The Beat Generation Revisited - Bent Sørensen
English ('almen') elective ('emnekursus') - 4. & 8. sem.
Thursdays, 12.30 to 2.15, Room 2.128, KS3
Mail me Beat Generation references or resources for Session 6...
[Course plan] [Resources]

This course aims to introduce students to the texts and thoughts of the so-called Beat Generation writers of the 1950s. The texts will be contextualised in various ways to further allow students to explore the cultural, aesthetic and intellectual climate of contemporary North America and Europe, as well as later reception of these authors and their works.

These contexts will include:

Beat poetics
Beat and auto-biography
Beats and exile
Beat and Buddhism
Beat cross-aesthetics: music, film, painting, web
Beats and race
Beats and gender
Beat and counter-culture
Beat aftermath, imitators, tributes: Internet, film, music

We will read (excerpts from) some of the core-texts of the Beat canon.
The texts can almost all be found in one of the several Beat lit. readers on the market:


The Viking Portable Library Beat Reader (ed. Ann Charters) (VPLBR)

Other good readers include:

Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation
(ed. Carole Tonkinson)
The Beat Book (ed. Anne Waldman)
The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture (ed. Holly George-Warren)


Recommended background:

W.T. Lhamon, Jr.,
Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style In the American 1950s
Steven Watson, The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels and Hipsters, 1944-1960

Course plan:

1.
7/2

Acts of naming
Beat poetics

 
Kerouac: On the Road
Labels and etymologies
Spontaneous prose?
  Madness and culture heroes
VPLBR, pp. xv-xxxvi: Introduction
VPLBR, pp. 615-622: The Game of the Name
VPLBR, pp. 57-59: Poetics of Kerouac
VPLBR, pp. 10-43: On the Road, Pt. 1, ch. 1; Pt. 3, ch. 9-11; Pt. 4, ch.6
2.
14/2
Allen Ginsberg: Howl, etc.
Madness, sexuality, politics and influences
VPLBR, pp. 62-77: Howl a. o. poems
VPLBR, pp. 544-548: Wichita Vortex Sutra
3.
21/2
William Burroughs: Junkie
& The Naked Lunch
Drugs, sexuality, power and experimental literature
VPLBR, pp. 104-116: Junkie
VPLBR, pp. 126-144: The Naked Lunch
4.
28/2
Gary Snyder: Rip Rap, etc.
 
Kerouac: Dharma
Bums
Buddhism, nature and mind
VPLBR, pp. 289-306: Poems etc.
VPLBR, pp. 569-580: Poems etc.
VPLBR, pp. 47-53: Dharma Bums
VPLBR, pp. 607-614: Alan Watts on Zen
5.
6/3
'Minority' Beats:
Diane Di Prima; Carolyn Cassidy; Joyce Johnson; Amiri Baraka
Gender and race issues in Beat texts
VPLBR, pp. 360-370: Di Prima poems
VPLBR, pp. 449- 488: Various memoirs
VPLBR, pp. 582-606: Norman Mailer's White Negro
6.
13/3
Beat aftermaths
Legacies of the Beats:
Internet communities, film, music, drama etc.
No reading - only browsing and viewing
Mail me Beat Generation references or resources for this session...

Resources:

America in the 1950s - background...

Background
articles
by Bent Sørensen:

'The Beat Generation' - literary and cultural history background
'Paradise Lost' - a thematic analysis of On the Road
'An On and Off Beat: Kerouac's Beat Etymologies' - an article from Philament
'The Ambiguous Valorization of Madness in Beat Literature' - the theme of madness in Kerouac and Ginsberg
'Beat Dreams - The Books of Dreams of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs' - an essay on their dream journals/memoirs

Powerpoint presentations by Bent Sørensen: Kerouac; Whitman as background for Ginsberg

Agendas
for analysis and essay questions by Bent Sørensen: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder

Images
: Kerouac

Blog
entries
by Bent Sørensen from The Atlantic Community:

Kerouac times
Basic Hip: Kerouac Times, vol 2
Allen Ginsberg and the American Scream
Howl Tape Unearthed
William Burroughs: Dr. Benway, I presume...
Gary Snyder, Smokey the Bear, Avalokitesvara and other Bodhisattvas
Minor Characters: Beat 'Others' 1
Beat 'Others', 2: Racial Othering
The Beat Goes on...

****

Kerouac resources from NPR

Breaking Ginsberg news: New tape of "Howl" reading discovered (PDF)
Direct link to the unedited sound file (Quicktime)

Literary Kicks website: Articles on Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder
, Di Prima and Baraka

Academy of American Poets: Ginsberg, Snyder, Baraka

Modern American Poetry website at University of Illinois: Ginsberg, Snyder
, Baraka

Book website on Snyder and others as fire lookouts in the Pacific Northwest

Snyder resources collected at Bent Sørensen's Writing California site

Other Snyder resources: mini-autobiography; audio files; video files 1  2  3  4

Diane di Prima: Home page  Levity.com  YouTube

Amiri Baraka: Home page  Literary biography YouTube: 1 (Black Arts, rap and street poetry)  2 (Interview)  3 (Lowku)

"Minor Characters": Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Carolyn Cassady, Bonnie Bremser, Women Beats in general

The use of Beats in commercials and other 'Beats-ploitation' examples: Kerouac wore Khakis - Gap commercial,
Howl used by The Gap, Burroughs Nike commercial, Analysis of both Gap and Nike commercials (PDF), Kerouac used by Hogan, More analysis: Cashing in on Kerouac, Jack Kerouac: The Bobblehead, Commentary on Beat hypocrisy and commercialism, Keegan's Ale 'Beatnik' commercial, List of 'Beatnik' films, Wikipedia entry on 'Beatnik' w. nice film posters etc.