Cause and Effect in the Beat Movement

In the beginning there were words. And the words were scattered and without form or meaning; darkness was over the surface of the literary counterculture of America, and a revolutionary spirit hovered over the tempestuous waters of disaffected, pencil-pushing youths across the nation. Into this bubbling void appeared the Beats: Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Michael Mclure and Philip Lamantia. They gathered together and manifested themselves on October 7^th, 1955 at San Francisco's Six Gallery, ushering in what would later be known as a golden rucksack age in American literature: The San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. That night was the first of what would become many poetry readings throughout the city, region, state, and finally country, that were actually held outside someone's apartment. Not only did this reading signify the start of a new movement and interest in modern American literature (making poetry, according to poet Gary Snyder, "Suddenly...useful in 1955 in San Francisco" (Snyder 162-163)), it also served as precursor to the impact and popularity of the savior of the Beats, Jack Kerouac. The "Lost Generation" of Hemingway and Fitzgerald assuming the role of John the Baptist, preparing the way and the hearts of the people, Kerouac was the Christ and Ginsberg and the rest of the Beats his apostles. A new stage in the literary development of America was born.

With the reading at the Six Gallery in 1955, the publishing of Ginsberg's "Howl and Other Poems" in 1956 and Kerouac's famous On the Road in 1957, the Beat generation had taken over the nation like a great flood, destroying all the old conceptions in modern literature and beginning again with something new and fresh. By the time Kerouac published his fourth book, The Dharma Bums, in October, 1958 (after The Town and the City in 1950, On the Road in 1957, and The Subterraneans in February, 1958), seemingly everyone knew his name and identified it synonymously with the Beat Generation and its movement and culture. Not only was he seen as its most ardent adherent and popularisor, he was also seen as the one who began it. Yet with all his major works published after the beginning of the San Francisco Poetry Rennaissance, and with all the events recorded therein as a basis for these works taking place years before, it begs the question of who or what influenced the other; whether the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance influenced Kerouac's writing and lifted him to the forefront of the movement, or whether Kerouac's writing and lifestyle influenced the movements of the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance.

Though Kerouac didn't actually read at the Six Gallery reading, he was there. In fact, he fictionalized the account in The Dharma Bums, where the character meant to represent the real Jack Kerouac, Ray Smith, makes the assertion that:

I was the one who got things jumping by going around collecting dimes and quarters from the rather stiff audience standing around in the gallery and coming back with three huge gallon jugs of California Burgundy and getting them all piffed so that by eleven o'clock when Alvah Goldbook was reading his, wailing his poem "Wail" drunk with arms outspread everybody was yelling "Go! Go! Go!" (like a jam session) and old Rheinhold Cacoethes the father of the Frisco poetry scene was wiping his tears in gladness. (Kerouac, Dharma Bums 13-14)

In scenes like these from The Dharma Bums, with Allen Ginsberg and his poem "Howl" so obviously represented as Alvah Goldbook and his "Wail," it is easy to see the influence of the Beats on Kerouac's writing. Indeed, one of the staples of the book (and most of his other fiction as well) is that all the characters and events portrayed are based on actual people and events as seen through the sometimes foggy lens of Kerouac's memories. Though the truth behind many of his re-creations would later be questioned by some, Kerouac always maintained the integrity of his work as being honest and true to life. According to Kevin J. Haynes, editor of Conversations with Jack Kerouac, "Kerouac stressed the autobiographical nature of his fiction, emphasizing that the stories he told were true and only the names had been changed" (xiv). Being that Kerouac frequently visited, hung out and lived with key figures in the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, it only makes sense that his novels would be bursting with their fictionalized 'others.' The most apparent example of this in The Dharma Bums is the main character, Japhy Ryder, meant by Kerouac to represent his friend and Buddhist model, poet Gary Snyder. Though some would assert Kerouac's claim that he "got things jumping" at the Six Gallery to be evidence for his influence upon the events that took place that night, it is more obvious to see the influence those events had on his writing, as they affected him enough to be the basis for them.

More of an influence on the reading that begot the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance than his actual presence there were Kerouac's relationships to the participants before the reading. The events at Six Gallery took place in October, 1955. Kerouac, in an interview with Al Aronowitz in 1959, talked about the early days of the Beat Generation and the early relationships that generated it. He states, "But, you know, Allen [Ginsberg] and I got our start forming a circle around [William S.] Burroughs and the guys from St. Louis - the whole thing really began in St. Louis...And [Herbert] Huncke's very important, you know, might be just as important as Neal [Cassidy], almost" (Haynes 29). Kerouac had met Ginsberg in 1944, when Ginsberg was just a teenager. He walked into Kerouac's apartment on the Columbia campus, which Kerouac describes as having been, "...a hangout for the intellectuals of the campus" and the first thing he said, according to Kerouac, was, "Discretion is the better part of valor" (Haynes 28). In the same year Kerouac met William S. Burroughs and Herbert Huncke. In 1946, he met Neal Cassidy, who would later become the basis for Dean Moriarty in On the Road,as well for other characters in Kerouac's works, such as Cody in Visions of Cody. From 1947 to 1950, Kerouac embarked on the series of journeys across the continent that would later become On the Road, which he finished in 1951. Within the next three years leading up to the poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, Kerouac also wrote Dr. Sax, Maggie Cassidy, The Subterraneans, Mexico City Blues, and had the experiences that would later lead to the writing of Tristessa. Though none of these works were to be published until 1957 or after, it is safe to assume they were read, either in pieces or in their entirety, by many in Kerouac's literary circle. In his journals from the time of writing On the Road, Kerouac even refers to Ginsberg's reading of the work and his comments on the writing. He states, in an entry on November 23, 1948, referring to some early notes for the work, "In the afternoon I...did some research in Ginsberg's letters for On the Road" (Kerouac, Windblown World 173). In a later entry, written one-to-two years later, and dated simply "Thurs. 20 - Sun. 23," Kerouac discusses how he, "Came home and Allen [Ginsberg] and I talked till dawn over my notebooks and various papers" (Kerouac, Windblown World 238). These passages show that while Kerouac's work was unpublished, it did not go without an audience among at least one of the leaders of the future Beat movement and Poetry Renaissance. This sharing of work was not one-sided either, as Kerouac has long been traditionally known for contributing the title "Howl" to Ginsberg's famous poem, and in 1957 actually typed the manuscript for William S. Burrough's cult-classic, Naked Lunch, in Tangier (Giamo 170).

This constant give-and-take between the leaders of the counterculture movements of the near future gave Kerouac a reputation that preceded himself among his peers, and by the time he went to San Francisco in 1955 see Ginsberg and met Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kennoth Rexroth and others, he was accepted as an equal. He and Snyder got along so well, in fact, based on a mutual zest for life and an increasing interest in Kerouac for Snyder's Buddhist practices, that later that year they climbed the Matterhorn together, and the following Spring lived together in a shack in California. Not long after, Snyder left for Japan and Kerouac, as a result of advice taken from Snyder, spent his summer as a lookout on Desolation Peak in the Cascades. This summer-stint as mountain lookout, along with his time spent with Snyder in the shack and while climbing Matterhorn, makes up the bulk of Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, which was both written and published between 1957 and 1958.

Though the publication of On the Road in 1957 established Kerouac as the leader of the Beat Generation, solidified a year later with the publication of The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums, he was by far the only voice among them. Writing in regards to the infamous Six Gallery poetry reading, author Michael Hrebeniak states:

In common with those performers at the Six Gallery's inaugural moment, the term "Beat" under Keroauc's hand denotes revelation: a full-blooded participation in life, "submissive, to everything, open, listening" (GB 72), and the search for a "company in which to be nourished, a confidence to fill the void left by that state" (Mottram, "Preface" 60). The poets enjoyed a spirit of camaraderie rather than shared aesthetic beliefs - Michael Davidson notes that the Six Gallery reading alone brought together every poetic style associated with the period, from vatic confessionalism and imagist precision to satirical self-projection, surrealism, and personalist meditation (4) - but their work collectively stands for resistance of habit, for experimentation in notation, and for discovery without a safety net. (Hrebeniak 13)

It wasn't just Kerouac's voice that was calling in the wilderness, it was a multitude of voices, some with varying messages and beliefs, all coming together in a "spirit of camaraderie," each pushing their own distinctive styles, each being comforted in a "company in which to be nourished," in "a confidence to fill the void." The Beat movement was not just about the renaissance of American literature and poetry, and it was not just about Kerouac. It was mixing of the two worlds, which were not all that dissimilar. It was the projection of voices rising up out of the obscurity that was desert-wandering of the American counterculture, and it was the telling of that story through Kerouac that helped to lead it out of that obscurity.

By many accounts the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance dissolved after five years or so with the disengagement of Kennoth Rexroth's publicity (when he deemed the Beats too commercial) and the departure of Gary Snyder to Japan (French 1). However, the Beat movement continued for many years, largely because of writers like Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, who continued to produce their spontaneous prose laden, counterculture/underground hipster works throughout the 1960s. Kerouac's The Dharma Bums has been a key Beat text since its publication in 1958. Its spontaneous prose is by and large a product of the spontaneous living it is based on. The counterculture messages inspired by Kerouac's life among the Beats and the "Dharma Bums" of America are poignant throughout, as are traces of the Gary Snyder-inspired Buddhist aspirations that would become common among many of Kerouac's later works. A good example of messages of this type found among the pages of this work is Kerouac's character Ray Smith's rant about American colleges:

...colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression in the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization. (Kerouac, Dharma Bums 39)

This lambasting of "everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time" is a shout-out to all the potential Beats in the nation to stand up, to stand out, and to stop conforming to the standards of a society that is content to live in unquestioned obedience to ridiculous notions of propriety and materialist expectation. Another quote that illustrates this well is from the character Kerouac based on Gary Snyder, Japhy. His take on Americanism is revealed when he speaks of his growing up in the old Northwest: "...I didn't feel like an American at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper gray censorship of all our real human values..." (Kerouac, Dharma Bums 31). This quote, with its images of sexual repression and the censorship individual ideals, is strikingly relevant even today. Much of the country is sexually repressed, and associates sex with shame and guilt more than they associate it with pleasure or oneness. The part about censorship of all our real human values is seen in those faulty associations not only in terms sex, but also in terms of things like drugs and alcohol, our diets, the way we spend our money, the way we act in public, and so on. It all has to do with how we feel we're supposed to act because of society's expectations versus how we really want to act independently, which is a subject common throughout Beat literature.

The histories of the Beat Generation, the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, and Kerouac himself are sometimes less than clear. With all the information that exists - the books, letters, timetables, etc. - it's easy to lose one's way in the mess of data, dates and figures, and to be confused by what may seem at first to be an evident, matter-of-fact account of the 'way things were' or how they happened. However, despite the graying overlap of certain areas or the seeming misinformation, despite the waters so muddied by time and literary criticisms, one simple truth remains: that the Beat Generation, the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, and Jack Kerouac are forever interconnected. And, as the counterculture movement represented by all three is still relevant today, it matters little who influenced who or how or why. It's the messages that matter. It's about the illumination of everyday life. As Kerouac wrote in his journal, Saturday, July 3, 1948, in reference to Herbert Huncke, when he used the word 'beat' for the first time as an adjective in writing: "But he's still alive, and strange, and wise, and beat, and human, and all blood-and-flesh and staring as in a benny depression forever" (Kerouac, Windblown World 100-101). And that is what it means to be 'beat.' It means to be living, human, flesh-and-blood; strange and wise and constantly staring at the beauty of the world around you, longing to be part of it. That's the message of the Beats, the message that inspired those true poets of the Six Gallery, and the message of The Dharma Bums.

Works Cited

French, Warren. The San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, 1955-1960. Boston: Twayne, 1991.

Giamo, Ben. Kerouac, the Word and the Way: Prose Artist as Spiritual Quester. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000.

Haynes, Kevin J., ed. Conversations with Jack Kerouac. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2005.

Hrebeniak, Michael. Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2006.

Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. 1958. New York: Penguin, 1976.

Kerouac, Jack. Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954. Ed. Douglas Brinkley. New York: Viking, 2004.

Snyder, Gary. The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979. New York: New Directions, 1980.