Yes He Was A Beat Writer! (2 Viewers)

I do agree with Thomas. I think Buk did maintain a self-confidence in his work that was as much a drive as anything else. I think the line from the Barfly screenplay "I thought I would be discovered after I was dead" was probably pretty applicable through the 1950's and maybe the first part of the the 1960's. I think into the latter half of the 1960's and then for the rest of his life the public validation of his work continued to swell. But I certainly think he was well aware of his artistic merits, long before anyone else took notice. I would even venture to say that that type of self awareness/confidence is at the very root of such a fantastic quote as "Don't Try".
 
Bukowski never hides in his work his own high opinion of his writing. He not only knew he was damned good, he knew he was a genius. In the early poems he puts on quite a literary show with lots of stylistic tricks to good effect. Later, he played that stuff down and went for the subtle effectiveness of the simple line and clear narrative. And I still think he was not a Beat, by his or anyone else's definition during the heyday of the Beat movement. Not even close.

signed,

a serious nerd but not an ass-licker
 
Hi, rekrab,
For those that may not have seen you in a while, here is a photo that I plan on using in our next book together. Amazing photo by Linda Kay Lund
barker.JPG
 
bospress.net said:
of a great writer and friend....

Thanks, Bill. Coming from you, that's a complement that means a lot to me. And I'll return it by saying that you're a great editor, publisher, printer and friend. Everything from Bottle of Smoke Press is of the highest possible quality, both in content and production. I feel very fortunate to be published by BOSP.

The photo was taken at the SPORK magazine "Extravaganza" reading, held a couple weeks ago at Mississippi Pizza Pub in Portland, Oregon. I read a long poem about Bukowski that's in the current issue. I thought it was interesting that the crowd seemed to know who Buk is. The few times I've mentioned him in the small city where I live, I've gotten blank stares. Portland is much hipper, more in tune with culture. This is one of the best photos I've ever had taken. Linda is a talented photographer.
 
back a few posts slobodan described bukowski as 'a writer' - the description reminded me of a young man who's ethnic origins were being questioned - his mother asked my advice on a response...i suggested he say "i'm a man."
i think slobodan has got it right - "writer."
we (writers) are an art form - the difference from visual artists is 'watercolors' to 'writercolors' but the paintings are just as artful - we are all artists -

peace
rrat
 
riverrat said:
we (writers) are an art form - the difference from visual artists is 'watercolors' to 'writercolors' but the paintings are just as artful - we are all artists

Hear, Hear, riverrat; keep it rollin'; as in rollin' out the good stuff. 'writercolors' like it much,

SD
 
I know this is now becoming a bit of a yawn.I just saw a "Beat Scene" magazine on e bay with,you guessed it-bukowski on the cover.hum?

ok guys.i was a bit rash with the ass lickers comment.forgive me!Buk 'd probably be amused about this.I didnt realise he actually managed to have a bmw and could afford a comfortable lifestyle later on.ooops .I was a bit rash.No expert guys.just my humble opinion which i now retract.Am i lickin ass now!
 
I just have to say this:

MYTH BUSTED!

(From the acclaimed tv-show 'mythbusters' on Discovery Channel)

Also, man, It's so very cool to be a part of a forum that actually holds an average age of more than 12 yo. Rekrab; I'd love to read your stuff, where can I find it?
 
To Beat And Not To Bop

.... The Beatnik generation consists of the forefathers of this new way of writing, and if you do not think of Buk as one of these forefathers [the Beats] than you are just a damned fool.

Here's my take on it. I never considered Bukowski a "Beat" writer for a number of reasons. I could never imagine him sitting on his ass in a jazz club, snapping his fingers to the hip beat of the sounds. Why it's not mentioned more I have no idea, but my understanding is that the word "beat" primarily refers to the beat of the music"”jazz music. The Beats were into pot, drink, zen, the music and the "high" of it all. That may have been the problem too"”learning how to function on earth.

So the beats were inspired by the music and they were inspired by the spontaneous jazz improvisations of the great players of the time, particularly by the awesome genius of alto saxman Charlie Parker, who Kerouac used to rhapsodize about and idolize (he also idolized the great tenor players Zoot Sims and Al Cohn and did a recording with them). In the same way that impressionism in music (Debussy) was inspired by impressionism in painting, the Beats were inspired to write in the same way the Charlie Parker was inspired to play. They started out by trying to break out of themselves creatively and ended up on the road of incredible free-associative literature, with the problem being that, at least with Kerouac, he burned himself out, burned out his creative reserves, by his late 40s and then drank himself to death at the home of dear old mom. The point being, Bukowski's roots seemed to be related to none of this. While the Beats were searching for a new way of working, related to trusting the first thought that came to them and few if any revisions"”Bukowski had "it" from virtually the beginning. He merely refined his gift over the years but always felt that he had it. Plus he had his blue-collar work ethic and stamina rather than the ants in the pants restlessness that many of the Beat writers suffered from and which caused much of their work to be highly inspired but erratic and uneven, at least to the eyes of yours truly.

The two works of Kerouac I'm most familiar with are On The Road and Dharma Bums, and they are fantastic reads, especially when you're young and unformed. But they were written under white hot inspiration, and Bukowski was different in that he wasn't trying to say everything in one sitting, or all at one time in one book. He knew how to pace himself and knew how to wait for the words to come, rather then open himself as an oracle like Kerouac did, who exhausted himself to the point of no return.

I think Kerouac, the only Beat writer who interests me, also considered himself a failure, as a failed writer, because he felt that his message through his books had been misunderstood as pure self-indulgence. He was crucified by the literary establishment and was so opened wide, perhaps because of his philophshy of the Tao, let's say, the idea of going with the natural order of things"”that he took this criticism personally and lived out this hurtness for the remainder of his days. He gave into it and the bottle.

Bukowski, au contraire, only got tougher and wiser with age and was, yes, self-indulgent in terms of certain habits (drinking and the horses), but not in terms of his creative self-discipline... and I believe that Bukowski and the Beats are separated not only by their dramatically different ways of working, but by an entirely different philosophy of life: Zen vs. Romantic Practical Realism. They were looking at some of the same things related to freedom and spontaneity, but viewing them through different ends of the telescope.

The irony is that Bukowski, through pacing himself creatively, ended up achieving the ends the Beats were yearning to stabilize and harness, but never seemed to do. Bukowski liberated modern poetry in ways that Ginsberg never could, though Ginsberg in a sense modernized poetry by writing about the madness of the times as in "Howl". I think however, that Bukowski went way beyond what Ginsberg achieved and tapped into a creative source that was ripe and fecund to the end... almost to his last very breath, whereas the Beats seemed more a product of the 50s and 60s. The world changed and it seems to me that the only one who kept pace with it all, within this group of writers, was Charles Bukowski, and Bukowski did it primarily on his own, while the Beats seemed to be constantly tampering with each others' creative heads and worshiping Kerouac's genius like he was a god. (Not that it matters, but as a point of speculation, to put it plainly, I also think that Kerouac may have been in love, though never overt or even admitted to himself, with Neal Cassidy, and Ginberg may have been in love with Kerouac, and something like that could complicate the emotions and the mind.) Kerouac was certainly inspired, but I think he, at the end of his life, felt that God had abandoned him, or it didn't matter one way or another; with Bukowski, it may have been the exact opposite. In the end, though, I'd have to agree with Kerouac about everything, at least in this moment"”"I don't know. I don't care. And it doesn't make any difference."

Poptop
 
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Lets also remember the Ginsberg spent 8 months in the psych ward....

Kerouac also renounced being a part of the beat generation and not sure if it was because he thought he failed. He is given a bad rap for a poem/phrase, that haunted him and he couldn't live it down.
I was reviewing A Supermarket in California, Gingberg, and no offense, he might be writing about a lost love, or declaring his homosexuality, or as he is known -loving those who weren't in love with America, its bland and too beat! Too nice, too thought out, planned....
Many people classify Bukowski, as in age, or some things that may have seemed contemporary for the 50's and 60's then, but after the era/made up generation passed, he definitely should have been omitted from that classification.
 
To beat or not to beat - is the question?
Someone please explain to me why this question is so important. Does it make his writing any better, any more important? Why is this question so important to so many on this board.

If this question has offended anybody on this board, I am sorry, but I just go to know!
 
If you read the Kerouacs Kerouac he never really enjoyed the Beat moniker either unless being labelled king of the beats got him a lot of free drinks which it did. BUt more often beat wannbe's dropped by his mothers to drink his crap.
Odd Keroauc was past the "beat" movement when it became trendy.
He was past what anyone could consider being productive/creative by the time On the Road was published.
What I find interesting is Kerouacs definition of Beat is certainly opposite to Buk's approach to life.
As I recall reading, Keroauc defined beat as beatific not beaten. He wanted the term to reflect a more bBake like state of grace.
Keroauc for all his on the road bravado lived with his mom and drank gut rot wine (tonkay?) until he died.
Moments of literary briliiance may have creeped out after On the Road but nothing was really significant other than Dharma Bums.
The only simliarity I see betweenn the two is that they both had a desire compusion to sit at typewriters perhaps illustrating that the best thing a writer can do is write.
Both displayed a tremdous discipline. Both had to write.
 
I had meant to say Ginsberg...
A Supermaket In California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I
walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
 
I just have to say this:

MYTH BUSTED!

(From the acclaimed tv-show 'mythbusters' on Discovery Channel)

Also, man, It's so very cool to be a part of a forum that actually holds an average age of more than 12 yo. Rekrab; I'd love to read your stuff, where can I find it?

Check Bill's website. I haven't yet, but he did just compliment him on being a great publisher, editor, etc.
 
I agree with many thoughts here, it doesn't matter how you classify him, why classify at all etc. But classifications are created for history and clarification. And Bukowski doesn't get to classify himself that's left for the historians and critics.

I've seen him lumped in with the Beats and I see similiarities in his style and Kerouac in they didn't like revising in their novels, wasn't On the Road and Post Office written in a few weeks? They both seemed to write non-fiction fiction. But they have differences obviously.

I guess you'd have to have a clear definition of Beat writer and how that stacks up against Bukowski.
 
this is beat

okay people
find a poem from
COME ON IN
and compare it to what a beat writer has written
lets see the&$#$#$#&@ similarity and let this game
of no he wasnt yes he was come to an end already
 
I think you could find a poem that shares Beat sensibilities, but an isolated incident does not a Beat make.
Like that time I wore lipstick. One time. I swear.
I kid, I wear lipstick all the time.
But back to the point, and away from the bad humour, Buk maybe sounded like a Beat on occassion (parts of Howl could've been written by him, I swear) he was not.
As far as the Beat Generation goes, there were only a few true Beats, anyway. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and a couple others I can't think of right now. The truest Beats probably never wrote a fucking thing. If the rest only followed their lead. The rest were sycophants and opportunists and posers. The same as any movement.
 
A Supermaket In California
Thanks, Penelope, for posting this... I found to my suprise, that I enjoyed it... brings Whitman forward to contemporary times, an immortal. Then, hmm..."what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry..." ... makes one wonder..."poling his ferry" indeed ... and Ginsberg uses the recurrence of Whitman's name as an effective unifying principle to hold it all nicely together...I give him credit for sitting down and writing this thing... I liked what he did here, the bastard... the feeling of the venerable and the new "”makes one feel.

....wasn't On the Road and Post Office written in a few weeks?....

I just happened to stumble across a note yesterday that Kerouac wrote his masterpiece on one long roll of I believe teletype paper, so he could keep the flow of it going without the paper changes, in three weeks"”about the same, as most readers know, that it took B. to polish off P.O. Despite it all, I also believe that Bukowski will continue to be lumped in with the Beats...for marketing reasons. My quess is that Bukowski probably outsells the authors of the Beat combined, and so those interested in the B. will be lured to Beat literature... and hair-splitting aside, I have no problem with that if it lures the reader to find out more about Kerouac and On the Road"”the man helped liberate America during the deadening 1950s, along with Elvis! I grew up during the 50s, and the "Leave It To Beaver" sickness in the culture was far worse than anyone can imagine who didn't pass through this surfacely sane, inwardly twisted time. Robert Crumb talks about these horrors well in "Crumb." Without MAD magazine as a teenager, I would have gone completely bonkers in L.A. Even then I caught on that nothing was as it appeared to be. . . .
 
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You know, Poptop, I want to say that I heard he wrote it all at one time while high on like heroin or something so he didn't leave the typewriter, although that may just be urban legend.

EDIT: I also read somewhere (wish I could remember, maybe a foreword) that their writings were published something like 10 years after the actual incidents they described (which made the Beats seem like hippies considering their lifestyle and that people were becoming "free" about the same time that the books were published). That, if true, leads me to believe that they didn't do much for the 50s outside of themselves, but I wasn't nearly alive then so I'll defer to someone who did.
 
i have to add something to that, i've read that kerouac wrote and re-wrote 'on the road' a number of times over many years, though i also heard that he wrote it all in 'one sitting', high on alcohol amphetamine and coffein, ha ha. maybe he wrote in between and even when he was 'on the road', before getting it all down in those three weeks. dont know really
 
Next year is the 50th anniversary of On The Road and they're publishing the original manuscript without edits. Real names and all the naughty bits will be left in.
 
"Whatever Happened To Kerouac?"

You know, Poptop, I want to say that I heard he wrote it all at one time while high on like heroin or something so he didn't leave the typewriter, although that may just be urban legend.

I remember reading (somewhere) that he'd do marathon writing sessions using stimulants of some kind, uppers and the like, and go on for hours, true of On The Road and consequently the use of teletype paper rolls, or whatever, to keep himself rolling on for hours upon hours. The results can great"”for awhile, and Kerouac got away with it for some time. But that can be bad for a writer. Henry Miller talked about the time he wrote 45 pages in one sitting and it just about killed him keeping his inspiration channel open for that long. After that, he learned his lesson and said that he never let himself get to the end of his energy reserves again, because it takes too long to replenish them. For some reason, I think Keroauc was unable to do that himself, and he ended up with only enough energy left to drink himself into oblivion. I'm not sure why, but I feel bad about that; that he might have had so much more to say once he got off the roller-coaster ride of inspiration where the inspiration is controlling you, instead of the other way around like Bukowski did it. Bukowski broke it down into parts and simply showed up every day, and was able to write from a fresh source. Only Pulp seemed to show signs of fatigue, but he was in ill-health, mostly.

EDIT: I also read somewhere (wish I could remember, maybe a foreword) that their writings were published something like 10 years after the actual incidents they described (which made the Beats seem like hippies considering their lifestyle and that people were becoming "free" about the same time that the books were published). That, if true, leads me to believe that they didn't do much for the 50s outside of themselves, but I wasn't nearly alive then so I'll defer to someone who did.

You may be right about the time of their experiences. If I remember correctly, the events happened in the late 40s. Then I believe On the Road was finally written in a three week period in 1952 and eventually published in 1957. Then all the fame came for Kerouac, the glamour boy!, such as reading from On The Road on the Steve Allen show, etc.; and then the writing of Dharma Bums, which is almost as good. Then after those two works I think he'd peaked and the rest of his life tapered off from there.

For those who are interested, check out the dvd, "What Ever Happened to Kerouac?" It's superb on Kerouac and the Beats, and you get to see K. on the William F. Buckley show discussing politics and the hippy movement. And of course it looked like Keroauc had had a few bar shots before going on the air.

I think I miss that that son-of-a-gun wasn't around longer"”a great writer, he was a sweet man with a gentle wisdom. Unfortunately, I believe that he thought he'd failed to get his point across in his writings, and that destroyed him. But not to me. OTR came at a perfect time in my early 20s, and it poptopped me opened, like a can opener, in a good way"”to the spirit of adventure, to the fabulous joyride of life, including women, sex, letting go, philosophy, spiritual exaltation... you name it. I'm grateful.

Poptop
 
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the "Beats"

some keep trying to connect me with
the "Beats"
but I was almost unpublished in the
1950s
and
even then
I very much
distrusted their vanity and
all that
public posturing.

and when I met a few of them
later in life
I realized that most of my original
feelings for
them
hadn't
changed.

some of my friends accepted that;
others thought that I
should change my
opinion.

my opinion remains the
same: writing is done
one person
at a time
one place
at a time

and all the gatherings
of
the
flock
have very little
to do with
anything.

any one of them
could have made
a decent living as a
bill collector or a
used car
salesman

and they still
could
make an honest living
instead of bitching about
changes of fashion and
the ways of fate.

but instead
from the sad university
lecterns
and in the poetry halls
these hucksters of the
despoiled word

are still clamoring for
handouts,
still talking the same
dumb
shit.


Come On In! - 2006
 
I don't consider Bukowski a Beat, but when people question that assertion, I need a handy bullet-point style outline to set their asses straight.

I usually go with:

1) He used simple, declarative language. The Beats did not.

2) He didn't care about "bringing poetry to The People", as if that would cure society's ills. The Beats did.

3) He looked at life's ugliness, did not flinch, and maintained almost a journalist's neutrality. The Beats could really be a bunch of screaming drama queens sometimes.

Anyone have other points to add ? I have two parties and the Lollapalooza Fest to attend this week.
At some point during any or all three events, a drunken debate about arts/poetry is going to ensue.
And I know some "Buk-was-a-Beat" freak will try me. Gimme some ammo, please...
 
He wasn't pretentious or preachy.

But you may have covered that in your other bullet points.

One exception you might hear about is, and I'm paraphrasing here, is "So you want to be a writer." The average reader finds this extremely pretentious or perhaps, condescending. The difference being that Buk was legitimate in everything he wrote in that. To me, he earned everything he ever wrote.
 
OK - that's good. I could see some people claiming "pretentiousness" or something in isolated sections of his poems... gotta prepare for those
 
Ammo for a drunken debate about arts/poetry

1) He used simple, declarative language. The Beats did not.

2) He didn't care about "bringing poetry to The People", as if that would cure society's ills. The Beats did.

3) He looked at life's ugliness, did not flinch, and maintained almost a journalist's neutrality. The Beats could really be a bunch of screaming drama queens sometimes.

4) He wasn't pretentious or preachy.

*use these bullet points wisely and sparingly or risk sounding pretentious.
 
1) He used simple, declarative language. The Beats did not.

The Beats simplified and liberated poetry. Made it more accessible by freeing it from the claws of academia and the restraints of metre. (and just like Bukowski they were anti-academia).
I see it as a continuation in american poetry. The increasing use of everyday speech and language. Simplified: Whitman started it, Carlos Williams continued in the early 1900s, Ginsberg took it up again in the fifties and Bukowski finished it in the 1980s.

For that matter Bukowski still isn't a beat.
 
I think you could find a poem that shares Beat sensibilities, but an isolated incident does not a Beat make.
Like that time I wore lipstick. One time. I swear.
I kid, I wear lipstick all the time.
But back to the point, and away from the bad humour, Buk maybe sounded like a Beat on occassion (parts of Howl could've been written by him, I swear) he was not.
As far as the Beat Generation goes, there were only a few true Beats, anyway. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and a couple others I can't think of right now. The truest Beats probably never wrote a fucking thing. If the rest only followed their lead. The rest were sycophants and opportunists and posers. The same as any movement.

And there you have it.

The Beats weren't so much a writting style as they were a cultural movement. As with any cultural movement one could simple dissociate themselves from it. If you were a rock band during the 90's you could have easily been labeled Grunge. But Grunge was a movement rather than anything new in music. What is Grunge? Punk meets hard rock. Nothing new, just a movement by folks (like so many before them) who believed they were onto something groundbreaking. We're special and are going to reject conventional behavior, norms and change the world. Fuck, how many times have we heard that? Buk was none of that. He was your average joe who enjoyed a beer and loved to write.

Buk said it himself, he wasn't Beat. Thus the definitive mouth on the matter has spoken. End of.

Just because a couple of pointy headed college professors claim he was doesn't mean a god damn thing. If I took as truth everything my professor told me I'd either be outside a local methadone clinic ranting about the social injustice of waiting in line for drugs or taking out a loan to open up a pig farm outside of Mecca. Most professors live in a perpetual world of absolution. As someone already stated in this thread, they absolutely love to label and put things in a box. It helps them sleep (whilst dreaming of tenure) at night.
 
this will be an insufferably long post, so just skip it if you don't feel like devoting 5-10 minutes to my thoughts on this issue...

i didn't reread the entire thread, so maybe i've said this before... but i think that the question of whether or not bukowski was a beat is interesting, beyond the "no" answer that seems pretty clear. in my opinion, english language literature wasn't truly democratized until the beats started writing. what i mean by this is that all of the literary movements in english/american literature before the beat generation still trafficked in stilted, metaphorical, and often abstract language. if you look at modernism in french literature - especially celine - the subjectivity that is basically modernism's hallmark resulted in language that was brought down to the level of the individuals who actually spoke it. zola's naturalism started this trend by including "actual speech" in his novels, and celine blew the doors off the literary establishment by writing an entire book (and then an entire series of books) written exclusively in conversational language, with no literary pretensions whatsoever. other french modernists, like andre gide, didn't do this so much with language, but in their attempts to look at the everday workings of society as a whole (rather than just the outsized romantic flailings that you see documented in books by balzac, flaubert, etc), these authors brought the idea of the "literary" down to the level of the commoner - "the counterfeiters" by gide is a great example of this. but, when you look at modernism in english language literature, you don't see the same thing - you see people wrestling with literary and classical tropes in tortured, mind-bending language. joyce's ulysses is the opposite of gide's counterfeiters, since it takes the everyday struggle of its everyday protagonist and raises it up to the level of the archetypical hero - thus bloom becomes the 'modern' hero, casting his influence over the literary landscape for half a century or more. it peppers in scatology, sex, popular discourse, and stream of consciousness (that hallmark of beat writing), but in a way that no one but the most patient can actually sit down and read. continuing on with other modernists like ts eliot and ezra pound, you get to a point where it's borderline unreadable unless you're intimately familiar with the classical source material that they are playing off of. and then, as a final nail in the coffin, you see the excessive subjectivity of modernism create a real anxiety among many of the high modernists (pound and eliot, primarily), to the point that they start defending fascism or other extreme right-wing ideologies in order to create some order over the literary tropes ("the individual," "the hero," etc.) that they have spent so many years subjectivizing.

so, while the french modernism wrested literature from the academy in both language and content (and of course i'm limiting myself to the mainstream literary modernism, and not related movements like surrealism), english-language modernism did the opposite, trying to solidify literature's relation to the academy - either by reinterpreting classical ideas, or by absorbing non-literary ideas into its sphere. while there are examples of english language literature that shrugged off academic pretension pre-beat generation (most notably henry miller's work), the romantic, spiritual flourishes in miller's work are exactly why later writers like bukowski did not consider themselves of the same school as miller. so then the beat generation comes along, riding keroac's insufferable stream of consciousness train, and at long last there is an american literary movement that is expressly subjective, relatable, and not tethered to anything currently in vogue in the literary establishment. this democratizing force is - for many people within the literary establishment - what distinguishes the beat generation. it's not just the subject matter, but also the physical idea that literature is so mutable (for example, the cutups of bryon gysin and william s burroughs) - it's not something to be slaved over for 7 years like ulysses or something that should consume one's entire life, like pound's cantos - it can be spewed out of a typewriter while on a drinking binge on a single scroll, or cut up and reassembled by different people (a la naked lunch) - OR, as we mosey back toward Bukowski, written by a drunk moving from roominghouse to roominghouse. so, even though bukowski's aims were so antithetical to others in the beat generation, it's also not as if the beat generation produced one homogenous body of work, either (it's three flagship texts - on the road, naked lunch, and howl - are all pretty different from each other). so if you look at the beat generation as the midcentury movement that de-academified literature, bukowski does seem to fit hand-in-glove, even if he was older than the rest of them, and even if he didn't participate one iota in their self-congratulatory bullshit or their buddhism (except, i suppose, at the request of linda, although that's not really related at all to the beats).

so, it more depends on how you see the beat generation than how you see bukowski. celine always said he wasn't a writer, that he was a doctor. but we know him as a writer. bukowski said he wasn't a beat, and i personally don't see him as one, because - to me - calling someone a beat implies a social relationship and engagement that bukowski wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. but, saying that he was part of the beat generation because he represented a style of writing - and also an attitude about writing - that the beats certainly helped usher in is not wildly off base.

thanks for reading,
poptop
 

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