Analyzing Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac

Embracing the independence, exploration of new frontiers, and open experimentation with psychotropic drugs that Beat works like On The Road offered in vividly crafted form has long been considered a tradition-and sometimes obnoxious stereotype-of the college experience, particularly to that of the English major eager to break from their hometown existence. It is as ubiquitous as the Che Guevara poster, NORML membership, and regrettable tattoo on college campuses across the county, subject to much satire and lampooning in pop culture. So imagine my surprise when a room full of English majors in the very class I write this paper for recently offered a reception best described as hostile towards these groundbreaking and staggeringly influencial works. Like the Beach Boy's Pet Sounds, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue and other landmark works that have suffered from their own reputation, it seems there now exists a widespread, knee-jerk desire to roast these sacred cows of the English canon.

Now instead of having to endure an under-read, overly-eager Philosophy major pontificate about the symbolism of Eastern mysticism in Dharma Bums, we must silently suffer the irony of a hemp-wearing, Obama-voting, "going-green," fashionista emblazoned head to toe with Sanskrit jewelry painting what could be considered the catalyst of the vast cultural changes of the 60s and the most influential literary movement of 20^th century America irrelevant with one single, uninformed stroke.

The revolution that authors Ginsberg and Kerouac imagined did not come at a price, as is obvious from their suffering reputations among what used to be their base. Their work is still frightening, thought-provoking, grotesque, and exceedingly relevant. It is so loose in form that it appears to be the work of a madman, its free-associative, subversive structure can be enraging to decipher, and the use of words like "nigger" and "queer" are all too often taken at face value. But anyone who calls the Beats racist or vulgar is woefully misinformed. It can be argued the Beat, through works like Howl, America, and Big Sur, are directly responsible for significantly elevating the social awareness of causes like Civil Rights, Free Speech, Environmentalism, Multiculturalism, Feminism, the LGBT movement and having a major influence on Alternative rock and roll and experimental, transgressive literature.

The 1950's in America, often portrayed as a Utopian ideal of the American Dream, was in reality a bubble that was about to burst. A bustling US Economy was artificially inflated by a worldwide depression that was a result of a gruesome and horrific World War, whose veterans were inserted from the fields of Europe into the hive-like mainstream of house, car, job, wife, and kids. Those who grappled with the horrors they had experienced and the disturbing rise of American materialism were marginalized, prosecuted, silenced, and branded as dangerous, pretentious radicals, returning to a country that had not taken any lessons from a unbelievable war other than to grow even more militaristic. The only answer for these outsiders was to attempt to overthrow the power structures through wit, cleverly constructed writing, and asking the painful but important questions.

The form of works like On the Road, The Howl, and America are noticeably abstract, free-associative, and subversive. The length of a sentence is often widely varied, with run-on sentences and fragments common throughout their work. But these changes were not arbitrary, in fact they were a expression of the reverence of nature that was sweeping the country. While Kerouac and Ginsberg were expanding their physical boundaries in their travels across the US, they were adapting this wandering mindset into their writing patters. While Americans like Hemingway had experimented with sentence structure, no previous writer had achieved the psychedelic effects of the Beat's evocative, jazz-influenced prose, striking at first glance and remaining with the reader. This writing style, deliberately and forcibly not "straight," coupled with the often biting political and social commentary, destroyed any remaining notions of rules to writing prose and poetry, and mimicked the drug-induced bursts of thought that came along with their copious experimentation with hallucinogens. The stream of thought writing of the beats was the most visual indication of their radical ideas.

Ginsberg and Kerouac were lettered men, who had studied the classics at Columbia, becoming involved in liberal politics and coming to terms with their views on peace and nonviolence. One key way they helped redefine social norms was their progressive writing on the subjects of racial prejudice and its complicated relationship with corporate America. Ginsberg's America is a good example of his unconventional style, particularly when he makes the references to the exploitation of "big black niggers" and "queers." These words to this day have painful connotations, and the mere printing and often existence of the word is beyond offensive for some of the population. Ginsberg use of the word in such a perceivably casual manner can make him seem flippant, but that is the point, as he plays on the uncaring, oblivious nature of white America towards racial discrimination at the time. In On the Road we see a different approach with a similar goal. Kerouac's exploration of Jazz culture in lovingly crafted words offered a spiritual and sympathetic view of what was commonly represented as movement of freaks, burnouts, drug addicts and lowlifes.

This use of unconventional writing and writing material resulted in works that were difficult to understand by the general public, leading to outcries against works like Howl's subject matter. These claims lead to a variety of obscenity trials against the Beat's work, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful in censoring the work. In fact, the opposite was achieved, and works like Burrough's Naked Lunch and Howl helped eliminate any fears of publishing works with difficult and challenging material. The victory of the Beats over censorship as defined by the court system is the most important aspect of their legacy, one that impacted every student in creative writing in college, aspiring writers, Poet Laureates, and book sellers.

Noted literary critic and artist Bruce Conner stated about connotations of the term "Beat"

"I don't know any artist that would call himself a beat artist... If somebody did, you'd consider him a fake, a fraud running a scam." The Beats have suffered incredibly at the hands of dominant culture, with their reputation irreparably damaged in the public eye. The social change and prodding of the establishment encouraged by their work in order to combat their marginalization has been largely forgotten, leaving them reduced to a chain smoking, black wearing stereotype removing them of the palpable power they once had.