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BEAT_DROP

                                             December 07, 2010

I wrote a lot of material for the
"Beat Generation" page, and one of
the things I said in the introduction
was this:

   "Calling this relatively small group
   of struggling writers, artists,             BEAT
   hustlers and drug addicts a
   'generation' was to make the claim
   that they were representative and
   important -- the beginnings of a new
   trend, analogous to the influential
   Lost Generation. This is the kind of
   bold move that could be seen as
   delusions of grandeur, aggressive
   salesmanship or perhaps a display of
   perceptive insight. History shows it
   was clearly not just a delusion, but
   possibly a real insight into some
   real trends that became
   self-reinforcing: the label helped
   to create what it described."

This version of the introduction
did not last long.

I won't quibble about the fact that
the phrasing may be awkward here, but               It's a hell of a lot
the reason it's awkward is that I'm in              better than the current
a difficult position:                               incarnation, though,
                                                    which babbles quasi-
Did it make any sense for Kerouac                   coherently for no
to make a claim about the entire                    good reason.
post-war generation?
                                                      (Actually, it's gotten
In retrospect, it seems like the                       a *little* tighter now.
"Beat Generation" was a real                                --  Oct 11, 2007)
phenomena, but it's at least
arguable that it was Kerouac's
*claim* that it was a phenomena       It often seems to me
that helped to create it.             that this is the way
                                      it goes...
The trouble with just saying
that is that as far as I know
this is an *original insight*                   GENERATING_BEAT
on my part.

Writer's working the beat lit
criticism racket are not                For that matter, it should
inclined to make the point              be a pretty obvious point
that there may not have been            that Kerouac was really
a there there before someone            out-to-lunch in a lot of ways.
pointed at it.
                                           Alcohol-addled when
It would appear that the only              not speed-crazed.
thing you can do is to repeat
what everyone else has said                    But there's no percentage in
on the subject uncritically.                   standing in the way of hero-
                                               worship.
   Even if it means passing
   along a slick piece of
   press agentry by Kerouac
   and Holmes.

   That's "neutrality" by
   wikipedia standards.

       WRONG_CONSENSUS

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