Beatdom issue three From the Warped Minds of David S Wills and Kirsty Bisset Beatdom Issue Three|March 2008 Created by Kirsty Bisset and David S Wills Cover Photo (c)David S Wills Regulars Letters from the Editor Notes of Contributors Poetry Eduardo Jones Features Who’s Who: A Guide to Kerouac’s Characters Articles An overview of the Beat Generation Beatnik Dictionary On the Map The Lost Novel: And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks Modern Beat: Tom Waits The Modern World Welcome to the Plastic World The American Epidemic Fiction & True Stories Tempest Tavern Temptress ADVERTISEMENT Letter from the Editor Dear Patient Readers, I hit Asia like Ginsberg and Snyder. Maybe one day I’ll get to Latin America like Burroughs… It’s been a long year of constant change since Constantly the fan mail and submissions kept rolling Beatdom last made a foray into the public domain. in, and I realised that I had a duty to the fanbase I Since then I’ve been doing my best to keep the had established with the first two magnificent magazine in the minds and hearts of its fans, but that instalments. The people wanted more, and I had to hasn’t been easy without something for them to give it to them. Out went the drinking, and back read… came the editing. It was February 2008 when Issue Two hit the I started various blogs about life in Asia, uploaded proverbial newsstands, and now we’re in a whole old articles and essays from the first two issues to new year. In that time much has happened. the website, and created a Beat Generation social Firstly there was Beatdom’s first ever public display, network, all to pique the interest of the people. We’d as we were asked to appear at Scotland’s nation lost too many staff members over the year of absence poetry festival, StAnza. In typical form, your humble to rely upon the same contributors. Impatience set editor forgot about the event until the night before, in. The distance became a factor. My old artists and when he was playing a gig with a local band, and illustrators went on to new jobs in Scotland. Eduardo together, he and the band spent the post-gig night Jones, our bat-shit crazy regular, was killed. Rodney both partying and making posters. We were late to Munch went missing somewhere in the Sea of the festival, but still put on a display, selling out our Japan… stock and drawing much interest for the magazine But now we’re back with an issue that takes the and its website. Beat out of the fifties and brings it right back into the Ah, the website. www.beatdom.com has kept the ugly new millennium, where it’s needed the most. magazine alive in the absence of any creative When the world changes too fast, and the hands of endeavour on the part of the staff. Through our high the diabolic wander beyond their stations, the spirit Google rankings, Beatdom has maintained a strong of the restless few must rise and seize the day. internet presence that has ensured a steady flow of fan mail and submissions. I can honestly say that David S. Wills without these, Beatdom would have faded into history. But the reason for this lack of productivity and Beatdom Magazine creativity was the increase of activity in my own life. www.beatdom.com In Scotland I was unemployed and partially employed, and constantly had time to write. But with Cover: Photo courtesy of David S Wills no money and no job prospects, I was forced to emigrate to South Korea. I took a job teaching in a Beatniks: small hagwon in Daegu, and have been here ever Publisher: The Mauling Press/ City of since. Recovery Life in Korea has been too hectic to facilitate much writing. The hours are long and the alcohol is cheap, Regulars: Kirsty Bisset, Steve Patterson, and consequently I found myself not sleeping for five Paul Kay, Nathan Dolby months, but instead working from 10am to 8pm, and drinking from 8pm to 5am, six or seven nights a Editor/ Design: David S Wills week. No writing, no Beatdom. [email protected] When holidays came, I vanished across the seas again – to the Philippines, to Japan, to China. In All letters, submissions & queries to: 2007 I toured American like Kerouac, and in 2008 [email protected] David S Wills - Founder, Editor... Scottish, Californian, Korean writer and booze-hound. Kirsty Bisset - Founder, Photographer.... Law graduate and global traveller. Ross Napier - Head of Graphics... Art graduate, scarred for life after the ‘microwave incident’ Richard Cormack - Illustrator... Half man, half fox. Eduardo Jones - Writer... Voice of the Doomed, wrote Terrorist Performance Art. Chuck Milbourne - Illustrator... Cosmic Assasin and to Jones who Steadman was to Thompson. Simon Warner - Music professor and poet from England. Adi Rajkovic - Lee Aitkin - A Fife-stuck Beat lover and closet poet. Ed Leonard - A poet with memories of the Beat Generation. Christine Timm - Performance poet from the Village Shelley Wiseberg - Poet Vince Anello - Poet J. Ameer - Poet Burroughs controversial writing was also a subject of debate. Much of Burroughs’s inspiration for his Beat novels came from his battles with drug addiction. After finishing his series of drug diaries, Junkie, and By Adi Rajkovic Queer, Burroughs explored a non-linear style of writing. When writing Naked Lunch, Burroughs used There have been many pivotal experiences and a cut-up technique, slicing up phrases and words to events that have influenced my vision as an artist, create new sentences. The avant-garde approach but the most arresting event (historically speaking) proved to be a success once Naked Lunch was has been the Beat Generation. Although short lived published. Soon after publication, it was prosecuted and long ago in the 1950’s, I have learned more as obscene by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. from the astute pantheons of the Beat Generation However, in 1966 the Massachusetts Supreme than I have from the spiritless stars that the current Judicial Court declared the work “not obscene” generation lionizes. based on the criteria developed largely to defend The Beat Generation was a group of people who the book. The case against Burroughs’s novel still had the audacity to rise above the cookie cutter stands as the last obscenity trial against a work of civilization and form a union of aspiring artists that literature. were all bored with society. I identified with the beats Kerouac’s style was unlike that of Burroughs and as individuals and as respected artists. I admired Ginsberg’s. Kerouac’s first acclaimed novel, On the their charisma and virtue. Their motives were sincere, Road, was an account of his adventures while on a and their thesis, competent. The beats were pioneers wild goose chase across America with his friend with no destination, changing the world one impulse Dean Moriarty. Neal Cassady was Kerouac’s muse, at a time. and eventually the inspiration for the character of Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase “Beat Dean Moriarty in On the Road, and later on Cody Generation” in 1948, generalizing from his social Pomeray in Visions of Cody. Cassady’s outlandish circle to characterize the underground, anti- and uncanny personality is also credited as the conformist youth gathering in New York at the time. inspiration for other Beat literature by Allen Ginsberg “Beat” originated from underworld slang - the world and later by Thomas Wolfe (one of the kings of the of hustlers, drug addicts and petty thieves, where counterculture). Kerouac wrote about personal Kerouac and his beat friends sought inspiration. Beat journeys in search of enlightenment. He eventually was slang for “beaten down” or oppressed, but to started writing in a style he called Spontaneous Prose, Kerouac, it symbolized being at the bottom and a literary technique akin to stream of consciousness. looking up. The works of Beats that impacted me the most were With Kerouac as the protagonist of the Beat the novels Naked Lunch, by Burroughs, On the Generation, his entourage served as the other Road and Dharma Bums, by Kerouac, and the characters in this literary revolution. The core Beats poems ‘Howl’ and ‘Reality Sandwiches’, by included: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Ginsberg. The fluent surge of words so bottomless Allen Ginsberg. When these three creative minds and evocative, stirred something deep inside me. came together they formed an intellectual environment Kerouac’s words especially were able to rekindle that soon progressed into an intellectual community, my forsaken spirit. Growing up in a generation and then a generation. consumed by apathy, the fire inside me slowly ceased Ginsberg was notorious for writing the poem ‘Howl’, to burn, remaining dormant for a long time. My aloof which became the focus of the obscenity trials in the perception of the world was shattered by the Beats. United States that helped to liberalize what could I have always believed that the purpose of legally be published. With his radical vocabulary and exceptional art is to make one feel- to defrost unorthodox style of writing, Ginsberg’s poems were emotions and sensations that have been numb for heresy to some and brilliant to others. Being the so long, and that is exactly what their words did for queerest of the group, much of Ginsberg’s poetry me. was inspired by his infatuation towards Burroughs, Candor and humility were part of the thread that Kerouac and other various Beats he encountered. strung together Kerouac’s words, becoming stitches in a boundless fabric that like a Native American deeper level.