KEEPING THE BEAT: THE PRACTICE OF A BEAT MOVEMENT A Dissertation by CHRISTOPHER ...

271 Pages·2012·0.86 MB·English

by  Christopher Carmona

KEEPING THE BEAT: THE PRACTICE OF A BEAT MOVEMENT

A Dissertation
by
CHRISTOPHER RICHARD CARMONA

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of
Texas A&M University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August 2012

Major Subject: English
Keeping the Beat: The Practice of a Beat Movement
Copyright 2012 Christopher Richard Carmona
KEEPING THE BEAT: THE PRACTICE OF A BEAT MOVEMENT

A Dissertation
by
CHRISTOPHER RICHARD CARMONA

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of
Texas A&M University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved by:
Chair of Committee, M. Jimmie Killingsworth
Committee Members, Chuck Taylor
Janet McCann
Eduardo Espina
Head of Department, Nancy Warren

August 2012

Major Subject: English
iii
ABSTRACT

Keeping the Beat: The Practice of a Beat Movement. (August 2012)
Christopher Richard Carmona, B.A., University of Texas-Pan American;
M.A., University of Texas at Brownsville
Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth

The literary movement of the Beat Generation continues to be a truly
influential movement in our current society. From the popularization of
hitchhiking across America to the rebel without a cause of James Dean, the
Hippie movement of the 60s, and the explosion of poetry readings in coffee
shops, the Beats have been influential to much of the social change in the last
half-century. Commonly the architects of the movement are referenced as Jack
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. However, the Beat
Generation was much bigger than six “white” men who wrote novels and
poetry about disenfranchised youths of the 1950s. The Beat Generation had at
its center several women and artists of color who have helped to redefine the
movement, such as Joan Vollmer, Bob Kaufman, Raúl Salinas, and Anne
Waldman. This project troubles the categorization of the Beat Generation as a
static movement in postwar America, and redefines it as an adaptive ideology
that continues through today’s Beat Movement. In this dissertation, I have
broken down the three most prominent rhetorical elements that have kept the
Beat Movement operating for over sixty years. The first element is the Beat
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desire to write for the underclasses of America and eventually to produce
writers to write from the underclasses. The second is the importance placed on
performance in their poetry and how that has changed the face of poetry over
the last half century. The third is the ability to build a community through small
presses and magazines, while at the same time pushing the boundaries of
gender roles, queer relationships, and interraciality.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Killingsworth, and my
committee members, Dr. Taylor, Dr. McCann, and Dr. Espina, for their guidance
and support throughout the course of this research.
Thanks also go to my friends and colleagues and the department faculty
and staff for making my time at Texas A&M University a great experience. I also
want to extend my gratitude to Manuel Luis Martinez, Karen Minzer, Hedwig
Gorski, Tammy Gomez, and Dr. Rob Johnson for their time and insight that
made this dissertation possible.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this to my mother who passed during the
writing of this dissertation, and my father for his encouragement and support,
and finally my wife for her patience and love.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................... v
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................ vi
CHAPTER
I INTRODUCTION: FROM THE BEAT GENERATION TO THE
BEAT MOVEMENT .......................................................................... 1

II I CAUGHT GOD PEEKING THROUGH THE HOLE IN
THE SOUL OF MY SHOE, SO I ASKED HIM FOR A
DOLLAR: POETRY FOR THE UNDERCLASSES, THE
OUTLAW, AND THE OUTSIDER ................................................. 25

Part I: You Don’t Know Jack! Jack Kerouac As A
French-Canadian Catholic Poor Boy .................................... 30
Part II: The Ginsberg Everybody Knew But No One
Talks About: Ginsberg As A Communist/Socialist
Jewish Middle Class Kid And Champion For The
Underclasses ............................................................................. 44
Part III: Singing About Golden Sardines With His
Cranial Guitar: Bob Kaufman Writing From The
Underclasses ............................................................................. 57
Part IV: La Resistencia: Raúl R. Salinas, Xicanindio
Beat Poet .................................................................................... 70

III RIFFING WORDS AND THE RHYTHM OF THE BEAT: THE
AESTHETICS OF PERFORMING BEAT POETRY ...................... 84

Part I: Ted Joans: Rent-A-Beatnik Jazz Poet ......................... 93
Part II: Before There Was Amiri Baraka There
Was Leroi Jones ........................................................................ 103
Part III: The Performance Is The Thing—Performing’s
Importance To Beat Poetry ..................................................... 121

IV ALL MY FRIENDS ARE WRITING TO CHANGE THE
WORLD: THE RELATIONSHIPS THAT MAKE THE BEAT
COMMUNITY ................................................................................... 144

Part I: The Beat Incubator: Joan Vollmer’s Apartment And
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The Birth Of The Beat Generation .................................................. 147
Part II: The Mimeograph Revolution: The Community Of
Small Presses And Magazines ......................................................... 164
Part III: Beat Relationships ............................................................... 184

V CONCLUSION: WHAT IS THE BEAT MOVEMENT NOW? ..... 220

NOTES……………………………………………………………………………... 247
WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................... 248
VITA ......................................................................................................................... 263
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION:
FROM THE BEAT GENERATION TO THE BEAT MOVEMENT

The Beat Generation is a name synonymous with wild cross-country road
trips, drugs, and open sexuality. In essence, the Beat Generation is considered
the precursor to the counterculture of the 1960s. It was spearheaded by three
men in particular: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs.
These three writers all wrote works that challenged the term “literature” in mid-
20th century America. Kerouac’s On the Road sent a thousand teenagers
hitchhiking across America in search of the “IT” that is the soul of America.
Ginsberg’s Howl is considered “the poem that changed America” (Shinder 3)
through its confessional tribute to his friends whom he considered the “best
minds of my generation” (Ginsberg, Poems 57). William S. Burroughs’ Naked
Lunch is considered the “novel that destroyed the novel” (R. Johnson Interview)
by giving a brutal look at a junkie’s world and offering a scathing criticism of
America at the same time. Two out of three of these works were challenged in
open court for being “obscene.” Both Howl in 1956 and Naked Lunch in 1965
faced obscenity charges and were put on trial to determine if they were actually
“literature.” In the end, two different state courts did not consider these texts
obscene and the barrier between obscenity and literature was forever blurred,
giving birth to a wave of publications that challenged America’s view of drugs,
________
This dissertation follows the style of MLA.
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sexuality, and social consciousness. But the question arises as to, what exactly is
the Beat Generation?
Trying to define the Beat Generation is like trying to define what it is to
be an American. The concept of being “Beat” differed from individual to
individual, and that gave it its power and fluidity of definition. According to
the American Heritage Dictionary, the Beat Generation “is a group of American
writers and artists popular in the 1950s and early 1960s, influenced by Eastern
philosophy and religion and known especially for their use of nontraditional
forms and their rejection of conventional social values.” In the late 1950s, Allen
Ginsberg was asked about the Beat Generation, and according to Ginsberg the
definition of Beat is “Exhausted at the bottom of the world looking up or out,
sleepless, wide-eyed, perceptive, rejected by society” (Charters xviii). In the
1980s, Gary Snyder, a prominent Beat poet from San Francisco, defined the Beat
Generation as “A particular state of mind within a definable time frame,
sometime in the early 50s up until the mid-60s when jazz was replaced by Rock
N’ Roll and marijuana was replaced by LSD. It is a new generation of youth that
jumped on board and the word beatnik changed to Hippie” (xvi). Jack Kerouac
is credited with the actual naming of the Beat Generation based on his
observations of the overworked, underpaid American working-class man and
the outlaws of society like Neal Cassady, car thief, hustler, and all-around ladies
man.
One of the major achievements of the Beat Generation was its ability to
break through literary barriers and bring literature to the streets. They did this