Category talk:Beat Generation writers

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I know that all such "school of painting/writing" categories must be either way too strict or are hopelessly fuzzy. But who says that Jane Bowles (or Paul Bowles for that matter), Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov or Kennth Rexroth were Beats? --Radh (talk) 10:59, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Hello Radh Well of course Rexroth and Bowles both disassociated themselves from the Beats. But then I have also heard Ferlinghetti, David Meltzer and Hirschman do that as well but they can't deny their involvment in the era even if they dislike being put into a box that they now disapprove of. Nevertheless I wonder if you have considered any of the following (including Jack) for this page: Don Carpenter, Jan Cremer http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Cremer, Chandler Brossard, Anatole Boyard,William Eastlake,Jack Gelber, Herb Gold, Alan Harrington, Jack Hirschman, Jerry Kamstra, Paul Krassner, Michael Rumaker. Charles Henri Ford was also involved for a time although is from an earlier generation. I am really not sure what Eric Nord is doing on the page however.Altcult101 (talk) 17:29, 24 November 2010 (UTC) P.S. Alex Trocchi —Preceding unsigned comment added by Altcult101 (talk • contribs) 17:36, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * My main aim was to have basically only two Beat Generation cats: 1.: the Beat writers and very similar writers; 2.: the cultural phenomenon in a wider sense. Everything else I'm not fanatical about. Bowles is in a Beat dictionary, between Brautigan and Bukowski, but I still don't know: all three to my mind are not Beats. Rexroth was at first friendly to Ginsberg etc., then very hostile. I can find no Beat-philosophy in his essay and isn't his poetry basically strict and formal?. Jan Cremer, Alexander Trocchi: yes. I would not include Norman Mailer, Herb Gold (always thought of him as a socialist realist, but perhaps should read him!). Will think about the others: But include everybody you want.--PS: I'd include Jack Hirschman, but Stalin? And he is in the category Outlaw Poets anyway. Your Alan Harrington must be another one. And only people with a wikipedia entry can be included here, the cat. must be added onto the article-page. Radh (talk) 19:10, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm short of time at the moment to get some of this done, but looking back through references would also like to propose Robert Duncan, Phillip Lamantia and Ed Dorn. Kenneth Patchen was older, like Rexroth, but aware that he was much revered around North Beach in the 50/60s and bonded with Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti. I think Rexroth hedged his bets with the Beats, patronised them a bit but I need to revisit the Meltzer interview to remind myself how he looked back on it all. Gold was stylistically not at all Beat but right in amongst them in Paris and North Beach. His book Bohemia is an entertaining read. I heard from a friend that Jack H has mellowed on the Stalin line. Sure that Mailer wanted to co-opt Beat into his own hipster operation, probably behind the leaden Barbary Shore as well as White Negro (Beats also the new barbarians of course).Altcult101 (talk) 17:16, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Brossard, Creeley, Duncan, Lamantia, Dorn, Ferlinghetti, Olson, Patchen (Mailer, Rexroth soon) are now under Beat Generation; not Beat writers - but this may be my "Original Research" - am perfectly willing to change this if you think so. As far as I know Patchen even hated to be called SF Renaissance.--Radh (talk) 22:49, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

While I had a moment I added the category to Kirby Doyle page, think he has to to be there. What about James Broughton - included in Evergreen issue 2? Brossard and Boyard both disclaimed BG status later in life although Jay Landesman said they were keen enough when the tag might have helped to sell their novels. Think you are right re the above distinction but what do you think about Jack Gelber? The only full-on Beat playwright apart from McClure?Altcult101 (talk) 15:19, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree, they all look good.--Radh (talk) 17:18, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Did you ever consider putting Hubert Selby Jr. or John Rechy into this list? Not just the controversy of their first books but the strongly underworld, really Beat feel of both. They also connect very well with the notions of spontaneous writing, which would identify them most certainly with our friend Tao's idea of the Beat Generation being a "literary movement". Altcult101 (talk) 15:07, 14 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Both are fine with me. A problem might be that somebody has created a number of Beat categories, which look more or less o.k.. but I'd like to take another look at them first.--Radh (talk) 15:33, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I came across one of those, just two names in it. Will wait till you've had a look. I just made some minor edits on the George Solomos page, including a link to the obituary by James Campbell - only just been published in The Guardian. You might find it of interest. Altcult101 (talk) 12:51, 15 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The poets-list? I an still for having all writers on one list, but am not that dogmatic anymore. And thanks for the George Solomos link.--Radh (talk) 13:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
 * We now have: Category: Beat Generation writers (Jack Spicer, Michael John Fles); Category: Beat Generation poets (3 p: Ginsberg, Rexroth, Spicer) and Category: Beat writers + Category:Fictional beatniks + Category: Beat Generation by medium (including The Last Times and five subcatagories: Books about the Beat Generation; Beat Generation events; Films about...,Category: Beat novels; Category: Beat poetry. The Beat novels and Beat poetry (books/poems) is fine with me, but Books about... and Films about...do not cover: Magazines about..., Essays about..., TV about..., Stand-Up comedians about...(I'd simply put it all into: Beat Generation - as a wider phenomenon). But, if further distinction is needed, we'd have to create cats for every new medium.
 * If we keep this new system, we need to add names, esp. to the poets and writers. Which would include everybody we think is close enough to the Beat style.
 * But then we should have more (strictly policed) cats: a) Beats (Kerouac, Ginsberg, WSB, Corso, Cassady and other non-writers, perhaps incl. Ferlinghetti, Lamantia, Hollo?); b) Black Mountain writers (Olson, but also J. Williams. Creeley to Dorn and Wieners + Fielding Dawson etc.); c) San Francisco Renaissance (Rexroth, Snyder etc.); z) non-Beats, non-Black Mountain, non-San Francisco Renissance writers and poets, who had similar themes or reacted to the fashion, z) being called "Category: Beat Generation" (as a wider cultural phenomenon).--Radh (talk) 14:21, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't bring myself to pitch in to the rather heated debate about whether the beat generation was just the Fab Four or a "wider cultural phenomenon" which included PAINTERS, actors, film makers, musicians - and many people who were none of those things. But I believe that to be the case and found plenty to support that in Paul Goodman, the introduction to the Protest anthology, the corresponding book to the large US BG exhibition. But I'm more inclined to use this in an article than here.

All those categories are wildly out of hand and many useless in encyclopedic terms and probably will wither away in time. You are quite right that they need to be rationalised. I noticed you have Burroughs son on the list - perhaps Jan Kerouac is worth considering? Altcult101 (talk) 10:50, 18 December 2010 (UTC)


 * She looks interesting. I will put her and the others in "Beat writers". Perhaps the other cats will go away in time. Paul Goodman and leading San Francisco Renaissance poets had strong views (Rexroth, Patchen), were anarchists, sozialists, communists for a time: this might be a difference to the Beats, but Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Snyder and also Keroauc were more political than Henry Miller was and pretended to be. And, this is the wrong place to bring it up, but I found an interesting article on Mexico City in the early 1920s recently: as a haven for draft dodgers, including cpusa's Michael Gold, but also of the city's own marijuana-boheme (Maurice Tenorio: Around 1919 and in Mexico City, chapter 10, p. 54ff. -).--Radh (talk) 11:14, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Very interesting looking indeed - will copy and read over the holiday. Looks to cover a period long before Rexroth went down there and got cosy with Tina Modotti. Ginsberg's politics were always consistent, transparent and positive. We know how Kerouac went but Burroughs was something else. I didn't know about his Westbrook Pegler enthusiasm until Hirschman mentioned it one time. Jack was very down on Burroughs for that, the gun enthusiasm and the Scientology and contends the core Beats (AG, Snyder and Ferlinghetti aside) were inclined to the right.Altcult101 (talk) 15:46, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * But would we buy a car from WSB? Robert Duncan (poet) was right-wing or at least very Anti-Stalinist: he criticised Denise Levertov strongly for her politics and said Paul Celan had been duped by Spanish Civil War propaganda. Norman Mailer was considered a "radical leftwing" fellow-traveller for a time. Paul and Jane Bowles were cpusa (~1938-40), as was "proletrian writer" (and "early Beat"?) Edward Dahlberg. Ed Dorn translated Guerilla poetry in Essex with Gordon Brotherston. LeRoi Jones took part in the Umbra Workshop of radical African American Writers of the Lower East Side in the early 1960s. In Detroit John Sinclair (poet) published his friends, but also Canadian, British, Black Mountain poets, in WORK/1-5 (1965ff). He later edited "Guerilla." German publisher and translator Carl Weissner thought the revolution was coming in the 1960s. He met and published Dan Georgakas in Heidelberg. German political artist Jochen Gerz at the end of the 1960s in Paris published experimental and Underground writers with his "Agentzia". But of course most Beat and Hippie poets were more mystical than political, I don't deny that.--Radh (talk) 09:47, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

If you haven't read it, and can get it, I recommend Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop and the American Avant Garde by Lewis MacAdams. (# ISBN-10: 0743207785 / # ISBN-13: 978-0743207782. He does a good job of winding together all that US political, cultural, metaphysical and socio-sexual radicalism is a clear narrative and a very pleasing style. Altcult101 (talk) 14:58, 22 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you, will try to get it from a library. --Radh (talk)