Faculty of Arts and Philosophy 2015-2016

Julie Stokx

WOMEN EDITING BEAT LITTLE MAGAZINES

Analyzing Hettie Jones’ Role as Co-editor of the Beat Little Magazine “Yugen” (1958-1962)

Promotor: Professor dr. Isabelle Meuret

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in American Studies Acknowledgments

Studying literature, I have always enjoyed reading. However, I never thought about how manuscripts of famous writers actually found their way to printed works. Thus, when I first started this project, researching the editing work of the women of the Beat Generation, I did not realize that I would become so interested in the actual process of editing and publishing. And, yet, today I pay more and more attention to the way texts are crafted, and, to the small names in books under the actual author. While the creative minds of our time, writing beautiful poetry and stories, continue to amaze me, I cannot help but ask “what about the editors?”

Thus, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to write about this aspect, which I knew so little about. Of course, I would not have been able to do it alone. Therefore, I want to thank my promoter Professor dr. Isabelle Meuret for her advice, feedback, and inspiration. I also appreciated all the support of the other professors of the MAAS-program and my fellow colleagues. Lastly, I want to thank Hettie Jones. I was able to have a correspondence with her about her time working as an editor of the little magazine Yugen. Not only did her answers to my questions add great depth to my research, she will also forever inspire me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction ...... 2 II. Theoretical Framework ...... 6 1. The Little Magazine in America ...... 6 1.1 Definition ...... 6 1.2 Historical Context: Magazines and the Mass Market ...... 8 1.3 Characteristics of Little Magazines ...... 11 2. The Beat Generation ...... 15 2.1 Rebels at a Time of Conformity and Repression ...... 16 2.2 “This is really a Beat Generation” ...... 17 2.3 Silent Girls in Black: The Women of the Beat Generation ...... 21 2.3.1 Historical Context: the Domestic Ideal of the 1950s ...... 21 2.3.2 Women Beats ...... 24 3. The Little Magazines of the Beat Generation ...... 28 3.1 Beats and the Media ...... 29 3.2 Beat Little Magazines ...... 30 3.3 Women editors ...... 33 III. Analysis ...... 38 1. Methodology ...... 38 2. Setting the Scene: the Editors, the Story, the Magazine ...... 38 3. Analysis of Yugen and the role of Hettie Jones as co-editor ...... 42 3.1 Editorial policy ...... 42 3.2 Content and contributors ...... 43 3.3 Financial Issues ...... 46 3.4 Production ...... 48 3.6 Audience ...... 49 3.7 Editorial Strategy ...... 49 3.8 Yugen’s Impact on the Beat Generation and on Hettie Jones ...... 50 3.9 “So, were you just the typist?” ...... 52 IV. Conclusion ...... 55 Bibliography ...... 57 Appendix ...... 61

1 I. Introduction

In the 1950s many literary “little” magazines started to appear in the United States. These little magazines were called little, not so much because of their actual size, but because of their small audience, their short lifespan, and their little economic profit. The literary content of these magazines was considered not commercial. This meant that the writers published in little magazines were usually unknown, or that their material was avant-garde or experimental. While the type of content of little magazines varied from fiction and poetry to literary criticism, it was characterized by its nonconformity and eccentricity.1 This kind of material was not suited for the money-minded popular periodicals because, unlike the editors of little magazines, their editors had to take the literary tastes of their audience into account. And, these popular periodicals were often more concerned about actually selling the magazines and making a profit from them. Conversely, the intent of the editors of little magazines was selfless. They wanted to give new writers and new literary movements a platform. Little magazines were not a specific phenomenon of 1950s America, although there was definitely an increase in such magazines at that time. Indeed, little magazines had been around since the nineteenth century, and there were many examples of little magazines in Britain and other parts of the world.2

Additionally, during the 1950s, a new literary movement that originated in the late 1940s, started to flourish: the Beat generation. This generation is mostly known for its three main literary icons: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. However, there were more writers that but it also included Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti as well as the younger generation of beat writers such as Bob Kaufmann and LeRoi Jones. Also, women were no strangers to the Beat Generation, often, seen as a “boy-gang,” centered on the famous male writers. The contributions of women were ignored and the women themselves were labeled as “silent beat chicks.” The omission of the women of the Beat generation from history and the literary canon is an often-studied phenomenon. Since the 1990s, feminist and Beat scholars and have continuously made efforts to recognize the significance of these women Beats.

1 Eliot Anderson and Mary Kinzie, eds., The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History, (New York: The Pushcart Press, 1978), 3. 2 Ibid.

2 Additionally, these women were often the “agents of their own recovery by writing themselves into Beat and postwar history” via memoirs. Among the most famous women of the Beat generation are Joyce Johnson, Diane di Prima and Hettie Jones.3

The surge of little magazines in the 1950s and the emergence of the Beat generation were connected. Even though, critics frequently claim that there is no truly “beat little magazine,” multiple little magazines were publishing beat poetry before mainstream publishing caught on. One of those little magazines was Yugen: A New Consciousness in Arts and Letters (1958-1962). It only ran for eight issues but offers such a wide range of literature that it can be compared to the many poetry anthologies that were documenting the New American Poetry. These anthologies were published after 1960, such as Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry: 1945-1960. In Yugen a similar diversity of material can be noticed. To illustrate, in Yugen 1 Jack Micheline, a lesser known beat, and Allen Ginsberg appear side by side, and Yugen 4 presents work of both Jack Kerouac and New York School poet Frank O’Hara. Although Yugen is frequently mentioned as an important little magazine in both beat and little magazine studies, a comprehensive analysis of the magazine as such is missing. According to The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Yugen was one of the only magazines that “ended up looking anything like an American beat little magazine.”4 However, since the magazine published works of various schools of poetry, can it really be characterized as a Beat little magazine?

Yugen was a project created by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (1934-2004) and Hettie Jones (1934-) in New York. They were married at the time and they put the magazine together, by hand, and sold it for 50 cents a copy. In her memoir, Hettie Jones states that Yugen was LeRoi’s idea but that she “threw herself at it.”5 She was the one who did all of the physical work, such as typing and binding, while also contributing to the selection and editing of the texts that appeared in the magazine. Hettie Jones also maintained a full-time job at Partisan Review, a popular though alternative literary magazine, and was able to provide a far wider audience for Yugen than most little magazines at that time because of the connections she made at Partisan. Even though Hettie Jones was clearly an important part

3 Nancy M. Grace, and Ronna C. Johnson, ed., Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002) 3. 4 Peter Brooker, and Andrew Thacker ed., The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Volume II, North America 1894-1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1024. 5 Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones (New York: Grove Press, 1990), 53.

3 of Yugen, she is often ignored in the historical narrative. Indeed, some studies have acknowledged her work, specifically studies that focus on the Beat Generation and the women of the Beat Generation. Still, others do not, or merely mention her as the typist, and give all the credit to LeRoi Jones. However, it is very clear that she was a lot more than the typist and that the project of Yugen was collaboration, rather than a one-man-job. By looking at her and LeRoi’s memoir, interviews, and accounts of other beat writers, and given that her name is on the magazine itself, Hettie’s significance as an editor is evident.

Thus, a few questions remain unanswered in both the area of Yugen and the role of its co- editor Hettie Jones. Firstly, what kind of magazine is Yugen? Can it be described as beat? And, what kind of influence did it have in that literary community in New York? Furthermore, what was its purpose, audience, or financing like? Secondly, what exactly did Hettie Jones do in the magazine? What was her editorial strategy? And, did her time at Yugen have a significant impact on her?

To answer these questions, I analyze both the little magazine Yugen and the role of its co- editor. This dissertation is divided into two parts. First, I offer a discussion of the little magazine in America. After defining the term and contextualizing the emergence of little magazines, I consider a few characteristics of the typical little magazine. These characteristics will be applied in the analysis chapter. Next, I explore the Beat Generation, its definitions, characteristics, and main members will be discussed here. Subsequently, the women Beats will be addressed. Finally, I will consider how these two areas – little magazines and women of the Beat Generation – intersect. Thus, an overview of women in editing will be provided. In the second part of this thesis, the case-study of Hettie Jones as a co-editor of Yugen will be thoroughly analyzed. The focus will be on the editorial policy, the contributors of the magazine, the financial issues, and production of the magazine. Each of these aspects will be connected to the role of Hettie Jones. However, primarily the parts on the editorial strategy and the impact of Yugen, as well as a separate section discussing her as an editor, will deal with Hettie Jones’ role in the magazine.

Essentially, I will demonstrate that Yugen is a beat little magazine because of its content, editorial policy, funding, audience, and impact. This will suggest that this little magazine had a fundamental role in supporting and promoting the authors of the Beat Generation and that it was vital in the creation of a literary community. Furthermore, I argue that Hettie

4 Jones was an active editor of Yugen, even though critics have often limited her importance. This will prove that women had an important role in the editing and publishing of Beat Generation literature.

5 II. Theoretical Framework

1. The Little Magazine in America

1.1 Definition

In The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography (1947), Frederick J. Hoffman, Charles Allen and Carolyn F. Ulrich proposed a definition in their influential study of little magazines from 1912 to 1945. More recent little magazine studies still use this seminal work as a source for their research. These include Eliot Anderson and Mary Kinzie’s The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History (1978), which discusses little magazines from 1950 to the late 1970s, and Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz’s The Little Magazine in Contemporary America (2015), which concentrates on little magazines from the 1980s to the present day.6 Accordingly, the definition of Hoffman et al. will also be considered in this dissertation.

Hoffman et al. define little magazines as magazines “designed to print artistic work, which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses.”7 Anderson and Kinzie elaborate on this definition, highlighting the artistic value of little magazines: “little magazines generally put experiment before ease and art before comment.”8 Furthermore, they emphasize the financial aspect: “as a rule, they do not and cannot expect to make money.”9 Similarly, Morris and Diaz include “penury” as one of the key characteristics of little magazine publishing.10 However, they mainly emphasize the significant role of little magazines “to promote the avant-garde.” They assert that “little magazines function as a ‘front guard’ that anticipates the newest movements in literature, politics, and art.”11

6 Frederick J. Hoffman, Charles Allen and Carolyn F. Ulrich eds., The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1947); Eliot Anderson and Mary Kinzie, eds., The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History, (New York: The Pushcart Press, 1978); Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 7 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 2. 8 Anderson and Kinzie, The Little Magazine in America, 3. 9 Ibid. 10 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemportary America, x. 11 Ibid., xiv-xv.

6 Essentially, a little magazine was characterized by its specific artistic content and its little funds. However, these magazines were called little not because of these aspects, or because of their physical size – Hoffman et al. note that they were in fact always small. Actually, their littleness derived from their audience. Hoffman et al. describe this audience as “a limited group of intelligent readers” who were interested in learning about new literary and artistic movements.”12 Consequently, little magazines usually arose from a community of people with common literary or artistic interests. 13 Finally, little magazines can be categorized as such because of the way they were produced, their impact and function, and the intent of their editors. These aspects will be discussed in a separate section below.

Although little magazines were mainly designed to publish literature – primarily poetry and fiction – other content could find its way to little magazines. Examples include literary criticism, art in the form of drawings and paintings, and even political manifestos.14 Hoffman et al. attempted to categorize little magazines from 1912 on by their content, and differentiated six types: poetry, leftist, regional, experimental, critical and eclectic little magazines. However, they emphasize that this kind of classification was merely “in the interest of convenience” when discussing a large corpus of little magazines. Usually, these categories overlapped.15 Moreover, Hoffman et al., as well as Anderson and Kinzie and Morris and Diaz, recommend considering a little magazine on itself in its proper literary, cultural, and historical context.16

LeRoi and Hettie Jones published the first issue of their little magazine Yugen in 1958. However, according to Hoffman et al., the United States had witnessed a long history of little magazines. Already in the nineteenth century, Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson printed The Dial (Boston, 1840-1844): “the parent of the American little magazine.”17 Thus, Yugen emerged at a time where little magazines were widespread – Warren French states in his 1961 article about little magazines that there had never been as

12 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 3. 13 Michael Anania, “Of Living Belfry and Rampart: On American Literary Magazines since 1950,” in The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History, edited by Eliot Anderson and Mary Kinzie (New York: The Pushcart Press, 1978), 11; Andrew Thacker and Peter Brooker eds., The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Volume II, North America 1894-1960, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 7. 14 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, x. 15 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 8. 16 Ibid., 8-17; Anderson and Kinzie, The Little Magazine in America, 3-5; Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, vii-xiv. 17 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 7.

7 many little magazines as in the 1950s 18 – and the genre already well established. Subsequently, the history of this specific kind of magazine has to be taken into account.

1.2 Historical Context: Magazines and the Mass Market

According to Andrew Thacker, a surge in the production of little magazines occurred in the beginning of the twentieth century.19 As aforementioned, little magazines were distributed already in the nineteenth century. However, the following century witnessed a significant increase. Thacker observes a similar increase in the publication of magazines in general. To illustrate, the amount of magazines in the US in 1860 was 575. By 1905, that amount had risen to 7500. Thacker believes this was a result of “improvements in printing technology” and “cheaper postal rates.” He also highlights the growing public interest in illustrated magazines. Resultantly, it became considerably easier and cheaper to produce a magazine. Moreover, the magazines’ prices dropped which, in turn, generated more circulation. Furthermore, Thacker connects this development to the growth of industrial production in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Consequently, the rise in “consumer goods” needed new and more markets. To reach these new markets, industries relied heavily on advertising. Naturally, magazines benefitted. Specifically, the “mass-market magazines” – magazines for mass markets about mass culture: sports, fashion, literature, celebrities, entertainment, society, and current events, such as McClure’s and Ladies Home Journal20 – filled their magazines up with advertisements. Thacker states that, by 1908, 54 % of the content of these magazines consisted of advertisements.21

Thacker asserts that the emergence of little magazines must be considered in this context of that mass market. Indeed, he perceives early little magazines to be “a simple rejection of the culture of the mass market.”22 Additionally, John Tebbel and Mary Zuckerman indicate

18 Warren French, “Little Magazines in the Fifties,” College English 22, no. 8 (1961), 547. 19 Andrew Thacker, “General Introduction,” in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Volume II, North America 1894-1960, edited by Andrew Thacker and Peter Brooker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 22. 20 The Gale Group Inc., “Mass Market Magazine Revolution,” St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, 2000, accessed July 10, 2016, http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3409001606/mass-market- magazine-revolution.html 21 Thacker, “General Introduction,” 22. 22 Ibid., 23.

8 the emerging consumer culture, specifically as a factor in the growth of little magazines. In the nineteenth century “quality monthlies” and “literary weeklies” were willing to print anything literary. However, at the turn of the century, the contents of such magazines needed to be aligned with the new, larger audiences. Editors did not want to risk their success by publishing literature that was too avant-garde for their wide-ranging audiences.23 Moreover, they did not want to lose their sponsors who bought advertisement space. Thus, by relying on advertisements the “periodical codes” were influenced.24 In general, little magazines were not designed for advertisements. The little magazine did not need to be commercial; they functioned primarily as a sponsor of innovative literature. However, Thacker does mention that the American little magazine occasionally used advertisements. He compares them to British little magazines that never published any advertisements. Primarily, advertisements in American little magazines were for other little magazines, for new small presses and bookshops, or for events, plays, and readings of poets and artists. These kinds of advertisements were part of the creation of a literary community and this was one of the key aspects of little magazine publishing.25

The history of the American little magazine officially started in 1912. However, its main precursor was The Dial, which was primarily focused on transcendentalism and published writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau. Other examples of nineteenth- century magazines that resembled the twentieth-century little magazines were Saturday Press (1858-1866) and M’lle New York (1895-1899). After a break, a “renaissance” of little magazines started in the 1910s. Harriet Monroe’s Poetry: A Magazine of Verse is considered the most famous and influential little magazine of that time. This magazine is still published today, which makes it an exception among other little magazines. Ezra Pound functioned as a foreign correspondent for this magazine between 1912-1917.26 The Little Review (1914-1929) edited by Margaret Anderson is another influential modernist little magazine. Notable contributors were Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, William Carlos Williams, and W.B. Yeats. 27 Other magazines include the Masses (1911-1917) by editors Floyd Dell and Max Eastman, and Alfred

23 John Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, eds., The Magazine in America: 1741-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 213. 24 Thacker, “General Introduction,” 22. 25 Ibid., 7. 26 Jayne Marek, Women Editing Modernism (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 24-57. 27 Ibid., 60-61.

9 Kreymborg’s Others (1915-1919).28 These little magazines were essential in the growth of new literary movements. Herein lies the cultural and historical significance of these types of magazines. Thacker asserts that modernism “took roots first in periodical publishing.” He also notes that without that kind of publishing modernism would not be the same.29

From the 1920s on, American universities became vital in the process of little magazine publishing. They started sponsoring little magazines that were specifically linked to the institution. Universities were primarily interested in the publicity that these magazines offered, but they also supported new literary movements. Tim Woods questions the notion of rebellion in such magazines and describes them as “academic magazines” rather than little magazines. Fundamentally, the editors of university based magazines were hindered by the authority of the university to censor material that was considered unfit “for the image of major institutions of education as upholders of social morals and the standards of public culture.”30 An example of such a magazine was Chicago Review (1946-), and a particularly controversial episode in its history shows exactly what the difference between an academic and little magazine is.31 The 1958 spring issue of the University of Chicago’s Chicago Review concentrated on a new group of avant-garde writers from San Francisco. It featured Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Lamantia, John Wieners, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and the first chapter of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Then, the summer issue continued this trend. It had a “Zen theme” and published Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Whalen. In the fall issue, similar experimental writing appeared from Joel Oppenheimer, Whalen, Brother Antonius and the second chapter of Naked Lunch. All the issues had spurred controversy among the readers of Chicago Review. However, the University of Chicago decided that the last issue was overboard and they threatened to end the magazine if the editors did not “tone [it] down.”32 Consequently, one of the editors Irving Rosenthal decided he no longer wanted to be

28 Tebbel and Zuckerman, The Magazine in America, 215. 29 Thacker, “General Introduction,” 1. 30 Tim Woods, “Academic Magazines,” in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Volume II, North America 1894-1960, edited by Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 945. 31 Warren French, “Little Magazines in the Fifties,” College English 22, no. 8 (1961), 547-548, 550. 32 R.J. Ellis, “ ‘Little…Only with Some Qualifications’: The Beats and Beat ‘Little Magazines,’” in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Volume II, North America 1894-1960, edited by Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1014.

10 hindered by censorship and went on to establish Big Table, a little magazine that would continue to publish the censored material from Chicago Review.33

In the 1950s, there was again a surge of little magazine publishing – although it would be the 1960s that truly developed as the decade of little magazines with the mimeograph revolution.34 Michael Anania argues that the magazines in the 1950s had really close ties to the modernist like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. What was different about the 1950s magazines is their lack of literary criticism, essays and book reviews. These magazines focused more on poetry. Anania links this to the existence of many university- based magazines that offered that kind of material instead. Just like the little magazines promoted the modernist literature of the early twentieth century, Beat Generation writers and other groups benefitted greatly from this type of literary magazine in the 1950s.35 In part II.3.2 of this dissertation, I will discuss some beat little magazines briefly to set the context for the analysis of Yugen.

1.3 Characteristics of Little Magazines

Although little magazines should be considered separately, there are certain characteristics that typify them. Thus, it is useful to list these characteristics in order to analyze the little magazine discussed in this dissertation.

Firstly, little magazines were recognized by their content. While this was usually poetry and fiction, non-literary pieces were accepted.36 However, the content’s foremost aspect was its avant-garde nature.37 Little magazines published primarily unknown or relatively unknown writers and, consequently, promoted “new and unorthodox literary theories and practices.”38 Little magazines thrived on experimentation with new forms of expression. Accordingly, editors frequently discovered innovative artists and were able to promote their early work.39 Unfortunately, the little magazine’s avant-garde spirit could hinder the

33 Ibid., 1014-1015. 34 Anania, “Of Living Belfry and Rampart,” 14-15. 35 Ibid. 36 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, x. 37 Anania, “Of Living Belfry and Rampart,” 11. 38 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 4. 39 Ibid., 2

11 appreciation of its readers. Often, little magazines published material merely for its “novelty,” which led to the accusation that their editors certainly printed new artistic pieces, but not necessarily quality work.40 Yet, little magazines did have the benefit that their content did not need to be “stylistically conform, or categorically topical.” 41 Essentially, they were able to do what the commercial magazines could not: ignore public taste and go against the literary conventions and traditions.42

Secondly, financial obstacles were a typical feature of little magazines. Editors generally did not make any profit from publishing a little magazine. Additionally, they even had to be prepared to lose money. Being poor was part of creating a little magazine.43 However, that did not stop the editors. As Daisy Aldan, editor of Folder (1953-1956) put it: “Certainly being poor never deterred a really gifted person from creating art.”44 Morris and Diaz state that this quote might as well be the motto of little magazines.45 Usually, the editors financed little magazines themselves, without any sponsors. This was possible because the production of a little magazine was relatively inexpensive. To illustrate, the emergence of offset printing46 at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century provided an easy method to print material. In the sixties, the mimeograph machine47 made that process even easier and cheaper.48 Essentially, any resources that were required were accessible. Additionally, the editors did most of the work themselves: typing, editing, printing, and binding. Naturally, this meant that little magazines did not always look as professional as commercial magazines. 49 Furthermore, apart from promoting similar little magazines as a way of mutual advertising, editors generally

40 Ibid., 5. 41 Anderson and Kinzie, The Little Magazine in America, 3. 42 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 2-4. 43 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, x; Anderson and Kinzie, The Little Magazine in America, 3; Hoffman, The Little Magazine, 2. 44 Dennis Barone, “Daisy Aldan, An Interview on Folder,” in The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History edited by Eliot Anderson and Mary Kinzie (New York: The Pushcart Press, 1978), 278. 45 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, xi. 46 This was “also called offset lithography, or litho-offset, in commercial printing a widely used printing technique in which the inked image on a printing plate is printed on a rubber cylinder and then transferred (i.e., offset) to paper or other material.” Encyclopedia Brittanica Online, s.v.,“Offset Printing,” accessed July 15, 2016, 47 A “ duplicator for making many copies that utilizes a stencil through which ink is pressed” Merriam Webster Dictionary Online, s.v., “Mimeograph,” accessed July 15, 2016, 48 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, xi-xii. explain dictionnary of media and communications 49 Ibid., xii.

12 deferred from using advertisements as an income – as explained above.50 Moreover, the editors did not need to pay the contributors of the magazines. Because of the writers’ limited recognition, appearing in a magazine usually sufficed for them.51 Thus, a little magazine could be considered as a non-commercial endeavor. Subsequently, it was not intended to be profitable. However, that did influence their survival. More often than not, little magazines collapsed because of lack of funds.52

That leads to the third characteristic of little magazines: their “probability of collapse.”53 Usually, financial problems caused a little magazine to cease its existence. However, there were other explanations. Firstly, the lifespan of a little magazine went hand in hand with the interests of its editors. Either they were frustrated with and no longer passionate about creating little magazines or the new movement that their magazine was promoting had become mainstream or had ceased to exist. Secondly, sometimes editors decided on publishing a set amount of issues of a little magazine. This was generally linked to the amount of funds that were available, though. Thirdly, the little magazine’s content could sometimes be too avant-garde and offend certain people. This could lead to government persecution of the editors, or a censorship trial, and, consequently, the end of the magazine. Lastly, the magazine could perish if – when there was more than one editor – the editors had a misunderstanding, either in general, about the direction of the magazine, or about the distribution of responsibilities.54

A little magazine usually had one or two editors. Naturally, they were an important element to little magazines and their personality constitutes the fourth aspect of little magazines. According to Hoffman et al. the history of little magazines is “a history of personalities.”55 This explains why every little magazine was different. Editors of little magazines were sometimes contributors themselves. Generally, they were dissatisfied with the literary status quo or with publishers who ignored artistic work because it did not conform to the “conventional tastes and choices.”56 These editors were always convinced

50 Ibid.; Anania, “Of Living Belfry and Rampart,” 18. 51 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 2. 52 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 5; Anania, “Of Living Belfry and Rampart,” 10. 53 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazines, 5. 54 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 5; Anania, “Of Living Belfry and Rampart,” 10. 55 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, v. 56 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, ix; Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 3.

13 that “our attitudes toward literature need to be reformed or at least made more liberal.”57 Ultimately, their intention remained pure and selfless. They produced art for art’s sake and not for any commercial gain. Essentially, they were the guardians of innovation, but also “by necessity innovators” themselves, “operating outside of prevailing modes of commercial publishing.”58 The purpose of the editors was expressed in the editorial policy or statement. Although this became in some cases merely “a ritualistic declaration and part of the magazine’s acknowledgment of its lineage among magazines of the first part of the century,”59 it did express the ideals and purpose of a little magazine. Moreover, it explained the “school of political or aesthetic thought” the magazine was expressing and represented the “urgency with which [the editors] felt a reform in modern letters was needed.”60 However, it could also simply be “an expression of generosity to those who are akin in spirit.”61

The fifth characteristic of little magazines, its audience, essentially indicated its littleness. This was always a select and small group of people, interested in the specific artistic quality of a little magazine. To illustrate, the circulation of a particular little magazine typically did not exceed 1000 subscribers. This “specialized readership” accepted the editors’ choices. 62 Morris and Diaz explain that: “altering […] content for to attract more subscribers would strike most little magazine editors as precisely beside the point.”63 Furthermore, Michael Anania emphasizes that little magazines were really created for writers and not for readers. Though “readers are welcome, sometimes even actively sought out,” little magazines were often created in a community of writers, as well as bought and read by writers.64

Lastly, the significance or impact of a little magazine was an important quality. Primarily, it had an important role in supporting and introducing new literary movements. In the 1920s and 1930s, little magazines played a vital role in the emergence of modernism. In the 1950s and 1960s, they were an essential part of the budding countercultural

57 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 5. 58 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, xii. 59 Anania, “Of Living Belfry and Rampart,” 11. 60 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 5. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid., 2. 63 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, xi. 64 Anania, “Of Living Belfry and Rampart,” 10.

14 movement.65 Accordingly, little magazines contributed significantly to twentieth-century history by giving it “an abundance of suggestions and styles which popular or academic taste scarcely could tolerate or accept.”66 Consequently, little magazines are also a “source of information about twentieth-century writing.”67 Additionally, the little magazine was often the only place a new writer could be published. This motivated new writers and installed confidence in them to continue their literary experiments.68 Editors often accepted “second rate writing” when they saw real talent.69 Indeed, editors founded little magazines precisely “to overcome the commercial and material difficulties” that writers face “whose commercial merits [had] not been proven.”70 This publishing opportunity provided the writer with recognition, which sometimes led to mainstream “money-minded” presses and periodicals to accept them as legitimate authors.71 Frequently, editors of book publishing houses and established periodicals even “scanned through the pages of little magazines looking for new talent.”72 Finally, the little magazine’s importance lies with the people that surrounded it. Undeniably, by bringing together like-minded people, little magazines stimulated the creation of literary communities.73 Herein lies their vital importance in literary history.

2. The Beat Generation

One of those literary communities stimulated by little magazines was the Beat Generation. This American literary and cultural movement originated in the 1940s and fully developed in the 1950s. While it began in New York, the Beat movement also developed in San Francisco. There, it had close ties with the San Francisco literary renaissance and the New York School poets.74 Additionally, the Beats were often linked to the Black Mountain Poets in, who were students of the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an avant-

65 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, ix. 66 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 4. 67 Ibid., v. 68 Anderson and Kinzie, The Little Magazine in America, 3. 69 Hoffman et al., The Little Magazine, 15. 70 Ibid., 5. 71 Ibid., 3. 72 John Tebbel, The American Magazine: A Compact History (New York: Hawthorn Books Inc., 1969), 214. 73 Morris and Diaz, The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, xi. 74 William T. Lawlor, ed., Beat Culture: Icons, Lifestyles, and Impact (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2005), xiii.

15 garde school that focused on “an alternative liberal arts education gained through communal experience and interdisciplinary study.”75

2.1 Rebels at a Time of Conformity and Repression

The historical and social context of postwar American society was important for the Beat movement. Martin Halliwell describes the 1950s as a period marked by “dualities, tensions, and contradictions.”76 To illustrate, World War II had a significant and beneficial impact on the American economy. Consequently, the life standard of Americans improved drastically. Primarily middle-class Americans had the opportunity to enjoy the subsequent improvements in housing and education, and the ability to afford the many new consumer products. The development of a culture of mass consumption was well under way. Essentially, the growth in industrial production had not only affected the magazines, but also society in general. Indeed, materialism had become the new way to happiness. Furthermore, the American soldiers had come home and were eager to resume their pre- war jobs and to settle down in the suburbs with their wives and children.77

Despite these improvements, the decade was also burdened by the aftermath of the war. The events of the Holocaust and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 had shocked the world. The creation of Hydrogen Bombs and the emergence of the Cold War, the arms race, and the Nuclear Age made people fear the possibility of the complete man-made destruction of humanity. Essentially, the fear of a nuclear attack and anxieties caused by the Cold War left American society in distress. Although the Soviet Union was the main enemy, the Cold War also roared at home. The idea of communism scared the American people and there was a legitimate fear of communist traitors seeking to destroy the American way of life from within. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt and the subsequent Red Scare further stimulated that climate of suspicion.78 Additionally,

75 Terrence Diggory, Encyclopedia of the New York School Poets (New York: Facts on File, 2013), 64; Among the Black Mountain poets were Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Larry Eigner, Paul Blackburn, Hilda Morley, John Wieners, Jonathan Williams, Fielding Dawson, Joel Oppenheimer, and Denise Levertov. (Diggory, 64-65) 76 Martin Halliwell, American Culture in the 1950s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 3. 77 Ibid., 1-3. 78 Ibid., 2.

16 the inauguration of Eisenhower in 1953 promoted an image of conservatism in the US.79 Essentially, the times were changing and American society was desperate to hold on to traditional values. Moreover, the conformism and consumerism of the decade both fit in the Cold War ideology that was projecting an American way of life, full of opportunities, happy families, and freedom. Fundamentally, this combination of a changing society and prevailing anxieties led to a decade of “inward-looking conservatism.”80

During this period of turbulence and conformism, “the Beat spirit was born.”81 Essentially, not everyone was on board with the reaffirmation of conservative traditional values. From this paradox of fear and anxiety versus domestic bliss and economic consumerism, arose a generation of “disaffiliated young people” who were not only influenced by the aftermath of the war but also seriously questioned the image of happiness and prosperity that the American media was putting forward.82 William Lawlor states that the Beats did not believe in the benefits of consumerism in the context of the fear of a nuclear attack: “What good were a house with a picket fence, a shiny car, and a washing machine if one had to dig a fallout shelter and be ready to enter it at a moment’s notice?” Moreover, the Beats laughed in the face of conformity because “[w]hat good were a career and social status if society required conformity in dress, language, taste, and thought?” Lastly, they were upset with how society dealt with difference and nonconformity: “What good was a family if divergence from expectations about marriage and parenthood meant that sons and daughters might be committed to institutions for mental health and undergo electroshock treatment?”83 The Beats rebelled against the conformist spirit of the 1950s by professing “individuality,” “spontaneity,” and “a desire to dismantle control.”84

2.2 “This is really a Beat Generation”

The Beat Generation is characterized by its heterogeneity. Consequently, there are multiple definitions of the Beat spirit. Moreover, Beat writing does not have a fixed set of

79 Ibid., 7 80 Ibid., 3. 81 Regina Weinreich, “The Beat Generation is Now About Everything,” in Postwar American Literature and Culture. Edited by Josephine Hendin (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004), 72. 82 Ibid. 83 Lawlor, Beat Culture, xiv. 84 Ibid. Xiii-xiv.

17 characteristics.85 Of course, beat writers and critics have made efforts to define this countercultural movement. Jack Kerouac – “king of the Beats” and author of the quintessential Beat novel On the Road (1957) – used the term “Beat Generation” during a conversation with his friend and writer John Clellon Holmes in 1948.86 They were pondering about the Lost Generation – the post-World War I group of writers like Ernest Hemingway who were disillusioned about the horrors of the war – and Kerouac decidedly called their current generation “really a Beat Generation.”87 In 1952, Holmes introduced the term to the world in his article “This is the Beat Generation.” In it, he believed this generation had been influenced by the war and therefore had something in common, a “general quality which demands an adjective.”88 Holmes described “beat” as followed:

More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. A man is beat whenever he goes for broke and wagers the sum of his resources on a single number; and the young generation has done that continually from early youth.89

In 1959, when the Beat Generation had become notorious in American society, Playboy asked Kerouac to explain what his definition of his generation was. He called it a “slogan or label for a revolution in manners in America.”90 “Beat,” however had various meanings according to him, ranging from “poor, down and out, deadbeat, on the bum, sad, sleeping in subways” to people that had a “new gesture or attitude” that Kerouac described as “a new more.”91 In this article, Kerouac described how his friend Herbert Huncke, a Times Square hustler, had originally coined the word “beat” in 1944 while talking with Kerouac and William Burroughs in relation to drugs. Kerouac accounts how Huncke said, “Man, I’m beat,” and how he immediately understood what Huncke meant.92 However, “beat” had been used in Jazz circles after the Second World War where it meant “poor and

85 Nancy M. Grace and Ronna C. Johnson, eds., Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 2-3. 86 Ann Charters, Beat Down to Your Soul: What Was the Beat Generation? (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), xv-xvi. 87 88 John Clellon Holmes, “This is the Beat Generation,” in The Beat Generation: A Gale Critical Companion ed. Lynn M. Zott (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2003), 4. 89 Ibid. 90 Jack Kerouac, “The Origins of the Beat Generation,” in The Beat Generation: A Gale Critical Companion ed. Lynn M. Zott (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2003), 22. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid., 23.

18 exhausted.” Moreover, Ann Charters observes that the word was used as early as the Civil War, where it was applied to men who disregarded their military duty. Later the meaning broadened and people traveling with circuses used it. Here it related to having no place to stay. In the twentieth century, “beat” received its drug connotation. It could refer to an addict being in “acute physical distress.” However, used as a verb, it indicated, “to be cheated or robbed,” specifically in the context of a drug deal.93 Then, Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg added a spiritual meaning to the word. Ginsberg was convinced it was more than “a slang term used by junkies and jazz musicians.” Indeed, he understood it as being “wide eyed” or “receptive to a vision.” He was thinking of poets like William Blake and Walt Whitman and how they expressed this openness of mind. Furthermore, Kerouac, a catholic himself, saw a religious element in the word beat because he associated it to the word “beatific.” Essentially, this referred to “possessing beatitude,” thus, having a saintly or angelic appearance. Kerouac thought of this when he was visiting a church in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, where he became fascinated by “the holy silence of the church.”94 Additionally, that spirituality of the Beats was noticeable in their interest in Eastern religions philosophies, and meditation. Many Beats found “refuge” in the teachings of Zen Buddhism.95

Others have often questioned the term generation. Beat author Gary Snyder argued that there was no such thing as a Beat Generation since only three or four people belonged to it, namely Herbert Huncke, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac. He subsequently stated, “Four people don’t make up a generation.”96 Hettie Jones expressed a similar concern when she was asked about her identification with the Beat Generation. She called term a “misnomer” explaining that “at one point everyone identified with it [the Beat Generation] could fit into my living room, and I didn’t think that a whole generation could fit into my living room.”97 Jones and her husband LeRoi Jones frequently hosted gatherings in their apartment in Greenwich Village, which became one of New York’s central hangouts for Beat writers. However, she adds that the movement became so

93 Charters, Beat Down to your Soul, xiii. 94 Ibid. 95 Lawlor, Beat Culture, xv. 96 Ibid., xv. 97 Ibid., 618.

19 popular at the end of the 1950s that “pretty soon the parties got so big that the whole generation couldn’t fit in my living room.”98

Beat literature was as heterogeneous as its adherents. Some recurring characteristics are “spontaneous composition, direct expression of mind, no censorious revision, Jazz-based improvisation.”99 Because the Beats’ themes were difficult to express in conventional modes, they had to find inspiration in the “rhythms and accents of natural speech” and “the unpredictable flow of jazz phrasing.” Furthermore, they were inspired by Walt Whitman’s long verses and his attention to detail. And they drew from “the imagism of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound.” Surrealism in poetry and paintings was also one of their main inspirations.100

Of course, there were more than three people in the Beat Generation. However, Kerouac (1922-1969), Ginsberg (1926-1997), and Burroughs (1914-1997) were indeed the chief representatives of this movement. Their seminal beat works, respectively, On the Road (1957), “Howl” (1956), and Naked Lunch (1959) were characterized by “spontaneity, an unwillingness to revise, and anarchist spirit, and the influence of jazz music.”101 The famous poetry reading Six Gallery in San Francisco, where Ginsberg introduced his poem “Howl,” on October 7, 1955, could even be considered as an unofficial start of the Beats’ popularity. Ginsberg described his poem as a “protest against the dehumanizing mechanization of American culture.”102

While Kerouac was seen as the main example of a beat writer and the inventor of the term “Beat Generation,” Ginsberg is credited with the promotion of the movement in the media and in literary criticism. Additionally, he was the glue that held everyone together and “the charismatic person whose personal contacts and public oratory helped the Beats to emerge, flourish, and endure.”103 Burroughs, then, was the oldest of the group and “had the intellectual resources to stimulate diverse reading and conversation.”104 Other influential

98 Ibid., 623. 99 Grace and Johnson, Girls Who Wore Black, 2. 100 Lawlor, Beat culture, xv. 101 Weinreich, “The Beat Generation is Now About Everything,” 72. 102 Ann Charters, Beat Down to Your Soul, xv-xvi. 103 Lawlor, Beat Culture, xiii. 104 Ibid., xii-xiv.

20 Beat authors include Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Ted Joans, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, and LeRoi Jones.

2.3 Silent Girls in Black: The Women of the Beat Generation

As iconic as its male figures are, a large group of women was also part of the Beat Generation. Unfortunately, they have often been left out of the historical narrative. Until the efforts of feminist critics to recover women writers of the twentieth century, it seemed that women Beats were relatively nonexistent. The women that were present were referred to as “silent girls in black” or “Beat chicks,” implying they were merely girlfriends and sexual partners of the male Beats.105 Now, however, it is clear that they contributed substantially to the canon of the Beat literature. They have written poetry and fiction, but their main contribution to literary history was in the form multiple memoirs that reveal much about the Beat Generation as well as what it meant to be a woman in American society of the 1950s. Consequently, the omission of women from the narrative surrounding the Beat Generation is problematic. It distorts the history of this artistic community.106 Ultimately, by acknowledging women Beats, the Beat Generation can be considered in a broader perspective and prevailing gender roles of the 1950s can be challenged.

2.3.1 Historical Context: the Domestic Ideal of the 1950s

The 1950s have often been described as a period of conservatism for women. During the war, their efforts to support the domestic economy by taking over the men’s jobs, while simultaneously providing for their family, were celebrated. However, when the men came back from the war, the women who had replaced the men in factories and other professions were led back to the domestic sphere. The men were eager to put the memories of the war behind them and American families moved to the suburbs to live a quiet life of conformity. Women reprised their roles as wives and mothers, which required all their attention. Naturally, this postwar ideal of domesticity limited women’s professional opportunities.

105 Ronna C. Johnson, “Mapping Women Writers of the Beat Generation,” in Breaking the Rule of Cool. Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers, edited by Nancy M. Grace and Ronna C. Johnson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 3. 106 Amy L. Friedman, “ “Being There as Hard as I Could:” The Beat Generation Women Writers,” Discourse 20, no. 1 (1998), 230-231.

21 Essentially, the ground that women had won during the war years seemed to disappear.107 Moreover, the emerging Cold War also created an ideology that celebrated the stability of the American family. This had become a weapon against the communist threat and nuclear anxiety. The person in charge of that stability was the woman. As housewife and mother, she assumed the role to strengthen the family ideal and thereby providing the security that so many Americans longed for in this period of distress. Naturally, this growing importance of a domestic role for women deeply influenced their identities.108

This domestic ideal was also heavily promoted in magazines, on television, and in Hollywood movies. Consequently, the stereotype of “the women’s retreat to domesticity” became so readily recognizable that it influenced historians in their accounts on the 1950s.109 Of course, not only mass media played an important role in this perception, social scientists were also eager to promote this idea. The domestic ideal is not just based on dreamy Hollywood images. A number of signs facts strengthened it. Primarily, there was an increase in families moving to the suburbs and an increase in homeowners. Then, after the industrial shift “from war production to the production of consumer goods” home appliances such as refrigerators were sold on a large scale. Additionally, a baby boom was well under way with the average woman having 3 kids in the 1950s. Essentially, these trends promoted “the 1950s variant of the domestic ideal [where] the woman at home is repeatedly drawn as a white, middle-class, suburban mother, caring for kids in a well equipped-home.”110

In 1963, journalist Betty Friedan criticized the image of the happy housewife in her successful publication of The Feminine Mystique (1963). She explained that there was a problem “that has no name” and “that lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women.”111 Essentially, she noticed a deep dissatisfaction in women of twentieth century America:

107 Joanne Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 1-11. 108 Ibid., 3. 109 Joanne Meyerowitz, “Rewriting Postwar Women’s History, 1945-1960,” in A Companion to American Women’s History, edited by Nancy A. Hewitt (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005), 382. 110 Ibid. 111 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1963), 15.

22 Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – “Is this all?”112

Friedan argued that experts in books and articles prescribed women’s identity as wives and mothers. This domestic ideal was the embodiment of true femininity. Women, who were unhappy because of their inability to pursue their dream, whether in the form of a career or something else, were to be pitied. Moreover, said Friedan, women went to college now, only with the goal of finding a husband and no longer to establish their own identity.113 Friedan’s publication left a deep impression on many American women who recognized their own lives in The Feminine Mystique. Joanne Meyerowitz states that this book ultimately stirred protestation against the domestic ideal, and, consequently “launched the […] feminist movement.”114

However, Joanne Meyerowitz and other revisionist historians have also argued that the narrative of the domestic housewife was only part of the story of the 1950s. Undeniably, American women suffered from the societal restraints and the conservatism of the 1950s. However, Meyerowitz questions this focus on the “women’s subordination,” arguing that it “erases much of the history of the postwar years.” Not only does this “downplay women’s agency,” it also victimizes them. The postwar years witnessed tremendous social and economic changes and subsequently the 1950s woman cannot be reduced to one major ideal image. This problematizes the complexities that came out of the back of the postwar years.115 For example, it appears that there were actually more women at work during the 1950s than during the Second World War. Moreover, historians tend to see the 1950s as a period of sexual repression for women. However, “[women] also engaged actively in contemporary debates over competing visions of appropriate sexual behavior.” 116 Meyerowitz states that there are two approaches for discussing the postwar decades: scholars either focus on the conservatism of the 1950s and its association with the Cold War climate or they inquire the universality of the postwar domestic ideal. Both are still being used. However, Meyerowitz considers the second approach as more rewarding.

112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., 16-18 114 Joanne Meyerowitz, “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946- 1958,” The Journal of American History 79, no. 4 (1993), 1455-1456. 115 Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver, 4. 116 Meyerowitz, “Rewriting Postwat Women’s History,” 390.

23 Essentially, whereas the 1960s is usually seen as a reaction against the conservatism of the previous decade, that second approach considers the 1950s as the beginning of an evolution that would fully develop in the 1960s. Thus, “[i]n this view, […], the civil rights movement, feminist movement, gay liberation movement, anti-war movement, sexual revolution, and counterculture all had their roots in the postwar years.”117 This view adds more complexity to the 1950s and provides the context for the women of the Beat Generation.

2.3.2 Women Beats

During the 1950s, certain groups of young women tried to break themselves free from the restraints of domesticity. Usually, when social commentators reported on rebellion among young people, the focus was on the men.118 Of course, “the only rebellion in town,” was the Beat Generation. Stereotypically, Beats were male poets. However, Wini Breines states that women were also attracted to this “cultural rebellion.”119 The Beats were averse towards “bourgeois respectability” and “the banality of middle-class values.”120 Those values were exactly what fueled the gender expectations for women in the 1950s, and, consequently, this explains why women yearning to break free from those expectations were attracted to the Beats.121 Unfortunately, the Beats were often described as “macho and sexist.”122 They celebrated “male bonding” and “[exalted] in a brotherhood of male friendship in love.”123 Women were allowed in the boys’ club, but existed mainly for the Beats’ sexual satisfaction, or to provide for them while they went on the road or while they were pursuing their literary dreams.124 Nonetheless, the women were willing to see past the Beats’ sexism, since the “possibility to break with domesticity” was worth the price.125

That price came in multiple forms. Women who rebelled in the 1950s were often either abandoned by their families or put in mental institutions. To illustrate, during a 1992

117 Ibid., 393. 118 Wini Breines, Young, White, and Miserable: Growing up Female in the Fifties (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 128. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 136. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid., 145. 123 Ibid., 146. 124 Ibid., 143-146. 125 Ibid., 147.

24 tribute to Allen Ginsberg at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, a panel of Beat writers was organized and an audience member asked why there were so few women among the Beat writers. Gregory Corso gave a very telling answer:

There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the ‘50s if you were male you could be a rebel, but if you were female your families had you locked up. There were cases, I knew them, someday someone will write about them.126

Evidently, being part of the Beat Bohemia was already difficult in terms of general societal expectations. However, arriving in a male-dominated scene where women were primarily viewed as sexual objects enhanced these women’s struggles. Moreover, although the women wanted to part with domestic expectations, often they would fulfill their roles of wives and mothers anyway.127 Yet, this was more an appropriation of the domestic ideal. Indeed, in the context of Beat Bohemia, women were able to transform “their consignment to the domestic making that realm the place of their agency.”128 This was contrasted by the “male Beats [who] abandoned the domestic sphere, reckoning it as a point of departure for the flight from constraint.”129

The restraints of 1950s American society and the prevailing sexist environment that the Beats created made it difficult for the women of the Beat Generation to stand their ground and find their voice. Historically, they have often been neglected or omitted from the literary and cultural history of the Beats. However, this would be a mistake.130 Brenda Knight asserts that many of these women “escaped the eye of the camera,” but were still writing, albeit more underground. Moreover, she argues that these women were essential in the “literary legacy of the Beat Generation” and “participated in a revolution that forever changed the landscape of American literature.”131 Finally, by pushing boundaries and

126 Brenda Knight, Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution (Berkely CA: Conari Press, 1998), 141. 127 Nancy M. Grace and Ronna C. Johnson, Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004, 26. 128 Ibid., 28 129 Ibid. 130 Amy L. Friedman, ““Being there as hard as I could,” 229-231. 131 Brenda Knight, Women of the Beat Generation, 1-2.

25 rebelling against gender expectations, they played an essential role in paving the way for the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s.132

Additionally, the women have often been seen as “mere passive facilitators and financial supporters.”133 Indeed, often it would be the women who were supporting the men by taking on jobs so that the men could go on the road and write. Johnson explained that these women functioned in different areas of Beat Bohemia besides living their life as an artist within the Beat movement. She asserts that they functioned as editors and publishers, or as organizers of Beat salons. They were sometimes seen as merely sexual beings, however, ironically, their jobs also entailed bringing in money, keeping the house, and being a mother. Lastly, some critics see these women as muses or models for the male Beats.134 This kind of criticism essentially downplays the importance the women Beats. Especially the word “merely” is striking. Jean Stefancic, for example, relates how women in some cases actually made the whole “Beat” experience for men possible:

During the war years and later, the men broke free from social roles and gray- flannel suit lives, but only on the backs of the hard-working wives and girlfriends who steadied them and brought home the bacon.135

Moreover, they were also writers. Many of the women Beats, like Diane di Prima and Lenore Kandel, would write at the height of the Beat movement. Others, like Hettie Jones, repressed their early writing and only started later. Moreover, many of the works of women writers such as Joyce Johnson’s Come Join the Dance (1962) and Brenda Frazier’s Troia: Mexican Memoirs (1969) had gone out of print.136

Women Beats were considered the “Silent Generation.”137 Herein lies one of the causes of their omission. Most of the women assert that the male Beats did not necessarily stop them from writing; in some cases they even felt supported. On the other hand, male Beats did not actively promote the literature of women Beats. Allen Ginsberg, for example, did not

132 Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy M. Grace, Girls who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 8-9. 133 Jean Stefanic, “On the Road Without a Map: The Women of the Beat Writers.” Seattle University Law Review 37, no. 1 (2013), 19. 134 Ronna C. Johnson, “Mapping Women Writers of the Beat Generation,” 28. 135 Stefancic, “On the Road Without a Map,” 19. 136 Johnson, “Mapping Women Writers of the Beat Generation,” 4. 137 Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones (New York: Grove Press, 1990), 10.

26 believe that there were many women, he only named Diane di Prima, who were as good of a writer as Kerouac. 138 Interestingly, the male Beats were very active in promoting each other’s literature: “male beat writers, whose tightly knit community was not only a group of friends but also a powerful vehicle for developing and promoting each man’s writing.”139 Though this was limiting for women, it ultimately led to “self-reliant artistic individuality” in their experience as writers, which was one of the fundamentals of Beat writing.140 Moreover, another reason that women Beats were missing from the literary canon lies in the fact that the “boy-gang” of Beat authors gained so much attention and popularity in the years after the Beat movement was at its height.141 Literary criticism solely put their focus on the male Beats, and it seemed that the women Beats had actually not been there at all. It was not until the women “started writing themselves into Beat and postwar literary history” with numerous memoirs that literary criticism caught on.142

The literature of the female Beats was different from the male Beats. Johnson and Grace notice that a few follow the “model of spontaneous composition.”143 However, most of the women Beats were actually great revisers and “careful crafters of their texts.” This goes against the stereotypical Beat writing “which disavow revision for the purity of the unmodified literary utterance.” 144 The women were also not averse toward more “conventional poetic techniques.”145

Generally, the women of the Beat Generation are divided in three generations. The first group was born between 1910 and 1920: Madeline Gleason (1903-1979), Helen Adam ((1909-1992), Sheri Martinelli (1918-1996), Ruth Weiss (1928-), and Carol Berge (1928-). Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy M. Grace note that these women were writing at the same time as Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs and that they had a similar desire to change “traditional literary models.”146 The second generation was born in the 1930s and included Joanna McClure (1930-), Bobbie Louise Hawkins (1930-), Lenore Kandel (1932-), Elise Cowen (1933-1962), Joanne Kyger (1934-), Diane di Prima (1934-), Hettie Jones (1934-),

138 Johnson and Grace, Women who Wore Black, 4-6. 139 Ibid., 17. 140 Ibid. 141 Friedman, “Being there as hard as I could,” 230. 142 Johnson, “Mapping Women Writers of the Beat Generation,” 4. 143 Johnson and Grace, Girls who Wore Black, 16. 144 Ibid. 145 Ibid. 146 Johnson and Grace, Girls who Wore Black, 12.

27 Joyce Johnson (1935-) and Brenda Frazier (Bonnie Bremser) (1939-). Johnson and Grace view this group as real women Beat writers because they “shared community and the cultural zeitgeist most directly with the established male Beat writers.” 147 In this generation, five other women are considered whom are farther away from the Beat aesthetic, but are still associated with the movement: Brigid Murnaghan (1930-), Margaret Randall (1936-), Rochelle Owens (1936-), Diane Wakowski (1937-), and Barbara Moraff (1940-). Lastly, the third generation of women Beats consists of Janine Pommy Vega (1942-) and Anne Waldman (1945-). They were influenced by the sixties countercultural movement.148 Other women who were close to the Beats, as wives, girlfriends, and muses were Carolyn Cassady, Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs, Edie Parker Kerouac, Joan Haverty Kerouac, and Eileen Kaufman.149

Brenda Knight finally argues, “Ironically, because the women in the movement have, to a certain degree, been ignored and marginalized, they represent the precious little of that which remains truly Beat.”150 Johnson and Grace similarly argue that the women Beats eventually broke their silence which was a significant achievement in those times: “ultimately, perhaps more daring and consequential than making the mythic Beat road trip.”151

3. The Little Magazines of the Beat Generation

In part one of this theoretical framework, the concept of the little magazine was explained. Then, the Beats were dealt with. And, it appeared that there was more to the story than just Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. Now, we look at how these two subjects are connected with each other. First, I will look at the relationship that the Beats had with the media, one that sometimes hindered their publications. Then, I will discuss some Beat little magazines that will set the context for the analysis of Yugen. Finally, I will look at the subject of women editors, which is at the center of this dissertation. The history of women in editing

147 Ibid., 13. 148 Ibid., 13-14. 149 Knight, Women Writers of the Beat Generation, 47-103. 150 Ibid., 5. 151 Johnson and Grace, Girls who Wore Black, 17.

28 and publishing will be discussed briefly. Then, I look at some Beat little magazines that were edited or co-edited by women.

3.1 Beats and the Media

The Beats had a complicated relationship with the media. On the one hand, journalists had become fascinated with this new group of rebels. Especially after the obscenity trial following Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s publication of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and the success of Kerouac’s novel On the Road in 1957, a genuine “media hysteria” broke loose. Major magazines like Life and Time and the tabloid press began publicizing the Beats’ lifestyle. They also appeared on television, which enhanced the visual image that people had of the Beats. Ultimately, this media coverage popularized the Beats. However, “beat” became primarily a useful label in advertisements for selling “everything from jazz records to black berets to bongos.”152

On the other hand, the media were very critical toward the Beat Generation. Their literary works were attacked in multiple articles and their lifestyle was ridiculed. Norman Podhoretz criticized Kerouac’s and Ginsberg’s style and described them as “anti- intellectuals” in his 1958 article for Partisan Review “The Know-Nothing Bohemians.”153

The mass media had no interest in their literature at all. Literary interest would only come in the following decades. Actually, journalists wanted to know what and who “beat” was and what the Beat Generation was about. Overall, they were not interested in the “spontaneous prose based on bop and jazz” or the “tradition of Walt Whitman and the inventiveness of William Carlos Williams.” Being Beat symbolized a sense of dissidence, overtly sexual escapades, and taking drugs and consuming too much alcohol. The media mocked how they looked and their style of dress – the berets, the beards, and the bongos. Ultimately, they were more interested in the hip, drug-taking, and rebellious Beatnik. “Beatnik” was originally a derogatory term, coined by columnist Herbert Caen in 1958. He

152 Charters, Beat Down to Your Soul, xxi. 153 Norman Podhoretz, “The Know-Nothing Bohemians,” in The Beat Generation: A Gale Critical Companion ed. Lynn M. Zott (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2003), 13-19.

29 derived it from the word Sputnik, which was the Soviet satellite. With this term, he created a “caricature of the Beats as lazy, indulgent, and probably communist weirdos.”154

Essentially, this distorted view of the Beats influenced the way the literary establishment saw them. Consequently, they were unimpressed with this new movement “betraying literary language with [words like] “like,” “cool,” and “hip.””155

3.2 Beat Little Magazines

The provocative subjects in their poetry, their new style of writing, and their lifestyle “that flew in the face of convention,” limited the Beats’ publishing possibilities. Indeed, the “conservative publishing establishment” did not take Beat literature seriously.156 The Beats also faced threats of censorship. The two most notable examples are the censorship trials about Ginsberg’s Howl and other Poems 1957 and Burroughs’ Naked Lunch in 1959.157 Since the main objective of a little magazine was to create a space for artists who were rejected by the established literary periodicals, it is no surprise that these magazines proved an excellent outlet for the writers of the Beat generation.158 Not only did many Beats appear in little magazines, they also produced their own little magazines – as is the case with the little magazine analyzed in this dissertation. William Lawlor further emphasizes that little magazines offered a “forum” to the beats “during periods of editorial rejection, and in counterbalance to caricatures, censorship, and sensationalism.”159According to Warren French, the beats were even responsible for a revival of little magazine publishing.160

Officially, there are 245 little magazines “that reflect the Beat spirit.” The 1950s witnessed a real surge, but already in the 1940s little magazines had started to publish beat poetry. The trend continued through the 1960s and the 1970s under the influence of the emerging counterculture. Furthermore, examples are found in the 1980s and 1990s. Lawlor situates

154 Lawlor, Beat Culture, 13. 155 Ibid. 156 Lynn Zott, ed., The Beat Generation: A Gale Critical Companion (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 261. 157 William Lawlor and Diane De Rooy, “Censorship,” in Beat Culture: Icons, Lifestyles and Impact, 52-53. 158 Zott, The Beat Generation, 261. 159 Lawlor, Beat Culture, 209-210. 160 Warren French, “Little Magazines in the Fifties,” College English 22.8 (1961): 547.

30 most of these magazines geographically in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. However, such little magazines could be found in Mexico, Canada, and even Europe.161

Interestingly, some scholars like James Campbell claim that there is no such thing as a Beat little magazine.162 R.J. Ellis argues that this is true to a certain extent. However, he does notice some little magazines that come close. The main little magazines that published Beat literature – whether consistently or merely in a couple of issues – at the height of the movement in the United States were Neurotica (1948-52), The Ark (1947), Ark II Moby I (1956), Ark II (1957), Black Mountain Review (1954-57), Yugen (1958-62), Big Table (1959-60), Kulchur (1960-65), Beatitude (1959-), The Floating Bear (1962-69), and Angel Hair (1966-69).163 Two magazines that have close ties to little magazine publishing and the Beat Generation, but are not little magazines by definition, are Evergreen Review (1957-59) and Chicago Review (1958).164

Jay Landesman and Gershon Legman’s Neurotica can be considered Beat, because of its influence on the Beats and because it was subtitled as The Authentic Voice of the Beat Generation in a 1981 reprint. However, the only Beat author that was published was Allen Ginsberg. The Ark under Sander Russell was “an outlet for radical anarcho-pacific sentiments” at a time when the societal pressures to conform after World War II emerged.165 Here, Ellis sees a link with the Beats who were similarly dissatisfied with the “power and oppression” of the government. In the magazine, authors such as E.E. Cummings, Philip Lamantia, and Kenneth Rexroth were among the contributors. Ark II Moby I with editors Michael McClure and James Harmon and Ark III were less focused on anarchism and primarily published poetry. These magazines had more of a Beat spirit with contributions from Denise Levertov, Charles Olson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac and Ginsberg. Next is Robert Creeley’s Black Mountain Review that published Burroughs, Kerouac, and Ginsberg in its seventh issue (1957). Though, the editor’s goal was “to bring together geographically separate exponents of open speech-oriented forms.”166 Therefore,

161 Lawlor, Beat Culture, 210. 162 James Campbell, This is the Beat Generation (London: Secker and Warburg, 1999), 93. 163 R.J. Ellis, “ ‘Little…Only with Some Qualifications’: The Beats and Beat ‘Little Magazines,’” in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Volume II, North America 1894-1960, edited by Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1001- 1024. 164 Ibid. 165 Ibid., 1009. 166 Ibid.

31 West Coast poets such as Philip Whalen and Michael McClure also appeared. Evergreen Review, then, is also notable for publishing Beat writers next to New York and Black Mountain poets. One of its editors, Donald Allen would later republish most of these authors in his anthology The New American Poetry (1960). Evergreen Review was not a typical little magazine, because of its larger circulation, paid contributors, and because its editors wanted to make it profitable. The only element that supports its littleness was its avant-garde content.167

Chicago Review is linked to the Beat Generation because of its three 1958 issues that were pulled from sales because of censorship issues (see 1.3). Big Table, then, offered a forum for the censored pieces.168 Kulchur was also closely related to the Beats. Its main editors were Marc D. Schleifer and Lita Hornick (she became the sole editor after 1962, but was first only the financial backer). Kulchur published Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and di Prima. The Floating Bear (1961-1969) was actually more a newsletter than a little magazine. Its editors Diane di Prima and LeRoi Jones published McClure, Whalen, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. But it would be very diverse in its later years. According to Lawlor its “mimeo production and direct-mail delivery created an immediacy rivaling today’s e-mail.”169 Yugen (1958-1962), the magazine analyzed in this dissertation, was the only little magazine that “ended up looking anything like an American little magazine,” according to Ellis.170 In the analysis in part two of this dissertation, I will further examine this assertion. Next, Beatitude was a project by Allen Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman and his wife Eileen Kaufman. They published primarily West Coast Beat poets. Finally, Angel Hair (1966-69) was edited and published by Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh. It focused on the New York poets of the 1960s. Though, already past the Beat movement, the magazine was influenced by its Beat precursors. Moreover, Anne Waldman is considered a third generation Beat poet.171

167 Ibid. 168 Ibid. 169 Lawlor, Beat Culture, 210 170 Ellis, “Little…Only with Some Qualifications,” 1024. 171 Lawlor, Beat Culture, 210.

32 3.3 Women editors

Because of the Beats’ unwillingness to revise and their devotion to spontaneity, discussing the work of editors in relation to Beat poetry seems almost pointless, if not irrelevant. Indeed, “the beats were no editors.”172 Essentially, says Ellis, the Beats were involved in the publishing and editing of little magazines. However, they lacked the “stability,” in the form of permanent addresses where copies would be sent from and the attention, patience, and care to revise other work. Moreover, the Beat movement was essentially one that desired to “move poetry of the page.” The Beats’ preference for oral communications, public poetry readings, and performances ultimately contradicted the need for Beat editors.173

Nevertheless, editors were required. Fortunately, there was a group of Beats that did provide the stability necessary for the production and editing of little magazines. Namely, the “silent beat chicks.” The women of the Beat Generation actually played an important role in the creation and production of these beat little magazines. Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy M. Grace identify in Brenda Knight’s Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution (1997) a “three-point theoretical construct (writer, artist, muse) to establish a canon of women Beats.”174 Indeed, Knight presents an overview of the women of the Beat Generation, recognizing their accomplishments in and contributions to this countercultural movement.175 However, one category of women is absent from Knight’s model, that is, those women who contributed to the Beat Generation as editors and publishers.

Historically, women had a difficult time to gain recognition as editors or publishers. It remained a male-dominated industry until well into the 1970s and 1980s. Women were either paid less for the same editorial work or were given menial secretarial jobs like handling the printer or managing the subscription lists. However, they were there. Gayle Feldman asserts that women in the 1950s and 1960s women started entering the industry

172 Ellis, “ ‘Little…Only with Some Qualifications’: The Beats and Beat ‘Little Magazines,’” 1006. 173 Ibid., 1008. 174 Johnson and Grace, Girls who wore Black, 11. 175 Knight also offers a fourth category of Beat women, namely ‘the precursors’

33 after access to higher education for women became more common.176 She argues that women ended up having more experience than the men who worked in the industry, simply because “women had to learn the job from the bottom up.”177 Indeed, women were hired as editorial secretaries or editorial trainees, whereas men were relatively quickly hired as full- on editors. Consequently, generally, women had a better understanding of what it took to run a publishing office. Feldman also notices some general differences between men and women in the industry. For example, overall women would pay more attention to organization, relationships with people –from authors to colleagues – and detail. Feldman calls this a typical “feminine trait” claiming women aimed for “everything [to be] just right.”178 Finally, the running of a magazine or book publishing company really implied trafficking and scheduling a managing editor’s office. Ironically, Feldman says, women were so good at this because, basically, it was similar to housekeeping.179

Similarly, Trysh Travis looks at women in book history. Interestingly, it appears that, since Early Modern Times, women have always had an important role in the process of bringing literature to the market, whether as publishers, editors, or generally in “workings of the communications circuit that transforms manuscripts into books and brings them to market.”180 Historically, this has been a way for them to get access to the “public sphere.”181 Ultimately, this was about challenging “gender roles and expectations that help constitute a fundamentally male-centered world”182

Many women also appeared to have had a decisive role as editors, specifically in the world of little magazines. Jayne Marek offers an analysis in Women Editing Modernism, and discovers a wide range of women who were actively involved in the publishing of modernist little magazines.183 Example include Harriet Monroe (founder) and Alice Corbin Henderson who were the editors of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse in its early days,184 or Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap who influenced the little magazine The Little Review

176 Gayle Feldman, “Breaking through the Glass Ceiling: Women have had a long hard struggle to reach their current status in the industry,” Publishers Weekly 233, no. 31 (1997), 82-90. 177 Ibid., 84. 178 Ibid., 90. 179 Ibid., 83. 180 Trysh Travis, “The Women in Print Movement: History and Implications,” Book History 11 (2008), 276. 181 Ibid. 182 Ibid. 183 Jayne Marek, Women Editing Modernism (Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 1-22. 184 Ibid., 23-59.

34 (1914-1929).185 Also notable are H.D and Bryer’s work in the press Egoist in the 1910s,186 and Marianne Moore’s editorship of the literary magazine The Dial between 1925 and 1929.187 Marek argues that these women have been largely ignored in literary history. They were seen as anonymous, or on the margins, and having no real “function as powerful and influential arbiters of modern aesthetic views.” 188 When they are discussed, it is in the context of women fighting a “heroic struggle against an oppressive masculine world,” but seldom in their own right as active contributors to certain literary movements.189 Marek states that this early work of women as editors and publishers, whether independently or as part of cooperative work with other women or men, deeply influenced them and provided “new opportunities for their voices.”190

In this context, thus, it is not surprising that the women of the Beat Generation – who were already marginalized in Beat literary history – receive little recognition for their work as editors and publishers. Granted, many critics do mention this, specifically, studies that focus on the women of the Beat Generation such as Grace and Johnson, and Knight.191 However, they mention it only in passing, definitely assuring their importance, but not elaborating on this issue. Among the women Beats who worked as publishers and editors are Joyce Johnson, Eileen Kaufman, Diane di Prima, and Anne Waldman. Moreover, Daisy Alden, who is not a Beat herself but showed ties to the Beats in her 1959 anthology A New Folder, which featured Corso and Ginsberg.192 She explains: “I knew most of them and published them in A New Folder. I was considered one of them although I was never a Beat.”193

This anthology was a reprisal of her little magazine Folder (1953-56) that she produced, edited, and distributed herself. The magazine was focused on the New York Poets, such as

185 Ibid., 60-100. 186 Ibid., 101-137. 187 Ibid., 137-166. 188 Ibid., 19. 189 Ibid., 194. 190 Ibid., 191. 191 See Grace and Johnson, Breaking the Rule of Cool, 1-30; Grace and Johnson, Women who Wore Black, 1- 24; and Knight, Women Writers of the Beat Generation, 1-9. 192 Ellis, “Little…Only with Some Qualifications, 1010. 193 Dennis Barone, “Daisy Aldan, An Interview on Folder,” in The Little Magazine in America: A Modern Documentary History edited by Eliot Anderson and Mary Kinzie (New York: The Pushcart Press, 1978), 277.

35 James Merril, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and Charles Olson. Daisy Alden was passionate about avant-garde literature and wrote poetry herself. She recounts:

At Hunter College I had been an editor of the literary magazine, and that imbued in me a lasting desire to publish a magazine. I did not publish Folder because avant- garde poets were not being published. It was an impulse of my own nature and I happened to publish it when it was needed.194 (264)

She does note that women had trouble in the publishing business. For example, she would do almost everything by hand with a hand press at home. However, when she would go to a print shop to work on the titles, she had to be careful: “When someone entered the shop, I had to stop work because women were not allowed on the union then and the printer would have been suspended or fined.”195 Alden also actively published female poets, knowing that they had trouble to get published.196 Furthermore, she found the most important aspect of editing was the inspiration she got from it: “reading the work of other poets […] inspired to new creativity.” She also believed that little magazines were essential in the creation of literary communities “Community is created in this sharing […] what made poetry magazines? A Community of poets! Those responsible for the renewal of the word.”197

Joyce Johnson was not linked to a little magazine. However, before she wrote her first book Come Join the Dance (1962), she had a career in a publishing house.198 Anne Waldman found the little magazine Angel Hair (1966-69), together with Lewis Warsh.199 Two more important female figures in beat little magazines are Eileen Kaufman and Diane di Prima. On the West Coast, the little magazine that published the Beats was Beatitude (1959-). It was created by Allen Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman, and Eileen Kaufman. Eileen Kaufman was a journalist from San Francisco before she met Bob. Not only did she substantially aid in the production of Beatitude in its first year, she also did the transcriptions of Bob’s oral poetry. Moreover, she edited his first poetry collection. Later,

194 Barone, “Daisy Aldan, An Interview on Folder,” 264. 195 Ibid., 268. 196 Ibid., 269. 197 Ibid., 276. 198 Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 81. 199 Terrence Diggory, Encyclopedia of the New York School of Poets (New York: Facts on File, 2013), 19.

36 she continued working as a journalist for Los Angeles Free Press, Oracle, Billboard magazine, and Music World Countdown.200

Diane di Prima is probably one of the most important figures in the beat little magazines and publishing in general. Together with LeRoi Jones she founded the newsletter The Floating Bear (1961-1969) and she created her own small press Poets Press.201 Issue 9 of the newsletter was so controversial Jones was arrested. One of their subscribers was in jail while he received his copy. Subsequently, prison guards confiscated the issue and Jones faced charges of obscenity. Principally, passages of Jones’ The System of Dante’s Hell had caused the controversy. In the end, the Floating Bear was cleared after Jones convinced the judges in court of the literary quality of the works in the magazine.202 Though, the Floating Bear was a collaboration, in the end it was mainly di Prima who did all the work. She did not always feel recognized for this though:

[T]hough Roi and I coedited the Bear, […] often it was he who got the credit for the whole thing. Most of the actual physical work devolved upon me and those friends I could dig up to help me. Most of the time, I am sure this was also true for Hettie, for the Totem Press books, in fact […] I often helped her and witnessed how it was she who typed the camera copy, proofed (most of the time) and pasted up (always), but it was Roi’s press, and in this he was not any different from any other male artist of his day. It was just the natural division of labor / and credit.203

Indeed, di Prima expressed a feeling that many women who worked in publishing were feeling at that time. They were seen as helpers, facilitators, and financiers. Even though, they had vital roles in the creation of magazines (and presses), the historical narrative either sees this as an obvious – “What else were they going to do?” – or ignore this fact and focus on the accomplishments of male editors and publishers.

Although all these women should be considered in further research regarding the editing and publishing of (beat) little magazines, Hettie Jones stands out. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on her accomplishments as an editor and the effect that this had on her own life as a woman and a Beat. As will become clear, the lack of credit that Hettie Jones received will ultimately characterize her as a true little magazine editor.

200 Knight, Women of the Beat Generation, 105-107; Charters, Beat Down To Your Soul, 272. 201 Knight, Women of the Beat Generation, 123-140. 202 Lawlor, Beat Culture, 53. 203 Diane di Prima, Recollections of My Life as a Woman. (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 253.

37 III. Analysis

1. Methodology

The purpose of this dissertation is twofold. First, I will analyze the little magazine Yugen and, accordingly determine its importance for the Beat Generation. Secondly, I will discuss the role of Hettie Jones as co-editor and assess her contribution to this magazine.

The analysis of the Magazine will be based on the theoretical framework of little magazines presented in the first part of this dissertation. Accordingly, its editorial policy content, financial obstacles, production and audience will be discussed. Then I consider its ultimate importance to the literary community of the Beat Generation. Finally, I will argue that Yugen was truly a beat little magazine even though its editors do not specifically define it as such. In this part, I will already refer to a few of Hettie Jones’ responsibilities. To determine Hettie Jones’ role as co-editor, I will use three memoirs that discuss the creation and production of the magazine. Primarily, Hettie Jones’ memoir will be analyzed. However, the memoirs of LeRoi Jones and Diane Di Prima’s, who played an important, though complicated role in the lives of both the Joneses, will also be used. Lastly, an interview conducted with Hettie Jones about her role in this magazine will be considered. 204 With this information, I present a reconstruction of the creation and production of Yugen.

First, however, I will introduce both the editors and explain the context in which Yugen emerged.

2. Setting the Scene: the Editors, the Story, the Magazine

LeRoi Jones (1934-2014) was an African-American poet, playwright, and editor. He also wrote literary and music criticism and was actively involved in the Black Arts Movement. Originally from New Jersey, he moved to the Lower East Side, New York, in 1957, where he immersed himself in the Beat Bohemia milieu. He was known as a second-generation

204 See appendix for full interview.

38 Beat writer. Primarily his first collection of poems Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (1961) links him to the Beat poetics. 205 However, his main link to the Beat Generation was the work he did as an editor for the little magazine Yugen and the mimeographed poetry newsletter The Floating Bear, which he co-edited with Diane di Prima. Furthermore, he contributed as an editor to Big Table, Evergreen Review, and Kulchur.206 In 1957, he started working at Record Changer, a music magazine, where he would meet his future wife Hettie Jones. Before Hettie became Hettie Jones (1934-), she was Hettie Cohen, a Jewish girl from Long Island. Like many girls of her generation, she felt the restraints of conformity.207 However, she knew she wanted a different life than the stereotypical 1950s ideal domestic housewife:

By 1951, the year we were labeled the Silent Generation, I’d been recommended to silence often. Men had little use for an outspoken woman, I’d been warned. What I wanted, I was told, was security and upward mobility, which might be mine if I learned to shut my mouth. Myself I simply expected, by force or will, to assume a new shape in the future. Unlike any woman in my family or anyone I’d ever actually known, I was going to become – something, anything, whatever that meant.208

Hettie Jones went to Mary Washington, which was the women’s college of the university of Virginia. In 1955, she moved to New York to attend graduate school at Columbia, she started working in a small film library “the Center for Mass Communications.” Her job was to write “promotional literature.”209 Later, she moved to Greenwich Village and started working at Record Changer as a subscription manager. Hettie had a passion for language and wanted to be a writer of her own. However, she struggled to find her own voice: “[…] my poems were awful, I thought,” she said.210 Nevertheless, at the Record Changer, she “basked in the genial, nonconformist air […] and shared the assurance that something would become of us all … eventually.”211 Hettie and LeRoi then became friends while working on the magazine, and by 1957 they were living together. When the Record Changer moved to California, Hettie wanted to be in a similar environment and was hired as a subscription manager for the leftist magazine Partisan Review. She developed a good

205 Lawlor, Beat Culture, 11. 206 Sollors, Werner. Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones: The Quest for a “Populist Modernism” (New York: Colombia University Press, 1978), 3-4. 207 Brenda Knight, Women of the Beat Generation, 183-184. 208 Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 10. 209 Ibid., 15. 210 Ibid., 23. 211 Ibid.

39 relationship with the editors William Philips and Philip Rahv and occasionally she edited texts herself.212

Meanwhile, the Beats – a name, according to Hettie, “ambiguous enough to include anyone” – were starting to become notorious.213 LeRoi and Hettie frequently attended poetry readings in Greenwich Village, in cafes like Jazz on the Wagon, the Gaslight, the Limelight, Figaro and the Cedar Tavern. From then on, they also started hanging out with poets like Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, and Frank O’Hara.214

In 1958, LeRoi came to Hettie with an idea for a new magazine that would give a platform to all of the poets who were writing and performing in new ways. According to Hettie Jones, the New York-scene was waiting for such a magazine. Thus, they created Yugen: A New Consciousness in Arts and Letters.215 A year later, they would start a low-budget, small publishing company Totem Press together with a befriended couple, George Stade and his wife Dolly. They planned on publishing small paperback books, mainly poetry. It would eventually publish various important authors, including Beats. For example, Scriptures of the Golden Eternity (1960) by Jack Kerouac and Empty Mirror (1961) by Allen Ginsberg.216

Being in an interracial relationship in the 1950s, the LeRoi and Hettie were confronted with intolerance. Though Greenwich Village was a more open community, “in 1950, thirty states still had miscegenation laws.”217 When Hettie became pregnant and married LeRoi in a Buddhist temple in 1958, her family did not speak to her for years. They had two children anyway, Lisa in 1959 and Kellie in 1961. While Hettie speaks fondly of her early relationship with LeRoi, it was far from ideal. For example, LeRoi’s infidelity put a strain on their relationship. A particularly painful affair with Diane di Prima even resulted in a daughter, Dominique, who LeRoi refused to acknowledge. Hettie recounts: “[I] wasn’t surprised to learn that he and Diane di Prima were lovers – but the first affair cuts the cake,

212 Ibid., 43-45. 213 Ibid., 47. 214 Ibid. 47-48. 215 Ibid., 53. 216 Lawlor, Beat Culture, 258. 217 Jones, How I became Hettie Jones, 36.

40 nothing is ever as sharp.”218 Di Prima and LeRoi co-edited the mimeographed newsletter The Floating Bear at that time, and di Prima often assisted Hettie in the production of Yugen. Moreover, Hettie and di Prima were friends. Di Prima did feel guilty “I [felt] I was betraying friend and principles.”219

However, it was not the infidelity that would end their marriage. It was the complexity of the racial tensions of the decade would have an irreversible impact on LeRoi. In the 1960s, he would change his focus toward black cultural nationalism. The bohemian world, which was primarily filled with white people, no longer satisfied him. And, he challenged the notion of assimilation in “the Black Bourgeoisie” or “the Black middle class,” because this prevented African Americans to find their true identity. His successful play Dutchman (1964) is an example of his “protest drama.”220 It condemned racial discrimination and questioned race-related issues.221 Hettie Jones narrates how “by the fall of 1964, black Americans were being asked to make choices. Nearly a decade of nonviolent protest had failed […] some people were beginning to say that hypocritical Roi talked black but married white. Others, more directly, said he was laying with the Devil.”222 After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, he “cut ties with his former companions in Greenwich Village.” He could no longer picture himself with a white wife, and subsequently left her. He moved to Harlem, changed his name to Amiri Baraka, originated the Black Arts Movement, and established himself as black cultural nationalist and a “militant political organizer and leader.”223 LeRoi’s parents, however, kept on supporting Hettie. Hettie managed by being a teacher and editor. In the end, she accounted how without LeRoi, she finally had the time and space to be a writer herself. LeRoi had never discouraged her, on the contrary.224 Nevertheless, the voice she was looking for in her early days at Record Changer would only appear later.225

218 Ibid.,98 219 Diane di Prima, Recollections of My Life as a Woman (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 219. 220 Sollors, Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, 4. 221 Ibid., 1-9, 12-15. 222 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 217-218. 223 Diggory, Encyclopedia of the New York Poets, 42. 224 Johnson and Grace, Breaking the Rule of Cool, 168. 225 Knight, Women of the Beat Generation, 187.

41 3. Analysis of Yugen and the role of Hettie Jones as co-editor

3.1 Editorial policy

With Yugen, LeRoi and Hettie Jones wanted to give new authors a platform, authors that conveyed a new consciousness, because “everyone downtown agreed that was just what the world needed.226 LeRoi came up with the name because he was attracted to the Zen association the word had:

It was a Zen word, a special quality of being, a texture of perception reflected by the term “mystery.” It had to do with attaining a high state of grace and relationship to divinity in whatever you did, especially in the arts.227

“Yugen” was actually a Japanese aesthetic form. It was a kind of sensibility “deeply rooted in the mind and emotion of Japanese people.” It could mean various things, but was most commonly known as “the beauty of gentle gracefulness.”228 However, it could also relate to mysteriousness, as this was its original Chinese meaning. Before it was used in art and poetry, Buddhists used it in this context. Andrew Tsubaki argues that there is no real English translation for this concept in the arts, but words like “intimation”, “elegance, “grace”, “composure”, “equilibrium”, “serenity”, and “quietism” come close.229 The most important aspect of Yugen in relation to the little magazine discussed here is that academics and interpreters do not easily see it when it appears, but that the artist always feels it when he is using it.230

The title page for Yugen said that the word in this context meant “elegance, beauty, grace, transcendence of these things, and also nothing at all.”231 Thus, the association with the original Japanese aesthetic was clear. However, “nothing at all” probably referred to this sense that the artist had while using “yugen.” For some interpreters – critics and readers-, their art could mean “nothing at all.” However, in a sense, that did not matter. Essentially,

226 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 53. 227 Amiri Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1997), 249. 228 Andrew T. Tsubaki, “Zeami and the Transition of the Concept of Yugen: A Note on Japanese aesthetic,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 30, no. 1 (1971), 55. 229 Ibid., 57. 230 Ibid., 55. 231 Yugen 1, 1.

42 the artist was put first in this magazine. This definitely situates Yugen in the category of little magazines, because it functioned primarily for writers.

Indeed, the purpose of Yugen was to offer “a new consciousness in arts and letters.” As will become clear from the content and contributors, Yugen succeeded in that commitment. They published avant-garde work that was not to everyone’s taste. Moreover, Yugen opposed itself against the serious academic taste. To illustrate, in Yugen 5, a quote by Edward Dahlberg is used to mockingly insult the seriousness of academics: “For the academe: It is redundant to be temperate if one is already impotent.”232 This implies that the moderation and the maintenance of the literary status quo used in academia were not supported in Yugen. Hettie Jones further elaborates on this by noting that the difference between academic magazines and their magazine “was not only in style but in a looser subject matter.” She also contends that this writing “reflected a more open lifestyle.”233

3.2 Content and contributors

Yugen has been described as a “beat little magazine.”234 However, both LeRoi Jones and Hettie Jones did not necessarily see the magazine as a beat venture. To illustrate, LeRoi Jones clarified that the magazine published writers that are “not all “Beat” or “San Francisco” or “New York”.” He refused to categorize the contributors because “they [were] various people who could also fit into other groups – for instance, the people who went to Black Mountain College – and others not affiliated with any real group […].”235 Hettie Jones similarly accounts that “Yugen wasn’t a particularly “beat” venture as there were other contributions from writers who didn’t consider themselves “beat.”” Furthermore, she summarizes the contributors as people who “were trying to write about new subjects in a new, more direct way.” 236

232 Yugen, 5, 1. 233 Hettie Jones, Interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016. 234 Ellis, “ ‘Little…Only with Some Qualifications’: The Beats and Beat ‘Little Magazines,’” 1019, 1024. 235 David Ossman, “LeRoi Jones: An Interview on Yugen,” in The Little Magazine in America edited by Eliot Anderson and Mary Kinzie (New York: The Pushcart Press, 1978), 319. 236 Hettie Jones, interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016.

43 Overall, Yugen published poetry. Especially the first six issues are focused on poetry, with the occasional short prose pieces such as “My Old Buddy” by Fielding Dawson237, and an excerpt from “Landsend,” which is the coda of Hubert Selby, Jr.’s novel Last Exit to Brooklyn.238 The seventh and eighth issues of Yugen are more diverse. Critical reviews, book reviews, plays, and, even on one occasion, song lyrics, appear next to poems and short stories. For example, in Yugen 7, Gilbert Sorrentino gives a rather negative review of two poetry collections: Robert Lowell’s Life Studies and W.D. Snodgrass’ Heart’s Needle. Sorrentino argues that:

[B]oth of these men indicate no attempt to get hold of the validities of American poetry, as defined by Pound, Williams, Olson, and the others […] even Eliot was more American than they are. They stand in the middle class, they are concerned with the car in the driveway, they are wild over the fact that their parents were not “accepted,” or slightly futile. Out of it they make what is at best a footnote to Scott Fitzgerald and the early O’Hara.239

Another notable non-poetry contribution is William Burroughs’ “The Cut Up Method of Brion Gysin” in Yugen 8. In this piece, Burroughs describes this literary technique as a way to add spontaneity to writing poetry: “the best writing seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut up method was made explicit […] had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity.” Burroughs explains that you just need a pair of scissors and a poem that you like: “Take any poet or writer you fancy. […] Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem.”240

The schools of poetry in Yugen were various. Consequently, the contributors are not solely beat. Writers who were associated with the Black Mountain Poets, the New York Poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance were also published. Beats that appeared regularly in Yugen were Diane di Prima (Yugen 1, 2, 3, 5, 7), Allen Ginsberg (Yugen 1, 3, 4, 5, 7), Gregory Corso (Yugen 2, 4, 5, 7), Barbara Moraff (Yugen 2, 3, 5), Gary Snyder (Yugen 2, 3, 4, 6) William Burroughs (Yugen 3, 7), Jack Kerouac (Yugen 4, 5, 6), Ray Bremser (Yugen 3, 4, 6), Edward Marshall (Yugen 4, 6, 7, 8), Jack Micheline (Yugen 1), Tuli

237 Fielding Dawson, “My Old Buddy,”. Yugen, 4 (1959), 8. 238 Hubert Selby, Jr. “Episode from Landsend,” Yugen, 6 (1960), 18-20. 239 Gilbert Sorrentino, “2 Books,” Yugen, 7 (1961), 5-7. 240 William Burroughs, “The Cut Up Method of Brion Gysin,” Yugen, 8 (1962), 31-32.

44 Kupferberg (Yugen 2), Peter Orlovsky (Yugen 3, 4), John Wieners (Yugen 4, 5), David Meltzer (Yugen 5, 6), Philip Lamantia (Yugen 6). Two contributing Beats that were closely associated with the San Francisco Renaissance were Philip Whalen (Yugen 1, 3, 5, 7), and Michael McClure (Yugen 4, 5, 6).

The contributors from the Black Mountain group were Charles Olson (Yugen 4, 6, 7, 8), Gilbert Sorrentino (3, 7, 8), Max Finstein (4, 5, 7), Fielding Dawson (4, 5), Robert Creeley (4, 6, 7, 8), Larry Eigner (5, 6, 7), Joel Oppenheimer (5, 7), Paul Blackburn (6), and Ed Dorn (6, 8). Next, there were a few poets from the San Francisco Renaissance: Ron Loewinsohn (2, 4, 6), Robin Blaser (3, 6), and George Stanley (7, 8). And finally some contributors that were associated with the New York Poets, like Oliver Pitcher (2), Frank O’Hara (4, 6, 7), Barbara Guest (5), Rochelle Ownens (6), Kenneth Koch (6, 7), and John Ashbery (7).

The first two issues of Yugen feature African American Beats such as Bobb Hamilton and A.B. Spellman, and African American New York poets like Tom Postell and Allen Polite. However, afterward, they disappeared from the magazine. This is surprising and inconsistent with LeRoi Jones’ later activism. Jones later reflected in his autobiography that he too was surprised about this fact, but also that at that time he felt an apprehension to publish them because: “I did think that white people would be opposed to a black dude even being a writer, even saying it.”241 Later, that changed of course.

Overall, the first four issues of Yugen were focused on Beat literature. That is linked to the evolution and development of the Beat Generation. It can be stated that the Beats were at the height of their popularity in the late 1950s. While the controversy surrounding their censorship trials first withheld publishers from taking on the Beats, by the end of the decade, they had become so popular finding a publisher was not really an issue anymore.242 In a sense, the purpose of the little magazine Yugen in relation to the Beat Generation had been fulfilled. Consequently, the increase of appearance of other schools of poetry in the final four issues is sensible. Then again, Beat poets still appeared in the last issues. This illustrates how different schools of poetry often were in contact with each other and do not necessarily have to be considered separately.

241 Amiri Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones, (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1997), 252. 242 Ellis, “Little…Only with Some Qualifications,” 1019-1024.

45

The contributors offered their material in various ways. A notice in Yugen 1 reveals one of the possibilities: “Manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self- addressed envelope.” 243 This suggests that writers were free to send their material. However, Hettie Jones saw this process in a less controlled way. She recounts that LeRoi “would run into people that we knew in the local bookstore, or in the Cedar Tavern […] or we’d find ourselves out listening to music and someone would offer pages right then.” Thus, according to her “things were completely informal.”244

3.3 Financial Issues

The second typicality of little magazines was their lack of economic resources. Since the magazine was not meant to be profitable, the editors were obliged to finance it themselves. Moreover, the contributors were not paid and little to no advertisements appeared in the magazine. In that aspect, Yugen is a perfect match. Firstly, the proceeds of each of the issues went to the funding of the next one.245 The first five issues were 50 cents, the sixth one 60 and the last two 75 cents. Granted, the later issues of Yugen were much longer. To illustrate, Yugen 1 counted only 24 pages, but Yugen 8 was no less than 63 pages. The self- financing aspect of little magazines is also apparent in Yugen. Interestingly, it was mainly Hettie Jones who provided the funds for the production. Since LeRoi was working on his own writing, Hettie had agreed to support him by working at Partisan.246 Even outsiders were aware of this fact. Joyce Johnson, women Beat and Hettie’s friend, for example, recounts how:

In the LeRoi Jones household, it was Hettie who paid much of the rent. Her small salary from her job at Partisan Review not only helped to support her husband, but fed numerous other young writers […] With what was left over Hettie and LeRoi published the literary magazine Yugen.247

Moreover, she managed the expenses of the magazine:

243 Yugen, 1 (1958). 244 Hettie Jones, interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016. 245 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 246 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 122-123. 247 Joyce Johnson, “Beat Queens: Women in Flux,” in The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture, edited by Holly George-Warren (New York: Hyperion, 1999), 47.

46

We set up everything right for our new enterprise, solicited ads, kept careful accounts in a cash book I bought (1.29$, February 26). On March 3 we paid the printer, in a couple of weeks I recorded the first sales – 10$!248

Furthermore, both LeRoi and Hettie suffered poverty in the years they were publishing Yugen. Hettie recounts that they had no money to travel “or even money to telephone longdistance”249

The advertisements that did appear in Yugen were all either for small presses, other little magazines, books of writers that were close to the Joneses, or events in Greenwich Village. For example, advertisements for Troubadour Press, New Directions, and Totem Press frequently return. Also, little magazines like Big Table and Kulchur are advertised. Moreover, a subscription form for Evergreen Review can be found in Yugen 5. Ads promoting books of poetry like Diane di Prima’s This Kind of Bird Flies Backward and Jack Micheline’s River of Red Wine and Other Poems. Furthermore, the multiple bars where Hettie and LeRoi would frequently visit are promoted, such as the Five Spot Cafe and Jazz On The Wagon. What these advertisements show is a sense of community that was supported by little magazines like Yugen. Rather than selling out and advertising for products, the magazine promoted the world where they were produced. Yugen itself was also advertised to a certain extent. According to Hettie Jones, Yugen’s popularity mainly grew by mouth-to-mouth advertising, but they also advertised in other little magazines.250 She remembered an example of this: “on page 3 of the April 2, 1958, Voice [the Village Voice, a popular local newspaper], in a box so you’d notice, Yugen was announced as a “New Quarterly on the Stands.”251

The financial issues that Hettie and LeRoi faced would ultimately end the magazine. Yugen 7 foreshadows the approaching collapse of the magazine. A notice reads:

If Yugen is to appear again we must have some financial assistance. We don’t want to come on like The March of Dimes but we are in desperate need. 500 $ wd promote 2 possibly 3 more issues.

248 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 54. 249 Hettie Jones, Interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016. 250 Ibid. 251 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 55.

47

Yugen 8 had a hopeful message in the notes at the back “there is a good chance Yugen might be appearing regularly beginning with this issue.” However, the recurring statement “Yugen is published quarterly” is followed by a question mark this time, suggesting the editors’ uncertainty.

3.4 Production

However poor they were, Hettie and LeRoi were able to produce eight issues of their little magazine. The production of Yugen was not expensive. For the first issue of Yugen they rented a “rickety IBM [typewriter] with erratic adjustable spacing, and rigged up a light box for paste ups.” Overall, the magazine was made by hand. Hettie Jones recounts how she “retyped all the work, then laid it out on a grid over a light box, and after it was as perfect as possible LeRoi took the pages to a printer who did a process then known as “photo offset” Then copies were made from the stencil this produced.”252 The way Yugen was produced – low budget, by hand – influenced the way it looked. However, according to Hettie the magazine did look “semiprofessional.” The people at Partisan Review would even compliment her how “neat and well done” it was.253

The magazine itself was put together, by hand, on their kitchen table, first in their apartment in Greenwich Village, 7 Morton Street # 20, and later in their Chelsea apartment on Twentieth Street: “Piece by piece I put it all together, on my old kitchen table, with a triangle and T-Square borrowed from the Changer.” To learn the trade, they would be advised by Dick Hadlock – the editor at the Record Changer.254 Sometimes, the Joneses would be assisted by a number of people. For example, before Hettie found out about LeRoi and Diane di Prima’s affair, di Prima would help them:

[…] We would work together on Yugen. […] We would type and proof and paste till almost midnight. I learned some of the production skills I later used at Poets Press while working with Roi and Hettie.255

252 Hettie Jones, Interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016. 253 Ibid. 254 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 54. 255 Diane di Prima, Recollections of my Life as a Woman, 218.

48 However, Hettie does note that, ultimately, she was the one who did all the physical work: “I was the one who literally put the magazine together, by hand”256

3.6 Audience

The amount of subscribers for Yugen did not exceed 1000, which was the normal amount for a little magazine. Yet, compared to Big Table and Folder who only reached 500 copies per issue, they were more successful.257 Hettie Jones has to be credited with this success. Because of her connection with Partisan Review, Yugen was distributed nationally, and not just in New York. Indeed, Hettie became friends with the distributor for Partisan Bernhard DeBoer and his wife, and he subsequently offered to send a few copies to university libraries in “Michigan and other Midwestern states” and to “places all over the US where we had no contacts.” She emphasizes that this aided in the reputation of Yugen. People like Frank O’Hara, for example, were excited about their magazine and subsequently wanted to be featured in it. Finally, Hettie emphasizes the value of Yugen in that aspect. She asserts that “we were able to reach new young readers who were excited about the Beats and wanted to know about other people writing what came to be known as the New American Poetry.”258

3.7 Editorial Strategy

An interesting aspect of the subject of editing beat little magazines is the fact that the Beats were so averse toward editing and revising. The spontaneity of the prose or the poetry was an essential element in Beat poetics. Thus, it seems counterintuitive to discuss any editorial strategy when it comes to Beat literature. However, that is what Hettie Jones did. She had never really “learned” to edit. However, her education did prepare her for this kind of work. For example, she edited the yearbook at her college. In general, she knew her grammar and understood how texts had to be made.259 During her time at Partisan Review, she was in charge of the subscriptions and did general secretarial work. However, the

256 Hettie Jones, Interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016. 257 Thacker, “General Introduction,” 17. 258 Hettie Jones, interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016. 259 Hettie Jones, Interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016.

49 editors William Philips and Philip Rahv started to teach her a few editing skills. After a while, Philips would occasionally ask her to edit something.

“Copyedit this,” he said to me [Philips to Hettie Jones] one day, putting a manuscript into my hand. “But I’ve never … How do you do it?” I said. He hesitated, frowning, then patted my shoulder. “Just make it right,” he said reassuringly. “And change it from English to American.260

Subsequently, that was what she did and she would keep on using this advice. She explains: “editing for me consisted in making sure that the writer’s spelling and grammar were correct and that the point was made.” For Yugen, however, she emphasizes that she only revised the typing mistakes because “Yugen […] was largely poetry and one doesn’t mess with poetry!” This is again in line with the typical attitude of a little magazine editor, who allows the poets or writers to express themselves how they want.

3.8 Yugen’s Impact on the Beat Generation and on Hettie Jones

Yugen had definitely an impact on the Beat Generation, in that it published such a variety of authors. Moreover, it also supported other groups like the San Francisco poets, the Black Mountain poets and the New York poets. Specifically, in the case of the Beat Generation, Yugen stood out. Not only the central Beats, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs, were in the magazine, for example. Also, foundational Beats such as Tuli Kupferberg and the late-generation Beat David Meltzer were published. One of the Beat poets who had his first publishing opportunity in Yugen was Ray Bremser.261 Moreover, Hettie Jones is convinced that they “made a great deal of difference” since Yugen was one of the few little magazines that published the Beats.262 Furthermore, Hettie Jones did notice some reluctance of the more serious periodicals, such as Partisan Review, to take on the authors she and LeRoi put forward. She states that:

William Philips later regretted not publishing more of the Beats, but neither he nor Philip Rahv would consider any of the work I urged on [them] nor would most of

260 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 45. 261 Charters, Beat Down to Your Soul, 35. 262 Hettie Jones, Interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016.

50 the younger editors, the rising neoconservatives, who simply assumed that they were American lit and I wasn’t.263

Then again, she felt that they did inspire some people with the poetry that appeared in their magazine. For example, Donald Allen’s anthology The New American Poetry (1960) published various names that “had appeared first in Yugen.264 Therefore, it can be stated that Yugen had a definite impact in supporting new literary movements. Furthermore, the magazine is also a great resource for twentieth-century writing. Rather than a controlled anthology, it offers immediacy. Indeed, each issue published new, recent poetry.

Additionally, Yugen brought a diverse group of people together, which definitely aided in the development of the literary community in New York. For example, the Joneses apartment(s) was not only the headquarters of the production of Yugen; it would also serve as a “Beat salon.”265 It was a place where like-minded people could come together and talk about literature and poetry. The talking would often be followed by parties. Hettie Jones remembers one particular party after a reading by Kerouac in the Seven Arts Coffee Gallery. After the reading, “A crowd of thirty, thus inspired [after the reading] needs a big enough place to party […] and we had nothing but party space to offer.”266 Jones recalls that from that time on people kept going in and out, crashing at their place, and partying. However, she was excited by all this, insisting it was “a young time, a wild, wide-open, hot time.”267

Others had also noticed how LeRoi and Hettie had started organizing a creative community from within their living room. Brenda (Bonnie Bremser) Frazier, for example, recalls that she would visit them sometimes with her husband Ray when they were in New York:

They were some of the first people that I met when we were in New York together. Ray and I went over there one time, maybe after I’d known him for a month. One of the issues of Yugen had just come out with one of Ray’s poems in it. They had a kind of party – I think they were always having parties then – and there were all poets there, like Barbara Moraff was there, the sort of subgroup of the Beat generation. They [Hettie and LeRoi] were the mother and father of the literary scene at that time. They were making things happen in an organized way that

263 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 100. 264 Ibid., 116. 265 Johnson, “Beat Queens: Women in Flux,” 47. 266 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 70. 267 Ibid., 71.

51 wasn’t happening otherwise. Maybe not on a Don Allen level, or maybe not on an academic level, but on the little magazine scene, they were putting it together like nobody else was. And they were married, they had kids, they were living a normal life. They were very hip, and yet they were paying the bills, which was incomprehensible to me. How could you do both at once.268

That sense of community is also noticeable in Yugen itself. In each issue, the contributors are adequately described and promoted. For example in Yugen 2, it reads, “You should read Gregory Corso’s book Gasoline!” But not only writers were promoted. Yugen was always decorated with various drawings and it had also beautiful cover art. In Yugen 7 a note tells the reader that “the cover was done especially for this issue by Mr. Bluhm [American abstract expressionism painter Norman Bluhm]. He is hung most frequently in the Leo Castelli Gallery, NY.”

Essentially, Yugen did exactly what a little magazine was supposed to do, promote new avant-garde movements and bring like-minded people together.

3.9 “So, were you just the typist?”

Clearly, Hettie Jones had a vital role in the production of the little magazine Yugen. Thus, it is unfair to minimize her contribution. In 1994, at a New York University conference on the Beats, someone asked her to comment on a statement that her role was insignificant because she had “just been the typist.” She strongly disagreed:

The very idea assumed that Yugen, the magazine I published with LeRoi Jones, had appeared in bookstores and on library shelves on the wings of song. Whereas, to the contrary, without the typist there there’d have been no magazine at all. Since the early issues of Yugen, as well as some of our Totem Press books were, well, hand jobs. Put together on the kitchen table. And indeed, I did the typing.269

Certainly, unlike LeRoi who published his own poetry in almost every issue of Yugen, Hettie never did this. At the time, however, she was still struggling to write. Nevertheless, Hettie’s contribution is important, not only in the larger context of the women of the Beat Generation but also on a personal level. To illustrate, Hettie would be in great debt to her

268 Johnson and Grace, Breaking the Rule of Cool, 125-126. 269 Hettie Jones, “Babes in Boyland,” 51.

52 early career as an editor for her own writing skills, later in life. For her, editing was an essential part of the writing process. She was convinced that being a writer meant being an editor, following the mantra “writing is rewriting.” Chelsea D. Schlievert even argues that Hettie found “agency through the process of editing.”270 In other words, her early years as an editor were vital for her identity. The love for editing came early in her career when she was working at Partisan Review. She narrates about watching William Philips edit:

I liked watching him edit, the care for the precise word, the very generosity of honing another person’s argument. When I began to take charge of business with the printer, and there were times when a line here or there had to be saved, we would spread out the proofs and go over them. The content dissolved in the pleasure of sweet manipulation.271

Looking back on Yugen, she adds that reading and editing the work of such talented people ultimately made her a better writer: “Word choices, habits of thought – these things, when you learn them early, can last your whole life long.” 272

Hettie Jones’ work as an editor is also telling in the context of the women Beats. Rather than being a “silent beat chick,” she actively participated in the Beat movement by supporting and promoting the literature of its members. She fondly looked back on it and was proud of this achievement: “If I hadn’t yet managed to speak for myself, here at least were these others.”273 Moreover, she felt that she was playing an essential role for women in future generations. Even though there are some examples of women working as editors in or in association with the Beat Generation, she still felt that this was an exception: “Those of us women […] were unusual and were mostly in rebellion against the traditional role women were expected to play.”274 Lastly, it appears that Hettie could offer that sense of stability that was necessary to produce a magazine. Moreover, her organizational talents that she picked up in her previous publishing jobs would become useful. She did, indeed, learn the job “from the bottom up.”

270 Chelsea D. Schlievert, “Self-Narratives and Editorial Marks,” Women Inventing the 1950s. Spec. Issue of Women’s Studies 40, no. 8 (2011): 1101. 271 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 44. 272 Hettie Jones, Interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016. 273 Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones, 55. 274 Hettie Jones, Interview by Julie Stokx, 22 March 2016.

53 Even though most little magazine studies do credit Hettie’s role in the production of Yugen, some do not.275 This is likely linked to the general omission of women Beats from cultural and literary history. It also relates to the general view that women in the 1950s were living according to the domestic ideal, as discussed in the previous part of this dissertation. Furthermore, it may be due to the fact that her memoir – where she started telling her stories, including the ones from her time at Yugen – was only published in 1990. Subsequently, recognition for her work came only later. Finally, it could be related to the importance of LeRoi Jones, who became a prominent poet, playwright, and activist from the 1960s on. Therefore, he was more subject to research and criticism, and more in the foreground concerning Yugen.276

Nonetheless, Hettie Jones does not feel as if she was not given credit. In fact, she details how “everyone knew that I literally “made” the magazine by hand because people who came to visit could see my work table.” Moreover, she felt respected for the work she did at that time. Additionally, it has to be noted that Hettie considered Yugen as teamwork effort between two partners. She says, “Yugen was LeRoi’s idea, but I threw myself at it.” She affirms that they “simply divided up the work [and] did what had to be done, because we both were very excited about creating a space for new writing”. Ultimately, this is what truly made them both little magazine editors. They were selfless in creating Yugen because it was a project for other artists who were struggling to be published, it was also a platform for new and adventurous writing, and it became a central power in the literary community of New York, in the 1950s.

275 For example, the work of Anderson and Kinzie The Little Magazine in America, where only LeRoi Jones is interviewed about Yugen; LeRoi Jones does not mention Hettie in the interview. However, in his autobiography (Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones) he tells the full story, including the work that Hettie did as an editor. Yet, he uses pseudonyms for her (“Nellie Kohn”) and Yugen (“Zazen”). This may have further complicated Hettie’s recognition. Furthermore, in Brooker and Thacker’s study The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Hettie is mentioned, but hardly recognized as a real co-editor; on one occasion they even refer to her as “Nellie,” (her pseudonym in LeRoi’s book) which clearly indicates that they have not researched her role adequately. 276 David Abrahamson ed., The American Magazine: Research Perspectives and Prospects (Ames: Iowa State University Press), 55.

54 IV. Conclusion

In this dissertation, I have presented an analysis of the Beat little magazine Yugen and the role of its co-editor Hettie Jones. In the first chapter some generalizations about little magazines, the women of the beat generation, and Beat little magazines were made. From the first section, it was clear that all little magazines have little funds, a small audience, and an avant-garde nature in common. The second section placed the Beats in the historical context of the 1950s, and from there on discussed the women of the Beat Generation who rebelled against the domestic constraints of the decade. Finally, some notes on women editors were made. Historically, women had been actively involved in the print business (books, periodicals, etc.) since Early Modern Times. Thus, it is by no means surprising that the Beat women were involved in similar work. This was then linked to the Beat Generation by discussing some women editors of Beat (or Beat-related) little magazines. One of the unexpected conclusions from this first chapter was that the Beats were ultimately no editors. Thus, it would seem irrelevant to discuss them in relation to the editing of little magazines. However, it became clear that the women Beats did possess all the necessities to produce a little magazine such as stability and organization.

In the analysis chapter both the questions that were presented in the introduction were addressed. Subsequently, the second chapter questioned the “beat” nature of Yugen and the exact role of Hettie Jones as an editor. Although Yugen would publish poetry from the New York School poets, the Black Mountain poets, and the San Francisco poets, the Beats were more prominent in its four first issues. This is linked to the popularity of the Beats after 1960. Essentially, the purpose of the little magazine was achieved and the Beats were no longer hindered in their publishing opportunities. Yugen can also be linked to the Beats’ fascination with Zen Buddhism. Of course, Yugen’s editors are also considered Beats. The production, financial issues and audience are what truly made Yugen a little magazine.

The second aspect that was researched in this dissertation was the role of Hettie Jones as the co-editor of Yugen. Jones insists that the magazine was ultimately a joint collaboration between her and LeRoi Jones. However, it still has to be noted that Hettie Jones had far more responsibilities than just “being the typing.” She also edited and, essentially, ran the magazine. As unimportant as the people in the background sometimes appear, eventually it

55 becomes clear that without them, nothing would even happen. Finally, that is what Hettie Jones’ role was in the little magazine Yugen. She operated in the background, providing that stability that was required from editors and publishers. She had the organizational talent to manage the magazine, was a careful reviser, and she did what was required of editors of little magazines: selflessly publishing avant-garde material for no commercial gain. The fact that she was often not entirely credited in accounts and studies about Yugen actually adds further strength to that argument. Like many women had done before her, Hettie played a vital role in the publishing and editing of little magazines. Her contribution was so obvious that there should be another category “editors and publishers” added to Brenda Knights’ categories of women of the Beat Generation (muses, writers, and artists).

Ultimately, this thesis revealed a budding rebellion, both in the world of magazine publishing and in American women of the 1950s. The importance of a magazine like Yugen today is still clear because it offers glimpses or snapshots of a certain literary and cultural time period. More than an anthology does, a little magazine depicts a sense of immediacy. Various authors appear side by side, which reveals a formation of a literary community. Also, the editors of Yugen would not conform to the 1950s standards of American society and went against the wave of consumerism and conformity. For Hettie Jones, this was hard. Women were supposed to act a certain way in the 1950s. However, this dissertation shows that rebellion was possible in the 1950s for women and that editing and publishing little magazines had a significant role in this rebellion.

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60 Appendix

Interview with Hettie Jones, email, 22 March 2016

How did you learn to edit? And, how specific was the editing process for Yugen?

I don’t think I ever “learned” to edit! I always had very good writing and grammar skills, and in college I was an editor of the yearbook, and wrote some personal essays for a college publication. Editing for me consisted in making sure that the writer’s spelling and grammar were correct and that the point was made. Re Yugen—that was largely poetry and one doesn’t mess with poetry!

You mention in your memoir that Yugen was Leroi Jones’s idea, but that you “threw yourself at it”. How would you describe your role and responsibilities in the production of Yugen? And, did you discuss with each other how the work would be divided?

I was the one who literally put the magazine together, by hand. Without computers, life was a lot more complicated. I retyped all the work, then laid it out on a grid over a light box, and after it was as perfect as possible LeRoi took the pages to a printer who did a process then known as “photo offset.” Then copies were made from the stencil this produced. Re any discussion, we simply divided up the work—I did all the mechanical stuff because I was good at it and he went out and found people who sent us poems—he either wrote to people or got recommendations from people we knew. We never discussed any roles, but simply did what had to be done, because we both were very excited about creating a space for new writing since the only other extant magazine at the time was on the West Coast.

In each issue of the magazine, there is information about the contributors to the issue, about the magazine (its price, address…) and also a few advertisements for other presses, magazines or events. Who was responsible for this?

I think this part was simply a collaboration. If there was anyone to telephone to ask for an ad, one or the other of us did. It was largely just information that we got word of mouth.

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Did you frequently take part in selecting the literature and poetry that would appear in Yugen? And, how were the pieces selected? Did you invite contributors?

Because I had a full-time job at the time, I think LeRoi did most of the inviting of contributors; he would run into people that we knew in the local bookstore, or in the Cedar Tavern (a hangout for painters and poets) or we’d find ourselves out listening to music and someone would offer pages right then. Things were completely informal.

To what extent did you make a difference in the literary landscape with Yugen?

Well, from this point in time I can say that we made a great deal of difference, because there wasn’t another little magazine that came out of New York featuring Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and others who later became very well known as American writers of that particular group. Because the bohemia back then was quite small (at least in New York), we knew not only writers but painters and musicians and dancers by name, and all of us attended all of their events. Because the distributor for Partisan Review (where I worked) liked us and appreciated our quirky little magazine because it was neat and well done, he agreed to send Yugen around to libraries and places all over the U.S. where we had no contacts. From that advantage we were able to reach new young readers who were excited about the Beats and wanted to know about other people writing what came to be known as the New American Poetry.

Would you say there were a lot of women doing this kind of work for magazines in the late Fifties and early Sixties? Or was it more of an exception? And why? Was it a particularly ‘beat’ venture?

Not a lot of women at all. Maybe none! The new writing was mostly a boys’ game and in general views about women had not changed for generations. Those of us women who were around in Greenwich Village then and on the San Francisco scene were unusual and were mostly in rebellion against the traditional role women were expected to play. Yugen wasn’t a particularly “beat” venture as there were other contributions from writers who didn’t consider themselves “beat” but were trying to write about new subjects in a new,

62 more direct way. The difference between largely academic writing and what we published was not only in style but in a looser subject matter and reflected a more open lifestyle.

Do you feel you were (and are) given enough credit for all the work you did?

Well, now that I have been recognized for all this, I am quite satisfied! But I was always given credit back then. Everyone knew that I literally “made” the magazine by hand because people who came to visit could see my work table. I also had a very good job—I actually ran the office of the Partisan Review which was a very well-known leftist magazine run by people a generation older than we were. So I was respected for the work and the responsibilities I carried out in that job, as well as doing Yugen.

Was Yugen advertised in any way? Or did its popularity grow by itself?

I think we advertised in a couple of other little magazines that sprang up but most of all it was talked about and then people began to buy it.

Do you have an idea what the readership of Yugen was like? Were the readers mainly friends and other writers, or also literary students and people in general?

I think, given that we got into university libraries because of the Partisan Review distributor, we were read not only by artists in New York but students in places like Michigan and other Midwestern states, and this enhanced our reputation beyond what we might have done all by ourselves, since we had no money to travel, or even money to telephone long-distance!

Do you have a favorite anecdote from your time working at Yugen?

Not an anecdote, no, but I do believe that working with all this wonderful writing helped me to understand how I wanted my own writing to go. It helped me to become sophisticated about writing in general. As a woman, of course, I would eventually write about different subjects from men—thankfully! But I will always cherish my memories of typing good writing over and over—and reading good writing over and over. Word

63 choices, habits of thought—these things, when you learn them early, can last your whole life long.

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