The Source (Beats)

The Source : 

The Source decoded

Slide 2: 

Alan Ginsberg--bearded poet. William Burroughs--older feller. Junky. Kerouac starts out as a jock! Ginsberg, gay, in love with all these dudes--Cassady, Kerouac esp. They’re college kids, at Columbia, “getting loaded, making conversation they could build off.” Exposing “secret scatological thought.” Scatological = dirty humor, potty mouth, etc. Their writing will get them into trouble with “obscenity laws.” Clash with First Amendment Rights.

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1950s--GI bill post WWII. Korean War, McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover. Marginalized cultures--never talked about. Jazz--abstract expressionists--joy and optimism. Kerouac writes 14 books before published. Ginsberg: “We were our own audience.” Jazz beat, beatitude, beat down = beat. 8 Beatitudes in New Testament: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

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Women were caretakers to beats, ornaments -- they all looked the same, too. Recall the scene with the old, bitter Gregory Corso, when he yells at his woman to shut up. Ginsberg and Burroughs gay. Ginsberg: Never expected their work to be represented in public; On The Road is a “perfect expression of a generation.” Ferlinghetti--poet in SF--the whole nation was tilting westward. Saw suburbia as an enemy. Burroughs: “Only the young bring anything in, and they are not young long.”

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Neal Cassady = muse to the beats. Jerry Garcia: “Cassady himself was the art.” Kesey: “He was like the bass line. A GREAT driver. His page was the highway; his writing tool the car. He could remember chains of thought.” SF scene--City Lights Bookstore in N. Beach--light Barcelona was to the anarchist artists. Artist as renegade. 6 at 6--major reading, when Ginsberg reads HOWL. Importance of the GROUP in this movement. A series of trials to liberate “The Word”--obscenity, etc.

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Ginsberg “the bravest man in America.” Recall John Turturro performing HOWL--suggests that it’s a letter to a former inmate friend of Ginsberg’s in the Rockland Loonie Bin. Straight America sees the beats as dirty, immoral (free sex, drugs, obscenity, etc). Lenny Bruce, comedian, is crucified for his performances. Naked Lunch. Burroughs’ most important work. Mailed in letters to Ginsberg. Cut up. Pasted together. Put together by Kerouac and Ginsberg. Kerouac gives title, Naked Lunch. Beats give birth to both hippies and punks.

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Early “punks” = Iggy Pop and Stooges, Lou Reed and Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa (sort of), Bowie, Television, etc. Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey become most famous acid pioneers -- VERY different approaches. Leary talks of evolution--psycho-chemical age--education will come not from what books you read… LSD = instant insanity. Leary: “We’re primitive--the challenge of intelligent life is to learn to use drugs.” Aldous Huxley: “The Doors Of Perception.”

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End of the 1950’s Beatnik becomes silly, object of parody and ridicule on TV, in press, etc. Principle beats run off--India, Tangiers. Kerouac becomes bitter and turns inward. Ginsberg and others interested in yoga, Buddhism Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO combines Buddhist studies with Beats Ginsberg returns in 1963--war is already on in VN--becomes involved in new movement that evolves into hippies 1967--Be-in, Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury. Spiritual way to rebel, building on the beats.

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Kesey, Jerry Garcia and many others feel that they are TRULY patriotic. Celebrating freedom and America’s TRUE values. Kerouac dies at age 44. “He died with $91 in his bank account. His death was from alcohol. He was known to consume 17 shots of Johnny Walker Red per hour, washed down with Colt malt liquor. The individualist never wanted to be known as the leader of a generation, as the king of the Beats.” Suicide?