/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17591150]

Anyone else think the Beat movement was a load of garbage?
The only art that came out of it was from guys that were just failed normalfags who happened to drift into the company of Beatfags and documented their lifestyle, like Kerouac. Burroughs too. Beatfags tried to claim Burroughs but he was just doing his own thing.

[Anonymous No.17591166]

>>17591150
One time Kerouac was in the audience of a reading that Frank O’Hara was giving and Jack said from the crow “you’re killing modern poetry, Frank.” And O’Hara immediately responded “that’s more than you’ve ever done for it.” Perfectly captures what the beats are to lit imo.

[Anonymous No.17591214]

>>17591150
I can't speak of the movement as a whole but Kerouac was cool. Ginsburg was shit.

[Anonymous No.17591230]

people hate Jack because he was handsome

[Anonymous No.17591245]

>>17591150
It produced Howl. Literally everything else it produced was trash.

But there are a lot of movements and moments in history that only produced one thing of note that enters historical memory. In fact they usually do.

Although in this case it's not even just one author of note, it's literally one poem. Its kind of remarkable actually how literally everything else Ginsberg produced was utter trash but then somehow he wrote this one amazing poem.

[Anonymous No.17591246]

I like kerouacs books. That’s enough for me. Anyway they’re basically Proto-hippies

[Anonymous No.17591289]

>>17591150
Burroughs peaked burger lit for my money.

[Anonymous No.17591326]

>>17591150
>was a load of garbage
thats the point, it was disillusion from the war and economic boom happy happy joy joy flower world peas.

[Anonymous No.17591338]

>>17591166
Kerouac at least had good taste, but I don't care for his subject matter

[Anonymous No.17591364]

>I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat"... the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific ... People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks, and finally I was called the "avatar" of all this.
>In light of what he considered beat to mean and what beatnik had come to mean, Kerouac once observed to a reporter, "I'm not a beatnik, I'm a Catholic", showing the reporter a painting of Pope Paul VI and saying, "You know who painted that? Me."

[Anonymous No.17591387]

>>17591326
Yeah, the beats are basically Lost Generation 2.0
Jack name drops Hemingway like 3 times in the first 50 pages of On the Road. And tell me it’s not just hippy Sun Also Rises. The connection is strong

[Anonymous No.17591442]

>>17591150

[Anonymous No.17591471]

>>17591387
Seems like the 1920s and the 1950s kinda had the same thing going on.

[Anonymous No.17592457]

I got introduced to the beats by a hot girl I met in the library a few years ago, I was young and everything she made me read/see I enjoyed. That goes for the movies about the beats aswell. Now on later notes I can still enjoy Kerouac but mostly because it brings me back to this time of my life.

[Anonymous No.17593510]

A lot of the lesser known poets and side figures are good. Personally not into the main ones.

[Anonymous No.17593587]

>>17591150

Kerouac is a compelling figure. He's caught up in the Beat movement, wanting to simply live and experience - while also growing old and frustrated - torn between traveling around and taking care of his mother - and trying to reconcile his Buddhist and Christian faiths. Makes for good reading.

[Anonymous No.17593677]

(((Beatnik)))

[Anonymous No.17593690]

>>17591150
>>17593587
Dharma Bums is the best
A guide for life
Big Sur is great as well, but very depressing as he was starting to lose control of his alcoholism and die

[Anonymous No.17593692]

>>17591471
People came back from a horrific war, to a land of material plenty but spiritually empty.

[Anonymous No.17593704]

(((Beat Generation)))

[Anonymous No.17593750]

>>17593677
>>17593704
Did you think the second one would be funnier? Best not to enter threads about books you haven't read.

[Anonymous No.17593793]

>>17593750
The second one is just more precise. Compile a list of writers who could be considered of that ilk, count the number of Jews, and then figure the percentage. Then will the meaningless, ugly counterculturalism of this (pseudo-)literary movement make perfect sense.

[Anonymous No.17593830]

>>17593793
Like I said, don't enter threads about authors/books you haven't read. And to spout /pol/shit on top? You're embarrassing yourself.

[Anonymous No.17593845]

>[I]n 1982, newspapers reported in huge headlines that the Supreme Court had ruled child pornography illegal. I was thrilled. I knew Allen would not be. I did think he was a civil libertarian. But, in fact, he was a pedophile. He did not belong to the North American Man/Boy Love Association out of some mad, abstract conviction that its voice had to be heard. He meant it. I take this from what Allen said directly to me, not from some inference I made. He was exceptionally aggressive about his right to fuck children and his constant pursuit of underage boys.[103

[Anonymous No.17593858]

>>17593845
Everyone knows this about him. Learn to separate art from artist, pleb.

[Anonymous No.17593882]

>>17593858
>separating art from artist
wew lad

[Anonymous No.17594014]

>>17591150
jack kerouac was so hot

[Anonymous No.17594188]

Kerouac's literary influences were rather conventional and conservative, including and especially Thomas Wolfe whose Look, Homeward Angel and similar roman-a-clefs have obvious influences on Kerouac's own style of writing, which include long sentences, rather exaggerated or enthusiastic romantic descriptions of people and places, and a relatively simple narrative arc of a young rather shy man who is overwhelmed by the rather mad world he is thrust into. The other influence on Kerouac's writing, arguably, is jazz, whose role in American culture was partly a result of the natural evolution of African-American music in the nation and in part a hangover of Weimar Germany (it was a young German Jew who left the country during the Weimar period, for example, who set up America's first and most influential jazz label - Blue Note Records). This suggests either an internal struggle (between the staid English conservative novel and the revolutionary jazz-inspired culture) or a synthesis, I'm not quite sure which is most appropriate for Kerouac's writings. Either way, he manages somehow to make something quite distinct in literary terms by being intimately familiar with both the structure and legacy of traditional novels like those of Wolfe and also with the looseness and lack of regulation promoted by jazz music.

[Anonymous No.17594242]

>>17594188

>The other influence on Kerouac's writing, arguably, is jazz, whose role in American culture was partly a result of the natural evolution of African-American music in the nation and in part a hangover of Weimar Germany (it was a young German Jew who left the country during the Weimar period, for example, who set up America's first and most influential jazz label - Blue Note Records). This suggests either an internal struggle (between the staid English conservative novel and the revolutionary jazz-inspired culture) or a synthesis

Jesus christ jazz is some of the worst music out there. The only people who like it are either musicians who admire its technical "feats" in a genuinely autistic way and do seem to mind that it sounds like nails on a chalkboard, or bougie retards trying to status signal who are not normally the type of people to be very much into music

[Anonymous No.17594257]

>>17594242
Lol

[Anonymous No.17594263]

>>17594242
I don't know enough about it to have an opinion, however in Germany it was ultimately outlawed as "Negromusik" in the 1930s, since jazz and the Weimar era were intimately linked in a cultural sense. Some conservative writers (e.g., Philip Larkin) enjoyed it a lot however, so I don't know. Perhaps in the 1950s or whatever it really did feel quite invigorating like a precursor to rock & roll or something.

[Anonymous No.17595845]

>>17594263
>I don't know enough about it to have an opinion
don't worry, neither does he

[Anonymous No.17595863]

Only burroughs and ginsberg were good out of all of them
Kerouac is just shit, the rest arent worth noting

[Anonymous No.17595880]

you're underestimating what the beats meant to that generation.

[Anonymous No.17595989]

>>17594242
Jacob Collier is a shining example of this. His fans are hysterical and his music sucks.
I must add that contemporary classical music is guilty of all of the same shit, though. And it's been that way for 100 years.

[Anonymous No.17595993]

>>17595880
Regardless their books were nearly all irredeemably terrible

[Anonymous No.17596006]

>>17595989
The second Viennese school killed classical music.

[Anonymous No.17596064]

>>17596006
Bingo.

[Anonymous No.17596135]

>>17591150
cry about it

[Anonymous No.17596159]

>>17591150
>The only art that came out of it was from guys that were just failed normalfags who happened to drift into the company of Beatfags
You sound like a buffoon

[Fneed Gardner No.17596188]

>>17594242
Brainlet

[Anonymous No.17596223]

>>17591442
This would be called a Woke or Soi kit today

[Anonymous No.17596274]

>>17595993
is that so. so now... what's inspiring to your generation?

[Anonymous No.17596326]

>>17591150
ive always admired and agreed with the writing of Gary Snyder, probably the only beat still alive cause he lives a healthy outdoors life

[Anonymous No.17596339]

>>17591150
Literally the only reason the beat movement is considered important is because the Boomers read those books when they were young. Boomers dominate everything so if Boomers like the rest of us are stuck with it until they finally all die off.
It will be interesting in the next decade or two as the Boomers finally die to see what of their art and culture survives. Is anyone going to give a shit about the Beatles after the Boomers are dead? Is anyone ever going to read On The Road again?

[Anonymous No.17596356]

>>17596339
"the only reason x is considered good is because of context!"

yes.

[Anonymous No.17596372]

>>17593858
His art is shit too though

[Anonymous No.17597417]

I only like Beatniks from cartoons

[Anonymous No.17597433]

Kerouac was a catholic who smoked weed so he pissed off the libtards and the conservatards