The Beat Generation - what thinks you?

Pittens

me? i see them as a group of average ( or above average but not great) writers whose position in literature has been blown out of proportion

Also they are - like Bret Easton Ellis - quite provincial in time and space.

Anyway I think them over-rated. What thinks you?

herbieflowers

I can only really comment on Ginsberg and Kerouac. In a line: some beautiful lines amidst a load of druggy nonsense!

Denerick

Writers don't write great works when living amongst each other like some hippy get together free for all. I like the concept of the writer as a recluse. Though I'm probably biased.

Valmont

On the Road really inspired me to get out there and go travelling. The fervorous pace at which it was written is very infectious. After a friend had loaned me On the Road I was just on my Christmas break from college so I had an impetuous moment and booked a flight to Berlin and then one from Rome back to Dublin. I probably had the best month of my life in between, travelling around a cold and wintry central Europe, visiting random museums and bizarre monuments. I'm not sure if The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test counts as beat but I didn't like that one so much.

Pittens

That's not writing, that's typing.

( Truman Capote on On The Road).

Actually he didnt type it, so Truman was wrong on that.

I am torn on the novel, I like it as a read but it is decidedly American which is - although America is a big place - still a bit parochial. In other words it doesn't really tell me much about the human condition in general, which you can get from Dostoevsky, George Eliot et al. but specific people in specific circumstances, at specific times and places and how they acted.

blue_steel

Loved On The Road when I was 18. Read it again a few years ago and thought it had aged horribly. Still a classic though because it's not Kerouac's fault that most of us grow up and become cynical.
William Burroughs is the real genius of The Beat Generation. Never mind the cut and paste rubbish; read Junky, Queer and especially Cities of The Red Night (and it's sequels). Inspired stuff. If he'd only had a little most discipline I have no doubt he'd be considered up there with Faulkner and Joyce.

Valmont

I read Junky and I loved it for illuminating a world I knew nothing about it. I didn't think it was a beat book though. Come to think of it, I don't really know what "Beat" even stands for!

Dades

On The Road was may favourite books for years. Inspired me to go travelling any time I could. I read a bunch of his other stuff too, but always came back to it.

Like many books (or genres), if you read it at the right time in your life it will become part of it.

rgt320q

I've found myself moving backwards through a lot of the great counterculture, and currently 'beat', works the past while; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Electric Kool-Acid Acid Test, On the Road, Howl etc. Really digging them all so far, particularly OtR, and The Doors of Perception. I've found the ideas, perspectives and attitudes presented, particularly of the Beat generation writers, to be most interesting part of their writings. While none of them have granted any of the great epiphanies that they are frequently purported to, nor inspired any radically uncharacteristic courses of action, I would by no means consider them to be as overrated as many claim, and some have indeed become almost instant favourites of mine.

damselnat

I have to say I'm huge fan of Bukowski, particularly his poetry. Never really "got" Kerouac...:eek:

Amazotheamazing

On the Road is a great book, if you read it at the right time. It's one of those books that capture a feeling and runs with it.

MadRush

Kerouac is definitely overrated....

his short sentence style just doesn't do it for me at all....

this was true. this exists. that happened. this happened.

i guess i'm biased because i love nabokov way too much

blue_steel

MadRush wrote: »

Kerouac is definitely overrated....

his short sentence style just doesn't do it for me at all....

this was true. this exists. that happened. this happened.

i guess i'm biased because i love nabokov way too much

Kerouac had a short sentence style?! Man try reading Dr Sax or Vanity of Doulouz or Lonesome Traveler. Or anything other than On the Road. Paragraph-long sentences are the norm.

Kerouac wasn't deliberate. His explosive spontaneous delivery is closer to evoking freewheeling reality of restless experience than anybody I've ever read.

Tiddlers

Surely everything is provincial in time and space due to progress and change? Personally I very much enjoy reading works by The Beat Generation and I also enjoy reading about them and life at that particular time. The whole period & the writing that sprung from it evokes a sense of awakening for me and seems quite fresh. I agree their writings may not always be the most eloquent or concise & smooth but that was part and parcel of what they were trying to create. If you consider what literature was like in the decades before the Beats, they did start a change. My personally favourite from the Beat generation is The Dharma Bums. Just magnificent. Recently read Post Office by Bukowski and I thought it had a lot of resonance with contemporary life and culture.

megadodge

On The Road was, for me, completely dull.

So bad, it is one of the very few books that held so little interest for me I couldn't even finish it.

As a result, I've never read any of Kerouac's other stuff.