Suburban Transpondency

Gonna keep this one short, cuz it ain't about me, it's about my good friend Adam Gratrix, Master of Suburban Transpondency. Adam has put together yet another excellent podcast, this one focused entirely on by with and about the Beats.

If you don't already listen to Adam, you should, now:

Suburban Transpondency

• Adam describes the Beat Generation to John 
• What if Jack Kerouac walked into a modern underground Jazz scene?
• Youpidou: "Crisis generation game feat J. Kerouac"
• Hakim Bey: "Poetic Terrorism"
• Parrhesia Sound System: "Stealing Electricity (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)"
• Mega Toothpaste Mammals: "Kerouac"
• Hakim Bey: "The Power of Art"
• Parrhesia Sound System: "Sweets For Junky Seventeen (William S Burroughs)"
• Is a new Beat Generation possible?
• "All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together." ~ Jack Kerouac

“The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and what's more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record of Wardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number.” 
― Jack Kerouac

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Reading the Beats

In response to a question from a valued DicksnJanes podcast listener, I started this blog. "Okay Dude - here is your challenge: Give me (us, the listeners) a list of 4 of the "beat" books we SHOULD read.....in the order you think we should read them..... Stevie Z"

That is a challenge Stevie - but an easy one for me to answer - by twisting it around a bit. I honestly think if anyone was inclined to read the Beats they would have already done so, on their own, in their youth. Most any college student in their 20s has picked up a copy of On the Road (used preferably), if they hadn't already read it in high school. If not, don't bother; you're too old, the befreerunaway dream is over.

But it's not too late to appreciate the Beats, in fact, the time is right, as I think we're now entering a new Beat era. My suggestion is to sidestep Jack, and concentrate on the overall 1950s Beat movement. There are a slew of good books available, and from own Beat library I recommend the following:

• The Beat Generation: the tumultuous '50s movement and it's impact on today, Bruce Cook, 1971
• The Beat Vision, Arthur & Kit Knight, 1987 (cover photo of Allen Ginsberg & Bob Dylan at Kerouac's gravesite)
• The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: the Beat Generation and American Culture, 1999 (lots of interesting material)
• Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation, 1995

For those still wanting to know more about the King of the Beats (how he hated that!), I'd start off with Kerouac, by Ann Charters, 1973. Another good one, but maybe difficult to find, is Desolate Angel, a biography: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation and America, by Dennis McNally, 1979. And one more which is sure to upset diehard Kerouac fans because it focuses on his homosexual tendencies is Subterranean Kerouac: the Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac, by Ellis Amburn,1998.

Now if you still want to read something by Kerouac himself, I'd recommend one of my favourites, The Dharma Bums. Or if you're interested more in the dark side of Jack, try Big Sur, the story of his breakdown, and perhaps the most revealing and painful of his books.

So Stevie, it's readers choice, no particular order, just go by whatever you can get your hands on in a decent used book shop. Never buy Kerouac new! And never let anyone tell you you have to start with On the Road.

As if....

Ya, like 'As if I need to be spending more time doing stuff like this when I'm still trying to convince myself there's so much other real world more important (ha!) stuff I SHOULD be taking care of.' But hey, here we are eh, so let's get going...

The short: Stevie asked me which 4 Beat books my DicksnJanes podcast listeners should read and in what order, and I figured that was worthy of a reply longer than I'd want to post in the comments section, and next thing I know, I have a new 'blawg' - as in (hopefully) filled with awe, cuz awe is what we don't share enough of.

The long: This could go on forever. But feedback and questions would help, preferably from the dicksnjanes tribe, which of course includes listeners to the aforementioned long running DicksnJanes Podcast. Not that I'll have any problem finding things to write about, but you know, it's nicer if we share.

Stay tuned, subscribe, and I'll get around to answering Stevie's question, okay? BTW, I'm still the Scarborough Dude, cuz I wanna be free to say any dam thing I please. Like if you don't appreciate my style, do us all a favour and fuck off!