beats, jack kerouac - 1989 - Jack Kerouac's Road: A Franco-American Odyssey

Jack Kerouac's Road: A Franco-American Odyssey
Herménégilde Chiasson
1989
National Film Board of Canada
55 min.

The National Film Board is one of Canada's most important cultural institutions. Important, as far as I'm concerned, because the film board has produced numerous films of relevance to this blog. Several of those films, such as Acts of Defiance and l'Acadie l'Acadie !?! have already been profiled on this blog. Canada as a site of colonial domination and inter-colonial struggle has produced many of the kinds of socio-cultural fractures that countercultures grow from. Herménégilde Chiasson's film about Jack Kerouac's life and family history follows one of those lines of fracture from Quebec into Lowell Massachusetts, an industrial town where many French Canadian's immigrated to in the late 19th century, and it was also the birthplace of seminal Beat author Jack Kerouac, a descendant of those immigrants. The mother of this unabashedly American iconoclast were, in fact, Quebecois.

Chiasson's film is an investigation into the life of Kerouac and his roots in this immigrant Quebecois-American culture, and it is also a look at this community itself. The documentary is a typical mix of interviews with members of the Quebecois community in Lowell and read quotations or old television interview segments from the famous author. Visually, the film shows old photographs juxtaposed against contemporary footage of the city of Lowell during the winter, and this winter aesthetic immediately conjures up ideas of Canadian towns despite the fact that its an American city on display.

This film also goes over many of the known details of Kerouac's life, such as his football scholarship to Columbia, his becoming a writer, and Allen Ginsberg appears to discuss their first meeting. The documentary's main focus however is the connections between its implied subjects, Canadian and American, mother and child, alien and native. Some of the interview subjects talk about growing up in Lowell and developing from their families an intimate knowledge of Canadian/Quebecois politics and society. Many of the Kerouac quotations referred to in the film refer to his mother, and in the context of this film the implication is that to refer to his mother is to refer to Quebec as well.

beats - 2007 - Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady
Noah Buschel
2007
Jean Doumanian Productions
80 min

Neal Cassady is a biographical film focusing on Jack Kerouac's Dean Moriarty muse for On the Road, Neal Cassady. This film minimizes his friendship with Kerouac, confining their interactions to the first 20 minutes of the film. Most of the movie actually focuses on the second phase of Cassady's career as a behind-the-scenes countercultural protagonist, his relationship to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

Cassady is a pivotal figure in American counterculture, first inspiring the beats to write and later befriending one of the best known hippie collectives of the era. His relevance is rooted in his friendships with the era-defining writers of these periods, and some of the scenes in this film use these writers interactions with Cassady as metaphoric markers of the passage of one era to another. In particular tensions are represented between Kesey and Kerouac. Kerouac is shown to reject the hippies who, in return, rejected him as well. Interestingly, Alan Ginsberg, who not only knew Cassady but also enjoyed relevance from one era to another, and was friends with Kesey himself, was not mentioned until 50 minutes into the film. The film is thus two travel narratives, first On the Road and Pranksters On the Bus.

Much of the movie is a simulation of 1960s film footage of the Prankster's cross-country bus trip or of a Ken Kesey party where Kesey pressures a drunken 1960s Keuroac to take acid. This shift in perspective and in media is a technique for conveying a sense of authenticity, and here it also refers to the hours and hours of film the pranksters shot of their voyage, film that was never edited into a proper film but nevertheless has found its way into countless documentaries about the 1960s.

The jazz music soundtrack largely signifies the beat era even if the film's emphasis is on the 1960s and psychedelia.

beats, william s burroughs - book - 2011 - Naked Tea: The Burroughs Bits

Naked Tea: The Burroughs Bits
Philip Willey with George Laughead
illustrations by Lyle Schultze
2011
54 pages

This book is a brief piece of William S. Burroughs fan-fiction, apparently excerpted from a novel-in-progress by Philip Willey.  Although the author is writing a novel, his name only appears online in conjunction with other small publications, or with anecdotes about meeting writers.  Naked Tea is, according to the book’s website, inspired by meetings with Burroughs.  Willey (I believe it to be the same Willey, although I may be mistaken) previously contributed an anecdote about meeting Henry Miller to a 1989 book titled Brushes with Greatness: An Anthology of Chance Encounters with Celebrities.  Willey seems to have a knack for turning his run-ins with authors into writing of his own, as exhibited in Naked Tea.

This book is a small and short self-published work featuring a brief narrative of hanging around and talking which includes William S. Burroughs as a character.  The writing itself is more Hunter S. Thompson (who is referenced directly in the text) prose-style than Burroughs, and so is much of the art, which (sorta) evokes a pastiche of Ralph Steadman’s wild illustrations, with one exception being a mixed media image that looks like a modified piece by Jean Dubuffet.  The text is a tribute to Burroughs, more than anything else, as it often reads as a stream of unexplained references to Burroughs fairly large and disjointed body of written works.

Lyle Schultz - 2010 - The Cut Ups (featured in Naked Tea)

Jean Dubuffet - similar to an image in Naked Tea!

The pieces written by Willey are imaginary conversations with the great American author, and this book thus makes an odd and fictional companion to other collections of Burroughs interviews such as the Semiotext(e) publication Burroughs Live, and the RE/Search books on Burroughs.  After two such imagined encounters between Willey (presumably) and Burroughs, the first at a tea shop (hence the title) the second at a rock concert, the book segues to a candid sketch of Burroughs in his final months contributed by George Laughead, the manager of the Kansas Heritage Group virtual library.  Laughead was a personal friend to Burroughs while the author lived in Laurence Kansas, and his online resource includes a Burroughs photo gallery and a page devoted to the Beat movement (which features a promotional statement regarding this book).

Apparently this is not the only work of Burroughs/Beats fan fiction out there...

Photo of installation by Marco Perego featuring a sculpted representation of Burroughs titled The Only Good Rock Star is a Dead Rock Star

beats, 1960s - book - 1960 - Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society
Paul Goodman
Vintage Books
1960
296 pages

Just before the start of the 1960s, and into the first couple years of the decade, a number of books were published that took a critical eye to American society during one of its most prosperous periods.  Such books included The Organization Man (1956) by American sociologist William H Whyte, that critically analyzed the behavior of American corporate executives, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) by freelance writer and urban critic Jane Jacobs, that critiqued the contemporary design of urban centres and their effect on quality of life, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1960), a book that inspired the environmental movement with its descriptions of the harmful ecological effects of certain industrial practices.  Growing Up Absurd (1956), Paul Goodman’s 300 page discussion of contemporary life and its effects on burgeoning masculinity in mid-century America may be added to this list, especially as it played a role in inspiring the radical 1960s.

Paul Goodman (1911-1972) was a radical leftist intellectual polymath who left behind a large body of literature when he died.  He was a prolific writer who had produced a number of works of fiction, drama and poetry.  Most of his work, however, was critical commentary and cultural analysis, on a myriad of subjects, delivered from a far-left perspective.  Goodman has been mentioned in Andrew Cornell’s article A New Anarchism Emerges as one of the writers who kept American anarchism vital during the mid-century period when far-left politics were at a low ebb in the United States.   Goodman wrote for a number of leftist magazines, publishing articles in which he discusses the mass media, sexuality, politics, social behavior, and the arts.  Out of Goodman’s large bibliography, Growing Up Absurd is probably his best known work, and the text that gave the author his reputation as a first-rate social critic.

In this book, Goodman identified a decline in the possibilities for young men in the United States during the 1950s.  Much of his analysis is focused upon what he considered to be the poor quality of employment positions that were available to young men at that time.  Goodman argued that, while a young man (the author operated under the presumption that masculinity was at stake, young women, according to the author, may still find life satisfaction in motherhood) may have opportunities open to them, the capacity for these opportunities to offer life satisfaction to them is nonexistent.  Many work occupations were/are unskilled or driven by business principles that empty them of their apparent usefulness because they become isolated from   Goodman's thesis for the text is that there were few avenues for an adult male to realize their masculinity in 1950s American society.

Goodman also argues that society has (essentially) become a machine of interactive mechanisms oriented towards production, and this has resulted in a withering of the aspects of life that once gave it meaning including community, education, and democracy.  Because Goodman was primarily focused on the effects of this society upon the quality of life for young men, he determined that delinquency, gang life (cf. Street Corner Society by William H Whyte for more concrete analysis of this social phenomena), and the arts (as represented by the Beats) became the major realms in which young men may find community and self-satisfaction.  That young men would turn to such outlets in order to feel useful is problematic to Goodman, however, who explains his sympathy to the need of youth to feel useful as they become adults, but also argues that such outlets in fact interrupt development and maintain the subject’s adolescent state.  

Goodman’s text basically predicted the youth culture of the 1960s.  Growing Up Absurd analyzed the socio-cultural conditions that gave rise to the Hippies, and what’s more Goodman’s political writings contributed to a body of far-left literature that influenced the New Left.  Goodman calls for a restructuring society oriented away from the technocratic strictures of isolated production towards the building of communities that enhance the experience of living.  It appears that many of the conditions Goodman described have continued, possibly even accelerated, where a division from work and community has lead into crises like the currently ongoing financial meltdown and a Graduate student bubble.  Numerous other crises of youth have emerged with the acceleration of the consumer society as individuals try to construct their identities based on brand associations and through image manipulations via social media.  All of this suggests that Growing Up Absurd can be read as a text that divined the cultural ground for the new social forms of the 1960s, but also that aspects of the text are still relevant as cultural analysis.

beats, piracy - book - 1991 - Ghost of Chance

Ghost of Chance
William S Burroughs
Serpent’s Tail
1991
56 pages

Ghost of Chance is a short fictional work that surveys many of the ideas that Beat writer William S Burroughs was working with through the 1980s (and also through much of his career).  The core idea of Burroughs work from this era was to bring figures from outlaw history into his literary concerns of drugs, disease, language and authority.  Ghost of Chance returns to Burroughs exploration of the terrain of pirate utopias (c.f. Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes by Peter Lamborn Wilson) the he first traversed in his 1981 novel Cities of the Red Night, with legendary Captain Mission returning as a primarily character in this novella.

The only textual account of Captain Mission is from A General History of the Pyrates, a 1724 book by Daniel DeFoe that essentially serves as a reference guide to the golden age of pirates.  According to DeFoe, via Burroughs’ afterword, Mission was one of the first pirates to establish a short-lived libertarian community.  In Ghost of Chance, Mission appears as a leader of his community, and as a man who communes with the indigenous population (and their customs) and with the animal population as well.  He cares greatly for the lemurs of Madagascar (where his community had settled) and keeps one that he called Ghost as a pet.  

The Captain Mission narrative eventually dissolves into Burroughs ruminations on Christ and a surrealist vision of bizarre disease (referred to as ‘the hairs’ in the text, a disease where hair-like organisms consume a host-body and spread to other hosts by contact), as well as devastation and incompetent authority in the contemporary period.  In some ways this book is a short glimpse into the things that concerned Burroughs around the time of writing, including a turn towards a fondness for animals that continued until the author’s death, and an interest in the environment.  The Captain Mission character is a central site for the interrelated spheres of Western anarchism, indigenous life, and the natural environment.  Mission is an embodiment of some of Murray Bookchin’s ideas of social ecology, and members of his community are expected to show respect to plant and animal life as they show respect to their fellow pirates.  The pirate captain represents the opposite of the European colonists who overrun and destroy Madagascar and its natural environment, which sets a pattern of force meeting counter-force that carries through the short book.

This book may also be a tribute to Burroughs close friend, Bryon Gysin, who died in 1986, a few years before this volume’s publication.  Burroughs and Gysin developed a number of ideas together (the cut-up, the dreammachine) that were intended to break down our perceptions of reality and by extension its apparatus of control.  Captain Mission was an experimenter of breaking down control systems via new forms of political and social organization.  Gysin, in collaboration with Burroughs, was an experimenter of breaking down control systems via new forms of language and sensory perception.  Burroughs makes a number of references to insights Gysin had through his text.  Furthermore the book is rife with black-and-white representations of uncredited abstract paintings of the kind Gysin (a painter who was, at one time, a member of the Surrealists) produced.  

abstract calligraphic work by Bryon Gysin

Ghost of Chance is probably one of Burroughs most accessible texts.  It is not fully linear, although it is also not oriented around cut-up text fragments and choped bits of narrative like many of his other novels are.  His rewriting of the Captain Mission story recalls the work Jorge Luis Borges did rewriting fragments of Herbert Asbury’s Gangs of New York and other texts, although Burroughs pushes Mission into an extreme that extends well beyond the figure’s textual origins.  This short book may serve as an entry point into Burroughs heavier Cities of the Red Night that covers some of the same ground via Captain Mission.

anarchism - article - 2011 - A New Anarchism Emerges: 1940 - 1954

A New Anarchism Emerges: 1940 - 1954
Andrew Cornell
The Journal for the Study of Radicalism
Vol 5, no. 1: 2011
pp. 105-131
Michigan State University Press

Andrew Cornell is a historian of American radical politics who teaches at New York University.  His CV shows a wide array of interests within the field of anarchist and radical history, however it appears that much of his work focuses on radical campus activity.  His article A New Anarchism Emerges: 1940-1954 does not cover campus politics but rather focuses on the period of the 20th century when American anarchism was at a low ebb.  The old left of the IWW had passed its peak, the Communist Party was in decline, and American enthusiasm for World War II had dissipated much of the radical sentiments of the first half of the century.  

During this period Cornell argues that while there was little that resembled a ‘movement’ with regards to anarchism, there were a number of publications and small groups of people whose work contributed to the rise of the radical 1960s.  Cornell’s article is a survey of anarchist activity within the United States during a lull that occurred between two extended bursts of radical action.  Cornell focuses on a number of now largely forgotten publications such as the anarcho-syndicalist newspaper, Why?, begun by the young syndicalist Audrey Goodfriend, and her older roommate, Dorothy Rogers.  According to Cornell, the publication moved away from a strict program of anarcho-syndicalist ideas and news towards a broader program that included analysis of the Spanish Civil War and critiques of World War II.  

Another publication Cornell discusses was a quarterly periodical titled Retort, published by Holley Cantine and Dorothy Paul.  Retort emerged from Cantine’s adherence to the ideals of American transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau - Cornell points out that it was published out of a cabin built by Cantine - and it included literary works in addition to the standard political analysis and criticism of such journals.  One of the first poem published in Retort was by radical San Francisco proto-beat poet Kenneth Rexroth.  In a section under the heading of ‘Proto-Beats’ within Cornell’s article, Rexroth is placed at the forefront of a circle of west-coast poets and artists who foregrounded radical politics in their art.  

In addition to Rexroth, some other well known figures were active during this period, although their best work was to come later.  Eventual Chicago 8 defendant and former Union Theolgical Seminary student David Dellinger led protests against segregation in prison while he was incarcerated as a Conscientious Objector to WWII.  Word of the protests spread to other prisons which eventually integrated their dining halls.  Dellinger and his associates took a non-violent approach to their protests which Cornell suggested had some influence on the path of the later civil rights movement.  (cf. see Glenda Elizabeth Gilmour's book, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 for a prehistory of the 1960s civil rights movement.)  Furthermore, Dellinger entered the movement with a background in theological study and demonstrated the potential for spirituality in radical politics.  

Cornell also discusses the early writings of the philosopher Paul Goodman, whose later work, Growing Up Absurd, about the unsatisfying and empty possibilities offered to American youth passing into adulthood during the mid-1950s, was an influential text on the burgeoning 1960s youth culture. Paul Goodman's may stand as a kernel of the essence of Cornell’s article, in that the anarchists of the 1940s developed new forms of political thought that intersected with the arts, spirituality, and action, and helped to produce the radical 1960s: that is the youth counterculture, the new left, the peace movement, and the civil rights movement.  Goodman was multi-talented and contributed ideas to all of the facets of countercultural activity that made the 1960s a new golden age for American radicalism.  Cornell describes a small and loosely connected network of anarchists who lacked anything resembling popular support, but were still very productive and provided the edifice upon which the radical 1960s were constructed.