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In the 1950s the best-known writers of the Beat generation, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg were often seen as rebels without a cause, "an amusing phenomenon" that had "no more connection with literature than the men in the moon", as one English critic put it (in Charters, xxiii). Today the Beats have not only become anthologized but they have also arrived in the popular mainstream. William Burroughs (the man who "accidentally" shot his wife in a game of Wilhelm Tell) featured in a NIKE tv-advertisement in the Nineties, Allen Ginsberg toured with Patti Smith, and Lisa Simpson has Kerouac's On the Road on her bookshelf. Joyce Johnson, a writer associated with the Beats due to her love affair with Kerouac, claims in her 1983 memoir Minor Characters that "'Beat Generation' sold books, sold black turtleneck sweaters and bongos, berets and dark glasses, sold a way of life that seemed like dangerous fun - thus to be either condemned or imitated" (in Charters, 480). If it had not been for the Beats' notorious anti-establishment lifestyle, which inspired following subcultures such as the Hippie or the punk movement, their literature would certainly not have known the same popularity - it is probably fair to say that more people own a copy of Burrough's Naked Lunch than have actually read the whole text.
In this course we are going to study key texts by Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Diane di Prima and other Beat writers in order to find out how and why they have moved from the social margins of postwar America to the status of cultural icons, if not that of a common myth. We will discuss, amongst other things, the construction of masculinity in the texts, the role of music, drugs and sex, and the aesthetics of coolness. Di Prima's memoirs will serve as an example of beat writing from a female perspective, and present a feminist awakening which ushers in another rebellious generation, that of the civil rights protests of the 1960s and 1970s.
Poems and additional material will be provided for you in a reader which you can buy at the beginning of the semester. However, you must own the following editions:
Burroughs, William. Junky. The definitive text of 'Junk'. Ed. Oliver Harris. London: Penguin Classics, 2008. Print. ISBN-13: 978-0141189826
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. London: Penguin Classics, 2000. Print.
ISBN-13: 978-0141182674
Di Prima, Diane. Memoirs of a Beatnik. London: Penguin Books, 1998. Print. ISBN-13: 978-0140235395
There will be a short test on Burrough's Junky in the second session, so you have to have read it before the start of term.
Reference: Charters, Ann, ed. The Portable Beat Reader. London: Penguin Books, 1992. Print. |
