Ginsberg &The Beats 1950s

Beat Writers Group of avant-garde writers in the U.S. in the mid-1950 ’ s Term “ beat ” coined by Jack Kerouac in 1948: – Down and out – Beatific Continued literary bohemianism of the Lost Generation writers of the 1920s, but lived in America, rejected European literary traditions and models.

City Lights Bookstore Kerouac and Ginsberg move from NYC to west coast in mid- fifties Meet group of young poets in the San Francisco area (Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, etc.) Poetry readings, gatherings at City Lights bookstore

Major Early Works First Edition Cover, 1957 First Edition Cover, 1956 First Edition Cover, 1959

Beats Rebelled Against… Movement follows discovery of mass atrocity, concentration camps at end of WWII Beats distrusted American “ virtues ” of progress and power after dropping of the atomic bomb

Atomic Bomb Los Alamos a metaphor for spiritual emptiness of modern rationality Many scientists contribute small parts to creation of doomsday device Loss of morality

Middle-Class Life Beats saw 1950 ’ s middle-class life as sterile and conformist – Rise of the suburbs – Madison Avenue – The “ corporation man ” – McCarthyism Levittown, NY 1940’s-1950’s

Instead, offered “ beatness ” Ginsberg defines beatness as “ looking at society from the underside, beyond society ’ s conceptions of good and evil. ”

Beatness, cont. Personal salvation through heightened awareness (however obtained-drugs, sex, etc.) Pursuit of “ total experience ” by disrupting social taboos

“who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls” (lines 10-11)

In many ways, carried forward traditional American literary projects of individualism and Transcendentalism. Believed in a transcending spirituality that no human “ systems ” could dissolve

Howl U.S. Customs and S.F. police seized the book and banned its sale when first published However, deemed to have some “ redeeming social merit ” and released for sale (Oct. 1957) One of the best-selling volumes of American poetry of all time Poetry Reading, San Francisco State University, 1955

Form in Howl Form attempts to be spontaneous, improvisational (like Jazz music) Influenced by the long, free-flowing monologues of Neal Cassady Whitman-like long line; initial repetition Ginsberg based line length on breath (as much as could be said in one breath)

Reading Howl: Part I Honors the fallen; people Ginsberg knew-- ” the best minds ” of his generation. Biographical facts in this section. References to Neal Cassady (the “ muse ” for Ginsberg and the beats), William S. Burroughs, Kerouac, etc. ms/howl.txt ms/howl.txt

Reading Howl: Part II Names the enemy: Moloch Stands for soul-lessness of 1950 ’ s American institutions--the military-industrial complex – Armies – Jails – Government – Factories – Banks – The Rational Mind itself (line 85) wl.txt wl.txt

Reading Howl: Part III Dedicated to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg meant in Columbia Psychiatric Institute ( “ Rockland ” in the poem) in 1949 Evokes his mother ’ s own mental illness and subsequent lobotomy In a society that seems crazy, how do we judge who is mad? Whitman-esque footnote, but even more explicit, shocking than Whitman?

“Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel! The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy! The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy! Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels! Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!” (From “Footnote to Howl”)