Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
‘This is what I was born for’
Marketing and Fashioning the Beat Generation in Literary Interviews
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Nederlands - Supervisor: Engels” by Maarten Luyten Debora Van Durme August 2013
Maarten Luyten Master N-E UGent Master Thesis Academiejaar 2012-2013 Debora Van Durme
ACKNOWLEGDEMENTS
A music teacher of mine once told me: “for the first ten years of my career as a composer, I was shy, quiet and hoped people would like my music. Nobody liked it. For the next ten years, I started telling everybody I was a genius. Now, my music is performed in theaters all over Europe and I’m receiving awards for being a genius.” It got me thinking.
I would like to thank my family, friends and girlfriend for their support. Most of all, I would like to thank my supervisor for her advice and revisions.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION 4 1.1) Self-Fashioning and Marketing 7 1.2) The literary interview 9 1.3) The Beats in literary interviews 11 2. GINSBERG 15 2.1) The blatant raconteur 16 2.2) The Blake vision: Ginsberg as a poet-prophet 17 2.3) The Beat mystic 20 2.4) Drugs: mythologizing, legitimizing and demystifying 22 2.5) The nonconformist rebel 23 2.6) Fashioning his poetic stance and his poetry 26 2.7) The invocation of literary influences as self-fashioning 29 2.8) The Beat Generation 30 3. BURROUGHS 33 3.1) His cause: the nonconformist enemy of ‘agencies of control’ 35 3.2) His work: fashioning his literature 38 3.3) Burroughs the author: fashioning his literary stance 40 3.4) The Beat Generation 42 3.5) Burroughs the junkie 43 3.6) Burroughs the legend: the murderer of his wife 45 3.7) Fashioning and marketing by other Beats 46 3.8) The interviewer: mythologizing Burroughs 47 4. KEROUAC 50 4.1) Kerouac the raconteur: displaying his personality 51 4.2) Celebration of the ‘underculture’ 54 4.3) Sexuality 55 4.4) Drugs 56 4.5) Buddhism and religious comprehensiveness 57 4.6) Fashioning his literature and literary stance 59 4.7) The Beat Generation 62 5. CONCLUSION 68
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1. INTRODUCTION
The Beat Generation is generally perceived as one of the most influential literary movements of the second half of the twentieth century and has been at the center of literary discussions over the past fifty years. Since the legendary break-through publications Howl, On the Road and Naked Lunch, this group or ‘movement,’ which was primarily represented by the ‘Beat triumvirate’ (Belgrad 2004) Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs, has received plenty of media attention. Contemporary reactions to these authors and their literature expressed both ‘extravagant praise and hysterical denunciation’ (Hassan 1963). For instance, ‘in 1959 journalist Paul O’Neil proclaimed that the Beat Generation consisted mostly of “talkers, loafers, passive little con men,” a “bohemian cadre” of “writers who cannot write, painters who cannot paint”’ (Starr 2004). Similarly, Thomas Curley depicted Jack Kerouac as a talentless writer who, just like his morally deviant characters, would never be taken seriously (1957) and Alfred Chester dismissed Burroughs as an iconoclast who has ‘turned his back upon’ civilization and abandoned ‘the quest for a moral position’ (1963).
On the other hand, in time these authors have been accepted as the progenitors of the beatnik- and hippie-movement (Watson 1995, 4) and are now widely recognized countercultural icons (Bennett 2005). In his Naked Angels: the Lives & Literature of the Beat Generation John Tytell describes the Beat movement as ‘a crystallization of a sweeping discontent with American “virtues” of progress and power. What began with an exploration of the bowels and entrails of the city – criminality, drugs, mental hospitals – evolved into an expression of the visionary sensibility’ (4). The Beat authors became known as nonconformist rebels and ‘naked angels’ on a quest for a ‘new vision’ (Chowka 1976) and their ‘writings (…) have long been seen as a space of cultural and political contestation’ (Haslam 2009). Holly George-Warren similarly evaluates their significance as follows:
As a cultural phenomenon, the Beat Generation changed us more than any other Twentieth-Century movement; its effects are still being felt today. As a literary
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movement, the Beat Generation gave us a cacophony of fresh, new American voices; the common thread running through the work was this: to say what hadn’t been said in a language as unique as one’s own thumbprint (1999).
As this remark implies, their influence appears to encompass all fields of culture and have determined the cultural evolution of the past century. Up to this day, their significance is apparent from film adaptations of Howl (Esptein & Friedman 2010) and On the Road (Salles 2012). Besides an unwavering fascination, we can discern a noteworthy surge in critical investigation. As the traditional understanding of the Beats has been extensively mined, it appears the time has come for revision and reinterpretation. Over the past decade, the Beats have repeatedly been revisited in a large body of studies and literary analyses that ‘complicate our conceptions of the Beat Generation’ (Theado 2004). Examples can be found in Ann Charters’ Beat Down to Your Soul: What Was the Beat Generation? (2001) and Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation (Johnson & Grace 2002). Especially Jenni Skerl’s Reconstructing the Beats (2004) and Manuel Luis Martinez’s Countering the Counterculture: Rereading Postwar American Dissent from Jack Kerouac to Tomás Rivera, signpost new assessments and new directions in Beat studies. Both publications share a similar goal, formulated in Skerl’s introduction: to ‘re-historicize, re-contextualize, and reinterpret’ the Beats. Their conclusions, however, ‘differ dramatically’ (Bennett, 2005). In Bennett’s assessment, Skerl’s publication mainly ‘advances a rather traditional sense of the Beats as countercultural rebels’ (2005). Martinez, on the other hand, ‘challenges [the] traditional interpretation of the Beat Generation as an unproblematic counter-hegemonic movement’ (2005). It becomes clear that present academic research is attempting to either refute or reinforce our traditional conception and understanding of the Beat Generation. In other words, we are still attempting to formulate a response to the question prompted in the title of Charters’ publication: what was the Beat Generation? If we aim to scrutinize and reassess the conventional interpretation of the Beats, we must also scrutinize how this traditional image was composed. Irrespective of which viewpoint one advocates, a crucial question in interpreting the Beat Generation and their customary reputation is how that repute was established.
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The controversy and sensationalism that the Beat Generation bathed in was undeniably, at least in part, a construction of the media (Watson 1995, Nash 2008). Nevertheless, the Beat Generation was, in the first instance, conceived and shaped in the minds of its authors. In this research I will investigate how the Beats shaped an image of themselves and transferred this to the public. According to Bruce Bawer and Jean Royer, the literary interview plays an essential role in this process, as they always establish a ‘character- portrait’ (Bawer 1988) and give the audience ‘the feeling of truth [and] close personal contact’ (Royer 1986, quoted in Rodden 2001). Hence, I will investigate how the Beat authors actively engaged in self-fashioning in literary interviews.
Although their reputation has frequently been analyzed and critically evaluated, no academic research has exclusively and comprehensively investigated the construction of the Beats’ image. Interviews with the Beat authors have regularly served as substantial sources in Beat studies and biographies and have frequently been discussed in the context of the Beats. Nevertheless, to my knowledge these interviews have never been analyzed as instruments for promoting and constructing the image of the Beat Generation.
Since this thesis is limited in space, I will only discuss Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac. My preference goes out to these three authors because they are still perceived as the primary authors of the Beat Generation and remain at the center of interest in Beat studies. Additionally, being the most renowned Beat authors, they contributed significantly to fashioning and advertising the Beat Generation. Most of all, I chose these authors because they were undeniable media-presences and frequently appeared in literary interviews. Hence, I believe them to be the most qualified Beat authors for this investigation.
However, I must remark that other Beat authors ought to be interesting for this investigation as well. Fashioning the Beat Generation was not solely the merit of these three authors and this process extends vastly beyond actual encounters with journalists and interviewers. Besides in literary interviews, the Beats also shaped their image in
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literary essays and even in their literature – as exemplified in Oliver Harris’s ‘”Virus-X”: Kerouac’s Visions of Burroughs’ (2004). In addition, we must not neglect the passive construction of their image. Their portrayal in contemporary journalism and literary reviews – where the stereotypic and often even caricatural image of the Beats was formed – and even their current reception in academic publications and popular culture all contribute to our conception of the Beat Generation.
I will begin this dissertation with some introductory notes concerning self-fashioning and marketing, self-fashioning in literary interviews, the Beats in literary interviews and my motivation for the selected interviews. By means of several interviews, I will then separately examine Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac’s construction of their authorial personae. Each analysis will begin with a general demarcation of the author’s performance in interviews. Subsequently, I will demarcate and analyze several noteworthy aspects of the author’s discourse and explain how he fashioned an image of himself as a person and a writer. Each analysis will touch upon similar topics such as: how the author conferred his literary, political, social or religious viewpoints and how this contributed to his image; how he advertised his literature and literary stance; how he portrayed himself or was portrayed by his interviewers and how he promoted and depicted the Beat Generation.
1.1) Self-Fashioning and Marketing
Since I investigate the advertisement and construction of the image of the Beat Generation, this research can be situated within the theoretical framework of marketing and self-fashioning. Significant publications on marketing and self-fashioning are Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980), Marysa Demoor’s Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves and Self- Fashioning, 1880-1930 (2004) and Marketing Modernisms: Self-Promotion, Canonization and Rereading (1996) by Dettmar and Watt. As these titles indicate, ‘marketing’ concerns the advertisement of both the work and its author. Self-fashioning, then, can be understood as a subtype of marketing as it signifies the construction of a public self that the author presents to his audience in order to advertise both himself and his work.
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According to Demoor, this practice mainly emerged in the course of the nineteenth century. It was in this period that, due to an increase in readership, the ‘book market (…) attained vast proportions’ and ‘[p⦌ublishing had become big business’ (Demoor 1). As a consequence, advertisement and promotion became indispensable if a writer did not want to ‘go under’ (4), especially for those who still had ‘a way to make’ (Dettmar & Watt 5). As George Bernard Shaw observed, authors had no choice but ‘to sell [themselves] together with [their] work’ (Demoor 4). As ‘we began to recount the lives of authors rather than of heroes’ (Foucault 1979), one of the author’s principal marketing tools became the author himself: his personality and public image. These personalities can be either real or fictional, but always serve the needs of what Peter McDonald labels ‘the profiteers:’ authors who ‘wanted and succeeded in achieving a best-selling career’ (1997, 14).
In this study, I will signify the Beats as ‘profiteers.’ In order to attain a firm position within the literary field and the commercial marketplace, they engaged in self- fashioning, in the construction of an authorial persona, a narrative self. Occasionally they even ‘engaged in self-mythologizing in order to seduce a consumerist public’ (Demoor 11) and, as will become clear from this research, attempted to ‘remain in control of their public image at all costs.’ Of course, the Beats belong to an entire different time than high modernist writers and had new means for marketing and self-fashioning at their disposal. Their options were not limited to reviews, photographs and articles in literary magazines, literary essays or publishing strategies. One of those new means, and a highly convenient occasion for selling the author, was the literary interview. Although the Beats were not the first to overtly market themselves, they were among the first generation to actively advertise themselves in literary interviews. Moreover, the Beats fashioned and marketed their authorial personae more intensively than any predecessors. According to Anthony DeCurtis (1999) the Beats ‘lasted’ and ‘thrived’ not purely for ‘aesthetic reasons,’ but mainly by becoming cultural icons through ardent, yet subtle marketing. They ensured their endurance by applying various advertising platforms such as their presence at political manifestations and public debates, appearances in clothing advertisements (DeCurtis 1999), poetry readings, publishing strategies, self-depictions in their autobiographical literature, articles and literary
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essays, photography, and so on. For this reason, Thomas Merrill even suggested that advertisement and not literary achievement was, at least in part, the Beats’ true innovation (1969).
1.2) The literary interview
In his Performing the Literary Interview (2007), John Rodden discusses and explores ‘the rhetorical craft of artistic self-fashioning through the form of the literary interview’ (1). Such interviews appear in literary magazines and intend to address a broad audience. Its purpose is to simultaneously inform and entertain the readers. The literary interview can be understood as ‘a co-production via the materials of verbal discourse’ (Rodden 16). It resembles a conversation between author and interviewer where the emphasis lies on the author’s responses. The typical questions inquire into the author’s work, his literary viewpoints, his personal thoughts and, in extension, his personality.
Although the literary interview has been mainly neglected as a distinctive genre, it is a significant medium for the construction of an authorial persona and public self. The literary interview was bestowed with a central role in literary magazines for the first time in George Plimpton’s Paris Review in 1953. Since then, the genre has developed into a noteworthy platform where authors can project and perform their narrative selves, and represent their personalities, viewpoints and literary theories ‘before an audience’ (Greenblatt 1980, 245). Consequently, since the 1950’s it has become increasingly crucial for sustaining contact with the audience and attracting a potential readership. Ronald Christ even claims that the main goal of the interview is always creating a persona, and raising interest in the character of the interviewee (1977).
In his study, John Rodden distinguishes roughly ‘three types of performing interviewees:’ (6) the traditionalists, the raconteurs and the advertisers. Generally, the first type would downplay their personalities, meaning that they tend to ‘put their work in the foreground of the interview’ (6). Rather than discussing their private lives, they
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accentuate a certain ‘cause,’ which can either concern their work, or another (political, sociological, economical, ideological…) message.
The second type, the raconteurs, would actively display their personalities. Since their primary goal is not to communicate information, they tend to deviate from an emphasis on their work or cause to an enjoyable and convivial conversation with their interviewers in which they ‘make themselves into literary spotlights of sorts’ (10). Consequently, these interviewees frequently tend to digress, moving incoherently from one anecdote to another. Remarkably, Rodden argues that this category of interviewees is also the most likely to revise and sometimes even make changes to the transcripts of the interviews.
The advertisers, Rodden delineates, would explicitly and fervently promote their personalities. They are the true performers, who tend to ‘project themselves as literary characters’ (13). They may often tend to ‘exploit interviews (and other media) to make their personae into objects of interest and contention equal to or greater than their work’ (13). Like the raconteurs, they tend to minimize the focus on their work. However, raconteurs are merely self-displayers, whereas the advertiser is a genuine self-promoter who advertises himself as a writer and character of his own invention. According to Rodden, this last type belongs to a more recent phenomenon. In a time when the literary interview was still new, we are less likely to encounter such fervent advertisers.
Additionally, Rodden sensibly emphasizes the possible correlations between these types, as this is only a ‘rudimentary phenomenology of types’ (7), which is naturally not prescriptive or normative. Correspondingly, in what follows, I will merge all three types in my characterization of the Beat authors.
Furthermore, I must also indicate a matter frequently emphasized by Rodden himself. Not only the interviewee, but also the interviewer is responsible for the audience’s perception of the author. Not only does the interviewer obtain at least partial control over the interview – since he poses the questions – but he also transforms the transcript into a fluent text. Structural changes, reformulations and omissions inevitably alter the impression and possibly even the content of the original interview. Furthermore, the
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interviewer’s personality may also have an impact on the dialogue. For example, Rodden notes a recurrent phenomenon among interviewers of ‘advertisers,’ especially when these interviewers are enthusiastic fans of the artist. While interviewing this type of artists, some ‘interviewers (…) [tend to] treat the interviewee as “a prophet, a visionary, a seer whose every act and utterance is taken to be of nearly scriptural significance”’ (12).
Finally, Rodden discerns a unique type of interview: the ‘peer interviewer,’ where the interviewer is either renowned or an acquainted and respected artist. This frequently occurred with the Beats, for example when Ginsberg interviewed Burroughs. According to Rodden, this might have a significant impact on the interview, due to the altered relationship between the interviewer and interviewee. For example, these interviews might often reflect natural and convivial conversations, or the interviewer’s share may increase significantly, as his questions can take the form of lengthy statements, equal to the interviewee’s answers (19).
1.3) The Beats in literary interviews
As the date of the first literary interviews in Paris Review (1953) reveals, the Beats belonged to the first generation of writers being featured in literary interviews. The wide collection of materials accessible today1 reminds us of the interview’s crucial function in advertising these writers. Of course, one might doubt whether they consciously deployed these interviews to perform and exploit their narrative selves. In my opinion, however, their active commitment to marketing does suggest at least a certain degree of conscious self-fashioning in these interviews. Moreover, literary interviews inevitably ‘give the reader a sense of the author’s personality,’ (Rodden 6) and thus authorial personae are automatically produced, whether one intends to or not.
1 Interviews with the Beat authors have been collected in various publications such as: Safe in Heaven Dead: Interviews with Jack Kerouac (1990) by Michael White; Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958- 1996 (2002) and Burroughs Live (2001).
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Additionally, the Beats were public figures who gained and increased their renown by public display. They visited university campuses, took part in public debates and political and cultural manifestations, appeared on television, in popular press and in literary interviews. In this wide gamut of public spaces, interviews formed an excellent locus for self-invention and image-exploitation.
The interviews I selected for the subsequent analysis stem from various publications and decades throughout the careers of Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs. Some interviews have acquired an almost legendary status, such as the Paris Review interviews. Others have received less attention. Although these interviews uncover a minor, yet definite evolution in the poetic and political stance of the Beats, as well as their perception of their own literary career and practice, this has no consequences for my analysis because, as Demoor remarks, ‘once a “persona” was created, it was all but impossible to change or replace it’ (15). Consequently, I presuppose a more or less stable image of the Beats and will primarily focus on continuities in their discourse. The wide range of these interviews serves to exemplify those permanencies in the representation of their authorial selves and the Beat Generation in general.
Evidently, an inquiry into aspects of marketing and self-fashioning requires interviews that display the Beats actively constructing, projecting and performing their public personae. Thus, in the selected interviews the Beats mainly discuss themselves, their political, social, cultural and literary viewpoints, their literature and literary technique, their private lives and so on.
All interviews stem from times when the Beat Generation had already been ‘faddish[ly] commercializ[ed]’ (Watson 1995, 4) in popular media. Hence, a part of their general reputation was already established within the popular press. Nevertheless, these interviews were to a large extent responsible for the construction of a public personality, as well as consolidating the reputation they received throughout time and still have today. Especially the earlier interviews played an important role in establishing that reputation and altering the caricatural image spread by the tabloids, since these interviews gave the Beats the opportunity to ‘present [themselves] in a more sustained and reflective fashion’ (Lotringer 2001, 15). For instance, the Beat Generation
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– both the writers and the generation as a whole – was already widely perceived as a band of nonconformists and immoral vagabonds. These interviews subsequently gave the Beat authors the opportunity to present themselves as artists and fashion their authorial personalities. In these interviews they frequently – and successfully – attempted to counter their caricatural reception and emphasize, for example, the intellectual nature of their rebellion. This also suggests that, despite the influence of the press, a persona is primarily created by the author himself.
Interviews stemming from later decades, on the other hand, frequently appear to function as an opportunity for retrospective confirmation. When the Beats, and particularly Ginsberg and Burroughs, look back on the crucial era of the 1950’s and 1960’s, they tend to confirm or even affirm the viewpoints and personae they projected as commencing authors ‘with a way to make’ (Dettmar and Watt, 5). Specifically in respect to ideas and ideals that became popularized during the counter-culture movement of the 1960’s, the Beats tend to assert their role as progenitors of this cultural revolution. Consequently, such interviews become interesting for analysis as they display the Beats confirming and enforcing the narrative selves they established in their earliest public appearances.
Hence, this collection of interviews exemplifies the Beats’ commitment to their initial personae and, in extension, to their myth. For above all, the selected interviews demonstrate the Beats’ indulgence in self-mythologizing. These authors transformed themselves into sensational characters and continuously confirmed their own myth, either by extensions to original narratives, supplementary exempla of their character or repetitions of the narratives that have become part of their legend.
Corresponding to my earlier remark, I must also indicate the influence of their interviewers in the creation and confirmation of that myth. Almost all of the selected interviews were conducted with admiring, acquainted or even befriended interviewers. Thus, these encounters provided excellent platforms for the Beats to perform their public selves, as the interviewers rarely challenge their interviewee’s narratives and frequently encourage self-promotion. For example, these interviewers often invite the Beats to reiterate famous anecdotes. This suggests that the ‘myth of the Beat Generation’
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had been firmly established since the Beats’ first performances and has been refined and confirmed ever since.
In the subsequent analysis, I will discuss Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg’s performance separately, indicating several remarkable features in their discourse. Following Rodden’s theory, I will generally categorize Kerouac and Ginsberg as ‘raconteurs.’ By convivially and brazenly discussing private matters, moving from one anecdote to another, they ‘turn [their] own personae into objects of attention’ – hence, Frank Conroy’s ‘open contempt for [the] Beat poets’ (Rodden 8). Burroughs, on the other hand, could best be distinguished as a traditionalist who is mainly concerned with his work or ‘cause.’ Nonetheless, I will indicate that none of these three authors can be strictly categorized under one type. I will accordingly demarcate several features that would classify Ginsberg and Kerouac as traditionalists. Similarly, Burroughs did not entirely shun inquiries into his private life either, nor did he exclusively discuss his ‘cause.’ Thus, this concurs with Rodden’s claim that these phenomenological types are not normative. In conclusion, I will argue that by combining autobiographical and confessional narratives with intellectual discourses and an emphasis on their work or ‘cause’ – their political, social and cultural viewpoints – they facilitated the image and public selves we know them by.
With these analyses, I hope to promote further investigation into aspects of marketing and self-fashioning, particularly within interviews. Concurring with Lejeune’s assessment of the literary interview (1980, 108-9), I also intend to promote a reevaluation of the literary interview as a distinctive genre and a significant instrument for self-promotion and self-fashioning. Most of all, of course, I hope to offer a better understanding of the Beat Generation and stimulate further research into this subject.
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2. GINSBERG
More than the other Beats, Ginsberg was a highly public figure who did not shun the popular media. Concurring with Thomas Merrill’s observation that ‘[h]e makes the news wherever he goes,’ (1969) Ginsberg frequently appeared in public debates – whether concerning drugs, homosexuality, ethics or politics. When reviewing his Planet News in 1969, John Grissim Jr. stated the following: ‘angry and outspoken in the Beat Fifties, he became the conscience-eye of a country, tribal elder to the war baby generation, and almost by chance, a multimedia presence.’ Due to this politics of presence Ginsberg became a cultural icon and in these media appearances he shaped and advertised his public self. Consequently, I agree with Merrill when he states that
‘no one has been more aware than Allen Ginsberg himself of how tempting a morsel he has always been for the popular press. He is good copy; and, despite his understandable pique over the fact that the tabloid version of Ginsberg often distorts the real Ginsberg, he must realize that the exposure has not been all to the bad.’
As this passage implies, Ginsberg owes much of his popularity to the attention the popular press gave him. Correspondingly, literary interviews formed an important platform for marketing and made it possible to advertise his literature, and possibly more importantly: his own personality. In these interviews he displayed himself as a non-conformist rebel, an anti-violence idealist, a highly innovative poet, a religious mystic with near-prophetic abilities and ‘a no-bullshit person’ (Lou Reed, 1997) who sought honesty, which resulted in his courageously shameless and open self-exploitation and introspection – a quality that inclined Norman Mailer to call him a ‘ real leader’ (1997).
In what follows, I will analyze how Ginsberg facilitated this authorial persona through his performance in the literary interview. By means of six interviews, I will denote several remarkable aspects of his discourse in which he markets himself and the Beat movement. Starting with the renowned 1966 interview with Thomas Clark and
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concluding with the interview with Steve Silberman in 1996, just a few months before his death, these interviews stem from each decade of his career. As I previously mentioned, I will generally categorize him as a raconteur, openly displaying his personality in a blatant delineation of personal narratives, mainly moving from one anecdote to the other. However, he repeatedly shows himself to be highly concerned with his ‘cause’ and hence exhibits some features of the traditionalist. In this manner, he managed to portray himself as an intelligent and amusing author, or, as Yoko Ono put it: ‘[someone who] never ceased to impress with his wisdom and sense of fun’ (1997).
2.1) The blatant raconteur
One prominent aspect of Ginsberg’s discourse is his openness when discussing private matters. When Steve Silberman (1996) asks him about his joys, he engages in a lengthy digression enumerating several activities bring him fulfillment. In this delineation he does not shun private subjects in the least, blatantly describing his sexual life:
Steve Silberman: What brings you joy right now?
Allen Ginsberg: Making love to younger fellows, and I seem to be able to still - I can't get it up so easily - but certainly heart to heart naked is great.
As he continues, Ginsberg also openly discusses personal relationships and encounters with other artists and constantly deviates into auxiliary clarifications and anecdotes, as observable in the following paragraph:
So I had the real intellectual and emotional pleasure of having an intimate life with a lot of great artists - and still do - like Phillip Glass or Francesco Clemente, the painter, or Robert Frank, the photographer. I even wound up on stage with Yehudi Menuhin the other day. Phillip had assigned me to read the "Sunflower Sutra" to music, to be conducted by Menuhin, and a string orchestra at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. It blew my mind, because I had remembered him as an unapproachable titan when I was young. Turned out to be a nice old Jewish guy,
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very sensitive and very elegant-handed, you know - his gestures. Very sharp and exquisitely gentle. And his manners were very beautiful.
This continuous, associative deviation into additional narratives irrevocably characterizes Ginsberg as a true raconteur who, corresponding to the conventional image of the Beats, could stay up all night, talking frantically about any possible subject. Since this interview was conducted shortly before his death, his reputation had already been established. Consequently, the interview mainly served to affirm his legendary persona.
Moreover, by openly discussing his sexuality and describing it in detail, he enforces his status as the non-conformist rebel who ‘speak[s] hidden truths about unspeakable things’ (Gilmore 1997) and refuses accepted social mores in his search for ‘a gregarious honesty which compels him to speak naturally and without inhibitions of virtually every intimate personal detail of his life’ (Merrill 1969, 39). In Merrill’s opinion, it is ‘[t]his absolute sincerity [and] openness’ (Burroughs, 1997) that enabled him to acquire his immense popularity.
2.2) The Blake vision: Ginsberg as a poet-prophet
Yet, while scrutinizing Ginsberg’s openness, Merrill sensitively remarks that ‘this honesty, along with a remarkable talent for showmanship, inspires the suspicion that there is a good deal of hokum to the history of this man’ (1969, 39). An excellent example forms the frequently invoked – both by himself and his biographers – ‘Blake vision.’ In the 1966 interview with Thomas Clark, Ginsberg expands this anecdote into a lengthy narrative for one of the first times and thus powerfully secures this story. In doing so, he nearly mythologizes his ‘vision’ and transforms it into a divine revelation:
And just after I came, on this occasion, with a Blake book on my lap – I wasn’t even reading, my eye was idling over the page of “Ah! Sun-flower,” and it suddenly appeared – (…) – and suddenly I realized that the poem was talking about me. Now, I began understanding it, the poem, while looking at it, and
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suddenly, simultaneously with understanding it, heard a very deep earthen grave voice in the room, which I immediately assumed, (…) was Blake’s voice; (…) it was like God had a human voice, with all the infinite tenderness and anciency and mortal gravity of a living Creator speaking to his son. (…) and simultaneous to the voice there was also (…) a sudden visual realization of the same awesome phenomena. (…) I suddenly realized that this existence was it! And that I was born in order to experience up to this very moment (…) – in other words that this was the moment that I was born for. (Clark 1966)
Reading this passage raises the suspicion that, as Merrill put it, at least a portion of his history is hokum. Nonetheless, since the question of its truthfulness inevitably remains unanswerable, I will not address this matter. What we can distill from this quote, however, is the almost divine role Ginsberg bequeaths himself. In this seemingly supernatural occasion, which borders on a divine apparition, Ginsberg appears to obtain a contact with the divine or the infinite. Like a romantic poet, he portrays himself as the poèta vates, the mystical seer who can access a world beyond our senses. It is as if he experiences a breach in the time-space-continuum, as the poem and Blake’s voice address him personally. In this case, Blake – or the ‘ancient voice’ – seems to embody God, speaking to his son. Ginsberg almost transforms into a new prophet, addressed by a suddenly highly livid and tangible divine ‘father’– ‘a living Creator speaking to his son.’ As it becomes clear from this interpretation, Ginsberg’s persona appears indebted to Jewish mythology, as he remodels his own experience after, for example, that of Moses.
A bit further in the interview, Ginsberg sensibly indicates the possibility that his epiphany was merely a hallucination, which would implicate his insanity:
Because suddenly I thought, also simultaneously, Ooh, I’m going mad! That’s described in the line in “Howl,” (…) – “who thought they were only mad…” (…) In other words it’d be a lot easier if you were just crazy, (…) but on the other hand what if it’s all true and you’re born into this great cosmic universe in which you’re a spirit angel – terrible fucking situation to be confronted with.
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Whether or not he truly experienced it as a difficult situation, Ginsberg nevertheless chose the second option and thus perceives himself as ‘a spirit angel,’ destined or born for this divine vision. He subsequently poses – following Ferlinghetti’s description – as ‘one of the prophets come back’ (in: ‘He’). If we continue following Jewish mythology, Ginsberg poses as a possible Lamed Vovnik2, with the opportunity of rising to the position of the Messiah. Correspondingly, Merrill interpreted Ginsberg as a ‘self- assigned prophet’ (60) and denoted that ‘Ginsberg would like to be a modern Christ’ (1969, 85).
Nevertheless, Ginsberg sensibly mitigates his prophetic allure when he states the following:
What prophecy actually is is not that you actually know that the bomb will fall in 1942. It’s that you know and feel something which somebody knows and feels in a hundred years. And maybe articulate it in a hint – concrete way that they pick up on in a hundred years. (Clark 1966)
In this clarification of his application of the term ‘prophecy,’ he defines the prophet as a seer, perceptive of subtle dynamics in society, whose prophetic quality does not entail direct or exact implications. In this manner, he lowers the bar for ‘prophecy’ by diminishing accuracy and emphasizing hazy fore- or insight. Thus, he alludes to the romantic image of the artist, born in the wrong era, who is only understood and appreciated for his true quality long after his death – perhaps a prospect he desires for himself.
2 Lamed Vovnik or Lamedvavnik is the Yiddish term for one of the 36 people in Jewish mythology who have the potential of becoming the Jewish Messiah. At all times, there are exactly 36 Lamed Vovniks spread across the world, who are not aware of their role.
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2.3) The Beat mystic
In the previous paragraphs I have mainly compared Ginsberg’s discourse and his persona to Jewish mythology. However, the Beats, and particularly Ginsberg, did not confine themselves to the practice and examination of one religion. In their attempt to fill the ‘spiritual vacuum in modern civilization,’ (Merrill 1969, 18) they turned to several religious fronts. Jack Kerouac once exclaimed: ‘I want to speak for things, for the crucifix I speak out, for the Star of Israel I speak out, for the divinest man who ever lived who was a German (Bach) I speak out, for sweet Mohammed I speak out, for Buddha I speak out, for Lao-tse and Chuang-tse I speak out (…)’ (1959). In his study of Allen Ginsberg, Thomas Merrill also emphasizes that ‘the religious fervor of the Beat Generation is comprehensive’ (1969, 27). Accordingly, Ginsberg’s discourse is marked by references to several religions. One, I already indicated: Judaism. Yet, more fervently than Western religion, Ginsberg turned to spiritualism and oriental beliefs. In an interview with Peter Barry Chowka, for example, he refers to Hinduism:
PBC: How has your study of Tibetan Buddhism, and your work with Trungpa Rinpoche, altered or expanded your own awareness?
AG: The shamatha meditation which I've practiced for a number of years under Trungpa Rinpoche's auspices leads first to a calming of the mind, to a quieting of the mechanical production of fantasy and thought forms; it leads to sharpened awareness of them and to taking an inventory of them. It also leads to an appreciation of the empty space around into which you breathe, which is associated with dharmakaya. In the tradition of the vipassana practice, this leads to insight into detail in the space around you (1976).
As both the date and the interviewer’s question demonstrate, the public was already familiar with Ginsberg’s interest in Buddhism. In this example, both the interviewer and Ginsberg himself reinforce this aspect of his persona. With this passage, he immediately showcases his knowledge of and indebtedness to eastern religious practices, and thus consolidates the image of an intellectual mystic, searching for a ‘new awareness’ and a
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solution to the problem of ‘how one is to live in a world that admits the absence of God’ (Merrill, 1969, 28).
In a passage from the interview with Clark, Ginsberg interestingly links Hinduism to Christian doctrine when he declares that ‘[t]he only way out [of the age of destruction] is through bhakti-yoga, which is Faith-Hope-Adoration-Worship, or like probably the equivalent of the Christian Sacred Heart (…)’ (1966). This passage noticeably reflects the comprehensiveness of the Beats’ religious fervor. In fact, believing was more important to the Beats than what one believed in – with the exclusion of institutionalized Western religions and ideologies. In other words: ‘the church [as an institution] is “square;” religious sensitivity is “hip” (Merrill 1969, 28). Through his eclectic interest in religion, Ginsberg renders the image of the ‘Beat mystic;’ an open-minded spiritualist whose wisdom lies in his very eclecticism.
This comprehensiveness is possibly one of the main causes for Ginsberg’s turn to Zen Buddhism, since it is a highly comprehensive religion itself and thus ‘offers an almost irresistible satisfaction to his vague spiritual hungers’ (Merrill 1969, 28). This interest in Buddhism can also be explained by two appealing facets of its doctrine. One aspect is the holiness of everything, which is the consequence of a neutralized distinction of good and evil. Just like Ginsberg exclaimed in ‘Howl’ that ‘everything is holy! everybody’s holy’ (1956) this attitude recurrently surfaces throughout his interviews, for example when commenting on Cézanne that ‘he’s really a saint!’ or when saying that ‘existence itself was God’ (Clark 1966). In doing so, Ginsberg does not solely legitimize his own prophetic stance, but he also sacralizes every detail of his life and every word he pronounces. In this way, the Beats justified their alleged immorality, since in Zen doctrine ‘to be right is to follow one’s natural bent’ (Merrill 1969, 34). Ginsberg accordingly applies Buddhism to legitimize the Beat philosophy when he states that ‘The Buddhist thing is bohemian, by its very nature. Or admits more bohemia. It's nonjudgemental let us say’ (Silberman 1987). In his comment on the Beat application of Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts observed that the Beats interpreted Zen in a rather idiosyncratic way, to make it serve their ends (1959).
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According to Carolyn Cassady (1999) and David Scott (1997), Ginsberg’s tendency towards self-complacency and self-magnification only increased as he grew older. We can observe this in the interview with Steve Silberman in 1987, where Ginsberg discusses the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, of which he was the primary tutor. When asked after the origins of its success, Ginsberg refers to the institute’s structure. In his description of the school as an autocratic organization, he subtly depicts himself as its ‘guru.’ Although he mitigates this claim by signifying the selflessness of this guru, it appears that, throughout time, he willingly adopted the role of mentor and ‘wisdom-teacher’ (Isaacs 1994). Concurrently, this facet of his persona was only fashioned in his later interviews, such as the following:
First of all they had a central organizing motor which was meditation. So they had a workable central thesis that was not based on the ego of the leader. Secondly, they didn't have a democratic baloney grounding -- they were in practice democratic, but in theory totally autocratic under the guru. If you have a sort of selfless guru who's not on a power trip.
2.4) Drugs: mythologizing, legitimizing and demystifying
The Beats’ interest in spiritualism is, as Rick Moody observes, highly entangled with the consumption of consciousness-altering drugs (1999). The Beats cultivated these to open up or deform their senses, a significant aspect of Zen meditation, and hence deployed drugs as a means to obtain deeper insights. Besides the obvious justification of aberrant behavior, this attitude validated and even formed a vital argument for writing under the influence of drugs. This can be exemplified by the following passage from the interview with Thomas Clark:
So – summing up then – drugs were useful for exploring perception, sense perception, and exploring different possibilities and modes of consciousness, and exploring different versions of petites sensations, and useful then for composing, sometimes, while under the influence. Part II of “Howl” was written under the influence of peyote, composed during peyote vision. In San Fransisco – “Moloch,”
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“Kaddish” was written with amphetamine injections. An injection of amphetamine plus a little bit of morphine, plus some Dexedrine later on to keep me going, because it was all in one long sitting. From a Saturday morn to a Sunday night. (1966)
In this famous passage, Ginsberg effectively mythologizes and secures two features of the Beat myth. Firstly, he affirms one of the most frequently entreated facets of the Beat myth: the legend that they composed most – or at least a significant amount – of their literature under the influence of drugs.
In the last two phrases, Ginsberg also invokes another aspect of his writing method: the legend that he, like Kerouac, wrote in long stretches, composing a poem or part of a longer poem in one uninterrupted period of time. In this way, Ginsberg legitimizes his use of drugs from the perspective of his writing method; drugs – in this case Dexedrine – ‘kept [him] going.’ In this short aside, Ginsberg powerfully conveys an essential aspect of the public image of not only himself, but also the Beats in general. He affirms the image of revolutionary, rebellious artists, who undermine conventions of composition. As a result, it becomes hard to believe that Ginsberg truly despised the sensationalism surrounding his persona when he consciously nourished such sensationalism by openly exposing his use of drugs during the composition of his poetry.
2.5) The nonconformist rebel
By openly discussing drugs – and more importantly: discussing them in positive terms – Ginsberg also poses as the nonconformist rebel who does not withhold himself from contesting profoundly entrenched taboos. This inclination would supposedly be entangled with his search for truth and honesty. Besides this search, Ginsberg and the Beats nearly professionalized undermining taboos, since these sustain a conformist ideology. This can be interpreted as an aspect of Ginsberg’s main ‘cause,’ which continuously transpires throughout the interviews. In this cause, John Tytell (1976, 9) and Thomas Merrill discerns noticeable affinities with existentialism, as he observes that ‘[t]he Beat Generation (…) sees the problem as a matter of human personality against
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the overwhelming pressures of conformity, competition, prestige, and respectability – all facets of modern civilization that measure worth by quantitative externals instead of by qualitative living’ (1969, 18). Ginsberg displays himself as the conscientious rebel, who insists ‘that he would not simply shut up, and that one should not accept delimited values or experiences’ (Gilmore, 1997).
Another aspect of this cause is his legendary struggle against the suppression of homosexuality at a time when ‘America was hardly prepared to admit that homosexuality might be anything other than a form of insanity’ (Gilmore 1997). Consequently, Ginsberg shamelessly discusses and exhibits his homosexuality in his public life. In the 1987 interview with Silberman, Ginsberg reinvigorates his legendary persona when he notes:
I use condoms now and do safe sex, and I'm very hesitant to blow somebody and take their sperm unless I know them real well and know their history, and they've been tested (Silberman 1987).
The emerging image of Ginsberg in this quotation is that of the legendary anti- establishmentarian rebel, who would not be silenced by accusations of immorality and promoted an unwavering belief and trust in his open-minded viewpoints. By candidly discussing homosexuality as something natural in public spaces, he reinforces his status as an ‘Old Courage-Teacher’ (MacAdams 1997).
Furthermore, the Beats were infamous for antagonizing legislative institutions. In his essay ‘A definition of the Beat Generation’ (1982), Ginsberg even describes the Beat Generation as a political protest movement. Consequently, in addition to undermining taboos, Ginsberg openly exposes his contempt of Western politics and opposes malpractices in modern civilization, such as those inflicted by the American government:
Then there's the right wing Stalinoid conservatives who really want to impose a police state, basically. A monotheistic police state, with just one thought. (…) You know the history of the massacres in Guatemala? Our CIA-subsidized colonels and military - trained in the US - were responsible for the murder of maybe 200,000 Guatemalan Indians, especially under the reign of a guy named Rios Mont, back in
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the '80s. And Rios Mont's guru was none other than Pat Robertson. So that Bible- thumper's got a lot of mass murder on his conscience, actually. (Silberman 1996)
In this interview from a time when he was already recognized as a countercultural revolutionary, Ginsberg consolidates his reputation as the prosecutor of injustice, the adversary of the ‘military-industrial machine civilization’ (Ginsberg 1982) and the conscience of the United States. He depicts the United States as a ‘monotheistic police state’ and severely criticizes the government as a corrupt, catholic, conservative and fundamentalist organization. Moreover, he portrays the United States as an imperialist power, responsible for the genocide of 200 000 Guatemalan Indians. From a certain perspective, Ginsberg’s insurgence confirms Norman Podhoretz’s assertion ‘that the Beats were an affront to the nation’s central ideals’ (Gilmore 1997). Yet Ginsberg experiences this as a positive attitude and subsequently reverses the perspective; the nation’s central ideals, such as freedom, ‘progress and power’ (Tytell 1976, 4) had mutated into conformism, materialism and domination and thus became an affront to humanity and humanistic ideals of equality and solidarity. Thus, he renders himself as ‘an energy center for the antiwar movement’ who ‘appealed for tolerance, for an opening of the narrowness that so afflicted the fifties’ (Tytell 1976, 107).
Another rebuttal of ‘the nation’s central ideals’ can be found in Ginsberg’s emphasis on irrationality. Following Tillich’s conviction that ‘we must deny that man’s essential nature is identical with the rational character of his mind’ (1957, 6) Ginsberg ‘deemphasiz[es] the intellect’ (Tytell 1976, 94) and juxtaposes irrationality to coherence and reason. Unsurprisingly, this attitude led to accusations such as Podhoretz’s allegation that ‘[b]eing for or against what the Beat Generation stands for has to do with denying that incoherence is superior to precision; that ignorance is superior to knowledge; that the existence of the mind and discrimination is a form of death’ (1958). Nonetheless, this ‘non-rational approach to existence’ (Merrill 1969, 16) is related to and often justified from the perspective of existentialism, prophetic poetry (Shapiro 1953, 46) and Zen Buddhism – due to ’the exaggeration of (…) the holiness of the personal impulse’ (Merrill 1969, 35). Moreover, it forms another revolt against society.
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Ginsberg once more poses as a conscientious anti-conformist when he states that ‘[t]hey say that intellect, like Saint Thomas Aquinas, will never do it’ (Clark 1966).
2.6) Fashioning his poetic stance and his poetry
In an interview with Jeremy Isaacs in 1994, Ginsberg confirms his fear of openly exhibiting his homosexuality in Howl. As this legend was already securely established in earlier interviews, both Ginsberg and Jeremy Isaacs consciously reiterate this story and, in doing so, ascertain its endurance:
JI: Wasn’t that very difficult in, after all, what was McCarthy’s America?
AG: Well, it would have been if I had intended it to be public but, to tell you the truth and as I’ve said before, “Howl” was written sort of in despair at writing poetry, I figured I couldn’t... I hadn’t succeeded in writing anything interesting, and so I said, “Well then, I’ll just write, writing for myself, and I’ll forget about the idea of publishing poetry”
In this excerpt, Ginsberg also explicates his poetic stance and relation with the audience and thus subtly fashions his narrative self. He renders the image of the romantic artist who writes solely for himself, since writing with the intention of publication did not result in interesting poetry.
A bit further in the interview, Ginsberg continues mythologizing Howl when he reiterates the legendary obscenity trial. In his statement, he describes the trial as trivial in comparison with his literary ambitions and those of his associates. In this allusion to the famous reunion of the Beats in Tangier, Ginsberg elevates Beat literature above the commercial marketplace, social responses to works of art and ‘temporary little local trial[s]’:
I was already in Tangier with Jack Kerouac and Peter Orlovsky and William Burroughs, helping type and assemble the manuscript of Naked Lunch, and I thought that was much more important than going back to fight a temporary little
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local trial, because, if I won, I won, if I lost, I won anyway, because the poem would be sought after for generations if it were forbidden, so I couldn’t lose either way.
Moreover, in this remark Ginsberg confirms his awareness of the positive marketing effects of the obscenity trial, even at the time of the trial. As this interview took place in 1994, he confirms Thomas Merrill’s earlier suspicion that ‘no one has been more aware than Allen Ginsberg himself of how tempting a morsel he has always been for the popular press. He is good copy; and, despite his understandable pique over the fact that the tabloid version of Ginsberg often distorts the real Ginsberg, he must realize that the exposure has not been all to the bad’ (1969). Of course, since Ginsberg is retrospectively discussing the obscenity trial with knowledge of the outcome, one might also suspect some exaggeration in his account. He stages a high confidence in the positive outcome of the trial and in the renown Howl would inevitably bring him. In this way, the account appears to be a form of retrospective self-confirmation and self-promotion. Ginsberg suggests that he did not doubt his eventual status as a famous and groundbreaking author.
As the previous example implies, Ginsberg devotedly fashions and advertises an image of himself as a poet and his poetic stance. In this sense, he exhibits some features of the traditionalist, corresponding to Rodden’s assertion that his categories are not exclusive and that the raconteur does not solely display his personality (Rodden, 2007). Accordingly, Ginsberg attached great importance to the explication of his work and style, as can be demonstrated by the following passage:
JI: In writing “Howl”, you also found the form, you found what you described as “open form” rather than “closed form”, to write verse in. Could you say something about that? What’s the difference?
AG: Well a shift to cadences used idiomatically in ordinary speech. Sometimes in Zen they speak of “ordinary mind” (as) the highest mind, so, in a sense, ordinary speech is the highest speech, and that there are phrases in idiomatic speech, vernacular speech, that penetrate in every direction, aesthetically, or
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intellectually, but are also commonly understood — like the phrase, “catch yourself thinking” — everybody knows what that means, and yet, in Esoteric Buddhism, it’s the process of stopping your mind and observing the mind. In everyday bar-room talk, or pub talk. (1976)
Although this is the first interview where he explains his poetry in this manner, Ginsberg did frequently fashion his literature as spontaneous and innovative. In this statement, he once more describes his poetry as an innovative adaption of ‘ordinary speech’. As Matt Theado (2004) suggests, Ginsberg retracts poetry from its ivory tower and describes it as a process of stopping to contemplate common expressions. In doing so, Ginsberg profiles himself as a genuine innovator who altered the perception and nature of poetry and ‘how it would speak [and] what it would articulate’ (Gilmore 1997).
Additionally, Ginsberg connects the Zen application of ‘mind’ to ‘speech,’ based on the association with ‘ordinary.’ As ‘ordinary mind’ is interpreted as ‘the highest mind,’ he similarly interprets ‘ordinary speech’ as the ‘highest speech.’ In this manner, Ginsberg advertises his poetry as highly elevated and formally innovative.
In the interview with Silberman from 1987, we can observe Ginsberg advertising himself as a groundbreaking poet even more directly. For one of the first times, he explicitly indicates how he wishes to be remembered after his death:
Steve Silberman: (…) How do you wish to be remembered?
Allen Ginsberg: What a question! I don't really want to interfere with my karma. (…) It would be nice to be remembered as an ecstatic poet, or a poet whose work could inspire or elevate others' minds; or a poet who spread some sense of expansion of awareness, or expansive consciousness. (1987)
When provoked to delineate his desired reputation, Ginsberg initially appears to refuse a response, possibly in an attempt not to come across as ‘self-absorbed’ (Scott 1997). Quite remarkably, however, he does eventually answer the question. In his response, he explicitly fashions himself as ‘a poet whose work could inspire or elevate others’ minds; or a poet who spread some sense of expansion of awareness, or expansive
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consciousness.’ In other words, he wishes to be perceived as an artist who had a definite impact on Western culture and thinking. In this statement, Ginsberg directly advocates and fashions the reputation he ultimately acquired.
2.7) The invocation of literary influences as self-fashioning
Throughout the interview, like in his essays, Ginsberg frequently refers to and discusses his influences. In my perception, these famous predecessors were not only crucial for the evolution of his poetry and poetic voice, but also for constructing his identity as a poet. I already indicated one influence: Blake. In his ‘William Blake and Allen Ginsberg: Poets of a Fallen World, Prophets of the New World,’ (1988) Christopher Pellnat examines the affinities between Ginsberg and Blake in terms of the prophetic features of their poetry and scrutinizes Ginsberg’s indebtedness to Blake. Ginsberg recurrently assigns a vital role to Blake throughout his interviews and distinguishes him as a substantial factor in his own poetic evolution. In my perception, Ginsberg even applied Blake as a legitimizing factor for his own political viewpoints, poetic stance and his authorial persona. In his interpretation of Blake he directly aligns him with several of his own viewpoints, as observable in the following paragraph:
I still haven’t read him all through enough to understand what direction he was really pointing to. It seems to be the naked human form divine, seems to be Energy, it seems to be sexualization, or sexual liberation, which are the directions we all believe in. (Clark 1966)
Although he tentatively expresses his own doubts, he clearly interprets Blake as a progenitor of his own ideals, such as sexual liberation. Moreover, he implicitly defines Blake as a prophet by allowing his projection of the author to ‘point’ towards a certain ‘direction.’ Coincidentally, this direction concurs with the direction Ginsberg imagines himself pointing to. Hence, by depicting Blake as a prophet and aligning himself with his predecessor, Ginsberg implicitly assigns that prophetic role to himself as well.
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Throughout all of his interviews, Ginsberg also recurrently alludes to the literary tradition by invoking writers and philosophers such as Shakespeare, Whitman, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Williams, Genet, Céline, Plato and by quoting several passages from Whitman’s, Blake’s, Wallace Stevens’ and Milton’s work. In some occasions, these references consist of mere namedropping, yet in other instances, they involve extensive quotations of entirely memorized poems. In doing so, Ginsberg showcases his literary knowledge – yet another powerful rebuttal of the Beats’ reputation as anti-intellectuals. More importantly, he appears to implicitly align himself with that Western tradition of canonical authors – a position he eventually received.
2.8) The Beat Generation
In his interviews, Ginsberg’s anecdotic narration frequently concerns or alludes to Burroughs, Kerouac or other members of the Beat Generation. By constantly referring to these authors, Ginsberg nourished the common conception of the Beat Generation as a rigid group, a closely bounded movement. Despite the artistic and ideological differences between these artists and the ‘[lack] of any shared platform such as the Imagist or Surrealist manifestoes,’ (Tytell, 1976, 3) this image prevails. According to most academic research, what held this group together was ‘a shared desire to inquire – in matters of the mind, of aesthetics and of the senses’ (Gilmore 1997) and ‘the ability to honestly confess each other their deepest feelings’ (Tytell 1976, 3). It appears that their unity mainly resided in their friendship, yet mere friendship does not convey the impression of a coherent literary movement – or at least not to the extent the Beats have been perceived. In my interpretation, what truly marketed this incoherent group of companions as a consistent movement was their continuous suggestion of this coherence. By ceaselessly referring to his fellow artists and indicating the influence they exerted upon each other, Ginsberg effectively renders the image of a seamless artistic unity.
Besides referring to the other Beats, Ginsberg also fervently advertises his colleagues. We may connect this to his reputation as ‘the acknowledged ringleader of the Beats’
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(Clark 1966). Gilmore indicates that despite this reputation ‘he was determined not to arrive as the Beats’ sole writer hero,’ (1997) and thus intensely engaged in marketing his co-Beats, especially Kerouac and Burroughs. In the following excerpt from the interview with Geneson (1975), for example, he advertises Kerouac’s literary technique and justifies Kerouac’s ‘long line’ by connecting this technique to a vast gamut of predecessors. In this way, Ginsberg attempts to refute complaints about Kerouac’s literary style by placing his companion at the end of a long series of precursors and thus places Kerouac, and more explicitly himself, between that Parthenon of canonical authors:
Kerouac got it from Thomas Wolfe, and from Herman Melville, and from Walt Whitman, and from the Bible, and from Shakespeare, and from Rabelais, Sir Thomas Browne, Burton. (…) From Whitman, Robinson Jeffers, and myself. (29)
Quite remarkably, as will become clear from my analysis of Kerouac’s performance, Ginsberg’s advertisement of his companion contrasts sharply with Kerouac’s frequent denunciation of the other Beats and, not in the least, Ginsberg. This leads me to suggest that Ginsberg was notably responsible for enforcing the Beats’ conception as a coherent group. This also appears to confirm Cassady’s claim that the Beat Generation was, to a certain extent, the ‘invention of (…) Allen Ginsberg’ (1999).
As I mentioned, Allen Ginsberg was a highly public figure and a talented performer. According to Thomas Merrill, he was undoubtedly aware of his effect on popular media and must have known that this attention has proven fruitful for advertising ‘Ginsberg the icon.’ Leslie Fiedler called Burroughs a character of science fiction. I would apply a similar description to Ginsberg, as he exhibits himself as a highly entertaining character. Following Merrill’s comment, one might indeed suggest that at least portion of this character and his story was in fact fiction. Moreover, in my estimation, Ginsberg became the principal character of his own myth – and thus provided the germs of the media- sensationalism that he supposedly detested. In the analyzed interviews, we get a clear view on how he designed and conveyed his narrative self through his performance in literary interviews. In my analysis, I generally categorized him as a raconteur. The anecdote functions as the main structuring device of his discourse as he diverges
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ceaselessly and incoherently into side-stories. In this anecdotal discourse, he does not shun private matters in the least and blatantly delineates personal details from his life, conveying the sincere honesty and openness that mark his persona. When recounting his famous ‘Blake vision,’ the story even takes on near-mythical proportions as Ginsberg poses as a medium between the earthly and the divine. He describes the epiphany as a divine apparition and places himself in the role of a poèta vates or even a prophet. I subsequently connected this account – which appears to draw significantly on Jewish mythology – to the religious comprehensiveness that marks both the Beat myth and Ginsberg’s persona. In this interview, Ginsberg exhibits his religious sensitivity and interest in alternative beliefs, such as spiritualism, Hinduism and Zen Buddhism. Moreover, he even portrays himself as a guru, a Buddhist teacher and mentor. As a result, he establishes the image of an eclectic and intelligent mystic who ceaselessly searches for a solution to the problems of modern life. Furthermore, his interest in spiritualism is highly entangled with the consumption of drugs and he even legitimizes these from the perspective of spiritualism, since drugs were supposedly applied to ‘open up the senses.’ Besides legitimizing drugs, Ginsberg nearly mythologizes writing under the influence of drugs. Additionally, by openly discussing drugs, Ginsberg conveys one of the key concerns of the Beat Generation: the demystification of drugs, related to his reputation as a nonconformist rebel. He appears to make it his divine vocation or cause to oppose all injustices of modern society, and does not withhold himself to openly display his contempt for the American government, for materialism and the ‘military- industrial machine civilization’ and for the contemporary conception of homosexuality. Consequently, he poses as the conscience of the United States and the progenitor of the counterculture revolution. Furthermore, Ginsberg attached great importance to the lucid explication of his poetry. By discussing his poetry he transfers his poetic stance to the audience, and subsequently fashions an image of his poetry and himself as a poet. Besides profiling himself as an avant-garde artist who altered poetry’s very nature, he even explicitly confesses his desire to be remembered as one of the greatest, most innovative poets of his time. Ginsberg additionally fashions his narrative self by aligning himself to renowned predecessors from the Western literary canon. He continuously invokes these literary influences and applies them to validate and explicate his own
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poetic stance. By alluding to an extensive array of canonical authors, he also proves himself to be a highly educated and intelligent poet and powerfully refutes accusations of anti-intellectualism. Lastly, Ginsberg engages in marketing the Beat Generation itself. Throughout his discourse, he repeatedly alludes to Kerouac and Burroughs and overtly advertises Kerouac’s work. Since this advertisement contrasts with Kerouac’s denunciation of Ginsberg, one might indeed suspect that Ginsberg was, for a large part, responsible for fashioning the Beat Generation as a coherent group of companions. When analyzing these interviews, it becomes clear that Ginsberg was highly engaged in fashioning and marketing his public self. Consequently, one almost feels confronted with a dilemma: either to perceive Ginsberg ‘as the unfortunate [victim] of a mechanism outside of [his] control’ (Dettmar & Watt 1996, 6) who, despite his sincerity and pique for the popular press, accidentally became a sensational and mass-media presence. Or one might perceive him as a talented advertiser, highly aware of his sensational character, who merely posed as an incorruptible and sincere avant-garde artist. The answer probably resides somewhere in between.
3. BURROUGHS
William Seward Burroughs is generally perceived as ‘the least-known figure of the Beat movement, obscuring details of his past (…)’ (Tytell, 1976, 36). Indeed, he may definitely be considered a ‘well-insulated man,’ (Ulin, 1999) and the most reclusive figure of the three chief beat authors. On the other hand, he did become an undeniable ‘pop-culture icon’ (Ulin, 1999) and a well-known, awarded author who was often perceived as the mentor of the Beats or the ‘dark tutor of the young Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac’ (MacAdams, 1997). In contrast to what his legendary seclusion might suggest, he did not acquire this reputation by total denunciation of mass media and public spaces, nor entirely by Ginsberg’s and Kerouac’s depiction of his persona (cf. infra). For despite his reserved and confined nature, he did not particularly eschew literary interviews and conducted numerous interviews throughout his career. Especially because he wrote
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considerably less theoretical or polemical essays than Kerouac or Ginsberg, interviews formed a crucial platform to construct and confirm his public image and maintain contact with his readers and admirers. Sylvère Lotringer even claims that ‘Burroughs rightly saw the interview as an opportunity to present himself in a more sustained and reflective fashion’ (2001, 15). Consequently, he has left us with a plethora of material that is still to be examined and that, according to Lotringer, may very well alter our image of this so-called ‘Hombre Invisibile’ (2001). Although this may indeed encourage interesting research, I do not intend to alter our perception of Burroughs, but investigate the ‘why and how’ of our current understanding of the author. In the subsequent paragraphs, I intend to investigate how Burroughs fashioned and conveyed his authorial identity through literary interviews, and how he provided soil for further mythologizing via his performance in these interviews.
By means of seven interviews from his entire career, collected in Lotringer’s Burroughs Live (2001, henceforth abbreviated as BL), I will indicate how Burroughs’ appearance in these interviews supported and confirmed the legends encircling his persona and the overall image we have of him today. Firstly, I will identify Burroughs as a ‘traditionalist,’ mainly concerned with his literary work and ‘cause’ – i.e. his political, philosophical, cultural and social convictions. Subsequently, I will indicate how he indulges in self- fashioning by elucidating his viewpoints concerning these matters and how, as such, he establishes and confirms his public image. Additionally, the sporadic inquiries into his personal life nourished the legends and mysterious quality surrounding him. Furthermore, I will indicate the influence of ‘peer interviews’ on his public persona. Lastly, I will also elucidate the interviewer’s role in shaping and attesting his public image – specifically through narrative elaborations as a confirmation of the ‘fictional character’ of William Burroughs.
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3.1) His cause: the nonconformist enemy of ‘agencies of control’
Beside his reputation as ‘an implacable enemy of conformity’ (MacAdams, 1997), William Burroughs is known for the intellectual nature of his rebellion against conformism and ‘all agencies of control’ (MacAdams, 1997). In an attempt to render some of his ideas to the audience, an interview was conducted in 1961 with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, titled ‘The Time-Birth-Death Gimmick’ (1961). As this was one of Burroughs’ first appearances in a literary interview, this interview was vital for fashioning the basis of his image. In this formal ‘Q-and-A’ Ginsberg and Corso inquire into his personal viewpoints, concerning various topics such as spiritualism and literature, but the interview mainly focuses on his political ideas. His deep concern with politics already transpires when reading the opening of the interview:
CORSO: What say you about political conflicts?
BURROUGHS: Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep this conflict under operation since they hope to profit from the situation. To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth. (BL, p. 42)
In this single statement, Burroughs already constructs much of his public image. To begin with, he bluntly exhibits his contempt for politics in general, as he experiences it as a corrupt ‘agency of control,’ solely meant to distract the citizens while ‘certain powers’ – which may refer to the American government or all institutions of power in general – mean to profit from the situation. Tytell accordingly indicates that Burroughs frequently ‘complained’ – in interviews, but also in personal letters – ‘of the menace of government control’ (1976, 43). This statement effectively renders Burroughs as the revolutionary Beat and anti-conformist rebel who openly displays his discontent with the government.
Moreover, we can connect this declaration to his distinctive fondness of conspiracy theories that also marks his novels (Tytell, 1976). In this scenario, governments or
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institutions of power are the primary conspirators, and civilians are their victims. It is as if every form of politics is but a play, a phantasm to misguide the public as they unconsciously subject to the will of those in power, the true demagogues and genuine enemy of individuality. It is not the cloth entrapping the bull, but the toreador controlling the cloth. The cloth is merely the instrument to subject the bull into conformity and thus confine his individual freedom.
In some instances, Burroughs even interprets political conflicts as mental or spiritual wars. This can be observed in the interview ‘Spiritual Conspiracies’ (1970) with Allen Ginsberg. While discussing the theme of invasion in The Soft Machine and Nova Express, Burroughs explicates his understanding of ‘spiritual conspiracies.’ Despite the fact that the interview only occurred in 1970, this is, to my knowledge, the first interview where he delineates this specific theory:
AG: And the intention of the Venutians is planetary takeover?
(…)
WB: Yes.
AG: In other words, they’re like the Reds, except from Venus.
WB: Yes, like the White Man arriving in the New World.
(…)
AG: Well, the anxiety of the invasion seems at the end to be dispersed by the dissolution of space and time, or the disillusion of time.
WB: Yes, it is. That was it. The dissolution was necessary in order to neutralize the conspiracy. From this comes the theme that the only future is to enter into a spirit, a completely spirit state.
AG: Grasping the matter? There is a notion that most conspiracies are actually spiritual conspiracies; in the sense of power takeovers involving people’s minds.
WB: The people conspired against.
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AG: Oh yes. Yes.
WB: Just as we destroyed the Indians by destroying their spiritual life.
AG: I’m still fuzzy on the last part. My point was that most conspiracies are mental anyway.
WB: They are. But usually if you want to destroy people, destroy their Gods. Destroy their Maker. (BL 130)
Once more, Burroughs showcases his keenness of conspiracy theories while demonstrating his contempt for the United States and its history. Yet, more importantly, Burroughs interprets the destruction of the Indians as a destruction of their spiritual life. Implicitly, he regards this spiritual life as essential for the wellbeing and survival of a population. Subsequently, we can link this comment to Burroughs’ evaluation of contemporary American life. Just as the Indians were ‘destroyed’ by the destruction of their Gods, modern civilization loses its value as a consequence of the loss of a spiritual life. Of course, this implies that conventional religions such as Catholicism are not experienced as spiritually fulfilling, but as meaningless, regulatory institutions that merely serve as yet another ‘agency of control’ (Merrill 1969).
Nonetheless, Burroughs did not confine his scrutiny to the subject of politics. When discussing the possibility of evolution in human consciousness in ‘The Time-Birth-Death Gimmick,’ he introduces the topic of language:
The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word forms – this can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color. We can translate word and letter into color – Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words, quote “words” can be read in silent color. In other words, man must get away from verbal forms to attain the consciousness, that which is there to be perceived, at hand. (BL, 43)
This passage exemplifies Burroughs’ profound distrust in language and his preference for alternative media to make sense of reality. In his retrospective illustration of the author, Richard Hell notes that ‘[Burroughs] postulated the Word – language – itself as
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the ultimate form of control’ (1999). Similarly, Robinson indicates that to Burroughs ‘language equals control’ and ‘the human race must free itself from the tyrannical constraints of language control’ (2007). On the other hand, however, ‘[w]riting was another way of subverting that which would control him’ (Hell 1999). It becomes clear that Burroughs’ ambiguous understanding of language has acquired a firm grip on our conception of the author. In this interview, he transfers that aspect of his persona to the audience for the first time and thus presents himself as an artist who ‘broadened people’s conception of what makes humanity’ (Reed 1997).
In these examples, Burroughs reflects his characteristic ‘paranoia, fatalism’ (Lotringer 17) and suspicion of every facet of humanity. Moreover, he demonstrates the Beats’ discontent with ‘acceptable’ ideologies and their attempt to fill the ‘spiritual vacuum in modern civilization’ (Merrill, 1969, 18). Such alternative visions on human consciousness and reality are henceforth presented as the direct antagonist of ‘square,’ impersonal perspectives on life. As can be deduced from these statements, the Beats – and Burroughs – were not solely concerned with literature and they presented themselves as more than mere writers. As Merrill points out, ‘the beatnik tends to regard himself as a pioneer, an explorer of inward reality; in this respect he has much in common with religious mystics’ (17). The Beats, like Burroughs in these excerpts, posed as pioneers, seeking and promoting a ‘new awareness’.
3.2) His work: fashioning his literature
In addition to his cause, Burroughs’ discourse primarily centers on his work. When we have a look at the interview ‘White Junk’ with Conrad Knickerbocker, Burroughs delineates his viewpoints on the future development of literature and discusses his renowned cut-up technique. This interview was conducted in 1965 and would have been one of the first interviews with a ‘serious literary journalist’ (Lotringer, 2001, 15) in which Burroughs was capable to exhibit his true literary influences, ambitions and theories. For this reason, the interview was vital for the construction of Burroughs’
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persona. In the following excerpt, he presents himself as an intelligent and highly self- conscious author and, as such, advertises both himself and his work:
CK: What will happen to the straight plot in fiction?
WB: Plot has always had the definite function of stage direction, of getting the characters from here to there, and that will continue, but the new techniques such as cut-up will involve much more of the total capacity of the observer. It enriches the whole esthetic experience, extends it.
CK: Nova Express is a cut-up of any writers?
WB: Joyce is in there. Shakespeare, Rimbaud, some writers people haven’t heard about, someone named Jack Stern. There’s Kerouac. (…) For exercise, when I make a trip, such as from Tangier to Gibraltar, I will record this in three columns in a notebook I always take with me. One column will contain simply an account of the trip, what happened. (…) The next column presents my memories; that is, what I was thinking at the time, (…) and the third column, (…) gives quotations from any book that I take with me. (BL 68-69)
In his response concerning plot, Burroughs conspicuously advertises his own work and, specifically, his cut-up technique as the future of literature. He presents this technique as enriching ‘the whole esthetic experience’ and thus promotes his work as a new step in the development of literature. He poses as an innovative artist whose work will define the future of literature.
In his second answer, Burroughs lucidly explicates his method and presents himself as a serious author who is deeply concerned with his art. Moreover, by mentioning ‘writers people haven’t heard about,’ Burroughs subtly evokes his profound literary knowledge. As a result, he comes across as anything but a ‘know-nothing bohemian’ (Podhoretz 1958).
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3.3) Burroughs the author: fashioning his literary stance
Besides an emphasis on his work and cause, Burroughs also tends to take on a position within the literary field. While discussing his work, he concurrently articulates his literary viewpoints and thus engages in the construction of a narrative self. An outstanding example, and once more one of the earliest interviews where Burroughs could discuss these matters, is the interview with Jaguar Magazine in 1966. In the following response, Burroughs refutes accusations of obscenity:
JM: The most frequent complaint against your books is simply that they are disgusting. How do you react to that complaint?
WB: Well, “disgusting” doesn’t refer to the books but to the subjective reaction of the person making the complaint. I don’t think anything is disgusting per se. These words “disgusting” and “filthy,” etc., have prevented us from undertaking any scientific experimentation in sexual matters. How far would people get in physics if discovery was described as disgusting – “Your formula is disgusting and filthy”? Not very far. (BL 94)
Again, Burroughs showcases his distrust of language as a mechanism for controlling people’s conception of reality. In addition, he designates the negative attitude towards his work as a form of stagnation and resistance to intellectual progress. When he compares the denunciation of his work to scientific regression, he associates himself with progressive scientists and poses as an experimental, innovative author. By explicitly regarding his books as innovative and therefore valuable and by dismissing spiteful evaluations of his literature as regressive, Burroughs fashions himself as the revolutionary, avant-garde artist who ‘undermine[s] mass culture’ (Nash 2008) and ‘act[s⦌ as godfather for literary countercultures (…)’ (Harris 1999).
In the interview ‘Queer’ (1985) with Regina Weinreich, Burroughs presents an even greater self-image. In the following dialogue, we can discern an interesting transition from his fascination with viruses to his work and subsequently his role as an author. While discussing the AIDS virus, he labels both his literature and himself as ‘prophetic:’
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RW: Did it seem scary to you when you heard about this AIDS epidemic?
WB: Well, no. It’s an epidemic, but it isn’t anywhere near plague proportions.
RW: When I heard about it and how it is transmitted and how devious a disease it is, I immediately thought of your theories about viruses.
WB: Well, of course. I think some of my theories are correct.
RW: You were foreseeing the AIDS virus.
WB: Well, I should hope so. That’s what writers are supposed to do.
RW: Are you still in that prophetic role?
WB: Yes, (…) (BL 619)
Although provoked, Burroughs does barefacedly confirm his status as a prophet. When he says ‘[t]hat’s what writers are supposed to do,’ he extends this definition to all writers, or at least proper writers. He even regards the prophetic quality of his work as the purpose of literature. In this way, he additionally depicts his work as an instrument for attaining deeper and even prophetic insights into society. Especially in his final response, he unambiguously affirms his prophetic allure. Of course, since the interview was conducted at a time when Burroughs had already acquired his legendary status, this interview was of no relevance for the construction of his image. The fact that Regina Weinreich even provokes this self-representation confirms this. Nevertheless, such statements serve as a crucial form of self-confirmation and are essential for the endurance of Burroughs’ reputation.
As the previous example already exemplifies, Burroughs recurrently elucidates his interpretation of the writer in general. In this manner, he implicitly demarcates his literary stance and fashions an image of himself as an author. In the interview ‘Intellectual Gunman’ (1984) with William Triplett, for instance, he conveys his interpretation of writers when debating immortality:
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When the Zen master says, “When your arrow hits the target in the dark, I’ll be there,” he means that quite literally. He achieves immortality through his students. Writers do the same thing through their readers. (BL 611)
Burroughs adopts a rather romantic definition of the author as someone who can exert such a profound influence on his public that he manages to endure through his work. In other words, great authors have a vital impact on society and thus attain immortality. By ascribing this quality to writers in general, he implicitly ascribes it to himself. In this statement, Burroughs seemingly projects his desire to ‘write his way out of [mortality]’ (Hell 1999).
3.4) The Beat Generation
We can discern a similar attitude in his assessment of the Beat Generation. When David Moberg asks Burroughs in 1975 how America might be transformed, Burroughs vehemently asserts the transformation the United States has already undergone:
Excuse me, in the last 20 years we have seen America transformed until it is completely unrecognizable. If Allen had gotten up in front of a college audience in the ‘30s and started talking about how everybody is a little bit homosexual, they would have blown their tops. It was absolutely anathema. That was something of a cultural revolution, and one very important factor was the breakdown of censorship. If you can say whatever you want on paper, then you can get a whole different attitude. (BL 313)
Although he does not entirely credit the Beat Generation for this cultural transformation, Burroughs does clearly market his associates’ part in this revolution. When he refers to Allen Ginsberg’s insurgence against the oppression of homosexuality, Burroughs tentatively indicates that the Beats’ rebellion was only possible within an atmosphere of transforming values. However, he also implies that the Beat Generation played a major role in opening up those values. Especially when he mentions ‘the breakdown of censorship’ he appears to allude to the obscenity trials of Howl and Naked
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Lunch. Burroughs considers these trials – and in extension: these works – as the essential opening shot for the ensuing cultural revolution. In retrospect, Burroughs reinforces the traditional conception of the Beat Generation as the progenitors of the counterculture movement and markets these authors ’as “the source” of all significant postwar dissent’ (Martinez 2003, 24).
Although Burroughs’ interpretation of the Beat Generation as a cultural revolution accords with Ginsberg’s vision, I must remark that his definition did not entirely concur with Ginsberg’s. In the same interview with David Moberg, Burroughs attempts to alter the traditional conception of the Beat Generation:
I wouldn’t say that my writing was all that political. The whole point of our writing is the cultural revolution – not directly political. (BL 319)
Despite his political denunciation of the United States, Burroughs visibly refutes the ‘Ginsbergian’ interpretation of the Beat Generation as a political protest (Ginsberg 1982) when he describes this movement and his own work as primarily apolitical. Furthermore, as Burroughs refutes the conventional understanding of the Beat Generation, such statements established the more nuanced and modern understanding of the Beats ‘as a loose coherence of like-minded writers’ (Belgrad 2004) rather than a coherent literary movement with a single, collective vision.
3.5) Burroughs the junkie
Of course, as I previously denoted, Burroughs is not a radical traditionalist, eschewing all inquiries into his private life and Rodden’s categories are not normative or exclusive. Despite his legendary obscurity, he did occasionally discuss personal matters openly, like Kerouac and Ginsberg did so fervently. However, it must be taken into account that, especially in the beginning of his career, he unveiled these matters much against his will, and mainly shunned such sensationalist inquiries – which frequently eclipsed his serious literary ambitions (Lotringer, 2001, 15). Consequently, he did not engage in active self- displaying and -fashioning to the extent Kerouac and Ginsberg did and his associates
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factually inaugurated much of the myths surrounding him (Harris 2004). However, he did occasionally permit such autobiographical deviations, thus sustaining the image and icon that, according to David Ulin, ‘exists, at least in part, to protect the man inside’ (1999). One example where he spontaneously discusses personal matters is the previously mentioned interview ‘White Junk’ (1965) with Conrad Knickerbocker. Despite Lotringer’s claim that this would have been one of Burroughs’ first serious interviews, the author does also openly unfold his personal experiences with drugs, and thus establishes his legendary repute as ‘Gentleman junkie’ (Ulin, 1999).
CONRAD KNICKERBOCKER: Why did you start taking drugs?
WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Well, I was just bored. I didn’t seem to have much interest in becoming a successful advertising executive or whatever, or living the kind of life Harvard designs for you. (...)
CK: There seems to be a middle-class voyeurism in this country concerning addiction, and in the literary world downright reverence for the addict. You apparently don’t share these points of view?
WB: No, most of it is nonsense. I think drugs are interesting principally as chemical means of altering metabolism and thereby altering what we call reality, which I would define as a more or less constant scanning pattern.
CK: What do you think of the hallucinogens and the new psychedelic drugs – LSD- 25?
WB: I think they’re extremely dangerous, much more dangerous than heroin. They can produce overwhelming anxiety states. I’ve seen people try to throw themselves out of windows; whereas the heroin addict is mainly interested in staring at his own toe. (…) (BL 62)
Although he does not digress into lengthy anecdotes – like Kerouac and Ginsberg occasionally tend to – his discourse is based on his personal experiences with drugs. Although this was one of his earlier appearances, the legends of his drug addiction were already established in, for example, the work and interviews of Ginsberg and Kerouac
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but also in his own novels. Nonetheless, in this passage he constructs the image of the ‘beat junkie’ who takes drugs very seriously. For one of the first times, Burroughs personally confers his reasons for taking drugs and soberly deliberates society’s attitude towards narcotics and the dangers of certain drugs. Consequently, he comes across as an intellectual junkie, in contrast to a traditional conception of addicts. Burroughs poses as someone who took drugs partly out of interest, without losing control, and is capable of insightful analysis. Like a scientist, he becomes the empirical examiner of drugs. The transpiring image is that of the ambivalent ‘aristocrat who has known the gutter’ (Tytell, 1976, 36).
3.6) Burroughs the legend: the murderer of his wife
In the same interview, we can even observe Burroughs referring to one of the most enthralling myths of his public image: the murder of his wife Joan Vollmer in 1951. According to the legend, this accident would have formed the basis and starting shot of his literary career. Despite his usual reluctance to comment on the incident he spontaneously starts discussing it:
And I had that terrible accident with Joan Vollmer, my wife. I had a revolver that I was planning to sell to a friend. I was checking it over and it went off – killed her. A rumor started that I was trying to shoot a glass of champagne from her head William Tell style. Absurd and false. (BL, 76)
In this statement, Burroughs introduces a major segment of his persona and myth and possibly one of the most significant causes of the perpetual fascination with this author. For, more than any legend surrounding the Beats, Burroughs’ homicide of his wife has been mythologized ceaselessly in their literature as well as in popular and academic representations of the Beat Generation. In my interpretation, and as can be deduced from this excerpt, Burroughs was, for a significant part, responsible for the appeal of this story. In this account, he juxtaposes two alternative versions of the incident and subsequently dismisses the latter and most famous one as ‘absurd and false.’ However, it was Burroughs himself who launched these rumors and subsequently denied, confirmed
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and introduced alternative versions throughout various interviews, reports and police investigations (Grauerholz 2002). By once more referring to the legendary incident and providing a statement in conflict with prior confessions, Burroughs nourishes both this myth and its mystery. As a result, he poses as ‘the godfather of outlaw artists’ (Jarmusch 1997) and as an unsolvable enigma – a ‘Hombre Invisibile’. It is this mysterious quality that inclined Oliver Harris to suggest that ‘[h]e was never completely there and never quite belonged, but always marked a limit, a point of excess, a kind of strange inner extremity’ (2004). In extension, one might connect this myth to his ‘ongoing fascination with guns and weaponry’ and wonder, as David Ulin did, ‘how much of it is genuine and how much is calculated for effect’ (1999).
3.7) Fashioning and marketing by other Beats
To move on to another recurrent aspect of Burroughs’ interviews, we can return to the first fragment I examined from ‘The Time-Birth-Death Gimmick’. This interview forms an excellent example of what Rodden called a ‘peer interview,’ conducted between Burroughs and two of his close friends: Ginsberg and Corso. This already suggests that the interview may have been deliberately staged to outline some of Burroughs’ innovative ideas and viewpoints. Moreover, the form and content suggest a premeditated interview as well, which concurs with Lotringer’s remarks that ‘[u]sually, [Burroughs] pre-selected the topics he would explore in each encounter’ and consequently ‘maintained some control over the subject-matter’ (2001, 14). Formally, the interview is marked by a rigid succession of short, straightforward questions and comprehensive answers, whereas other, unacquainted interviewers tend to stick less to this meticulous form. Furthermore, most interviewers alternate between subjects and sporadically challenge or disagree with Burroughs. Corso and Ginsberg, on the contrary, barely diverge from the topic of politics and noticeably center Burroughs’ thoughts. Rather than disrupting his delineation, they assist him to fully unfold and elucidate his viewpoints on the matter. Consequently, the interview appears to construct a deliberate, conscious and purposeful platform to present Burroughs in a certain light, as a visionary intellectual and subsequently advertises both the author and the man.
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By conducting interviews in collaboration with his associates, these interviews also implicitly confirm the common understanding of Burroughs as the mentor and instructor of his younger companions. Since the interview consists of a strict order of question and answer, neither Corso nor Ginsberg interrupts or contradicts Burroughs’ oration as he unfolds his theories. It even gets the appearance of a lecture where Burroughs illuminates his apprentices as he responds to their questions and passes down his knowledge and insight. Thus, this passage forms an excellent example of how these artists advertised each other, corresponding to the traditional image of the Beats as a closely bonded and coherent group, both in artistic vision and companionship.
3.8) The interviewer: mythologizing Burroughs
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of several of the transcripts is the interviewer’s own narrative mythologizing of Burroughs. As John Rodden indicated, an admiring interviewer can have a profound impact on the perception of the interviewee (2007, 12). An excellent example of such supportive mythologizing is the interview with Conrad Knickerbocker. In a lengthy introduction, Knickerbocker sketches an image of Burroughs, depicting the author as a nearly mythical character. The opening verges on a seamless literary invocation of a setting and atmosphere: ‘firecrackers and whistles sounded the advent of the New Year of 1965 in St. Louis, and strip teasers ran from the bars in Gaslight Square to dance in the street when midnight came.’ After outlining the setting, its principal character is introduced: ‘William Seward Burroughs III. (…) After an absence of 20 years, he had returned to his birthplace from Tangier.’ In this single clause, the writer instantly alludes to Burroughs’ famous self-imposed exile. His return almost becomes a mythical homecoming after wandering abroad for two decades – a blueprint copy of the Odyssey. Subsequently, the hero’s character and appearance are delineated, neatly following the myth prepared and prescribed from the earliest drafts of Kerouac’s The Town and The City (Harris, 2004):
His manner was not so much pedagogic as didactic or forensic. He might have been a partner in a private bank. (…) A friend of the interviewer, spotting him across the
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lobby, thought he was a British diplomat. (…) His face carries no excess flesh. His expression is taut, and his features are intense and chiseled. He did not smile during the interview and laughed only once, but he gives the impression of being capable of much dry laughter under circumstances. (…) He speaks elliptically, in short, clear bursts. (…) He smoked incessantly.
This enumeration of descriptive details constructs a literary character that substitutes for ‘the real Burroughs.’ In other words: Burroughs becomes fictionalized and has been ever since Kerouac for the first time described his ‘enigmatic smile, which is at once sinister and comic’ in The Town and The City (1950). Just like Oliver Harris indicated that ‘the mythic narrative of the Beat legends has been told and retold, taken up by generation after generation of fascinated and uncritical listeners’ (Harris 2004), Knickerbocker’s narrative tends to echo prior depictions rather than rendering a neutral, unaffected impression of the author. The remark that ‘[h]e might have been a partner in a private bank,’ for example, reflects Kerouac’s comparison of Burroughs to ‘a shy bank clerk with patrician manners’ (Tytell, 39). Furthermore, this illustration roughly corresponds to Burroughs’s mysterious and ambivalent image; simultaneously a conformist clerk and a lawless drug addict. The image of the legendary renegade presented here almost invokes awe and sustains the mythical nature of his persona, thus contributing to his infamy and raising interest in his character for potential readers.
As I mentioned, Burroughs did not eschew literary interviews and subsequently these interviews formed a convenient platform to construct and advertise his narrative self. In the precedent section, I generally defined him as a traditionalist, mainly emphasizing his work or cause in interviews. These interviews – of which he partially maintained control himself – formed an opportunity to explicate his viewpoints concerning politics, language and literature. Particularly his characteristic mistrust of politics, the government and any ‘agency of control’ are accentuated in his discourse. The image that surfaces from his discourse is that of an innovative intellectual, engaging in public debate on every thinkable subject. Other subjects such as his work are extensively discussed as well, contributing to his reputation as a highly self-conscious artist. While delineating his viewpoints on literature, he explicates his literary stance as well and thus
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fashions himself as a highly innovative and influential artist. Similarly, he advertised the Beat Generation as a cultural revolution. Nonetheless, he did not entirely avoid inquiries into his personal life. As I indicated, he openly discussed drugs and his views on narcotics, which evidently concurs with our conception of him as ‘gentleman junkie’ (Ulin, 1999). Contrary to his legendary seclusion and reluctance to recount private matters, he even discusses the murder of his wife. By nevertheless obscuring the truth of this event, he nourishes one of the most enthralling aspects of his myth. Yet, possibly more vital for marketing his narrative self than his own discourse and performance, was the contribution of his interviewers. Frequently, the Beat authors conducted ‘peer interviews’ among friends or associates. I included two examples of interviews conducted in collaboration with Ginsberg. These interviews quickly obtain the appearance of pre-established discourses, purposefully meant to give a thorough account of Burroughs’s viewpoints on a certain subject. In relation with the intellectual and highly engaging contents of these discourses, he appears like the mentor, the ‘dark tutor’ of the Beats, elucidating his students, like Ginsberg and Kerouac frequently portrayed him. Lastly, some interviewers tend to include descriptive details in their written transcripts, thus elaborating on the legends surrounding his persona. As I denoted, these descriptions of his character, actions or appearance, mostly echo prior descriptions and hence confirm the image of a man who has become, as Leslie Fiedler states, ‘a character of science fiction [himself]’ (quoted in Oliver Harris, 2004). Consequently, these interviews nurtured the mysterious quality surrounding him and the haunting legends of his self-imposed exile, his relentless drug addiction and ties with the New York crime-scene, the death of his wife, his homosexuality, and his image as an invisible adventurer, Beat mentor and ‘intellectual gunman.’
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4. KEROUAC
As Brinkley’s description ‘the quintessential literary mythmaker of postwar America’ (1999) insinuates, Jack Kerouac was renowned for the extent to which he fictionalized his life and the life of his peers. The publication of his autobiographical myth On the Road made Kerouac an overnight celebrity. As a consequence, he became the spokesperson of the Beat Generation and appeared in various interviews where he explained his interpretation of the Beat Generation and showcased his talent as a narrator. Instantly he was crowned ‘the King of the Beats’ (Krim 1959), progenitor of the countercultural revolution and, as Ehrmann put it, ‘a role model to many who came of age on the cusp of the Beat and hippie generations’ (1999). Nonetheless, Kerouac remains, up to this day, a highly ambiguous figure as ‘the truth about Kerouac diverges from the myth’ (Ulin 1989). Most of all, Kerouac became a very sensational media figure, whose stereotypical depiction and reputation eclipsed his serious literary ambitions. He was portrayed, and often came across as, an irresponsible, anarchistic bohemian and rebel, a pot-smoking, childish ‘wild man’ (Krim 1959) and, according to Champney, a restless ‘[hater] of everything’ (1959). Present-day studies, on the other hand, have uncovered that the ‘seemingly apolitical Kerouac was in fact a nonvoting Eisenhower Republican and frequent admirer of Buckley’s National Review and its wry conservatism’ (Brinkley 1999). Accordingly, Kerouac even disapproved of Ginsberg’s and Burroughs’ denunciation of the U.S. government. Especially in posthumous studies and biographies, the conventional image of Kerouac as a crime-approving, nonconformist revolutionary has made way for a more critical interpretation and observation of Kerouac’s viewpoints and his character. In his ‘The American Journey of Jack Kerouac,’ Douglas Brinkley denotes that even during his own life Kerouac took on a rather paradoxical stance, resulting in attacks from the Right ‘for his bohemian lifestyle and [from] the Left for his middle-American politics’ (Brinkley 1999). Nonetheless, it was the bohemian, nonconformist caricature that prevailed, not only during his own lifetime, but even in the popular conception today. Hence, one might indeed call Kerouac ‘the victim of his own mythmaking’ (Brinkley 1999). In my interpretation, Jack Kerouac was imprisoned
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by the image he, his literature and the media created. Consequently his public appearances resulted in a confluence of the stereotypical image he received and his own inadequacy ‘to act under the spotlight as who the media wanted him to be’ (Brinkley 1999). However, as I will indicate in this dissertation, this image was frequently nourished by Kerouac’s own performance in interviews – which was either a form of conscious self-fashioning, or an attempt to meet the popular conception.
By means of various interviews collected in Paul Maher’s Empty Phantoms: interviews and encounters with Jack Kerouac (2005, henceforth abbreviated as EP) and one interview with Ted Berrigan, collected in Plimpton’s The Paris Review Interviews: Beat Writers At Work (1999, henceforth abbreviated as PR), I will analyze how Kerouac indulged in self-fashioning in literary interviews and thus initiated and nourished the myths surrounding his persona. Throughout these interviews, Kerouac generally appears as the ultimate raconteur, who eagerly displays his personality and subsequently fashions and advertises his authorial and somewhat legendary persona. On the other hand, Kerouac also repeatedly attempts to denounce and refute several incongruous or incorrect myths. On several occasions, I will also indicate the interviewer’s impact on Kerouac’s appearance. Thus, I will explain how his legendary and sometimes rather ambiguous image was constructed.
4.1) Kerouac the raconteur: displaying his personality
As I mentioned, Kerouac can be perceived as the most prototypical raconteur of the Beats. Even more than Ginsberg’s interviews, his recount is marked by a succession of anecdotes and thus frequently takes on the appearance of a monologue, rather than an interview. This aspect of his persona was already firmly established when he recounted the following anecdote to Miklos Zsedely in 1964:
So I went down to a little bar, on the Boulevard St. Germain I suppose, and I was waiting for all these beautiful young girls with berets, who come from Sorbonnne Law school. Come around reading their law books say, “Hey, would you parlez avec moi?” Talk to me? One of them did talk to me; made a date to meet later. I
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said, “je t’aime.” Oh boy, yeah, when I go to Paris. I was about old enough to be her grandfather. (…) Millions of girls started to sit around me. I was in my element, my glory, all the girls were coming. Ha! Here comes Gregory Corso. “Kerouac, every time I see you you’re surrounded by girls, surrounded by girls, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And he ruined the whole thing. (EP, 243)
Comparable to his novels, Kerouac sensationalizes an entertaining, autobiographic anecdote. On the one hand, by narrating anecdotes from his life in such detail, he exhibits his remarkable memory that supposedly formed the basis of his novels. Hence, his anecdotal discourse renders Kerouac as someone who ‘had a fantastic memory’ (Carr, quoted in Gifford & Lee 1979, 46) – a quality that eventually gave him his epithet ‘memory babe’ (Nicosia, 1994).
On the other hand, because of his constant transformation of such events into lively, entertaining tales, one inevitably questions their truthfulness. As a result, the image Kerouac transfers to the audience is paradoxical: one the one hand he poses as the ‘counterculture hero’ (Bennett, 2005) with a ‘heart-pounding intoxicated love of life’ (Bangs, 1969), whereas on the other hand he appears as the raconteur who transformed his life and personality to near mythical proportions. Accordingly, Fiona Paton remarks that ‘Kerouac’s reputation is still that of a hoodlum street poet, an uncultured free spirit who just happened to have a knack for telling stories’ (2003). As this statement implies, Kerouac’s inclination towards autobiographical self-display resulted in the ridicule of other writers such as Truman Capote (Brinkley 1999) and their condemnation of Kerouac as an ‘egocentric’ author (Virginia Quarterly Review, 1958). Nonetheless, as visible in the previous example, it his is own performance that encouraged such ridicule.
In contrast with Carolyn Cassady’s assertion of his shyness and tenderness (1999), Kerouac also recurrently behaves rather assertively in his interviews. In the famous Firing Line interview with William F. Buckley (1968) for example, he vehemently insults Ed Sanders:
JK: You make yourself famous by protest.
ES: That’s not… who does? Not me.
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JK: You.
ES: No, I make myself famous by singing smut.
JK: I made myself famous by writing songs and lyrics about the beauty of the things that I did, and the ugliness, too.
ES: You’re a great poet, I’ll admit.
JK: But you made yourself famous by saying “Down with this, down with that. Throw eggs at this, throw eggs at that.”
ES: I hope not. That’s not what I want.
JK: Take it with you. I cannot use your abuse, you may have it back.” (EP, 346-47)
Of course, such comments may very well be connected to the discomfort he felt with his reputation as King of The Beats (Kilgannon 2006). As Cassady insistently emphasizes, ‘Jack was painfully self-conscious and extremely ill at ease in company. When sober, he was shy and gauche with strangers. Any public attention had to be met fortified with drink’ (1999) – and in this particular interview, he was noticeably intoxicated3. However, from a different angle, Kerouac’s performance does not shed a positive light on his character and merely concurs with the stereotypes encircling his persona. Especially to his contemporary critics, he radically confirms the caricature of the non- intellectual, illiterate ‘freak’ (Dempsey 1957) ‘who loves (but loves, man!) his booze’ (Krim 1959). On the other hand, this behavior resembles the image Kerouac rendered of himself in his literature as the prototypical Beat who rejects accepted social values and ‘live[s] (…) on the edge’ (Prothero 1991). Once more, the ensuing image is, in Tytell’s words, that of ‘a figure of antithesis and contradiction’ (1976).
An interesting case concerning Kerouac’s alcoholism can be found in the interview with Ted Berrigan in 1968. The transcript repeatedly indicates that ‘drinks are served,’ which insinuates that Kerouac was severely intoxicated during the encounter. However, when
3 Kerouac’s intoxicated state in the interview can be observed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaBnIzY3R00
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looking back at the interview, Berrigan explains that these ‘parenthetical interludes’ were only inserted afterwards by George Plimpton whereas in reality, ‘none of that happened’ (1991). This remarkable instance exemplifies the media’s responsibility in fashioning ‘the King of the Beats.’ In doing so, Plimpton indulges in the fictionalization of Jack Kerouac and suffuses Kerouac’s reputation as an alcoholic. Nonetheless, as the interview with William Buckley exemplifies, it is his own public performance that encouraged publicity to diverge attention from his art and serious aspirations to his character and, in extension, his caricature (Brinkley 1999).
4.2) Celebration of the ‘underculture’
We can connect his unconventional, sensational and sometimes blunt performance to Kerouac’s celebration of what Brinkley dubbed ‘the nation’s underculture’ (1999). This attitude can be observed in his overt acceptance of aberrant behavior and criminality. In doing so, he demonstrates his characteristic celebration of life ‘in whatever form or condition he found it’ (Cassady 1999) and his love for ‘all earthly creatures – criminals included’ (Brinkley 1999). Moreover, not only did Kerouac celebrate ‘the nation’s underculture,’ he even mythologized it. As Brinkley remarks, ‘Kerouac was intent on creating his own Yellowstone red story, only in the modern context, where existential jazz players and lost highway speedsters would be celebrated as the new vagabond saints’ (1999). His most famous myth is that of Neal Cassady, as he converted the legendary car thief into the archetypal Beat who pursued ‘kicks’ and excitement, inconsiderate of social mores or laws. Correspondingly, Kerouac mythologizes this ‘holy goof’ in his interviews as well and thus fashions the atmosphere of the Beat Generation and acts as its primary mythmaker. In the subsequent paragraph from the 1968 interview with Ted Berrigan, for example, he transforms Cassady’s arrest into a humorous anecdote and thus enforces the persona he had constructed in prior interviews and his literature:
He picked up two beatniks that time in blue jeans in North Beach, Frisco. He said, I got to go, bang bang, do I got to go? He’s working on the railroad… had his watch
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out…two-fifteen, boy I got to be there by two-twenty. I tell you boys drive me over down there so I’ll be on time with my train… So I can get my train on down to (…) San Jose. They say, Sure kid and Neal says, Here’s the pot. So – “We maybe look like great beatniks with great beards… but we are cops. And we are arresting you.” (Berrigan 1968, PR 118)
4.3) Sexuality
Additionally, as I also discerned in Ginsberg’s discourse, Kerouac does not avoid the topic of sexuality. This can be observed in the following anecdote where Kerouac blatantly describes his encounters with French prostitutes:
JK: (…) I was walking down the road… Boulevard Beaumarchais, walking down the boulevard Beaumarchais, and a woman comes up to me in a mink coat perfume all over, she says, “Voulez-vous un petit moment?” “Mademoiselle, je pense que je n’ai assez d’argent.” (…) [T]he reason that I said that before that happened I was walking through Rue Clignacourt in Montmartre. (…) Il y a une peine grosse Italienne in the doorway. A beautiful Italian broad in the doorway with slacks, you know. I said “Pia-ta ta ta boom!” And I’m out. Two minutes. Two minutes.
ST: You did?
JK: Yeah.
ST: What did she do to you?
JK: She took me to the house.
ST: Two minutes? Pretty good. (Zsedely 1964, EP 244)
Since the interview took place in 1964, at a time when Kerouac’s reputation had already been established, this anecdote consolidates the image he had also presented in his novels of the prototypical Beat who ‘express[es] [his] marginality by living spontaneously, (…) celebrating nakedness and sexuality’ (Prothero 1991). Especially in
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Ginsberg’s understanding of the Beat Generation, this celebration of sexuality became part of a larger cause: a ‘sexual "revolution" or "liberation"’ (Ginsberg 1982). Whether this was also part of Kerouac’s initial cause is, as Cassady asserted (1999), highly questionable. In my interpretation, Kerouac’s celebration of sexuality was, at least initially, a goal in itself as a part of an undefined and individualistic search ‘for the freedom and innocence of a lost frontier’ (Tytell 1976). In this anecdote, Kerouac exemplifies his search for freedom through the exploration of various experiences.
4.4) Drugs
Although it may not have been Kerouac’s intention, the Beat Generation became known as ‘an intellectual counterculture’ (Hopkins 2005) that had a tangible and clear message to transfer – according to some, this would have mainly been ‘an invention of the media and Allen Ginsberg’ (Cassady 1999). Another aspect of this ‘cause,’ as Ginsberg envisioned it, would have been the ‘[d]emystification (…) of drugs’ (1982). Although I doubt that Kerouac saw this as a part of a larger, political cause, he does openly discuss the use of drugs. In Aronowitz’ ‘St. Jack,’ (1959) for instance, Kerouac turns opium and morphine into an acceptable subject for conversation:
[Allen Ginsberg] doesn’t drink much. He’s had a lot of dope, you know. That guy’s had more dope, heavy dope, you know, in the arm, than anyone I know that dodn’t become a dope addict. Great will power! Great will power! Experiments. I’ve had a lot, too. But I didn’t have to use will power because I have an allergy to it. I keep throwing up. Yeah, I’ve had a lot. Not now, though. Like, I’ll go to Tangier and see Bill Burroughs and he’ll say, “Well, boy, how about kicking the gong around tonight and get some opium!” Or else I go to Mexico City and see old Bill Garver. He’ll say, “Well, I’ll give you a shot of morphine.” (EP, 167)
More than merely consuming drugs, the Beats were known for their various experiments with hallucinogens. By openly discussing drugs, Kerouac displays himself as an unconventional ‘rebel without a cause’ (Ehrmann 1999) who glorifies drugs and ‘is determined simply to find joy in his life, even at extravagant cost and risk’ (Krim, 1959).
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Especially since this interview occurred at the outset of his career, when his reputation was still in the middle of being established, he launches and promotes his now popularized image as ‘a harbinger of cultural change’ (Ehrmann 1999) who championed a ‘new awareness’ (Hopkins 2005) and new perspectives on life and morality.
4.5) Buddhism and religious comprehensiveness
Just like Ginsberg, Kerouac was interested in and noticeably indebted to Buddhism. In fact, according to the legend, it was Kerouac who first introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism (Tytell 1976, 75). In his publication, Tytell emphasizes that Kerouac was a devoted student of Buddhism and explains that ‘his studies in Mahayana Buddhism confirmed his own literary aesthetic, as well as supporting his spiritual needs’ (1976, 74). In the interview with Ted Berrigan, Kerouac correspondingly exhibits his knowledge about oriental belief. Since Kerouac rarely had the opportunity to discuss topics that truly interested him, such as Buddhism (Brinkley 1999) and since, as Berrigan indicates, this was one of the few interviews where the author could freely discuss topics of his own choice (1991), this interview had an indispensible impact on fashioning that aspect of Kerouac’s narrative self:
INTERVIEWER: How has Zen influenced your work?
KEROUAC: What’s really influenced my work is the Mahayana Buddhism, the original Buddhism of Gautma Śàkyamuni, the Buddha himself, of the India of old… Zen is what’s left of his Buddhism, or Bodhi, after its passing into China and then into Japan. The part of Zen that’s influenced my writing is the Zen contained in the haiku (…). But my serious Buddhism, that of ancient India, has influenced that part in my writing that you might call religious, or fervent, or pious, almost as much as Catholicism has. Original Buddhism referred to continual conscious compassion, brotherhood, the dana paramita meaning the perfection of charity, don’t step on the bug, (…) (Berrigan 1968, PR 122).
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Firstly, by discussing Buddhism and subtly indicating the difference between Zen and Mahayana Buddhism Kerouac displays his profound knowledge and understanding of oriental belief. This concurs with Carolyn Cassady’s notification that ‘Kerouac probably had deeper instinctual insights into the message of Buddha’ (1999). In these remarks, Kerouac effectively counters allegations of anti-intellectualism and poses as a ‘James Dean with brains’ (Brinkley 1999)4.
Secondly, by delineating his indebtedness to Zen Buddhism Kerouac reflects the Beats’ turn to alternative religions in their search for a response to the ‘spiritual vacuum in modern civilization’ (Merrill 1969). In his ‘On the Holy Road: the Beat Movement as Spiritual Protest’ (1991) Stephen Prothero investigates Kerouac’s turn to Buddhism and interprets this as ‘an undefined commitment to a spiritual search.’ According to Prothero, ‘Buddhism attracted Kerouac because it seemed to make sense of the central facts of his experience (suffering, impermanence) and to affirm his intuition that life was dreamlike and illusory.’ Although Kerouac does not explain his reasons for turning to Buddhism, he does clearly render another aspect of the Beats’ repute. By discussing Buddhism, he reflects Ginsberg’s notion of ‘spiritual liberation’ (1982) and poses as the Beat who ‘reject[s] of dominant spiritual norms and established religious institutions’ (Prothero 1991).
Just like Ginsberg, Kerouac directly links Buddhism to Catholicism and thus demonstrates the Beats’ comprehensive religious fervor. Stephen Prothero even designates Kerouac as the chief advocate of the Beats’ religious investigation when he denotes that ‘[t]his religious eclecticism was epitomized by Jack Kerouac who, though born a Catholic, practiced Buddhist meditation and once observed the Muslim fast of Ramadan’ (1991). Accordingly, Kerouac effectively showcases this religious eclecticism in his interview with Ben Hecht in 1958:
I worship Christ, I worship Allah, and I worship Yahweh who is the father. I worship ‘em all. (EP, 79)
4 Kerouac did, in fact, envision James Dean as a prototypical Beat. In this case, however, the author becomes more than a handsom, yet hollow icon and rebel – if one wishes to perceive James Dean as such; Kerouac also presents himself as a genuine intellectual.
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4.6) Fashioning his literature and literary stance
While elucidating his indebtedness to Buddhism, Kerouac simultaneously fashions an image of his literature. Accordingly, Kerouac frequently discusses his work in his interviews, albeit to a lesser extent than Burroughs. Just like Ginsberg, he echoes prior clarifications of his literary technique and lucidly deliberates his prose. In doing so, he confirms his authorial persona and enforces the legends surrounding his life and literature. One of these legends was his refusal to revise his original manuscripts. When discussing editorial revisions with Charles Jarvis and James Curtis in 1962, he passionately asserts his literary viewpoints and thus fashions an image of himself as an author:
Once God moves the hand, you go back and revise, it’s a sin! (…) My thought does not have to be improved because I got it from Heaven, just like you got yours. (EP 191)
In this passage, Kerouac depicts his writing method as being truthful to one’s first thought. He immediately invokes the legend that he, just like the other Beats, published his books in their original form. Kerouac echoes the ideals formulated in his ‘Essentials of Spontaneous Prose’ (1959) such as: ‘sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind’ and ‘no revisions.’ Moreover, he does not solely refer to his writing method, but also justifies his viewpoints from a religious perspective: revisions are a sin against the divinity of one’s first thought. In this way, he depicts his literature as highly innovative in voice, style and composition.
In the interview with Al Aronowitz, Kerouac simultaneously specifies the inspiration for his writing style and justifies it from yet another angle:
See, I changed my style from The Town and the City because of Neal – Neal Cassady. Because of a forty-thousand-word letter that Neal wrote me. (…) Neal, he was just telling me what happened one time in Denver, and he had every detail. It was just like Dostoyevsky. And I realized that’s the way to tell a story – just tell it! (…) The Town and the City was fiction, you know, mostly. But in spontaneous prose, you just tell what happened. You don’t stop, you just keep
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going. (…) [L]ike Homer probably did. Spontaneity is also in Shakespeare you know. (…) See, Neal is more like Dostoyevsky. (…) I got my rhythm from Neal, that’s the way he talks, Okie rhythms. (1959, EP, 168-170).
For one of the first times in his interviews, Kerouac defines Cassady as a vital source of inspiration. In this reference to the archetypal Beat, he powerfully mythologizes his life. His acquaintance with Cassady nearly appear to constitute the initiation or ‘first chapter’ of Kerouac’s legend, as Cassady would have inspired both Kerouac’s spontaneous prose and his definition of ‘Beat’. Subsequently, this story has been continually reiterated and cultivated throughout his interviews, as also observable in the 1968 interview with Ted Berrigan.
Secondly, Kerouac justifies his literary style by aligning it to three canonical Western authors: Homer, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky. In his interpretation, Kerouac’s prose marks the completion of a long literary development. Just like Ginsberg, he projects his own literature against a series of legendary predecessors, and thus fashions himself as an innovative author whose merit resembles that of Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky. Yet, in his attempt to rid himself of accusations of anti-intellectualism, the presumptuousness of this statement only appears to support certain critics’ opinion that Kerouac could never be taken seriously (Curley 1957).
However, Kerouac does not want to come across as a one-sided innovator whose main achievement is a single, characteristic style that he recycled and developed throughout his oeuvre. In the interview with Ted Berrigan, he asserts that there are noticeable stylistic differences between his novels and thus displays himself as a versatile author, a literary centipede. His true talent, for which he ought to be credited and remembered, would then be manifest in his ceaseless experimentation. Once more, Kerouac attempts to refute accusations such as Krim’s allegation that ‘(…) “wit,” “tension,” “density,” and “complexity” (…) seemed falsely over-intellectual and forced to Kerouac and his band of guerillas’ (1959). Additionally, he projects his will to be considered ‘first and foremost an old-fashioned craftsman’ (Brinkley 1999) who sought literary achievement. He affirms this authorial image when providing an overview of his differentiated styles in his discussion with Ted Berrigan:
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(…) and the style has varied from the highly experimental speedwriting of Railroad Earth to the ingrown toenail packed mystical style of Tristessa, the Notes from Underground (by Dostoevsky) confessional madness of The Subterraneans, the perfection of the three as one in Big Sur, (…) and not to overlook Book of Dreams, the style of a person half-awake from sleep and ripping it out in pencil by the bed… yes, pencil… what a job! (…) And finally I decided in my tired middle age to slow down and did Vanity of Duluoz in a more moderate style (…) (PR 109).
Of course, this self-representation as a craftsman appears in conflict with the very idea and principles of spontaneous prose. While spontaneity rejects a conscious treatment of and emphasis on form, this statement appears to present Kerouac as a highly self- conscious author who is deeply concerned with the style and form of his novels. As this interview took place at the end of his career, one might suggest that, throughout his entire career, Kerouac attempted to present himself as a serious writer and contest his spiteful label as a talentless ‘typist.’ In fact, it is known that Truman Capote’s dismissal of Kerouac’s literature as ‘typing’ haunted the author until his death (Brinkley 1999). However, in the same interview Kerouac also passionately exclaims: ‘[g]oddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings’ (PR 107). Although this should not necessarily be perceived as incongruous – depending on how one interprets ‘craft’ – these statements do, to a certain extent, encourage an ambiguous understanding of the author. As Kerouac rejects craftiness and an emphasis on form, yet at the same time wants to be recognized as a craftsman and formal experimenter, his self-representation appears rather paradoxical, or at least unclear.
Nevertheless, in this enumeration of his publications, he advertises his work and displays himself as a true ‘work-beast’ (Brinkley 1999). He exhibits the vast amount of published works and thus portrays himself as a serious artist who wrote, tirelessly, one novel after the other. In this way, he constructs his authorial self and confirms Ann Charters’ observation that ‘[t]here was almost no time in his life during which he wasn’t writing’ (1973).
This extreme productivity is also confirmed in what Brinkley (1999) calls ‘[t]he most enduring myth about Kerouac:’ the tremendous rate at which he wrote his novels. When
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analyzing his interviews, it becomes strikingly clear how often Kerouac repeats this facet of his working method. In doing so, he nurtures one of the most prevalent aspects of his persona and assures its endurance. We can observe this continuous consolidation of his legend in the 1962 interview with Jarvis and Curtis:
I write in vast, eighteen-hundred-words-a-night bursts for about six nights, and the book is done. I use teletype paper; I put a sixteen-foot strip of teletype paper through the typewriter and blast away, single spaced, saying, “I’m going to tell you what happened,” because it’s all true stories and all I do is change the names. (EP 191)
As academic research has proven, much of his myth was exaggerated (French 1986). In reality, Kerouac spent a considerable amount of time preparing his novels, outlining the plot and chapters and sketching characters in his diaries and notebooks. Even before he started writing his novels, he trimmed his story in his notebooks and he also revised his manuscripts after his writing marathons. These marathons were subsequently only possible after a long period of preparation and he could only write at this speed by following those notebooks (Charters 1973). Warren French even claims that ‘[t]he number of books that he wrote [before publishing On the Road] has often been exaggerated.’ Moreover, scholars and academics have frequently indicated that Kerouac’s renowned ‘spontaneous prose’ was not as original and innovative as he liked to assert. The spontaneous method has mainly been interpreted as ‘a derivative of “automatic writing”’ (Moody 1999), and clearly has several affinities with prior formal experiments. These exaggerations in Kerouac’s legend appear to confirm that advertisement and not literary achievement was, at least in part, the Beats’ true innovation (Merrill 1969).
4.7) The Beat Generation
Corresponding to Burroughs and Ginsberg, Kerouac also discusses the Beat Generation in his interviews. As I already remarked in the beginning of my analysis, Kerouac mythologized the Beat Generation in his anecdotic sketches of several Beat characters –
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such as Neal Cassady – and thus illustrates the atmosphere of the Beat Generation. On the other hand, he recurrently expressed his resentment of the other Beats and thus renders a severely contrasting image of the Beat Generation. Consequently, his attitude towards this movement appears to be rather ambiguous. In what follows, I will focus on this aspect of his discourse and how he subsequently fashions, or at least attempts to, an image of the Beat Generation.
Especially in the beginning of his career, we can observe Kerouac explicitly advertising the Beats. While expressing his contempt for the popular media in Aronowitz’s ‘St. Jack,’ (1959) Kerouac defines himself and the other Beats as ‘the greatest writers since the Transcendentalists.’ Not only does he envision his companions within the pantheon of American authors, but by comparing the Beats to the Transcendentalists he also portrays the Beat Generation as a rigid artistic movement with a shared vision. In these early statements, Kerouac introduces and firmly establishes that image:
I want you to know that in discussing Cassady, Ginsberg, Burroughs, myself, Orlovsky and Corso you’re dealing with some great American writers, the greatest since the Transcendentalists (Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Dickson) (…). (EP, 171)
On the other hand, Kerouac increasingly attempted to ‘dissociate himself from Ginsberg and Burroughs’ (Brinkley 1999). In the interview with William Buckley, recorded only two years before his death, the author unabashedly insults Ginsberg in statements such as: ‘And I show my thumbs-down to Ginsberg over there in the back. He’s a nice fellow, yeah. We’ll throw him to the lions’ (EP 331)5. Kerouac’s denunciation of the other Beats can be interpreted as an attempt to fashion himself as ‘an individual American writer like Melville or Steinbeck, not as a part of an insidious antiestablishment Beat cabal (…)’ (Brinkley 1999).
Already in 1958, when Beat literature was only beginning to break through, we can discern ruptures in its very core. In fact, many Kerouac scholars have remarked that
5 After this interview ‘Ginsberg hugged Kerouac and whispered, “Goodbye, drunken ghost.”’ (Brinkley 1999)
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already by this time, ‘he started to pull away from his Beat friends’ (Brinkley 1999). In an interview with Mike Wallace, Kerouac barefacedly denies the existence of this generation and thus attempts to repudiate the central concept of the Beat Generation and its contemporary interpretation as a coherent movement. When comparing the following statement to the previous one from the interview with Aronowitz in 1959, the position Kerouac takes towards the Beat Generation appears rather paradoxical:
MW: What is the Beat Generation?
JK: Well, actually it’s just an old phrase. I knocked it off one day and they made a big fuss about it. It’s not really a generation at all (1958, EP 64)
Similar to Burroughs, Kerouac preferred to interpret the Beat Generation as a philosophical rather than a political movement. In agreement with Cassady’s remark, Jack Kerouac frequently shows himself ‘less politically or socially oriented; [he was] deeply concerned with seeking an understanding of the purpose of life (…)’ (1999). Kerouac’s original understanding of ‘beat’ more likely designated a mental state – as he also delineates in his 1959 essay ‘The Origin of the Beat Generation.’ Moreover, in contrast with his reputation and the media’s depiction, Kerouac was in fact far more conservative than his peers (Tytell 1976). He was even rather quick to ‘dissociate himself from Ginsberg’s advocacy of social anarchy and left-wing politics’ (Brinkley 1999) and Burroughs’ fatalist denunciation of the U.S. government. In the interview with Ted Berrigan, he pungently expresses his grudge against Ginsberg:
Ginsberg got interested in left wing politics… Like Joyce I say, as Joyce said to Ezra Pound in the 1920’s, “Don’t bother me with politics, the only thing that interests me is style” (PR 135).
In this statement, Kerouac compares his relationship with Ginsberg with the tensions between Joyce and Pound. Kerouac draws an analogy with his current disagreement with Ginsberg and thus mythologizes this conflict in itself. Moreover, he validates his grudge against Ginsberg and portrays himself as the ideologically correct party. Another argument for his denunciation of Ginsberg’s political viewpoints is that to him the Beat Generation was about art, not politics. On the other hand, in this attempt to clarify his
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viewpoints and dissociate himself from a movement he had named, he also comes across as ‘a middle-aged writer who had lost touch with the erupting youth culture’ (Brinkley 1999).
Despite his frequent attempts to alter the image of the Beat Generation and dissociate himself from this movement, the traditional understanding of the Beat Generation as a coherent movement and a group of friends remains, up to this day, unharmed. Already in his earliest interviews and evermore throughout his career, Kerouac challenges that image. Yet, at the same time, he repeatedly confirms this conventional conception. Besides exemplifying his paradoxical stance, this also confirms Demoor’s hypothesis of the impossibility to replace an established persona (2004, 15). Notwithstanding the effect of these interviews, the image of the Beat Generation was, in my estimation already steadily established before Kerouac had the opportunity to refute this image in his interviews.
We can conclude this analysis by referring to Justin Trudeau’s observation that ‘Jack Kerouac’s novels have never been enough. Due to the thinly-veiled autobiographical nature of his fiction, Kerouac the person, and not the author, has drawn much of the focus in both popular and scholarly circles’ (2006). Indeed, Jack Kerouac was, as Brinkley (1999) put it, a ‘persona-driven author.’ Throughout my analysis, I have labeled Kerouac as a raconteur. In fact, Kerouac may very well be considered the most passionate raconteur of the Beats, as his interviews mainly evolve around sensationalized and exaggerated anecdotes. Especially when given free speech, as observable in the interview with Berrigan, Kerouac ‘totally expose[s] himself’ (Berrigan 1991) and showcases his remarkable talent as a performer and narrator. Thus, the interviews render Kerouac either as the mythmaker of the Beats, ‘the great rememberer’ (Holmes 1985) or the involuntary ‘King of the Beats’ who was destroying himself with alcohol. In these interviews, he also displays the Beats’ celebration of the ‘underculture’ and comes across as the author who transformed ‘[h⦌ipsters and hoboes, criminals and junkies (…) into the heroes of [his⦌ novels’ (Prothero 1991). Furthermore, Kerouac shamelessly discusses sexuality and exposes his pursuit of enjoyment. In doing so, he simultaneously fashions his public self and confirms the movement’s acclaimed role in
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the sexual liberation of the United Sates and the counterculture movement. In extension, the Beat Generation is also known for its ‘demystification of drugs.’ Accordingly, Kerouac openly discusses drugs in his interviews – albeit to a lesser extent than Ginsberg – and thus poses as ‘a harbinger of cultural change.’ Just like Ginsberg, Kerouac showcases his indebtedness to Buddhism. He exhibits his knowledge of the eastern religion and acts as an ‘explorer of inward reality’ (Merrill 1969) and a pioneer in the search for a ‘new vision.’ He also exposes his religious eclecticism when he compares Buddhism to Catholicism or when he exclaims: ‘I worship’em all.’ While indicating his indebtedness to Buddhism, he simultaneously fashions an image of his literature. Hence, he shows himself as more than a ‘hoodlum street poet’, but a serious writer who is deeply concerned with his art. While explaining and validating his literary viewpoints concerning editorial revisions and spontaneous prose he constructs an image of his literature and himself as an author. Often he even noticeably indulges in mythologizing his writing method, for example when he reiterates the legendary speed at which he composed his novels. Yet, he most clearly engages in self-promotion when he delineates the variety of formal experiments throughout his oeuvre and thus advertises himself as an innovative author. Especially in these cases, one might suspect some exaggeration, as research has deflated many of these myths. Especially the amount of novels he wrote before publishing On The Road and even the originality of his spontaneous prose have been severely exaggerated. By constantly repeating these myths in his interviews, they have become part of our conception of Kerouac and they have indisputably contributed to his fame. For this type of self-promotion, literary interviews proved to be very useful. Consequently, one may indeed suggest that advertisement was, to some extent, the Beats’ true innovation. Lastly, Kerouac engaged in marketing and advertising the Beat Generation just as Burroughs and Ginsberg did. However, Kerouac’s interpretation of the Beat Generation is rather ambiguous. Especially throughout time he took on an adverse position towards this movement and thus became the man who ‘named and then divorced the Beat Generation’ (George-Warren 1999). In his earlier interviews, Kerouac overtly promotes his associates. By constantly referring to the Beats in his anecdotes, he invokes a closely bounded movement. At some points, he even overtly advertises his companions as great artists who defined the literature of their time.
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However, in his later interviews, his perception of the Beat Generation became more negative. In an attempt to alter our understanding of the Beat Generation and portray himself as an independent writer, he irrevocably dissociates himself from his companions. As I mentioned, Kerouac was a ‘persona-driven author.’ Far less than Ginsberg and Burroughs, he discusses his work or cause in his interviews and far more than his colleagues, he presents himself as the mythmaker of the Beat Generation. Comparable to Ginsberg, Kerouac mythologizes and fictionalizes his life. However, one might suggest that Ginsberg always maintained control over his own narrative self. Kerouac, on the other hand, ‘was lost in a blur of sensational media distortion and controversy’ (Kilgannon 2006). I would even tentatively propose that Kerouac’s persona was taken over by the media and ultimately became a substitute for his true personality. For, what is perhaps most remarkable throughout his interviews, are his unsuccessful attempts to convey a different ‘Kerouac’ than the media did. Despite these attempts, certain aspects of the ‘real’ Kerouac, such as his tenderness, his serious literary ambitions or his political viewpoints, did not reach the mass public in his time and were only acknowledged in critical, nuanced studies of the author after his death. The image presented by the contemporary media, on the contrary, tended to confirm his reputation as an assertive, irresponsible, antiestablishment and insensitive alcoholic. As the dates of the interviews show, Kerouac attempted to refute this image until the end. Consequently, one might suspect that the media was partially responsible for fashioning the King of the Beats. Nevertheless, it is Kerouac’s own self-mythologizing in his interviews and, not in the least, his literature that motivated the media’s depiction. Afterwards, I would propose, Kerouac never managed to obliterate this distorted and simplistic image. For, as Demoor denotes, ‘once a ‘persona’ was created, it was all but impossible to change or replace it’ (15).
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5. CONCLUSION
Since the 1950’s, the Beat Generation has become one of the most influential and most debated literary and cultural movements in both popular and academic circles. In the beginning of their careers, these authors were ridiculed as ‘know-nothing bohemians,’ irresponsible and immoral junkies and glorified ‘typists’. Throughout time however, they became known as a coherent movement of ‘innovative poets’ (Watson 1995, 5) who advocated and pursued a ‘new vision’ on life and society. Specifically Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs have commonly been perceived as countercultural heroes whose work has exerted a vital influence on Western society and literature. Yet, we must ask ourselves how this reputation was established. Undeniably, any reply to this question involves a convergence of various factors that contributed to the creation of the Beats’ image. In this thesis I investigated the Beats’ own responsibility in fashioning their repute. More specifically, I examined how they constructed this image in literary interviews. As I indicated, interviews form a highly useful instrument for marketing and self-fashioning because these ‘give the reader a sense of the author’s personality’ by simulating a close contact between the reader and author. Such interviews enable the author to present himself in a certain light and – either implicitly or explicitly – advertise himself and his work.
By means of various interviews from throughout their careers, I examined how William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac marketed and fashioned the Beat Generation. Despite several common points, each of these three authors approached this practice in his unique way and subsequently rendered visibly differing images of themselves and the Beat Generation. Following John Rodden’s theory (2007), I generally categorized Kerouac and Ginsberg as raconteurs who openly display their personality and whose discourse primarily revolves around amusing or sensational anecdotes, rather than discussions of their work. Burroughs, on the other hand, could best be perceived as a traditionalist. He tends to eschew inquiries into his private life and mainly confers his philosophical, political, social and literary viewpoints. Of course, Rodden remarks that his categories are not normative or exclusive. Concurrently, Kerouac and
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Ginsberg exhibit some features of the traditionalist as they discuss their work and political viewpoints. Similarly, Burroughs does not avoid all inquiries into his private life.
I started this research with my analysis of Ginsberg’s performance in literary interviews. As I denoted, Ginsberg was a highly public figure and a sensational media-presence. This already raises the suspicion that he must have been aware of the positive effects of this attention. Following Merrill’s comment, we might suggest that Ginsberg consciously presented a sensational and somewhat fictionalized image of himself. In doing so, he assured his prominence in popular culture and academic research. Throughout his anecdotal discourse, he comes across as a nonconformist and demonstrates his legendary openness, honesty and sincerity. Quite often, he even presents himself as the principal character of his own story – and I would tentatively say: his myth. Especially when recounting his renowned ‘Blake vision,’ Ginsberg poses as a mythical medium between the earthly and the divine and fashions himself as a poet-prophet. When discussing the influence of Buddhism, he establishes the image of the ‘Beat mystic’ and poses as a genuine guru. As I denoted, these interviews also gave the Beats the opportunity to refute certain allegations and present themselves in a different fashion than sensational tabloids and spiteful criticism did. Correspondingly, Ginsberg recurrently tends to validate certain aspects of his persona. For example, he legitimizes the use of hallucinogens from the perspective of Zen Buddhism and his writing method. Moreover, he portrays this ‘demystification of drugs’ as part of a larger social and political cause. He makes it his vocation to antagonize corrupted values and ideals and thus mythologizes himself as the driving force of the countercultural revolution. Besides his cause, Ginsberg also fashions an image of his literature and advertises himself as an intellectual, innovative avant-garde author. Lastly, he also explicitly markets the Beat Generation as a coherent artistic and political movement. As a result, one inevitably starts to suspect a proper amount of conscious self-fashioning and –promotion. Especially his numerous – and often rather sensational – public appearances and his awareness of the positive effects of media sensationalism make us wonder whether his ‘pique’ over the popular press was genuine (Merrill 1969) or simply a calculated display of artistic integrity.
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Despite what his seclusion might suggest, William Burroughs appeared in a plethora of literary interviews and indulged in self-fashioning and marketing just as Ginsberg or Kerouac did. Although he could best be perceived as a traditionalist, Burroughs does display his personality as well. While discussing his cause and work, Burroughs inevitably renders his fatalist, paranoid and obscure character. Particularly his distrust of nearly every aspect of life and politics transpires throughout the interviews. In addition to this cause, Burroughs also explains his literature and literary stance. In certain instances, he even directly promotes himself as an innovative, prophetic artist whose work will influence the literary development of the twentieth century. Quite remarkably, we can also observe Burroughs discussing his private life. In my estimation it is exactly his usual seclusion that determines the force of his myth whenever he does openly discuss his private life. By allowing his public to only obtain minimal biographic information Burroughs nurtures the mysterious quality of his persona. For example, when he soberly and intelligently deliberates hallucinogens, he suffuses the legends of his relentless drug addiction. Yet, by not giving too much detail about his own experiences with drugs – in contrast to Ginsberg and Kerouac – he nevertheless appears rather reserved. Similarly, he freely debates one of the most absorbing myths of the Beat Generation: the murder of his wife. In this case he even introduced, confirmed and denied alternative versions of the event. It is this subtle play between invoking aspects of his myth and nevertheless obscuring the truth or details of these stories that encourages the ceaseless fascination with this mysterious ‘Hombre Invisibile.’ However, what is perhaps most noteworthy in his interviews, is the interviewer’s own participation in mythologizing Burroughs. Although it is rather common for interviews to include some descriptive or biographic information, certain descriptions appear to transform Burroughs into a ‘character of science fiction’ and allude to the various legends surrounding his public image. Despite his overt isolation and inaccessibility, Burroughs’ mere performance or even presence almost appears enough to furtively fashion and reinforce one of the most intriguing characters in postwar Western literature.
In contrast to Burroughs, Jack Kerouac was renowned for the openness and detail with which he narrated autobiographical anecdotes. In my analysis I even suggested that, just
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like in his novels, he practically fictionalized his life and that of his peers. For this reason he may very well be responsible for many of the legends of the Beat Generation. By constantly recounting anecdotes, Kerouac sketches the atmosphere of the Beat Generation and presents himself as the ‘great rememberer’ and mythmaker of the Beats. As a result, the interviews affirm his status as a ‘hoodlum street poet’ who dramatized the nation’s ‘underculture.’ Unfortunately, his performance also suffused his reputation as an alcoholic. When discussing religion and Buddhism, he poses as a pioneer in search of a ‘new vision.’ Kerouac also frequently alludes to drugs and sex and thus confirms the Beats’ alleged ‘pursuit of every possible sensory impression’ (Millstein 1957). On the other hand, he ardently attempts to refute his caricatural image. On several occasions, he counters his demeaning reputation as a glorified ‘typist’ by advertising, validating and sometimes even mythologizing his literary technique and viewpoints. Moreover, Kerouac explicitly promotes himself as an experimental and highly versatile author. Perhaps the most striking ‘myth’ Kerouac attempts to undermine is that of the Beat Generation itself and his connection to this so-called movement. However, especially in the beginning of his career, Kerouac also zealously advertises the Beat Generation. By defining its writers as innovative and highly important and subsequently denying the very idea that one could call it a generation at all, Kerouac expresses an ambiguous position towards the ‘Beat Generation.’ As I indicated, Kerouac’s discourse definitely contains some amount of exaggeration. Not only in literary interviews, but also in his literature, Kerouac fictionalizes himself and the Beat Generation. This somewhat exaggerated image was quickly taken over by sensationalist tabloids that constructed a stereotypical and incongruous image of the ‘King of the Beats.’ Indeed, as I demonstrated, the media – even the ‘serious’ press – were partially responsible for fashioning the King of the Beats. What subsequently transpires throughout the interviews is Kerouac’s discomfort with this reputation and his inability to be ‘who the media wanted him to be’ (Brinkley 1999). At some points, Kerouac’s behavior appears to confirm that distorted image. At others, he eagerly attempts to present himself in a different fashion. As a result, Kerouac never managed to project a lucid and unambiguous narrative self. Nevertheless, he does visibly engage in self-fashioning and - fictionalizing as a means of marketing and thus remains responsible for the reputation
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he received. In other words: the distorted image presented by the media was nevertheless an image that Kerouac inaugurated himself.
As these analyses demonstrate, the Beats indisputably indulged in self-fashioning as a means of marketing their literature, themselves and the Beat Generation. Their interviews are marked by a confluence of confessional narratives and more intellectual discussions of their work or ‘cause.’ In these narratives and discussions, they constructed, presented and consolidated their authorial personae. Since interviews, as Bawer and Royer remark, always render a ‘character-portrait’ and give the audience ‘the feeling of truth [and] close personal contact,’ literary interviews formed an excellent platform for self-fashioning and marketing. The Beats were among the first generation to appear in such interviews and they clearly employed these to advertise themselves. Besides in these interviews, the Beats marketed themselves in various ways. More than any predecessors, they intensively fashioned and advertised their narrative selves in their autobiographic literature, in theoretical and polemical essays, through their performance in public debates and their appearance in clothing advertisements, and so on. Thus, we can indeed suggest that advertisement was, in extension to their literature, their true innovation.
Of course, as I remarked in my introduction, fashioning and marketing the Beat Generation was not solely the merit of these three authors. On various occasions, I have indicated the role of the press in fashioning the Beat Generation or even the interviewers’ participation in mythologizing or depicting the Beats. Other Beats have marked and constructed the image of this movement as well – one only has to think of Holmes’s introduction and definition of the Beat Generation in his essay ‘This is the Beat Generation’ (1952). Additionally, their contemporary reception and depiction in reviews, news items and the popular press had an impact on their reputation as well. Lastly, the depiction of this generation and its authors in popular films and documentaries also affirmed and consolidated our perception of the Beat Generation.
Nevertheless, via these interviews, Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs present themselves as interesting characters and overtly nurture further mythologizing of their characters and always provide the basis for the legends and myths encircling their
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personae. For, as I have repeatedly insinuated, the Beat generation is a movement of legends. Although these stories are always relatively truthful – in some instances more, in others less – they constitute the foundation of their image and understanding. In his ‘What is an Author?’ Foucault observed that at a certain point in time, ‘we began to recount the lives of authors rather than of heroes’ (1979). In my estimation, these three authors perfectly exemplify that statement. As these writers have performed and conveyed their personae, we, the public, started recounting their lives and personalities. This implies that we must never underestimate our own part in mythologizing the Beat Generation. Both in popular culture and academic research we, their readers, admirers, scholars or even over-hearers, suffuse and sustain the story of the Beat Generation.
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