbrain!’ a very funny attack on global stupidity
and arrogance. 2/5

Journals

Ginsberg was an incorrigible hoarder. Throughout his life he kept

scrapbooks, cuttings files, journals, letters, manuscripts, notebooks and,
in his later years, faxes and computer disks. His journals—in three col-
lections: Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties (1977), Indian Journals
(1970) and Journals: Mid Fifties (1995)—are a testament to the impor-
tance of his literary record-keeping, since they offer an insight into the

43
poet and his lifetime. Full of dream records, diary entries, notes, draw-
ings, musing and snatches of verse, the journals are valuable literary
documents in their own right, frequently containing the seeds of Gins-
berg’s published poetry. Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties is particu-
larly important since it contains an account of Ginsberg’s trip to South
America during which he tried to find the hallucinogen yagé that Bur-
roughs had sampled there years before. But it’s the frankness of Gins-
berg’s writing that’s most interesting, the open manner in which he
discusses his dreams, talks of his family and of his relationship with
Peter Orlovsky. The journals let us delve into the poet’s mind far better
than any biography could ever hope to. 3/5

Miscellaneous Works

Ginsberg’s poetry collections cover far more territory than that

included here, with various small press publications and limited runs.
Among Ginsberg’s other works are: Airplane Dreams (1968), Ankor
Wat (1968), The Fall Of America: Poems On These States 1965-1971
(1972), Iron Horse (1972), Sad Dust Glories: Poems Work Summer In
Woods 1974 (1975), Mind Breaths: Poems 1972-1977 (1978), Poems
All Over The Place: Mostly Seventies (1978), Straight Heart’s Delight:
Love Poems And Selected Letters: Allen Ginsberg And Peter Orlovsky
(1980), White Shroud: Poems 1980-1985 (1986), Death & Fame: Last
Poems, 1993-1997 (1999). The best place to start is Collected Poems
1947-1980 (1985), which includes all of Ginsberg’s best-known work.
His letters to and from Neal Cassady have been published in As Ever:
The Collected Correspondence Of Allen Ginsberg And Neal Cassady
(1977).

44
 4. The Third Mind: William S Burroughs

Biography

William S Burroughs was born on 5 February 1914 in St Louis, Mis-

souri. His grandfather was the inventor of the automatic adding
machine and founder of the Burroughs Corporation. By the time of Bur-
roughs’ birth, the family’s stake in the company had been sold off, but it
had produced a big enough windfall to ensure that his parents were
comfortably well off for the rest of their lives (and could give Bur-
roughs a regular monthly allowance of $200 for much of his early adult
life).
Burroughs fared well at school (academically if not socially) and
graduated from Harvard, majoring in English Literature. He studied for
a term at the Vienna Medical School and then dropped out and returned
to the States to take graduate classes in anthropology at Harvard. While
in Austria he married a Jewish woman in order to secure her a visa to
escape the Nazis. Back in the US Burroughs tried to join the military
when the war began, but was rejected by the navy, the air force and the
OSS (the fledgling CIA). A very brief spell in the army came to an end
when the authorities discovered the contents of his psychiatric file.
Aware of his homosexuality from an early age, Burroughs had had
relationships with other men, including a hustler named Jack Anderson,
in the 1940s. Anderson’s rejection of him led to a finger-chopping inci-
dent in which Burroughs amputated one of his little fingers with a pair
of shears. The psychiatric report from Bellevue hospital was part of the
file that the military authorities got hold of.
Living in New York during the early 1940s, Burroughs survived on
his parental allowance. He was intrigued by the criminal underworld
and frequently hung out in seedy bars and cafeterias, chatting with hus-
tlers, petty thieves and robbers. He planned a bank heist but drank so
much Dutch courage that he was too inebriated to carry it out.
During this period Burroughs met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac
through Lucien Carr, who Burroughs had known from St Louis. Much
older than Ginsberg and Kerouac, Burroughs became their mentor,
impressing them with his knowledge of literature and history as well as
his cultured manner. As Kerouac later remarked, what impressed them
was that he had ‘finish.’ Burroughs also met Herbert Huncke, who gave

45
him his first experience of hard drugs and taught him the tricks of the
junkie lifestyle.
As the Beat Generation grew, Burroughs moved into an apartment
with Joan Vollmer who would become his common law wife. She
developed an addiction to Benzedrine inhalers (which contained strips
of paper soaked in amphetamine) that quickly got out of control. After
Joan became pregnant with Burroughs’ son they moved to Texas, where
Burroughs grew cotton and marijuana crops. The marijuana crop was a
failure and Burroughs and his wife shipped out to New Orleans, where
Burroughs was arrested for possession of heroin. Fortunately, he
avoided a jail sentence since the police had illegally searched his house.
Skipping the States to avoid further legal problems, the family moved to
Mexico City where Burroughs studied Mayan and Aztec history on the
GI Bill.
South America proved the perfect environment for Burroughs. Boys
were cheap, drugs were easily available and no one paid him any notice.
He had an affair with a young American, Adelbert Lewis Marker, and
travelled with him through the South American jungles in search of the
hallucinogenic drug yagé. But Marker wasn’t really gay and their rela-
tionship soon ended.
On 6 September 1951, tragedy struck. Burroughs and Joan were at a
party and had been drinking heavily throughout the day. At some point
in the evening Burroughs told his wife “It’s about time for our William
Tell act.” Although they had never played such a game before, Joan put
a glass on her head. Burroughs aimed at it with his gun, fired and
missed. The bullet hit Joan in the forehead, killing her instantly.
Skipping the country on the advice of his lawyer, Burroughs eventu-
ally ended up in Tangiers. He quickly settled into life there and began
writing seriously. His first novel, Junkie, was published in 1953. He
worked on a sequel, entitled Queer, as well as the book that would
become his greatest success, Naked Lunch. Although isolated from the
rest of the Beat Generation, Burroughs kept in regular letter contact
with Kerouac and, in particular, Ginsberg. After a brief romance with
Burroughs, Ginsberg had become his closest friend and also acted as his
literary agent.
In 1957 Ginsberg and Kerouac visited Tangiers and helped prepare
the Naked Lunch manuscript for publication. When Maurice Girodias’
Olympia Press finally accepted the novel it marked the beginning of
Burroughs’ fame. Banned in the Unites States, Naked Lunch got entan-

46
gled in the same headline-grabbing legal battle that Ginsberg had faced
over Howl And Other Poems. The judge finally ruled in the book’s
favour.
Moving to Paris in 1958, Burroughs took up residence in what would
come to be known as the Beat Hotel. It was in Paris that he became
friends with the painter Brion Gysin, who would have an enormous
influence on Burroughs’ work during this period. One day while cutting
through a sheaf of newspapers with a Stanley blade, Gysin noticed that
he was producing new sentences out of the newspaper headlines. Find-
ing them hilarious, Gysin rushed over to Burroughs and let him read
them. Burroughs thought that the technique had serious potential as a
literary device and began to produce ‘cut-ups.’ The cut-up technique
obsessed Burroughs over the next few years and he began to produce
thousands of these random sentences by typing up his own texts with
other works (by Shakespeare, TS Eliot, Rimbaud) and then cutting the
pages into sections and rearranging the sections to create new texts.
Gysin and Burroughs both believed that this would let literature catch
up with painting techniques such as montage. They also thought that the
cut-ups were magical (predicting future events), could induce experi-
ences similar to drug highs and might even operate as a means of free-
ing the individual from unspecified controlling forces.
Obsessed with this new literary method, Burroughs spent the major-
ity of the 1960s working on cut-ups. The result was the Nova trilogy
(The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express) as well
as hundreds of hours of tapes of cut-up street sounds and conversations.
He also worked on a series of films with British director Anthony
Balch: Towers Open Fire, The Cut-Ups and Bill And Tony.
From 1966 to 1973 Burroughs lived in London, continuing his cut-up
experiments and investigating Scientology. He had started using the E-
Meter, a piece of equipment that operated like a lie detector and was
used by the Scientologists to help ‘decondition’ their followers. During
his time in London Burroughs worked on The Wild Boys, Port Of Saints
and Exterminator!, still using his cut-up technique but mixing it with
patches of straight narrative. Life in London took its toll on Burroughs
though, and when Ginsberg visited him in 1973 he was shocked by his
old friend’s withdrawn lifestyle. Arranging a teaching position for Bur-
roughs on a creative writing course in New York, Ginsberg encouraged
him back to the States.

47
 Returning to New York in the 1970s Burroughs began to enjoy celeb-
rity status. Living in an old YMCA building, (dubbed the Bunker
because of its lack of windows) Burroughs hired a young secretary,
James Grauerholz, to run his day-to-day affairs. Grauerholz’s enthusi-
asm brought Burroughs out of obscurity. Giving lucrative college read-
ings, hanging out with famous stars like Andy Warhol, the Rolling
Stones and Patti Smith, Burroughs suddenly became the epitome of
1970s junkie chic. Ironically it was because of his new-found fans that
Burroughs got hooked on heroin again after being clean for several
years.
After getting into the methadone programme in 1980, Burroughs fin-
ished his come-back novel Cities Of The Red Night. Moving out of New
York in search of peace and quiet, he returned to the Mid-West to live in
the small university town of Lawrence, Kansas. He spent the rest of his
life there, writing two sequels to Cities Of The Red Night (The Place Of
Dead Roads and The Western Lands) and fending off a constant stream
of unannounced visitors. The eldest of the three principal Beats, Bur-
roughs survived both his friends, dying in August 1997, just months
after Allen Ginsberg.

Junkie (1953)

Summary: Junkie follows William Lee (the pen-name Burroughs fre-

quently used, based on his mother’s maiden name) as he moves through
the New York underworld of the 1940s as a junkie and a thief. Lee nar-
rates his attempts to score, avoid the police and fund his habit (through
petty crime). As the novel ends he’s about to depart for South America
in search of a hallucinogen called yagé that, he hopes, will be the ‘final
fix.’
Subtext: Junkie is an autobiographical, journalistic report told in the
first person. It’s the most straightforward of all Burroughs’ books, often
sounding like a hardboiled detective story in the Raymond Chandler
mode. It’s more like a documentary account than a novel, and even crit-
icises the United States’ drugs laws by arguing that junkies only
become a problem to society when being an addict is a criminal offence.
Behind The Beat: Originally, Junkie was supposed to have been pub-
lished together with Queer by Carl Solomon who was working as an
editor at Ace Paperbacks. In the end, though, Ace published the novel
as part of its Double Book series with Maurice Helbrandt’s autobio-

48
graphical Narcotic Agent. At first Burroughs wasn’t keen on being
lumped together with a narc, but decided that Helbrandt’s story wasn’t
as bad as he’d expected. The novel was marketed as a cheap, sensa-
tional paperback and didn’t achieve much recognition until after Bur-
roughs became famous.
Hip Or Square?: Since being republished by Penguin in the 1970s
(as Junky), the novel is generally regarded as one of Burroughs’ most
accessible books. 4/5

Queer (1985)

Summary: Queer was designed as a sequel to Junkie, continuing the

story of William Lee’s search for drugs as he leaves the United States
for South America. Unlike Junkie, though, Queer is a love story cen-
tring on the relationship between Lee and Eugene Allerton, a young
American man he meets in Mexico City. Allerton is essentially straight,
but Lee tries to seduce him. The resulting relationship ends badly as
Allerton rejects Lee.
Subtext: Although Queer shifts from the first-person narration of
Junkie into the third person, it’s still as autobiographical as its predeces-
sor. Burroughs met Adelbert Lewis Marker in Mexico City and the Lee/
Allerton affair is based on their time together. No longer on junk, Lee is
now addicted to Allerton and suffers the same highs and lows of the
junkie as he pursues him. The most important part of the novel is the
story of Burroughs’ search for the hallucinogenic drug yagé in the Ama-
zon jungle. When he finds the drug he experiences a bisexual vision that
throws him into confusion.
Behind The Beat: Burroughs wasn’t the only person searching for
yagé in the 1950s. Both the CIA and the KGB had been experimenting
with it during the period, planning to use it as a brainwashing truth drug
in the Cold War. Burroughs hoped that the drug might allow him to
achieve his ultimate goal – freedom from conditioning. But on trying to
take the drug back to America he found that it didn’t survive for long
once the vines it was brewed from were cut.
Hip Or Square?: Embarrassed by his autobiographical story of unre-
quited gay love, Burroughs refused to publish Queer for over thirty
years. When it was finally released it received a mixed response. It’s
quite unlike any of Burroughs’ other books and is more personal and
emotional than anything else Burroughs has written. 3/5

49
 Interzone (1989)

Summary: This collection of short stories and Burroughs’ early ‘rou-

tines’ (comic vignettes) dates from 1954 when Burroughs moved to
Tangiers.
Subtext: The work collected in Interzone offers a fascinating insight
into Burroughs’ shift from the writer of Junkie and Queer (straightfor-
ward, linear novels) to the demented genius behind Naked Lunch. The
material in Interzone is collected into three sections: ‘Stories,’ ‘Lee’s
Journals’ and ‘Word.’ Among the short stories, the two that stand out
are ‘The Finger’ and ‘Twilight’s Last Gleamings.’ The first tells the
autobiographical story of Burroughs’ Van Gogh kick when he ampu-
tated one of his little fingers with a pair of garden shears. ‘Twilight’s
Last Gleamings’ introduces the character of Doctor Benway, one of
Burroughs’ best-loved villains, who returns again and again throughout
the novels.
Behind The Beat: ‘Lee’s Journals’ are a mix of autobiography and
routines, offering William Lee’s perspective on Tangiers and its inhabit-
ants while he waits for his next shot of morphine. The pieces fall half-
way between the first-person narration of Junkie (with its street tough
style) and the weird trippyness of Naked Lunch (with its use of rou-
tines). But it’s the final section, ‘Word’ that really makes the transition
from Burroughs’ early work to the kind of material that would comprise
Naked Lunch. As Burroughs writes in the opening, ‘This book spills off
the page in all directions, kaleidoscope of vistas, medley of tunes and
street noises, farts and riot yipes…’ Several of the passages from
‘Word’ ended up in Naked Lunch, but most of all it’s the style that pre-
empts Burroughs’ masterpiece. ‘Word’ sacrifices story coherence in
favour of a series of surreal visions. It’s completely outrageous (even
more so considering it was written in 1954), full of sex, drugs and the
kind of nightmarish characters that only Burroughs could come up with.
Hip Or Square?: Excellent examples of how Burroughs’ writing
changed between Junkie and Naked Lunch. 3/5

50
 Naked Lunch (1959)

Summary: There’s no easy way to describe Naked Lunch other than

to compare it to Junkie written on drugs. The story (if it can be called
that) follows Lee as he tries to score for drugs and ends up going
through withdrawal. The novel is made up of a series of ‘routines’ or
sketches that are like a sick junkie’s nightmares—hellish glimpses of
the world through the addict’s eyes.
Subtext: Naked Lunch is the novel that secured Burroughs’ reputation
and caused a whirlwind of controversy, debate and legal proceedings
when it was released in the US. For all its status as a piece of pornogra-
phy, it’s a very serious work with a clear social intent. As the title sug-
gests, Burroughs uses the novel to unveil (make naked) the mechanisms
of control and repression that rule American society. Burroughs shows
how the law and the health authorities persecute both addicts and homo-
sexuals, and turns this persecution into a mad vision of hell. It’s both a
warning against drug addiction and a critique of society’s treatment of
those branded undesirable.
Behind The Beat: While living in Tangiers, Burroughs sent a series of
letters home to Ginsberg. In each letter he added a ‘routine’ (short
comic skits, the literary equivalent of dirty jokes). Talking assholes,
mad doctors and surreal pieces on Tangiers’ nightlife were among the
stories that managed to escape surveillance by the postal authorities.
Much of the material was written while Burroughs was on a variety of
drugs and it has the strange, broken up feel of writing under the influ-
ence. But it’s also hilariously funny, scathingly satirical and quite unlike
any other piece of Beat fiction. The novel was first published by Olym-
pia Press in Paris, who were internationally renowned for printing por-
nographic novels as well as the odd racy literary classic (Henry Miller’s
novels, for instance). When Grove Press planned to publish the novel in
the United States in 1961, Burroughs’ work became embroiled in the
same kind of censorship trial that had dogged Miller’s Tropic Of Can-
cer. After a fierce legal battle it received the courts’ endorsement under
the First Amendment and was unleashed on an unsuspecting America.
Hip Or Square?: Obscene, funny and completely off-the-wall, this is
Burroughs’ masterpiece. 5/5

51
 The Nova Trilogy:
The Soft Machine (1961)
The Ticket That Exploded (1962)
Nova Express (1964)

Summary: The trilogy’s story is pretty vague but the main theme is
the invasion of the Earth by a group of intergalactic criminals known as
the Nova Mob. Like an extraterrestrial version of the Mafia, the Nova
Mob move in on Earth and try to take over everything, from the legal
system to the minds of each individual member of the planet. But the
Nova Mob aren’t the usual kind of space invaders—they’re two-dimen-
sional virus organisms that invade the minds of humans through their
addictions (to drugs, sex, money, power, etc.). Only Inspector J Lee of
the Nova Police and a handful of partisans can save the Earth, but first
they have to use the cut-up technique to free themselves from the invad-
ers’ mind-control techniques.
Subtext: The Nova trilogy is a very strange piece of science fiction
that’s unlike the usual kind of work written in the genre. The science
fiction scenario is an excuse for Burroughs to expand his obsession with
addiction and control and explain his new cut-up method. Burroughs
suggests that the cut-up is the only way of freeing yourself from the
influence of control: cutting up sounds, images and words will allow
you to break free from the word and image locks that keep you impris-
oned in a fake reality and in your bodies. The cut-up becomes a means
of reaching a higher consciousness without drugs: ‘learn to make it
without any chemical corn’ is Burroughs’ advice.
Behind The Beat: Critics have always been divided over whether the
Nova trilogy ought to be regarded as the most important moment of
Burroughs’ career or as his greatest failure. Reading the books is cer-
tainly hard work: ‘The question caught our ticket that exploded—need
the White Smoke to circumstance—Remember I was the door—It’s the
old naked dream beside you—You got sex and pain informa-
tion?—mouth of hair?—’ Burroughs was aware of the problems his
readers faced and put the novels through several revisions. He ulti-
mately claimed that he wasn’t completely satisfied with the results.
Hip Or Square?: Although it’s difficult to read, the Nova trilogy is a
fantastic concept, a twenty-first-century literary work that deserves seri-
ous attention and recognition. 4/5

52
 The Wild Boy Quartet:
The Wild Boys (1971)
Port Of Saints (1973)
Exterminator! (1973)
Ah Pook Is Here (1979)

Summary: The world is in chaos. After an unspecified disaster deci-

mates the first world and plunges it back to a low level of technological
sophistication, wild packs of boys roam the deserts of North Africa.
Children from all over the world run to join them, leaving their parents
and turning their backs on civilisation in order to run wild. The charac-
ters reappear throughout the quartet, except in the short stories of Exter-
minator! But many of the characters in Exterminator! possess the same
agenda as the wild boys—violent revolution—and so can be linked with
them.
Subtext: The wild boys have obvious links to the 1960s counter-cul-
ture, except that they’re all gay. Rejecting their families and heterosexu-
ality, the wild boys set up gay communes and wage guerrilla war on the
rest of the world. Two army squadrons are sent out after them, a group
of middle-aged soldiers and a lesbian commando unit. But the boys
wipe them out. There’s lots of gay sex (even more than in Burroughs’
other novels!) and many critics have found Burroughs’ accompanying
misogyny hard to deal with.
Behind The Beat: Burroughs described The Wild Boys as a personal
fantasy and there’s a sense that he’s writing the kind of science fiction
that he’d like to read himself. These novels are more accessible than the
Nova trilogy, with cut-up material used sparingly. Their focus on ado-
lescent boys allows Burroughs to include lots of autobiographical mate-
rial about his childhood in St Louis and the time he spent on the summer
camp ranch (the site that would later be used to build the first A-
bombs).
Hip Or Square?: The Wild Boy quartet bridges the gap between the
complicated literary experiments of the Nova trilogy and the Red Night
trilogy of novels in the 1980s that begins with Cities Of The Red Night.
3/5

53
 Cities Of The Red Night (1981)

Summary: A virus plague begins to spread across the Earth. A team

of scientists speculate about its origin, while a ‘private asshole’ called
Clem Snide investigates the disappearance of a missing American boy.
The story switches back between the present, the past and the future. In
one of the plot stands, an eighteenth-century pirate captain tries to
establish a libertarian commune on Madagascar. Other sections tell the
story of a future world where a radioactive virus destroys the Cities of
the Red Night. As the novel continues, various plot threads intertwine,
the time-frame collapses and it’s revealed that the CIA is part of an
intergalactic conspiracy designed to enslave the Earth.
Subtext: Cities Of The Red Night plays with many of the themes of
Burroughs’ earlier work—addiction, viruses, gay sex, the search for
freedom—but tries to follow the linear storytelling of a conventional
novel. Although the novel’s storyline eventually collapses into confu-
sion it’s certainly one of Burroughs’ most coherent works. Burroughs’
stories about eighteenth-century pirate communes are part of his con-
tinuing interest in alternative lifestyles and societies (something that
was first seen in The Wild Boys). He presents the novel as a ‘retroactive
utopia’ that tries to imagine what life could have been like if these com-
munes had survived the hostility of the rest of the world.
Behind The Beat: The novel was written during Burroughs’ come-
back in the 1980s. Burroughs relied on his secretary James Grauerholz
to help edit the material (much as Allen Ginsberg had edited Naked
Lunch) and it seems that this had a positive influence, giving the novel a
more coherent structure. Christopher Isherwood proclaimed the novel
as Burroughs’ ‘masterpiece,’ but it’s unlikely to ever eclipse Naked
Lunch as the novel that Burroughs is best known for. Many critics have
noted the way in which it allowed Burroughs to escape from the compli-
cated experiments that he had been working with in the 1960s and
1970s.
Hip Or Square?: One of Burroughs’ best works, Cities Of The Red
Night is a distillation of many of his most important themes. 4/5

54
 The Place Of Dead Roads (1983)

Summary: In the Old West, at the turn of the century, Kim Carsons (a
young teenager) sets out to become a shootist. Enjoying the relaxed
laws of the frontier, Carsons gathers a gang together (The Wild Fruits)
and gets involved in various criminal activities. His feud with a local
rancher and his flagrant disregard for the laws of the society he rejects
eventually get him shot.
Subtext: Burroughs uses the frontier as a space to imagine an alterna-
tive to mainstream, heterosexual culture. His cowboys are gay, drug-
taking outlaws who hate the mean-spirited nature of straight society.
Kim tries to defy every rule possible, uses black magic in his gunfights,
time-travels (visiting Venus in the 1980s) and forms a criminal under-
world of ‘Johnsons’—a group of moral criminals who are totally
opposed to the ‘Shits’ of the world. It’s best described as a science fic-
tion western and, like Burroughs’ other work, its central theme is the
escape from control. Kim tries to live his life the way he wants to, but
constantly finds that the rest of the world is imposing its laws on him.
One critic, David Glover, has suggested that the novel could be read as
Kim’s last dying thoughts. The novel opens with Kim being shot in the
back during a gunfight and ends with him dying on the ground, what
lies in between could be read as a split-second fantasy in which Kim
imagines the world differently in the moment before he dies.
Behind The Beat: Burroughs had frequently mentioned his desire to
write a western and many of his fans were eager to see the result. The
Place Of Dead Roads is both a sequel to Cities Of The Red Night and an
independent novel. Burroughs borrows the concept of the Johnson from
Jack Black’s autobiographical story of life among the bums and hobos
of the United States—You Can’t Win (1927)—that he had read as a
child. Black used ‘Johnson’ to denote someone who was a criminal but
was still honourable.
Hip Or Square?: The Place Of Dead Roads is a fantastic novel, full
of rich characters and events and very, very funny. 5/5

55
 The Western Lands (1987)

Summary: In the final novel in the Red Night trilogy, Burroughs con-
tinues the story of Kim from The Place Of Dead Roads. Kim was assas-
sinated by one of his own lieutenants, Joe the Dead, who feared that his
adolescent behaviour was going to jeopardise the outlaw culture that
Kim had helped establish. After death, Kim journeys into the Western
Lands, the Egyptian Land of the Dead. The story concerns the search
for immortality (by Kim and his creator, Burroughs) and continues the
fight against the oppressive controlling forces of mainstream society.
Subtext: The Western Lands is a novel about Burroughs’ approaching
death. He makes this quite explicit, writing himself into the story as ‘the
old writer’ who lives with his cats. But it is also a novel about AIDS,
written in 1987 when the epidemic was at its peak. Death is everywhere
in the novel, but the most important kind, according to Burroughs, is
soul death. Using Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings as a refer-
ence, Burroughs explains the Egyptian theory of the Seven Souls and
uses this in his indictment of modern society. The controllers want to
kill off the seven souls and reduce the Earth’s population to mindless
zombies. As usual the Venusians and their followers run the conspiracy,
but this time Burroughs isn’t confident about our chances of winning.
Exhausted, he ends the novel on a pessimistic note: ‘The old writer
couldn’t write anymore because he had reached the end of words, the
end of what could be done with words.’
Behind The Beat: Since The Western Lands is so concerned with its
author’s death it’s fitting that it was to be Burroughs’ last novel. The
works that would follow—Ghost Of Chance (1991), The Cat Inside
(1992), My Education: A Book Of Dreams (1995), Last Words
(2000)—were at best novellas, at worst edited selections from Bur-
roughs’ journals and dream diaries.
Hip Or Square?: The last of Burroughs’ great novels and a fitting
end to both the Red Night trilogy and Burroughs’ career. 4/5

56
 Miscellaneous Works

In between Burroughs’ great books lies a host of other works. Oliver

Harris’ edited collection of Burroughs’ correspondence—The Letters
Of William S Burroughs 1945 To 1959 (1993)—is a treasure trove of
material that includes several drafts of Burroughs’ earliest routines, sent
to Ginsberg from Tangiers during the 1950s. Irascible, hilarious and
always opinionated, Burroughs’ letters prove to be one of his best
works. Among the other published pieces is The Yage Letters (1963),
documenting Burroughs and Ginsberg’s separate adventures in South
America. The cut-up technique gets the manifesto treatment in The
Third Mind (1978), where Burroughs and Gysin explain and demon-
strate the cut-ups. Other cut-up material can be found in the Burroughs,
Corso, Gysin, Beiles collaboration Minutes To Go (1968) and The Bur-
roughs File (1984). Ali’s Smile/Naked Scientology (1972) collects
together Burroughs’ opinions on the Scientology movement. The Last
Words Of Dutch Schultz (1975) is a film script that’s interesting, if
flawed. The essay collection The Adding Machine (1985) covers a
diverse range of subjects, from CIA weaponry to Ernest Hemingway.

57
 5. The Beat Generation Movement

While Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs are the names most often
associated with the Beat Generation, they are actually just the most rec-
ognisable personalities of a literary and social movement that included
many more (less well-known) writers and artists. In the early days of
the Beat Generation, around the late-1940s and early-1950s, the move-
ment didn’t extend much further than the friendship of Kerouac, Gins-
berg and Burroughs. But as the media turned the Beats into a social
phenomenon, the Beat lifestyle suddenly swept across America’s cities
and into the rest of the world. A whole generation of artists, writers and
musicians saw their own concerns reflected in the Beat Generation and
pledged allegiance to the Beats’ challenge to straight society.
The Beats found friends and followers in all walks of the arts. Sadly
there’s not space here to list all the musicians, painters, poets and even
stand-up comedians who they influenced. But the writers in this chapter
are the key members of the Beat movement, the ground troops who
acted as muses, fellow artists and political agitators (and sometimes all
three). Many of them were there from the start (Herbert Huncke, John
Clellon Holmes), while others form a bridge between the Beats and the
hippies (Neal Cassady, Alexander Trocchi). Some deserve an honorary
mention simply because they were influenced by the Beat movement
and often carried the Beatnik flag (Norman Mailer, Hunter S Thomp-
son).

Nelson Algren

Although not usually mentioned as a member of the Beat Generation,

Nelson Algren (1909-1981) deserves credit as one of the few American
novelists, pre-Beat, willing to tackle the growing world of post-war sub-
cultures. Born in Chicago, Algren charted the wild side of the concrete
jungle in his novels. He remains most famous in literary circles for his
love affair with Simone de Beauvoir, the French feminist writer and
lover of Jean-Paul Sartre.

The Man With The Golden Arm (1949)

Summary: Frankie Machine is an ex-army tough guy who deals cards
in an illegal Chicago gambling joint. His wife Sophie is always nagging

58
him for more money, but his heroin addiction is burning a hole in his
pocket. His stripper girlfriend Molly tries to convince him to get
straight, but he can’t quite manage it.
Subtext: Just as the Beat Generation would look to the underworld’s
lowlife characters for inspiration, so Algren sets his story in the down-
town tenement blocks of Chicago. It’s a grim world, full of bedraggled
characters like Nifty Louie, Frankie Machine’s neighbourhood drug
dealer, and Sparrow, Frankie’s best friend. Algren explicitly sets
Frankie’s drug addiction against the background of the war and its after-
math.
Behind The Beat: Burroughs was always quite dismissive of Algren’s
work, noting that he’d never actually lived the life of a drug addict.
While Burroughs set out to clear up the myths and lies that surrounded
drug addiction, writing in an attempt to convey his first-hand experi-
ences with drugs, Algren proved to be less interested in drugs them-
selves than in the personal relationships that the junkie’s world depends
on. Like nineteenth-century French novelist Emile Zola, Algren’s
depiction of the abject poverty to be found in the real world is a means
of arguing for social reform.
Hip Or Square?: Although it’s not exactly Beat, Algren’s obsession
with the blue-collar, Skid Row world of dimes and dope paved the way
for the Beat Generation. 3/5

Carolyn Cassady

Carolyn Robinson was the prototype Beat woman. Born in 1923 in

Nashville Tennessee, she studied for a drama degree, learning the Stan-
islavsky method acting technique that would become so famous in
America after the war. Moving to Denver in 1947 to begin an MA
course, she met the young Neal Cassady, who instantly fell in love with
her and promised to divorce his teenage wife, LuAnne. Innocently
believing Cassady’s spiel, she became one of his many lovers of the
period. Through Cassady she met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and
remained close friends with them (especially Kerouac) during her tur-
bulent relationship with Neal. Although shocked by her boyfriend’s
voracious sexual appetite—she briefly dumped him after discovering
him in bed with Allen Ginsberg and LuAnne—she married him on
April Fool’s Day, 1948. As Neal continued to run wild, frequently aban-
doning her and their children, Carolyn did her best to support the family

59
single-handedly. During the 1950s she had a brief affair with Kerouac,
partly at Neal’s suggestion. Sacrificing her artistic ambitions as a writer
and painter to look after her children (including the immature Neal and
Jack), Carolyn Cassady has since become an important Beat spokes-
woman and has recently been involved in the planned film adaptation of
On The Road.

Off The Road: Twenty Years With Cassady,

Kerouac And Ginsberg (1990)
Summary: Carolyn Cassady’s autobiographical book tells the story of
her marriage to Neal Cassady and her love affair with Jack Kerouac.
Subtext: Giving a woman’s view of the traditionally macho Beat
scene, Carolyn Cassady cuts through the posturing to the core of Ker-
ouac and Neal Cassady’s man-child personalities—criticising and cele-
brating them in equal measure.
Behind The Beat: First published in Rolling Stone magazine and then
in the book Heart Beat: My Life With Jack and Neal (1976), Carolyn
Cassady’s memories of the Beats during the years before they became
America’s favourite enfants terribles make for fascinating reading.
They also ensure Carolyn Cassady a place as one of the most important
female Beats—a muse, mother and artist who bucked social convention
and suffered the full brunt of Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac’s selfish
machismo while holding them both enthralled. The relationships dis-
cussed in Off The Road became the basis of the film Heart Beat and
Carolyn Cassady was consulted regarding the casting and the script.
Hip Or Square?: Although never allowed to take up her place on the
road or behind the wheel, Carolyn Cassady’s work is never square. 4/5

Neal Cassady

Born in 1926—while his parents were driving through Salt Lake

City, if legend is to be believed—Neal Cassady’s life was dominated by
speed (the movement as well as the drug). As a teenager he stole cars,
drove them around until he became bored with them, then stole another
one. By his own estimates he stole 500 cars between 1940 and 1944. In
1947, Cassady came to New York where he met Ginsberg and then Ker-
ouac. Sharing girls with Kerouac and having an on-off, turbulent affair
with Ginsberg, Cassady became the Beat Generation’s foremost

60
muse—a madcap symbol of their desire to break through the boundaries
of society’s inhibitions. Cassady remained close friends with Ker-
ouac—and a regular character in his novels—until the late 1950s when
he was imprisoned for possession of marijuana. Afraid of repercussions,
Kerouac cut his ties with him. In the 1960s Cassady joined Ken Kesey’s
Merry Pranksters, driving their psychedelic Day-Glo bus across the US
as they carried out their ‘acid tests.’ He died in 1968 after accidentally
overdosing on a cocktail of barbiturates and alcohol.

The First Third (1974)

Summary: The first volume of Cassady’s autobiography covering his
early years up to the mid-1940s.
Subtext: The First Third tells the story of Cassady’s early youth, in
particular his vagabond upbringing, experience of juvenile prisons and
his first meetings with the emerging Beats.
Behind The Beat: While The Second Third exists as a collection of
taped recordings made during Cassady’s time with the Merry Prank-
sters, Cassady died before completing the final third of his life. His role
in the Beat Generation’s history is pivotal. Without him there would
never have been On The Road and without that novel it’s easy to imag-
ine Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs continuing to work in obscurity.
His crossover from Beat to hippie is, perhaps, a fitting symbol of the
close ties between the two counter-cultural groups (ties that Kerouac
didn’t understand at all—unlike Ginsberg or, to a lesser extent, Bur-
roughs).
Hip Or Square?: The embodiment of the Beat Generation’s quest for
speed, free love and large quantities of drugs. 3/5

Gregory Corso

Although Gregory Corso (1930-2001) wasn’t present at the begin-

ning of the Beat Generation, he quickly established himself as one of
the movement’s leading writers after meeting Ginsberg in 1950. An Ital-
ian-American teenager, worldly-wise after several years in prison,
Corso was a street urchin poet who, like Herbert Huncke, had first-hand
experience of the wrong side of the tracks. Abandoned by his parents,
Corso had spent most of his childhood with various foster parents
before committing a string of offences that landed him in The Tombs.

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Under Ginsberg’s guidance and promotion, he developed his poetry and
soon became one of the Beats’ most vocal spokesmen. Although reha-
bilitated through poetry, Corso never quite shed his tendency to make
off with other people’s property, famously selling all of Allen Gins-
berg’s furniture in order to finance a trip to Europe. Adolescent, manic
and disruptive, Corso was the Beat movement’s foremost enfant terri-
ble.

Gasoline (1958)
Corso’s poetry is often as wild as the person himself. His second
published collection Gasoline secured his literary reputation at home
and abroad by deliberately highlighting this wild edge while also prov-
ing that he was knowledgeable of past poetic tradition. Much of Corso’s
poetry—including ‘Ode To Coit Tower,’ the opening poem of Gaso-
line—shows the influence of the English Romantics, especially Words-
worth, Coleridge and Shelley. Like his Beat colleagues, Corso is well
aware of the harshness of the world and rages against its cruelty in sev-
eral of the poems. In ‘The Last Warmth Of Arnold,’ for instance, Corso
tells the story of a young schoolboy who’s too innocent and timid to
survive in the real world. After being attacked he starves to death
alone—an image of the way in which the world crushes those who are
too sensitive to fight back (after all, Corso had to learn how to defend
himself while serving time in juvenile reform schools).
Hip Or Square?: The Beat Generation’s leading poet after Ginsberg.
3/5

Diane DiPrima

Beat poet Diane DiPrima (b.1934) was a well-known figure on the

Bohemian New York scene of the late-1940s. Her teenage involvement
with the Bohemian artists brought her in contact with Ezra Pound, with
whom she corresponded before finally meeting in person in the early
1950s. In 1957, at the height of the Beat phenomenon, DiPrima met
Ginsberg, Kerouac and Peter Orlovsky, famously joining them in an
orgy. Unlike many women on the Beat scene, DiPrima was always more
than just a muse, publishing several books of poetry and prose (This
Kind Bird Flies Backwards, Dinners And Nightmares and Revolution-
ary Letters). In the 1960s she spent time on the West Coast and became

62
part of Timothy Leary’s acid heads, before joining the political activists
called the Diggers.

Memoirs Of A Beatnik (1969)

Summary: An autobiographical novel told in the first person, Mem-
oirs Of A Beatnik is based on DiPrima’s youthful experiences in the
1950s as she partied her way through the Bohemian/Beat scene.
Subtext: A semi-pornographic ‘memoir’ that secured DiPrima’s posi-
tion as a Beatnik goddess—something that her legendary orgy with
Ginsberg, Kerouac and Peter Orlovsky had already gone some way
towards doing. But, considering its 1969 release, it’s also an important
feminist statement—quite a rarity in the male-dominated Beat world.
Behind The Beat: As well as being a poet and a writer, DiPrima
played an important role in the publishing world of the Beat scene, co-
editing and producing the Floating Bear newsletter with LeRoi Jones in
the early 1960s and suffering the wrath of the censor for her troubles.
Her memoirs Recollections Of My Life As A Woman was published in
1999.
Hip Or Square?: Telling it like it really was, man. 4/5

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Although Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b.1919) was never a principal Beat

writer, he was a fervent supporter of their work. Without the help of
Ferlinghetti and his City Lights publishing/distributing facilities, the
careers of many of the Beat poets (especially Ginsberg, Corso and Sny-
der) would have been much less fruitful.
City Lights Bookstore opened in June 1953. By 1955 Ferlinghetti
had bought out his partner and had begun publishing poetry books
under the City Lights imprint. In addition to his business acumen, Fer-
linghetti was also a successful poet and it was his collection Pictures Of
The Gone World that was the first book to be published by City Lights
in 1955. Ferlinghetti’s poetry was influenced by e e cummings and, as
the years continued, was increasingly characterised by radical social
commentary. As one of the principal poets of the San Francisco Poetry
Renaissance in the 1950s, Ferlinghetti became an important spokesman
of the new counter-culture and, after publishing ‘Howl,’ vocally

63
defended the new literature against the censorship laws. The City Lights
Bookstore remains an important landmark in San Francisco to this day.

A Coney Island Of The Mind (1958)

Ferlinghetti’s poetry is always characterised by a revolutionary ideal-
ism of the pacifist, anarchist and, more recently, ecologist persuasion.
The key to his poetry is an unshakeable belief in the essential wonder of
life. While Ginsberg, Kerouac and the other East Coast Beats were
always willing to highlight the horrors of modern life (making them
‘Beat’ in terms of being ‘beaten down’), the West Coast poets held a
more dignified and optimistic view of the world (‘beatitude’). The Zen/
Buddhist studies of Ferlinghetti, Snyder, Philip Whalen and others led
them to adopt a more hopeful approach to life. Also, unlike the East
Coast Beats, Ferlinghetti and his circle were wary of the media circus
that Kerouac and Ginsberg openly courted. Ferlinghetti’s work is
remarkable because of its simple pleasures. He creates a poetry that’s
much lighter than Ginsberg’s rants. Much of the poetry in A Coney
Island Of The Mind is designed for oral readings (preferably with jazz
accompaniment) rather than the printed page. Comic, lively and slightly
surreal, Ferlinghetti’s work was also always ready to show political
commitment. His libertarian anarchist beliefs could never be silenced
for long. 3/5

Brion Gysin

Brion Gysin (1916-1986) was a painter, poet and writer who had a
profound influence on the career of William Burroughs. They first met
in Tangiers in the mid-1950s, where Gysin ran a local restaurant, the
1001 Nights, but it was only later in 1958 when they were both living in
the Beat Hotel in Paris that they became close friends and collaborators.
Gysin introduced Burroughs to various occult practices, including mir-
ror gazing, and was credited with inventing the cut-up method that Bur-
roughs used throughout the Nova trilogy and other works. In addition to
his paintings, Gysin collaborated on several books with Burroughs as
well as writing a novel, The Process (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970).

64
 Here To Go: Planet R-101 (1982)
Summary: Combining interviews with Gysin with selections from his
texts, essays, short stories and biographical material, Here To Go is the
best introduction to Gysin’s work.
Subtext: The various pieces collected together in Here To Go show
the influence of Gysin on Burroughs’ work. The subjects discussed
here—American and Russian interest in mind control, the occult,
altered states of consciousness—will be more than familiar to readers of
Burroughs’ novels. After Gysin’s death in 1986, Burroughs told Gins-
berg that Gysin was ‘the only man I ever respected. He understood
everything I’d done.’
Behind The Beat: Although he never achieved a great deal of recog-
nition as either a painter or a writer, Gysin is a pivotal figure in Bur-
roughs’ career and an important (if peripheral) member of the Beat
Generation. In Here To Go Gysin discusses his research into the
twelfth-century Muslim leader Hassan I Sabbah, the ‘Old Man of the
Mountain’ as well as the medium Eileen Garrett and the Dream
Machine (a stroboscopic device he invented to induce altered states of
consciousness).
Hip Or Square?: One of the most fascinating members of the Beat
Generation—a one-off original. 5/5

John Clellon Holmes

John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) always remained half in and half

out of the Beat circle. He spent the war years in the US Navy before
studying literature and philosophy at Columbia. After meeting Kerouac
and Ginsberg he became a regular face on the Beat party scene and was
convinced that his friends and contemporaries might well be the van-
guard of a new literary movement. But while he was intrigued by the
Beats’ love of drugs, sex and crime, he remained deeply sceptical of the
lifestyle they were adopting and their infatuation with underworld fig-
ures such as Herbert Huncke. Playing the role of observer rather than
participant, Holmes’ first book Go was based on the adventures of his
Beat friends.

65
 Go (1952)
Summary: Paul Hobbes is a struggling young writer in post-war New
York. The novel follows him through parties, bars and jazz clubs as he
battles his artistic demons and forges friendships with a group of other
would-be artists.
Subtext: Like Holmes, Hobbes is an observer. Although immersed in
the Beat Generation he always remains slightly detached, his conserva-
tive opinions making him wary of the mad excesses of his friends,
David Stofsky (Ginsberg), Gene Pasternak (Kerouac), Hart Kennedy
(Cassady) and Albert Ancke (Huncke).
Behind The Beat: Originally titled The Daybreak Boys after a nine-
teenth-century New York river gang, Go tells the story of the youthful
Beat Generation from the perspective of Holmes’ alter ego, Paul Hob-
bes. As first novels went in the 1950s, Holmes did rather well out of the
publication, receiving a $20,000 advance (much to Jack Kerouac’s
annoyance). He became one of the first commentators on the new
movement—even before they had published the work that would make
them famous. He is generally credited in accounts of the origins of the
term ‘Beat Generation’ since, according to legend, Kerouac used the
term in a throwaway fashion as he chatted to Holmes at one of the many
Beat parties. Holmes noted it in his journal for prosperity and used it as
the title for a New York Times article on his friends in 1952: ‘This Is The
Beat Generation.’
Hip Or Square?: Never quite willing to become Beat, Holmes
instead adopted the less dangerous role of the Beat Generation’s first
chronicler. 4/5

Herbert Huncke

Herbert Huncke (1915-1996) is often described as the original Beat.

A Times Square hustler whose repertoire included hustling, thieving,
drug dealing and male prostitution, Huncke was a gutter philosopher.
He was one of the principal Beat muses; an authentic vagabond who
taught the middle-class Beats the reality of life on the streets (famously,
he introduced Burroughs to heroin in the late 1940s). During the 1960s,
as the Beat and hippie ethos boomed, his writings were published.
Many of these were fragments of autobiography, stories, overheard con-
versations and observations that he had jotted down in pay toilets and

66
cafeterias while waiting for his next connection. In his later years he
lived in the Chelsea Hotel, in a room paid for by the Grateful Dead.

The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (1980)

Summary: Huncke’s autobiographical account of his childhood and
his relationship with the Beat Generation in the 1940s, 1950s and
1960s.
Subtext: To anyone who knows Huncke by reputation as a thief, liar
and all-round charlatan, his writing style comes as quite a shock. His
simple, honest style is more like a confession than an autobiography,
and to his credit he never tries to excuse or defend his actions. He is, as
a later book would ironically proclaim, Guilty Of Everything.
Behind The Beat: Part autobiography, part historical snapshot, The
Evening Sun Turned Crimson was first published by Cherry Valley Edi-
tions in 1980. The book offers one of the best insights into the early
days of the Beat Generation, with Huncke giving warts-and-all portraits
of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs. There are some great anecdotes
here: Huncke’s first meeting with Burroughs (where he takes Bur-
roughs’ trademark suit and snap-brim hat as evidence that he’s an FBI
agent); hanging out with old time junkies in Times Square; smoking
dope with the ship’s pet monkey on a sea voyage.
Hip Or Square?: The best of Huncke’s published writings, a fantastic
set of sketches that are testament to a life spent on the wrong side of the
tracks. 5/5

LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka)

LeRoi Jones (b.1934) became one of the leading African-American

poets of the early 1960s. Moving from New Jersey to Greenwich Vil-
lage in 1957, Jones began writing and set up various publishing ven-
tures including the Floating Bear newsletter that he co-edited with
Diane DiPrima. The mimeographed publication, with just 300 subscrib-
ers, became an important part of the Beat literary sphere and eventually
ran into problems with the authorities in 1961, when Jones and DiPrima
were arrested for distributing obscene material (the issue contained
Jones’ poetry and excerpts from Naked Lunch). The charges were even-
tually quashed. In 1966 Jones dropped out of white culture altogether,
converted to Islam and changed his name to Amiri Baraka. His influ-

67
ence on African-American literature—as an artist and an activist—is
extensive and he is often credited with being the Malcolm X of litera-
ture. He is one of the few African-American Beat era writers to have
received recognition within the white-dominated movement.

Preface To A Twenty-Volume Suicide Note (1961)

The poems in this collection date from the period 1957-1961 and
were written against the background of the Beats’ rise to fame and their
subsequent loss of popular appeal as they were overexposed in the
media. Jones clearly associates himself with the movement, name-drop-
ping Kerouac (in ‘In Memory Of Radio’) and dedicating other poems to
Allen (Ginsberg, one presumes) and Gary Snyder. Yet, although he is
closely linked to the Beats (his poetry’s irreverence and use of bits and
pieces of pop culture are characteristic of the beat aesthetic), Jones also
manages to step back from the movement in order to question what the
legacy of the Beats will be. In ‘Way Out West,’ dedicated to Snyder,
Jones plays with the San Francisco poets’ love of nature by offering an
urban-nature poem in which the beauty of the natural world is tinged
with hideous images of junkies, rhesus monkeys and brains being
sucked out. In ‘To A Publisher… Cut Out’ he’s more direct in his ques-
tioning, remarking we have come a long way and are uncertain which of
the masks is cool—a fitting comment on the predicament of the Beats
after the hullabaloo of media fame had burnt itself out at the end of the
1950s. 3/5

Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer (b.1923) was more a contemporary of the Beat Gen-

eration than a proper member of the group. Like his Beat friends,
Mailer’s life became more notorious than his novels. He secured news-
paper headlines in 1960 after he stabbed his second wife (he used a pen-
knife and she escaped without serious injury). Further uproar greeted
the publication of An American Dream (1965)—where the hero stran-
gles his wife to death and gets away with the murder. Throughout the
1960s Mailer continued to get his name in the papers, with a series of
bar-room brawls, arrests and a failed attempt to run for Mayor of New
York. Although his 1983 novel Ancient Evenings sold for $1 million,

68
critics have remained dubious about accepting him as the great Ameri-
can novelist that he has always wanted to be.

The White Negro (1957)

Summary: The White Negro argues that the hipster (the prototype of
the Beats) is a mid-twentieth century hero produced by the stress of the
nuclear age.
Subtext: Mailer believes African-Americans are more cool, sexual
and primal than their white counterparts.
Behind The Beat: Although Mailer makes an important distinction
between the hipsters and the Beats (claiming that the Beats are white,
middle-class wannabes), The White Negro has become one of the most
important non-fiction works about the Beat counter-culture of the
1950s. Written at the height of Beat fever in 1957, The White Negro cel-
ebrates the hipster’s love of sex, jazz and marijuana, claiming that he’s a
new kind of revolutionary, a hedonistic outlaw who is totally opposed to
white, middle-class culture. Although it is sometimes offensive—Afri-
can-American novelist James Baldwin famously complained that it was
yet another myth about black men and sex—it’s an important work
highlighting the ways in which the hipsters were experimenting with a
lifestyle that was the opposite of the nuclear family mainstream. It was,
of course, this kind of lifestyle that the Beats wanted to create for them-
selves.
Hip Or Square?: Mailer is always more square than hip, but in The
White Negro he proves that he has some idea of where the counter-cul-
ture was coming from. 4/5

Gary Snyder

One of the principal poets of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance,

Gary Snyder (b.1930) first met Ginsberg in September 1955 when the
latter arrived at Berkeley to study for an MA. After reading with his
new friend at the Six Gallery poetry event, Snyder became an integral
part of the Beat Generation, immortalised by Kerouac in The Dharma
Bums as Japhy Ryder. A learned student of Oriental literature and phi-
losophy, Snyder was deeply interested in Buddhist thought (and
planned to join a Zen monastery in Japan). His enthusiasm for Bud-
dhism encouraged Kerouac and Ginsberg’s interest in the subject. Sny-

69
der’s work includes several poetry collections—Riprap And Cold
Mountain Poems (1959), Myths And Texts (1960), The Back Country
(1968), Regarding Wave (1970)—as well as books of prose and inter-
views.

Riprap And Cold Mountain Poems (1959)

The dominant theme of this early collection is the conflict between
life in the city and life in the countryside or woods. Written after Snyder
worked in Yosemite in 1955 as a trail crew labourer, the poems in Rip-
rap are full of images taken from America’s rural landscapes: ‘Mid-
August At Sourdough Mountain Lookout,’ ‘Piute Creek,’ ‘Hay For The
Horses.’ The title of the collection refers to the man-made trail of cob-
blestones laid on mountainsides to allow horses to walk without slip-
ping. Making a path or journeying through nature was one of Snyder’s
recurring themes. Like the Transcendentalists, Snyder believed that the
experience of the natural world would allow spiritual growth—an idea
that Kerouac would adopt in The Dharma Bums. Of course, this rejec-
tion of the city was closely tied to Snyder’s Zen interests. It’s important
to note that in Riprap Japan becomes a symbol of the poet’s belief in a
society that isn’t as consumer-obsessed as America, something that
Snyder touches on in poems such as ‘Higashi Hongwanj,’ ‘Kyoto:
March’ and ‘A Stone Garden.’ The poems hope that the spiritualism of
the East might offer America salvation. It was a hope that Snyder would
develop and rework throughout his career. 3/5

Hunter S Thompson

Although Hunter S Thompson (b.1937) is a writer whose work first

found recognition after the Beat phenomenon had ended, he remains an
interesting example of how influential Beat culture was. A journalist,
novelist and all-round wild boy, Thompson’s work grows out of the
Beat obsession with experiencing life before writing about it. His sub-
jects include the Hell’s Angels, the death of the American Dream (Fear
And Loathing In Las Vegas) and the presidential elections (Fear And
Loathing: On The Campaign Trail ’72).

70
 Hell’s Angels (1966)
Summary: Written as a piece of first-hand reportage, Hell’s Angels
follows Thompson’s research into and interviews with various members
of the Hell’s Angels Motor Cycle Club. In the course of his uneasy
friendship with the bikers, he buys a Harley Davidson and joins one of
their runs.
Subtext: Thompson’s gonzo style—which he used in Hell’s Angels,
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1972) and his political writing for
Rolling Stone magazine—is best described as a form of journalism that
requires the participation of the writer in the events that he’s reporting.
As a result, Thompson always places himself in the firing line, whether
he’s riding with the Hell’s Angels or running for Sheriff to experience
the American political system. It’s a search for authentic experience that
mirrors Burroughs’ Junkie—the writer adopting a lifestyle in order to
report back to the rest of the world.
Behind The Beat: Thompson’s brave attempts to befriend the Angels
inevitably lead to a savage stomping. Although he tried to prove his
macho credentials by displaying his arsenal of shotguns, he was never
quite accepted by the greasy bikers, who knew that he was a member of
the press and guessed that he’d probably stitch them up at the first avail-
able opportunity.
Hip Or Square?: Angry, defiant and always ready to rumble, Thomp-
son takes the Beat’s love of first-hand experience to new extremes. 4/5

Alexander Trocchi

Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984) bears the remarkable distinction of

being the only Scottish Beat writer. Born in Edinburgh, Trocchi
attended Glasgow University. He lived in Paris during the early 1950s,
editing the avant-garde magazine Merlin from 1952-1955. During these
years he was involved with the early Situationists (a group of revolu-
tionary artists). In 1957 Trocchi moved to New York, where he became
part of the Beat scene. His literary works include several French-Eng-
lish translations as well as a series of pornographic books written for
Maurice Girodias’ Olympia Press: Helen And Desire, Thongs, and
White Thighs. His most influential works were Young Adam (1954) and
Cain’s Book (1961). In the 1960s Trocchi focused his energies on Proj-
ect Sigma, an underground movement that wanted to kick-start a revo-

71
lution by putting international artists in contact with one another. This
‘Invisible Insurrection,’ as one of his essays termed it, would subvert
Western society through offering free universities, new methods of pub-
lishing and (somewhat optimistically) global chain letters.

Cain’s Book (1961)

Summary: Necchi is a Scottish immigrant working as a scow captain
on the Hudson River. He is also a junkie and a writer. Cain’s Book
charts his writing of the novel while trying to keep himself in heroin.
Various incidents (shooting up with fellow junkies, fulfilling the chores
of a scow captain) merge with his drugged recollections (his childhood
in Scotland, past sexual encounters).
Subtext: Cain’s Book ranks with Burroughs’ Naked Lunch as one of
the most important novels about heroin and addiction. Its narrator (Nec-
chi) is an autobiographical creation whose drug experiences mirror
Trocchi’s own. Necchi slowly becomes Cain, the biblical character who
kills his brother and steps outside of society by breaking the rules.
Behind The Beat: Writing Cain’s Book was a torturous experience for
Trocchi. He remained an addict throughout the novel’s composition and
after he’d spent his advance on drugs, the editors at Grove Press (anx-
ious to see the novel finished) struck a deal with him. He was paid a
small contribution for each set of pages that he completed. Produced in
this piecemeal fashion, the book became even more disjointed than it
was originally destined to be. Unlike Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, Cain’s
Book doesn’t offer a fantastic portrait of the junkie’s world, but instead
a very realistic picture of addiction. In addition to this, Trocchi’s tone is
defiantly unapologetic. Cain’s Book is a nihilistic rejection of every-
thing except the artist’s own consciousness.
Hip Or Square?: An underground classic, Cain’s Book was Trocchi’s
greatest achievement. It was also the last major work he completed
before heroin finally robbed him of his creative strength. 5/5

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 6. Beats At The Movies

If the Beats hadn’t come along when they did, Hollywood would
have had to invent them. In the 1950s the studios realised that one of the
most important audiences for feature films was what is now called the
youth market. As post-war affluence spread across America, teenagers
suddenly had money in their Levis pockets and were willing (in the
words of the song) to spent their ‘Saturday Night At The Movies.’
From Elvis to the Beats, the youth craze proved to be a viable film
market—both in the sense of films for the kids and films about the kids.
The first wave of films was comprised of sensational pictures fuelled by
the media hysteria surrounding the juvenile delinquents, bikers and
junkies (The Blackboard Jungle, The Wild One, The Man With The
Golden Arm). Designed for adults and parents, these movies offered tit-
illation under the guise of addressing real social issues.
The second wave of films were designed to tap into the youth market
itself, appealing to the kids by offering them stories about their lives
and loves. Setting up a series of youth stars (most notably James Dean
and Marlon Brando) these films were designed to cash in on the kids’
own fascination with rebels and outlaws.
But the lucrative youth market didn’t just line the pockets of the stu-
dio executives. Out of it came the American independent cinema boom
of the 1960s. Roger Corman’s cheap and cheerful genre films—whose
target audience were the Beatnik kids and their hippie follow-
ers—allowed a stream of young film-makers (including such luminaries
as Nicolas Roeg and Dennis Hopper) to gain first-hand experience
working on a film set. These youngsters would later become the key
players who brought the 1960s counter-culture to the screens.

The Wild One (1954)

Crew: Director: Laslo Benedek. Producer: Stanley Kramer. Writer:

John Paxton, based on The Cyclists’ Raid by Frank Rooney. Cinematog-
rapher: Hal Mohr. Film Editor: Al Clark. Production Designer: Rudolph
Sternad.
Cast: Marlon Brando (Johnny Strabler), Lee Marvin (Chino), Mary
Murphy (Kathie Bleeker), Robert Keith (Sheriff Harry Bleeker), Jay C
Flippen (Sheriff Stew Singer).

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 Summary: Johnny is the leader of an outlaw motor gang The Black
Rebels Motorclub. Riding into a small American town the gang begin to
raise hell, upsetting the locals in the process. Johnny falls for waitress
Kathie only to discover that she’s the sheriff’s daughter. When a rival
motorcycle gang led by Chino rides into town, a fight ensues. By the
conclusion Kathie’s love saves Johnny from a life of lawlessness.
The Subtext: Brando is the epitome of Beat cool. His brooding,
moody presence is bursting at the seams with hipness, a cool insolence
that rejects every established value and symbol of authority. In the
film’s most famous line of dialogue a young girl asks Johnny what he’s
rebelling against—“Whattaya got?” comes the surly reply. Brando and
his outlaws are Beat prototypes and their dialogue is full of hip talk like
“nowhere,” “Daddy-O,” “crazy” and “squares.” They’re also based on
the outlaw motorcycle gangs of the early 1950s, the gangs who would
later evolve into the Hell’s Angels.
Behind The Beat: Banned in the UK until 1968, The Wild One is
actually a pretty tame film with little in it that’s likely to rock the fabric
of society.
Hip Or Square?: The happy ending, in which Kathie brings her man
back into the loving arms of society (and presumably makes him into
her husband, son-in-law of a policeman!) is a real drag, but Brando’s
iconic performance goes down in history as pure hip. (Incidentally,
Brando directed and starred in the only hipster western, One Eyed Jacks
(1961).) 2/5

Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Crew: Director: Nicolas Ray. Producer: David Weisbart. Writer:

Stewart Stern. Cinematographer: Ernest Haller. Film Editor: William
Ziegler. Art Director: Malcolm Bert.
Cast: James Dean (Jim Stark), Natalie Wood (Judy), Sal Mineo (John
‘Plato’ Crawford), Jim Backus (Frank Stark), Ann Doran (Mrs Stark).
Summary: Jim, a troubled young teenager, moves to a new town and
starts classes at the local high school. Ostracised by the main gang, Jim
finds friends in Judy and the shy, bullied Plato. But trouble continues to
follow him. The school bullies force him to prove himself in a series of
fights and car races with disastrous results.
The Subtext: Although it’s best described as a juvenile delinquent
film rather than a true Beat film, Rebel Without A Cause deserves a

74
mention in any survey of Beat cinema simply because so much of the
Beats’ anti-authoritarian stance grew out of the juvenile delinquent cul-
ture in early 1950s America. While most films portrayed the delin-
quents as working-class slum kids, Nicolas Ray’s film explicitly set up
Jim as a middle-class teenager. Saddled with unsympathetic parents and
challenged by his own peers, Jim only wants to find the space and free-
dom to do his own thing. Dean became a proto-Beat icon when his early
death turned him into some kind of martyr (he was never hip or cool
enough to better Brando, though, who had the Beat act down pat).
Behind The Beat: Angry, rebellious and defiant, Rebel Without A
Cause sows the seeds of Beat discontent. Best of all is Ray’s willing-
ness to question gender stereotypes—Jim is forced to be a man by his
father and his peers when all he really wants to do is drop out and sit on
the sidelines. Meanwhile, Plato’s infatuation with Jim (implicitly homo-
sexual) was particularly progressive for a mainstream 1950s movie.
Hip Or Square?: A little too earnest for its own good, but Dean’s
frustrated anger is powerfully Beat. 3/5

The Blackboard Jungle (1955)

Crew: Director: Richard Brooks. Producer: Pandro S Berman.

Writer: Richard Brooks, based on The Blackboard Jungle by Evan
Hunter. Cinematographer: Russell Harlan. Film Editor: Ferris Webster.
Art Directors: Cedric Gibbons, Randall Duell.
Cast: Glenn Ford (Richard Dadier), Anne Francis (Anne Dadier), Vic
Morrow (Artie West), Louis Calhern (Jim Murdock), Sidney Poitier
(Gregory Miller).
Summary: Richard Dadier starts teaching at a new school. He soon
discovers that there’s a major discipline problem, with a gang of delin-
quents terrorising the staff and pupils. Dadier tries his best to teach the
unruly class, reaching out to black student Gregory Miller, but after he’s
wrongly branded a racist the class turns against him.
The Subtext: Like Rebel Without A Cause (released the same year),
Richard Brooks’ film of Evan Hunter’s novel deals with the problem of
juvenile delinquents. There are striking similarities between Morrow’s
gang of switchblade-carrying hoodlums and the Beats, particularly their
jive talk and their rejection of authority (here cast as the teachers). The
gang isn’t allowed to develop beyond the usual delinquent stereotypes

75
and they are clearly labelled as dangerous and wrong by the film’s
heavy-handed moral code.
Behind The Beat: The Blackboard Jungle was a sensational attempt
to cash in on the early 1950s hysteria over the delinquents. One tagline
read: ‘I’m a teacher. My pupils are the kind you don’t turn your back on,
even in class!’ Famously, its ‘Rock Around The Clock’ soundtrack
caused uproar when the film was screened in Britain as Teddy boys
rioted in cinemas, ripping up the seats. It’s also a message movie—par-
ticularly in the way it handles the racism theme.
Hip Or Square?: A film that’s more interesting as evidence of how
Hollywood approached the youth subcultures, rather than as a film
about the delinquents or the Beats. 2/5

Pull My Daisy (1959)

Crew: Directors/ Producers: Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie. Writer:

Jack Kerouac. Cinematographer: Robert Frank. Film Editors: Leon
Prochnick, Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie.
Cast: Allen Ginsberg (Himself), Jack Kerouac (Narrator), Larry Riv-
ers (Milo), Gregory Corso (Himself).
Summary: Milo, a railroad brakeman, lives with his wife and son in a
Manhattan apartment. Two poets arrive at the apartment and wait for
Milo’s return. They smoke a joint and argue about poetry. Milo returns
from work and tells them that he’s expecting a guest, a Bishop. The
Bishop arrives with his mother and sister and they talk to the assembled
company. The poets berate the Bishop about what is holy—“Are alliga-
tors holy? Is baseball holy?”—until he leaves.
The Subtext: Generally regarded as the first Beat film, Pull My Daisy
contains all the classic elements of Beat art. The film’s style is improvi-
sational, both in terms of the acting and the way it’s shot. The theme is
pure Beat—the poets challenge a figure of authority and respectable
middle-class values.
Behind The Beat: The incident of the Bishop and his family was (as
is so often the case with the Beats) drawn from a real-life discussion
between Kerouac, Ginsberg and a Bishop that took place at the Cas-
sady’s house in the mid-1950s. Kerouac used the incident as the focus
of a play, entitled The Beat Generation Or The New Amaraean Church
and it was this drama that became the source of the film script. After
discovering that The Beat Generation had already been registered by

76
MGM as a film title, the film-makers took Pull My Daisy from one of
Ginsberg’s poems (one critic, John G Handartd, has suggested that ‘pull
my daisy’ refers to taking off a stripper’s G string).
Hip Or Square?: The most ‘beat’ of all Beat films, Pull My Daisy is
an obscure treat. 5/5

Shadows (1959)

Crew: Director/Writer: John Cassavetes. Producer: Maurice McEn-

dree. Cinematographer: Erich Kollmar. Film Editors: Len Appleson,
Maurice McEndree. Production Designers: Randy Liles, Bob Reeh.
Cast: Lelia Goldoni (Lelia), Ben Carruthers (Ben), Hugh Hurd
(Hugh), Anthony Ray (Tony), Dennis Sallas (Dennis).
Summary: Hugh is an African-American jazz musician. His younger
brother Ben spends most of his time hanging out with his white, Beatnik
friends. Meanwhile various young men are courting their sister Lelia.
The film follows these three characters through their daily lives in New
York.
The Subtext: The most striking thing about Shadows is its racial
theme. While Ben is clearly African-American, his brother and sister
have a light-skinned complexion that allows them to pass as white. The
main focus of this passing is Lelia, who has a one-night stand with a
white man. After he discovers that her family is black he’s so shocked
(and so bigoted) that he unceremoniously dumps her.
Behind The Beat: On the strength of Shadows, Cassavetes is gener-
ally regarded as the father of American independent cinema. Predating
the New York Underground film revolution of Andy Warhol and others,
Shadows is caught between the Beat Generation and the 1960s counter-
culture. Released in 1959 on a double bill with Pull My Daisy, the film
won instant critical acclaim. While Pull My Daisy has a limited
focus—never straying from the apartment meeting between the poets
and the Bishop—Shadows is much wider in scope, following its Beat-
nik characters across a New York world of bars, jazz clubs and parties.
Although history has proved that Cassavetes’ claim that the whole film
was improvised—“If we had had a writer we would have used a
script”—was rather exaggerated, the film does possess an edgy, rough-
and-ready quality that’s in keeping with an improvisational piece.

77
 Hip Or Square?: Challenging, independent and full of a very per-
sonal vision of life and relationships, Shadows is a major film in the
Beat cinema canon. 4/5

The Beat Generation (1959, aka This Rebel Age)

Crew: Director: Charles F Haas. Producer: Albert Zugsmith. Writers:

Richard Matheson, Lewis Meltzer. Cinematographer: Walter H Castle.
Cast: Steve Cochran (Detective Dave Culloran), Mamie Van Doren
(Georgia Altera), Ray Danton (Stan Hess), Fay Spain (Francee Cul-
loran), Maggie Hayes (Joyce Freenfield).
Summary: A serial rapist dubbed The Aspirin Kid is terrorising New
York. Detective Dave Culloran tracks him through the coffee houses of
Greenwich Village, giving us a glimpse of the lives and loves of the
Beatnik kids.
The Subtext: The Beat Generation was a B-movie piece of exploita-
tion film-making that wore its cash-in credentials on its sleeve. The
original tagline for the picture read: ‘The wild, weird, world of the Beat-
niks! Sullen rebels, defiant chicks, searching for a life of their own! The
pads... the jazz... the dives... those frantic ‘way-out’ parties... beyond
belief.’ Combining shocking footage of a gang of Beatniks at play, with
a salacious story about a serial rapist (what exactly is the connection
there?), The Beat Generation’s target audience were middle-aged men
who had read about the Beatnik phenomenon in the New York Times and
wanted to catch a glimpse of the sex and drugs lifestyle. Pure titillation,
with Mamie Van Doren (the 1950s answer to Pamela Anderson) squeez-
ing into a series of tight sweaters.
Behind The Beat: One of a series of cash-in B-movies starring Beat-
niks (others include Bucket Of Blood (1959), The Rebel Set (aka Beats-
ville, 1959) and Beat Girl (1959)). It’s good trashy fun, though it should
be remembered that it was films like this that sounded the death knell of
the Beatniks as a counter-culture, sucking them into the mainstream of
late-50s America. Movie trivia fans may be interested in the supporting
cast, which includes Louis Armstrong (as himself) and cult horror babe
Vampira (as a Beatnik poet). There are also roles for James Mitchum
(son of Robert) and Charles Chaplin Jr. (son of, well … guess who).
Hip Or Square?: Definitely squaresville, Daddy-O, but unintention-
ally hilarious. 1/5

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 Bucket Of Blood (1959)

Crew: Director/Producer: Roger Corman. Writer: Charles B Griffith.

Cinematographer: Jacques R Marquette. Film Editor: Anthony Carras.
Art Director: Daniel Haller.
Cast: Dick Miller (Walter Paisley), Barboura Morris (Carla),
Anthony Carbone (Leonard DiSanso), Julian Burton (Maxwell Brock),
Ed Nelson (Art Lacroix).
Summary: Nerdy waiter Walter wants to be as successful as the
Bohemian clientele who patronise the café where he works. After acci-
dentally killing his landlady’s cat, Walter covers the evidence in plaster.
But when the mummified cat is found, Walter’s hailed as a talented
sculptor. Finally popular and famous, Walter’s desperate to keep the in-
crowd happy and so does some more sculpting—only this time of
humans.
The Subtext: Building on the B-movie trash of The Beat Generation,
Corman’s cheapo horror comedy reworks the Beatniks for the drive-in
audience. There’s a half-baked message about the vagaries of fame hid-
den in there somewhere—particularly apt since 1959 was the beginning
of the end for Kerouac and friends as media darlings.
Behind The Beat: Admittedly, Beat culture is just another excuse for
Corman to put a few Bohemians on screen, but at least Bucket Of Blood
has the decency to be entertaining. Corman was the master of the low-
budget genre flick and this horror comedy is one of his best efforts. It
was reputedly shot over just five days and came in so far under budget
that Corman had enough money to embark on the ultra-low budget The
Little Shop Of Horrors (1960). Griffith’ s script does a god job of paro-
dying the Beats (with Allen Ginsberg suffering the brunt of the satire)
and exaggerates the Beat slang jive talk into complete and utter non-
sense.
Hip Or Square?: Jokily affectionate rather than spiteful, Corman’s
film is the best of the B-movie cash-ins. 3/5

The Subterraneans (1960)

Crew: Director: Ranald MacDougall. Producer: Arthur Freed.

Writer: Robert Thom, based on The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac.
Cinematographer: Joseph Ruttenberg. Film Editor: Ben Lewis. Produc-
tion Designers: George W Davis, Urie McCleary.

79
 Cast: George Peppard (Leo Percepied), Leslie Caron (Mardou Fox),
Janice Rule (Roxanne), Roddy MacDowall (Yuri Gilgoric), Anne Sey-
mour (Charlotte Percepied).
Summary: Leo Percepied is a San Francisco Bohemian who has an
tumultuous affair with French girl, Mardou.
The Subtext: An insight into the Beatnik world, a love story, or just
another sign of how overexposed the Beats had become by the early
1960s? At best The Subterraneans can be described as a mainstream
exploitation picture—‘From the book by Jack Kerouac that shocked
America’ read the taglines—with a colourful Beatnik scene made up of
bongo players with goatees, several pretty girls and a few real-life jazz
musicians (Art Pepper and Art Farmer) making cameos in a failed
attempt to lend some credibility to the Bohemian backdrop.
Behind The Beat: The film venture that Kerouac hoped would mark
his emergence as a literary star of the first order turned out to be a dis-
mal mess. Ripping Kerouac’s novel to shreds, Robert Thom’s screen-
play replaces black love interest Mardou with white girl Caron (who is
supposed to be French—perhaps the film-makers thought that was a
daring enough cross-cultural relationship for clean-cut Peppard to be
involved in). Losing sight of the whole point of the novel—i.e. the race
theme—MacDougall serves up a half-baked picture that’s little better
than B-movie cash-ins like The Beat Generation. Peppard makes a poor
Jack Kerouac and ambles along without much conviction. After The
Subterraneans he starred in another toothless literary adaptation, Break-
fast At Tiffany’s where the novel’s gay plot was shelved in favour of
romance between Peppard and Hepburn’s characters.
Hip Or Square?: Proof that Hollywood is not the place for literary
classics. 1/5

Thee Films: Towers Open Fire (1963),

The Cut-Ups (1967), Bill And Tony And Others (1972)

Crew: Director/Cinematographer: Antony Balch. Writer: William

Burroughs.
Summary: In Towers Open Fire, the best of the short films, Bur-
roughs stars as a resistance fighter. Armed with a Ping-Pong ball gun he
battles the forces of Control, storming the Reality Studio. In The Cut-
Ups, Balch applies Burroughs’ literary techniques to film, scenes are
cut together randomly, with a voice-over that is equally fragmented:

80
“Hello—Yes—Hello—Does it seem to be persisting?” Burroughs stars
in much of the footage (playing a doctor examining a teenage boy, wan-
dering the city, on the subway) and the final reels were given to an edi-
tor who randomly cut and spliced each foot of film together (thereby
removing artistic or narrative coherence). Bill And Tony And Others
(aka Who’s Who) has Burroughs and Gysin reading from a Scientology
text and the script of Tod Browning’s cult film Freaks (1932). The orig-
inal plan was to use the film in a live performance where the footage of
Burroughs would be projected onto Gysin’s face and that of Gysin onto
Burroughs’ face.
Subtext: Influenced by the cut-up method that Burroughs and Gysin
had been experimenting with during the 1960s, the films are the cine-
matic cousins of Burroughs’ Nova trilogy.
Behind The Beat: These films were the result of the collaboration
between Antony Balch, Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville
during the years 1962-1970. Rescued from destruction by Genesis P-
Orridge in the 1980s, the footage is now collected together (along with
other shorter pieces like William Buys A Parrot and Ghosts At No. 9)
under the title Thee Films. At the time of their release the films were
shown in just a couple of London cinemas, with Balch only managing
to get a two-week run for The Cut-Ups. Many audiences reacted badly
to the disorientating footage—often demanding refunds. Also there was
a bizarrely high quantity of bags, coats and umbrellas left in the audito-
rium after each screening.
Hip Or Square?: Weird, wonderful and difficult viewing—much like
Burroughs’ novels of the period. 5/5

Chappaqua (1966)

Crew: Director/Producer/Writer: Conrad Rooks. Cinematographer:

Robert Franks. Film Editors: Kenout Pettier, Cécile Decugis. Art Direc-
tor: Régis Pagniez.
Cast: Conrad Rooks (Russel Harwick), Jean-Louis Barrault (Doctor
Benoît), William S Burroughs (Opium Jones), Allen Ginsberg (Mes-
siah), Paula Pritchett (The Water Woman).
Summary: Alcoholic junkie Russel Harwick leaves New York to
undergo withdrawal treatment at a sanatorium in France. At the château
he meets Doctor Benoît and the sinister figure Opium Jones (the person-
ification of his addiction to heroin, and a character familiar from Bur-

81
roughs’ fiction). A hallucinatory period of withdrawal nightmares
ensue, which include reworkings of the St Valentine’s Day Massacre
(with Rooks and Burroughs shooting Tommy guns) and several bizarre
encounters with imaginary figures. Eventually Harwick’s treatment
ends and he leaves in a helicopter. But as he departs he sees himself
standing on the balcony of the château, waving goodbye.
The Subtext: The story owes much to Burroughs’ fiction, in particu-
lar Burroughs treatment of drug addiction in Naked Lunch. But Rooks
acknowledges the debt.
Behind The Beat: Although Chappaqua is a defiantly personal story
of addiction, Rooks ensured the film cult Beat status by convincing
Burroughs and Ginsberg to appear in it. Ian Sommerville, who had
worked with Burroughs on his cut-ups sound recordings and on the
Anthony Balch films, played a role in the film’s sound production.
Rooks was one of the many film-makers who considered the possibility
of making a film of Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch in the 1960s. When
this project never transpired he turned his attention to Chappaqua’s
autobiographical tale of addiction and enlightenment. The original print
of the film was acquired by Universal who offered to distribute it, but
then let it fall by the wayside in favour of other projects.
Hip Or Square?: Frequently dismissed as little more than a flaccid
drug movie, Rooks scores unlimited Beatnik points by convincing Bur-
roughs to play such a fantastic role. 3/5

Heart Beat (1979)

Crew: Director: John Byrum. Producers: Alan Greisman, Micheal

Shamberg. Writer: John Byrum, based on the autobiography by Carolyn
Cassady. Cinematographer: Laszlo Kovacs. Production Designer: Jack
Fisk.
Cast: Nick Nolte (Neal Cassady), Sissy Spacek (Carolyn Cassady),
John Heard (Jack Kerouac), Ray Sharkey (Ira).
Summary: The film follows the relationship between the Cassady
family and Jack Kerouac during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Subtext: Although melodramatic in tone, Heart Beat is a fairly faith-
ful adaptation of Carolyn Cassady’s memoir Heat Beat (that would later
become the basis of her book Off The Road).
Behind The Beat: Allen Ginsberg is present in Heart Beat but is
named Ira since the poet objected to the way he was portrayed in the

82
film. During the period covered by the film Kerouac and the Cassadys
had a ménage à trois, with both men sharing Carolyn Cassady (at first
this was at Neal’s instigation but it later began to make him jealous).
Despite their great affection for one another (and their shared bisexual-
ity) Neal and Jack never developed their own relationship any further
than being just good friends—a fact that had more to do with Kerouac’s
reservations than Neal’s.
Hip Or Square?: A better stab at approaching the Beats than the ear-
lier The Subterraneans, Heart Beat is a respectable, rather than success-
ful, attempt to translate Beat lives onto the screen. 2/5

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

Crew: Director: Gus Van Sant. Producers: Nick Wechsler, Karen

Murphy. Writers: Gus Van Sant, Daniel Yost. Cinematographer: Robert
Yeoman. Film Editors: Curtis Clayton, Mary Bauer. Production
Designer: David Brisbin.
Cast: Matt Dillon (Bob), Kelly Lynch (Diane), James Le Gros
(Rick), Heather Graham (Nadine), Max Perlich (David). William S Bur-
roughs (Father Murphy).
Summary: Bob and his gang are junkies who support their habit by
robbing drugstores. Hassled by the law and quickly running out of phar-
macies to rob, they skip town. After the youngest member of the gang
overdoses, Bob decides to get straight and checks into a detox hostel
where he meets an old-time junky priest, Father Murphy. But Bob’s past
catches up with him.
The Subtext: Gus Van Sant’s drugs film is less preachy than most of
the Just Say No scare films about the dangers of addiction. Refusing to
moralise, Van Sant maintains a neutral position as his characters play
out their roles.
Behind The Beat: Van Sant collaborated with Burroughs during the
late 1980s and early 1990s, producing a student film called The Disci-
pline Of D.E. (based on a short story in Exterminator!) and filming Bur-
roughs in Thanksgiving Prayer (1991). In Drugstore Cowboy, Father
Murphy bears a striking resemblance to the main character in Bur-
roughs’ short story ‘The Priest They Called Him.’ Burroughs and his
secretary James Grauerholz rewrote the original scenes for Father Mur-
phy with this character in mind. As a result, Murphy becomes the film’s
conscience, adding gravitas to the film and taking a radical view on the

83
US drug policy: “Drugs have been systematically scapegoated and
demonised in this country.”
Hip Or Square?: Burroughs’ cameo performance as Father Murphy
makes what would have been a good film into a great film. 4/5

Naked Lunch (1991)

Crew: Director: David Cronenberg. Producer: Jeremy Thomas.

Writer: David Cronenberg, based on Naked Lunch by William S Bur-
roughs. Cinematographer: Peter Suschitzky. Film Editor: Ron Sanders.
Production Designer: Carol Spier.
Cast: Peter Weller (William Lee), Judy Davis (Joan Lee/Joan Frost),
Ian Holm (Tom Frost), Julian Sands (Yves Cloquet), Roy Schieder
(Doctor Benway).
Summary: The year is 1953. William Lee is working in New York as
a pest exterminator. His wife Joan becomes addicted to the bug powder
that he uses in his work. A giant talking bug recruits Lee for some
obscure espionage operation. After shooting Joan, Lee escapes to Inter-
zone (an imaginary Tangiers) and begins to write Naked Lunch. Lee
finds himself embroiled in a bizarre conspiracy, manipulated by forces
out of his control.
The Subtext: Lee’s confusion is part sexual and part artistic. Cronen-
berg presents the story as Lee’s coming out as both a gay man and a
novelist. In imitation of the nightmarish universe of Burroughs’ novel,
Lee is manipulated by alien forces, addicted to non-existent drugs (the
black meat) and compelled to shoot Joan over and over again (actress
Judy Davis plays two characters, both of whom are shot in the forehead
by Lee).
Behind The Beat: Since its publication numerous Hollywood players
had expressed an interest in the book (even, briefly, Mick Jagger), but
no one had ever got past the discussion stage. David Cronenberg was
probably the only director who could have tackled Burroughs’ infa-
mously unfilmable novel. His interest in body horror was heavily influ-
enced by Burroughs’ work. Cronenberg’s master stroke was in realising
that the novel couldn’t be taken on its own terms. Blending the novel
with fragments of Burroughs’ biography, he creates a loose adaptation
of the novel that, while different in plot and action, captures the book’s
themes of addiction and control.

84
 Hip Or Square?: Although excising most of Lee/Burroughs’ homo-
sexuality (an important theme in the novel), Cronenberg achieves what
no one else could have—a successful translation of Burroughs’ phantas-
magoria. 4/5

Miscellaneous Films

As such acclaimed literary luminaries, the Beats found their antics

preserved on film and video cameras (indeed, they were positioned as
one of the first literary movements to benefit from the mass media of
cinema and television). Among the many documentaries and minor
films that are centred on or include the Beats the following stand out as
particularly interesting:

William Burroughs: The Movie (Howard Brookner, 1983) a series of

interviews and archive footage of the author that includes rare footage
of Burroughs’ alcoholic son Billy, who died during the film’s produc-
tion in 1981.
Commissioner Of Sewers (Klaus Maeck, 1986) combines interviews
with performance footage of some of Burroughs’ mid-1980s readings.
What Happened To Kerouac? (Richard Lerner, 1985) is a series of testi-
monials and recollections about Kerouac from various Beat voices
(Burroughs, Corso, Edie Parker, Ginsberg, Snyder) that also includes
footage of Kerouac’s television appearances.
Cain’s Film (Jamie Wadhawan, 1969) is a biography of Alexander Troc-
chi and the story of how Cain’s Book fell foul of the censors.
Wholly Communion (Peter Whitehead, 1965) is a rarely seen documen-
tary filmed during the International Poetry Incarnation at the Albert
Hall where Trocchi acted as Master of Ceremonies and poets such as
Corso, Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (as well as many others)
performed.
The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg (Jerry Aronson, 1986) is a biogra-
phy of the Beat poet laureate with recollections from Burroughs, Nor-
man Mailer, Abbie Hoffman and others.

85
 7. Resource Materials

Books By The Beats

Algren, Nelson, The Man With The Golden Arm (New York: Doubleday,
1949).
Burroughs, William S, The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (London:
John Calder, 1985).
Ah Pook Is Here And Other Texts (London: John Calder, 1979).
Ali’s Smile/Naked Scientology (Bonn: Expanded Media Editions,
1972).
The Burroughs File (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1984).
The Cat Inside (1986. Revised edition, London: Viking, 1992).
Cities Of The Red Night (London: John Calder, 1981).
Exterminator! (1973. London: Calder and Boyars, 1974).
Ghost Of Chance (1991. London and New York: Serpent’s Tail,
1995).
Interzone, ed. James Grauerholz (New York: Viking, 1989).
Junkie (1953. Revised edition retitled Junky, London and New York:
Penguin, 1977).
The Letters Of William S Burroughs 1945—1959, ed. Oliver Harris
(London: Picador, 1993).
My Education: A Book Of Dreams (London: Picador, 1995).
Naked Lunch (Paris: Olympia Press, 1959).
Nova Express (1964. New York: Grove Press, 1992).
The Place Of Dead Roads (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1984).
Port Of Saints (1973. Berkeley: Blue Wind Press, 1980).
Queer (New York: Viking, 1985).
The Soft Machine (1961. Second revised edition, 1966. Third revised
edition, London: Calder and Boyars, 1968).
The Ticket That Exploded (1962. Revised edition, New York: Grove
Press, 1967).
The Western Lands (New York: Viking, 1988).
The Wild Boys: A Book Of The Dead (New York: Grove Press, 1971).
A William S Burroughs Reader, ed. John Calder (London: Picador,
1982).
Word Virus: The William S Burroughs Reader, ed. James Grauerholz
and Ira Silverberg (New York: Grove Press, 1998).

86
Cassady, Carolyn, Heart Beat: My Life With Jack And Neal (New York:
Pocket Books, 1976).
Off The Road: Twenty Years With Cassady, Kerouac And Ginsberg
(London: Black Spring, 1990).
Cassady, Neal, The First Third (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1974).
Corso, Gregory, Gasoline (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1958).
DiPrima, Diane, Memoirs Of A Beatnik (New York: Olympia, 1969).
DiPrima, Diane and Jones, LeRoi eds., The Floating Bear: A Newsletter
1961-1969 (La Jolla, California: Laurence McGivlery, 1973).
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, A Coney Island Of The Mind (San Francisco:
New Directions, 1958).
Ginsberg, Allen, with Neal Cassady As Ever, The Collected Correspon-
dence (Berkeley: Creative Arts, 1977).
Ankor Wat (London: Fulcrum, 1968).
Collected Poems 1947-1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1994).
Death & Fame: Last Poems 1993-1997 (New York: Harper Fla-
mingo, 1999).
Empty Mirror: Early Poems (New York: Totem/Corinth, 1961).
The Gates Of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948-1951 (Bolinas: Grey Fox,
1972).
Howl And Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights, 1956).
Indian Journals (San Francisco: City Lights, 1970).
Journals, Early Fifties, Early Sixties (New York: Grove Press, 1977).
Journals, Mid Fifties 1951-1958 (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).
Kaddish And Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights, 1961).
Poems All Over The Place, Mostly Seventies (Cherry Valley: Cherry
Valley Editions, 1978).
Planet News (San Francisco: City Lights, 1968).
Plutonium Ode (San Francisco: City Lights, 1982).
Reality Sandwiches (San Francisco: City Lights, 1963).
Gysin, Brion with Terry Wilson, Here To Go: Planet R-101 (San Fran-
cisco: Research Publications, 1982).
Holmes, John C, Go (New York: American Library, 1980).
Huncke, Herbert, The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (Cherry Valley, NY:
Cherry Valley, 1980).
The Herbert Huncke Reader, ed. Benjamin G Shafer (New York: Wil-
liam Morrow, 1997).
Kerouac, Jack, Big Sur (New York: Bantam, 1963).
The Book Of Dreams (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1961).

87
 Desolation Angels (1965. London: Granada, 1972).
The Dharma Bums (New York: Viking, 1958).
Doctor Sax (New York: Grove, 1959).
Lonesome Traveler (1960. London: Andre Deutsch, 1962).
Maggie Cassidy (New York: Avon Books, 1959).
Mexico City Blues (New York: Grove, 1959).
On The Road (New York: Viking, 1957).
Pic (New York: Grove, 1971).
Sartori In Paris (New York: Grove, 1966).
The Subterraneans (New York: Grove, 1958).
The Town And The City (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1950).
Tristessa (New York: Avon, 1960).
Vanity Of Duluoz (New York: Paragon, 1979).
Visions Of Cody (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973).
Visions Of Gerard (New York: Farrar, Straus and Co, 1963).
Jones, LeRoi (aka Amiri Baraka), Preface To A Twenty-Volume Suicide
Note (New York: Totem Press, 1961).
Mailer, Norman, The White Negro: Superficial Reflections On The Hip-
ster (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1957).
Snyder, Gary, Riprap And Cold Mountain Poems (San Francisco: Origin
Press, 1959).
Thompson, Hunter S, Hell’s Angels (1966. London: Penguin, 1967).
Trocchi, Alexander, Cain’s Book (New York: Grove, 1960).
Young Adam (Paris: Olympia Press,1954).
Helen And Desire (Paris: Olympia Press, 1954).

Books About The Beats

Amburn, Ellis, Subterranean Kerouac (New York: St Martins, 1998).
Ash, Mel, Beat Spirit: The Way Of The Beat Writers As A Living Experi-
ence (New York: Putnam, 1997).
Berlowitz, Leslie and Beard, Rick, Greenwich Village: Culture And
Counterculture (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press, 1991).
Black, Jack, You Can’t Win (1927. New York: Amok Press, 1988).
Campbell, Allan and Niel, Tim, A Life In Pieces: Reflections On Alexan-
der Trocchi (Edinburgh: Rebel Inc, 1997).
Campbell, James, Paris Interzone (London: Secker & Warburg, 1994).
Campbell, James, This Is The Beat Generation (London: Random
House, 1999).

88
Charters, Ann, ed., Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters (New York: Viking,
1995).
Charters, Ann, Kerouac (New York: Warner, 1973).
Charters, Ann, ed., The Penguin Book Of The Beats (London and New
York: Penguin, 1992).
Cook, Bruce, The Beat Generation (New York: Scribners, 1971).
Ehrlich, JW, ed., Howl Of The Censor (San Carlos, California: Nourse
Publishing, 1961).
Feldman, Gene and Max Gartenberg, eds., The Beat Generation And The
Angry Young Men (New York: The Citadel Press, 1958).
Felver, Christopher, Ferlinghetti Portrait (Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1998).
George-Warren, Holly, ed., The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats: The
Beat Generation And The Counterculture (London: Bloomsbury,
1999).
Gifford, Barry and Lee Lawrence, Jack’s Book (New York: St Martins,
1978).
Green, Martin, ed., A Kind Of Beatness: Photographs Of A North Beach
Area 1950-1965 (San Francisco: Focus Gallery, 1975).
Halper, Jon, ed., Gary Snyder: Dimensions Of A Life (San Francisco:
Sierra Club Books, 1991).
Hickey, Morgen, The Bohemian Register: An Annotated Bibliography Of
The Beat Movement (Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press,
1990).
Honan, Park, The Beats (London: JM Dent, 1987).
Hunt, Tim, Kerouac’s Crooked Road (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon
Books, 1981).
Kherdian, David, ed., Beat Voices: An Anthology Of Beat Poetry (New
York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995).
Knight, Brenda, Women Of The Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists
And Muses At The Heart Of A Generation (Berkeley: Conari Press,
1996).
Kramer, Jane, Allen Ginsberg In America (New York: Random House,
1969).
Krim, Seymour, ed., The Beats (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publi-
cations, 1960).
Lee, Robert, ed., The Beat Generation Writers (London: Pluto, 1996).
McDarrah, Fred W and Gloria S, Beat Generation: Glory Days In
Greenwich Village (New York: Schirmer Books, 1996).

89
McDarrah, Fred W, Kerouac & Friends: A Beat Generation Album
(New York: William Morrow and Company, 1985).
McNally, Dennis, Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation
And America (New York: Random House, 1979).
Merrill, Robert, Norman Mailer Revisited (New York: Twayne, 1992).
Miles, Barry, Ginsberg: A Biography (1989. Revised edition, London:
Virgin, 2000).
William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible (London: Virgin, 1992).
Molesworth, Charles, Gary Snyder’s Vision: Poetry And The Real Work
(Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1983).
Morgan, Ted, Literary Outlaw: The Life And Times Of William S Bur-
roughs (New York: Henry Holt, 1988).
Nicosia, Gerald, Memory Babe: A Critical Biography Of Jack Kerouac
(New York: Grove, 1983).
Peabody, Richard, ed., A Different Beat: Writings By Women Of The
Beat Generation (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1997).
Phillips, Lisa, ed., Beat Culture And The New America: 1950-1965 (New
York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1995).
Plummer, William, The Holy Goof: A Biography Of Neal Cassady (New
York: Marlowe and Co, 1994).
Polsky, Ned, Hustlers, Beats And Others (London: Chivers Penguin,
1967).
Rosset, Barney, ed., Evergreen Review Reader 1957-1966 (New York:
Blue Moon Books, 1993).
Roszak, Theodore, The Making Of A Counter Culture (New York: Dou-
bleday, 1969).
Runan, Stephen, Disk Of The Gone World: An Annotated Discography
Of The Beat Generation (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1999).
Russell, Jamie, Queer Burroughs (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
Sargeant, Jack, Naked Lens, Beat Cinema (London: Creation, 1997).
Shumacher, Michael, Dharma Lion: A Biography Of Allen Ginsberg
(New York: St Martins, 1992).
Silverberg, Ira, ed., Everything Is Permitted: The Making Of ‘Naked
Lunch’ (London: Granta, 1992).
Sitney, P Adams, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943-
1978 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974).
Skerl, Jennie and Robin Lydenberg, eds., William S Burroughs At The
Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989 (Carbondale and Edwardsville:
Southern Illinois University, 1991).

90
Smith, Larry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet At Large (Carbondale and
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983).
Stephenson, Gregory, The Daybreak Boys: Essays On The Literature Of
The Beat Generation (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1990).
Sterrit, David, Mad To Be Saved: The Beats, The ’50s And Film (Car-
bondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998).
Tonkinson, Carole, ed., Big Sky Mind: Buddhism And The Beat Genera-
tion (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995).
Turner, Steve, Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster (New York: Viking
Penguin, 1996).
Tytell, John, Naked Angels: The Lives And Literature Of The Beat Gen-
eration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976).
Watson, Steven, The Birth Of The Beat Generation (New York: Pan-
theon, 1995).
Weinreich, Regina, The Spontaneous Poetics Of Jack Kerouac (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University, 1987).
Woodward, Komozi, A Nation Within A Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi
Jones) And Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill and London: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 1999).

Films By And About The Beat Generation

The Beat Generation (aka This Rebel Age) (1959) Not currently avail-
able on video or DVD
The Blackboard Jungle (1955) PAL format video, S050895
Bucket of Blood (1959) PAL format video, 21224S
Cain’s Film (1969) Not currently available on video or DVD
Commissioner Of Sewers (1986) PAL format video, MJ015
Chappaqua (1966) PAL format video, TVT1236
Drugstore Cowboy (1989) PAL format video, 02945S
Heart Beat (1979) PAL format video, PEV72012
The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg (1986) PAL format video, MJ022
Naked Lunch (1991) PAL format video, VA30567. PAL format video,
Widescreen, VA30298
Pull My Daisy (1959) Not currently available on video or DVD
Rebel Without A Cause (1955) PAL video format, S001011. PAL video
format, Widescreen, S013913. Region 2 DVD, D014069
Shadows (1959) PAL format video, 2ND1064
The Subterraneans (1960) Not currently available on video or DVD

91
Thee Films 1950s-1960s PAL format video, TOPTV002
What Happened To Kerouac? (1985) Not currently available on video or
DVD
Wholly Communion (1965) Not currently available on video or DVD
The Wild One (1954) PAL format video, CC7635. Region 2 DVD,
CDR90848
William Burroughs: The Movie (1983) Not currently available on video
or DVD

Magazines

BeatScene. A hip magazine devoted to all aspects of Beat lives and art.
Back issues and subscriptions are available from their Website http//
www.beatscene.freeserve.co.uk or from 27 Court Leet, Binley
Woods, Near Coventry, Warwickshire, CV23 2JQ. Email: kev@beat-
scene.freeserve.co.uk
The Kerouac Connection. A literary journal devoted to the life and
works of Jack Kerouac and the other members of the Beat Genera-
tion. Running for over 15 years, The Kerouac Connection is one of
the best literary journals on the movement. Their Website is at http://
www.angelfire.com/ca2/kerouacconnection. Contact: kerocon-
[email protected] or PO BOX 7250, Menlo Park, CA, 94026-7250.

Webpages

Beat Generation Resources. A useful starting place, offering links to a

variety of Beat-flavoured Internet sites. http://www.connectotel.com/
marcus/beatfaq.html
The Beat Museum is an excellent online resource, full of art, photo-
graphs and extracts from Beat writers. http://www.beatmuseum.org/
The Beat Page is a professional-looking resource with plenty of photos
and information. The main focus is on novels and poetry, with indi-
vidual pages given to each of the main Beat writers. http://www.rook-
net.com/beatpage/
Literary Kicks has been running since July 1994 and is still one of the
best Beat sites around. It focuses on four main areas: the Beats; the
Bohemians; the Transcendentalists; and the 1960s Counter-culture. A
wealth of material for any Beatnik fan. http://www.litkicks.com

92
93
 The Essential Library: Best-Sellers
Build up your library with new titles every month

Woody Allen (Revised & Updated Edition) by Martin Fitzgerald, £3.99

Woody Allen: Neurotic. Jewish. Funny. Inept. Loser. A man with problems. Or so
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94
 The Essential Library: Recent Releases
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95
 The Essential Library: Currently Available
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96