Lost, Beat and hip

THEIR words were incoherent, drunken, dizzying, controversial, irreverent, funny, misogynistic, and even tender- coined by founding father Jack Kerouac, they were the Beats. Like the French Impressionists, the Beats were a close-knitted group of friends first, and a movement later- Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady and Herbert Huncke. But the term later extended to intersecting groups of post-World War II American writers.

Additionally, various groups attached themselves to the Beats- wannabe bohemians, hangers-on, second-generation Beats. According to the spirit of the movement they were all disillusioned young people struggling to redefine themselves by discovering sexual and political liberation. None in our generation could have been alive to experience the Beat generation. They label us as, 'Generation X', 'Gen Y', or whatever else, but the Beat generation was something of a new kind of faith. Beat was not just about a common aesthetic. It was a lifestyle, a state of mind.

Given the time of its occurrence, amongst other irrelevant similarities, many would pigeonhole the Beat Movement along with the hippies. But while the hippies had their happy colours, everything was in black and white for the Beat Generation. Colour movies were rare, while colour televisions had not been invented yet. They had their marijuana but didn't get psychedelic drugs until the very end of the 50s. But one thing they did have was jazz. The Beats loved jazz. They used this music as a backdrop to their poetry, creating possibly the first ever multimedia. This left influences even felt today (read: Tom Waits).

To understand the Beats, if that is possible, one has to look at the first small group. The term 'Beat Generation' gradually came to represent an entire period in time, but the entire original Beat Generation in literature was small. Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady met around the neighbourhood surrounding Columbia University in uptown Manhattan in the early 40s, adding to the group Corso from Greenwich Village, and Huncke hanging around Times Square. They then migrated to San Francisco where the group really expanded, and added some much needed diversity to what was still not a movement yet.

Most of this initial group of Beats struggled for years to get published; it is inspiring today, with the advent of such widespread media, to learn how they managed to keep each other from giving up hope and giving up writing, when it was almost apparent that their works would never be understood; acceptance wasn't really big with the Beats. At its core the Beats, as mentioned already, were a closely-knit group of friends writing poetry together and helping each other hone his craft, not a movement. However, their moment of fame began with a legendary poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The term 'beat' was still not birthed.

The phrase "Beat Generation" was invented by Jack Kerouac in 1948. The phrase was introduced to the general public in 1952 when Kerouac's friend, John Clellon Holmes, wrote an article, 'This is the Beat Generation,' for the New York Times Magazine. In his article he addressed the problems of labeling an entire generation, calling it 'unrewarding,' yet he acknowledged that his generation somehow 'demands an adjective.' And so he described the Beat Generation as one that implies 'the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and ultimately, of soul: a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. A man is beat whenever he goes for broke and wagers the sum of his resources on a single number; and the young generation has done that continually from early youth.'

But every movement, every revolution, leaves behind its own slime of bureaucracy. Like punk, grunge, and most other countercultural trends, the Beat movement, once a rebellious, taunting cry against bourgeois intellectualism and repression, was soon picked up by mainstream America. Burroughs said about his friend Kerouac once that his style inspired millions of people of both sexes buy a million pairs of Levis.

When discussing the Beats it would be silly to just talk about the poetry. They, along with those affiliated with them, were mostly men, and the work they produced was almost entirely male-focused. It has to be mentioned that despite the movement's progressive-mindedness, much of the Beat writings were ridiculously misogynistic. Women were either idealized, or demonized, and honoured for their skills in bed. However an uncensored and un-tidied-up reading of the poetry is necessary to truly understand the spirit of the movement, and the times that lead to it.

A number of Beat poems are self-indulgent and sloppy, but there are the obvious masterpieces- Ginsberg's 'Howl', Corso's 'Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway', Kerouac's novel 'On The Road' etc. Most of these works very obviously fall short of traditional standards of expectations of literary quality, but going against the grain, overturning convention, arguably is the most important part of the movement. There is something admirable about the Beat poets' utter refusal to be tamed, their celebration of their own individuality.

To end this article one final thing must be added, Beat poetry insists upon being read aloud. Whether you read to an audience or to yourself, you won't escape from the jazzy rhythms. You will enjoy their self-dramatizing style, their high-spirited, fractured music and despair.

By Ahsan Sajid

References-
Wikipedia
Beat Poets, Everyman's Library Pocket Poets (selected and edited by Carmela Ciuraru)
This is the Beat Generation, by John Clellon Holmes, The New York Times Magazine, November 16, 1952 (online version)