Beat Generation

Perhaps it never existed.

By the late 1950s, the Beat Movement yielded another topical response, the passionate hipster to his chick, by Diane de Prima, and also a feminist, gender-reversing reply by Babette Deutsch, the dispassionate shepherdess, which not only reverses the gender but the emotional temperature promised by passionate women.

and in the first line do not live with me do not be my love we have a disinvitation which technically means i suppose a withdrawing or cancelling of a previously issued invitation maybe the correct word is an uninvitation since the person being addressed was never asked to come in the fores place you'll give me once a thought that stings and once a look to make my blood doubt that it runs you'll give me rough and sharp perplexities and never ever will you give me ease for one another's blessing not designed marked for possession only of the mind and soon because such cherishing is brief to ask whereon was founded the belief that there was anything at all uncommon in what each felt for each as man and woman if this then be our case if this our story shall we rail at heaven shall we at worst be sorry heaven's too deaf we should grow hoarse with railing and sorrow never quicken what was failing But if you think we thus may pleasures prove, Do not live with me, do not be my love.

Pretty emphatic.

Hello, and welcome back to the History of British Magic.

Today we are talking about The Beats.

And this is another one of our topics where we're gonna spend, like, virtually half the day or more in class not necessarily talking about the material.

It's also another example of me not entirely being familiar with the material.

Like, As much as the Beats were kind of a big deal when I was in college, we were, like, one generation out from the Beats.

When I was originally doing my undergrad, like, a lot of the professors that I had fondly remembered when we had, like, Allen Ginsberg coming to campus, and I think William Burroughs made an appearance as well.

It was kind of fondly remembered, kind of a big deal, they were considered one of the big and important artistic movements, especially in America, in the 1960s and 70s, and they were very influential for reasons that we're going to talk about, but for all that, it wasn't something that ever really interested me personally all that deeply.

Um, fairly frequently we would hear recitations of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, which is a really impressive, powerful poem.

Yeah, I think there's a reason for that, with Naked Lunch in particular, because it does come from such a controversial novel.

Especially from that generation, the beat generation, which we've learned horrible things about now.

But even back then, before we knew all that, nobody...

America loves a counterculture, but it hates a counterculture at the same time.

And so we spend a lot of time discussing different authors or artists that represented the brand ideals that we were trying to create in.

In particular, I had a number of conversations about the Beat Generation writers, Jack Kerouac and his peers.

And coincidentally, after kind of a six-month debate and discussion, the New York Public Library had an exhibit on Jack Kerouac's private diaries.

And so I went up there to see if I could be inspired by some of his early writings.

And then actually something we didn't use, which is the idea that Martin Odegaard would have actually loved being in a fishing town because he's Scandinavian and likes fish.

You started reading that as if you were doing like beat poetry in Stoke Newington.

Oh, there's people.

There's that guy who sits on trains and does it.

And then the door's open and he walks out of the carriage.

And that's content.

That's beat poetry.

And then you get a brand deal.