Encyclopedia of Beat Literature

414 Pages·2008·2.99 MB·English

by  Rita Barros

Encyclopedia of
Beat Literature
Edited by Kurt HEmmEr
Foreword by Ann cHArtErs
Afterword by tim Hunt
Photographs by LArry KEEnAn
Encyclopedia of Beat Literature
Copyright © 2007 by Kurt Hemmer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permis-
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encyclopedia of beat literature / edited by Kurt Hemmer; foreword by Ann
Charters; afterword by Tim Hunt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8160-4297-7 (alk. paper)
1. American literature—20th century—Encyclopedias. 2. Authors,
American—20th century—Biography—Encyclopedias. 3. Beat Generation—
Encyclopedias. I. Hemmer, Kurt.
PS228.B6E53 2006
810.9′11—dc22 2005032926
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Text design by Joan M. Toro
Cover design by Semadar Megged/Salvatore Luongo
Printed in the United States of America
VB Hermitage 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Dedicated to Linda, Dick, Erik, and Jason.
page iv blank
C
ontents
Foreword vii
Introduction ix
Entries 1
Afterword 357
Selected Bibliography of Major Works by Beat Writers 359
Selected Bibliography of Secondary Sources 372
Beat Generation Movement Chronology 376
Contributors 380
Index 385
page vi blank
F
oreword
For more than a half-century, writers and critics experimental aesthetics from Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
have been exploring the controversial nature Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure,
of the concept of a Beat Generation and of Beat LeRoi Jones, John Wieners, as well as Kerouac and
literature. The first article on the Beats, “This Is Ginsberg.
the Beat Generation,” written by novelist John The third anthology appeared in 1961 when
Clellon Holmes for the New York Times in 1952, Thomas Parkinson, a professor of English at the
provoked so many letters to the newspaper’s edi- University of California at Berkeley who had
tor that Holmes spent nearly six months trying to encouraged Ginsberg to enroll as a graduate stu-
answer them. Since his time, scores of journalists dent, compiled A Casebook on the Beat. This
and scholars have offered their different interpreta- collection highlighted “the pros and cons of the
tions of Beat literature, and this encyclopedia is a beat movement—with 39 pieces of beat writ-
worthy continuation of their spirited conversations ing—Kerouac, Ginsberg, and others,” along with
on the subject. attacks on and defenses of the Beats by writers
Which dozen or so volumes do I consider to be such as Norman Podhoretz, Kenneth Rexroth, and
essential among the previous books about Beat lit- Henry Miller.
erature? Still noteworthy in my estimation are the In the 1970s four books stand out in my
three earliest critical anthologies, including Beat estimation. The California poet David Meltzer
authors that followed soon after the publication of did extensive interviews with Rexroth, William
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956) and Everson, Ferlinghetti, Lew Welch, McClure, and
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957). These three Richard Brautigan that were published as a mass-
anthologies expanded the reading audience for the market paperback, The San Francisco Poets (1971).
Beat writers, providing them a contemporary con- After working with Kerouac to compile his bibli-
text and some literary respectability. ography in 1966, Charters published the first full-
The first, Gene Feldmen and Max Gartenberg’s length biography, Kerouac, in 1973, four years after
edition of The Beat Generation and the Angry Young his death.
Men, appeared in 1958 and compared the new The first insightful academic study of the writ-
radical American writers with the group of young ing of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and William Burroughs
contemporary English novelists and playwrights was John Tytell’s Naked Angels in 1976. Two years
considered their British counterparts. later, Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee published
Two years later Donald M. Allen edited The Jack’s Book, a fascinating series of interviews with
New American Poetry, placing the Beat poets amid “the men and women who populate the Kerouac
their avant-garde contemporaries in the United novels.”
States. To conclude his anthology, Allen included In the 1980s and 1990s commentary on the
“Statements on Poetics,” a discussion about their Beat writers increased from a trickle to a flood, as
vii
viii  Encyclopedia of Beat Literature
their work was scrutinized by a growing number In the last half of the 20th century these 12
of academic scholars who understood that their books about the Beats established the canon of
poems and novels were authentic works of litera- important authors and works; in the first years of
ture. Number eight on my Top Titles’ Chart is Tim the 21st century, new books began to investigate
Hunt’s critical study Kerouac’s Crooked Road: The the subject of the Beat literary movement’s place in
Development of a Fiction (1981). Hunt’s laudable the wider context of American culture.
aim was “to reconstruct Kerouac’s development In 2001 Beat Down To Your Soul collected
from a promising imitator (the Wolfean The Town essays, reviews, memoirs, and other material that
and the City of 1948) into intuitive experimentalist explored the different aspects of “Beat.” In 2002
(Visions of Cody, 1952) by way of the relatively con- John Suiter wrote Poets on the Peaks, a brilliant book
ventional novel that still mostly shapes our sense examining how Snyder, Whalen, and Kerouac’s
of his work (On the Road as eventually published work as fire lookouts in the North Cascades con-
by Viking).” tributed to their development as nature writers.
In 1983 appeared The Beats: Literary Bohemians That same year Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy
in Postwar America, issued as volume 16 in the M. Grace edited Girls Who Wore Black, interviews
Dictionary of Literary Biography, 700 pages of bio- with members of three generations of Beat women
graphical essays analyzing the work of the major along with literary analysis from the perspective
and minor Beat authors. of gender criticism. Finally in 2004, Jennie Skerl
In 1991 John Arthur Maynard wrote Venice collected essays that challenged the media stereo-
West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, types and legends about the Beats, emphasizing the
an in-depth investigation of the geography that contribution of African-American and female Beat
supported a community of dissident writers at writers.
midcentury. If the pattern of this unceasing production of
That same year appeared The Portable Beat books on the subject of Beat literature holds—the
Reader, a wide-ranging anthology that celebrated attempt to understand their literary achievement
the development and extent of Beat writing. Last in an expanding cultural context by viewing their
on my list of a dozen essential titles, in 1996 Brenda work from multiple points of view—then this
Knight’s compilation Women on the Beat Generation Encyclopedia of Beat Literature for Facts On File
focused on the work of 40 women writers who are promises to be the most useful of all. Enjoy!
too frequently overlooked in discussions of Beat
literature. Ann Charters
I
ntroduCtIon
Rob Johnson, the William S. Burroughs scholar logical stories of the Beats’ lives. The two—art and
from the University of Texas Pan-American, life—cannot be separated. But neither should the
began to work on this encyclopedia in 1999. When study of the art be dominated by the study of the
I took over as the editor, the decision was made to lives. After years of studying these countercultural
create a work that focused on the literature rather heroes, I thought the time had come to create a
than the lives and culture of the Beat Generation. work that rigorously examined the work of these
Too often the legends of the Beat Generation have artists as a collective movement that continues to
usurped the primary focus in Beat studies from thrive. My hope is that this text will help perpetu-
the texts themselves. What ultimately makes the ate and invigorate the ongoing intellectual conver-
writers of the Beat Generation important is their sation over what writers and texts are “Beat” and
art. The Encyclopedia of Beat Literature is designed which of them are worthy of continued analysis.
to introduce and guide fans, students, and instruc- The creation of this encyclopedia truly started
tors to some of the most ambitious and stimulating for me in the summer of 1992 when I walked into
works produced by the Beat writers and their allied the Brown University Bookstore on Thayer Street
contemporaries. This volume should complement in Providence, Rhode Island, and discovered Ann
the excellent dictionaries, encyclopedias, historical Charters’s The Portable Beat Reader. I was already
surveys, and biographies already in existence about determined to pursue a career as a literature
the Beat movement as well as those to come. Here instructor, and I wanted to find a genre of writing
is a sampling of novels, memoirs, books of poetry, that would sustain my enthusiasm for the half-
individual poems, essays, and short story collec- dozen or so years required of graduate study. After
tions of some of the best literature that the Beat working intensely on an undergraduate senior the-
movement produced. I wanted to call attention to sis on the novels of Milan Kundera and their rela-
these works as they appeared in their own histori- tion to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, I had
cal moments, not as dead things collecting dust on developed a new appreciation for the artistic use of
shelves but as motivating and living stimulators language. I wanted to find something, as William
of the imagination. Both aficionados and novices Carlos Williams would say, written in “American.”
of Beat literature should find material in these What I found was a genre that I anticipate will
pages that will enhance their appreciation of Beat not satiate my enthusiasm during my lifetime.
literature. Reading Charters’s introduction, “Variations on a
The aura surrounding the fantastic and often Generation,” and the selection from Jack Kerouac’s
cinematic lives of the Beat writers at times over- On the Road, which included the mind-blowing
shadows the brilliance of their writing. I myself was line “But then they danced down the streets like
first lured to the exceptional artistry of Beat writing dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been
by the wonderful incandescence of the mytho- doing all my life after people who interest me,
ix