Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte Valérie Partoens From Beat to Bad Connections: Joyce Johnson’s (Feminist) Response to Kerouac’s On the Road Masterproef voorgedragen tot het behalen van de graad van Master in de American Studies 2014 Promotor Prof. Isabel Meuret Vakgroep Letterkunde Expression of thanks First of all, I would not have been able to complete this dissertation without the time and guidance of my supervisor Isabel Meuret. In addition, I would also like to thank the Master Program of American Studies and its team of professors for giving me the opportunity to gain more knowledge about a field of studies in which I have always been extremely interested. Likewise, I would also want to express my gratitude towards my classmates, of whom many now have become close friends, for their friendship and for their help during this year. Evidently, I would not be able to finish this thesis and this year of higher education without the support of my family and friends, who always believed in me even when I did not. Last but not least, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Joyce Johnson, who took the time to personally discuss her novel Bad Connections and as a result gave me the opportunity to gain a more comprehensive insight into the particular setting of the novel and her life within the Beat movement. 2 Table of Contents EXPRESSION OF THANKS ..................................................................................................2 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................4 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK.......................................................................................7 2.1 The Beat Generation as a male-centered social and literary movement ..........................7 2.2 Gender during postwar America and during the counterculture ....................................13 2.3 Women Beat writers in the limelight: Joyce Johnson ....................................................18 2.4 Bad Connections.............................................................................................................22 2.5 On the Road....................................................................................................................26 3 A CRITICAL READING OF THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN ON THE ROAD AND BAD CONNECTIONS ...................................................................................29 3.1 The position of women in American society..................................................................29 3.2 Male-female relationships and escaping “square” society ............................................33 3.3 Female sexuality.............................................................................................................39 3.4 Objectification and stereotyping of women in the patriarchal society ...........................43 4 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................50 5 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................55 3 1 Introduction The recent success of films such as Howl (2010), On the Road (2012), and Kill Your Darlings (2013)1 and the rise of the contemporary hipster subculture as a phenomenon that has its roots in the 1930s and 1940s2 has demonstrated that the themes and values of the Beat Generation are still of significance and a source of inspiration for the present generations. Nowadays, the Beat Generation tends to be remembered as a product of and a reaction against the stifling conformity of the Eisenhower presidency of the 1950s, as a group of intellectuals that proclaimed a new notion of social and literary freedoms to counter the political and psychological repressions that characterized the Cold War America of the 1950s3, and as pioneers of the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s.4 Although this male- dominated group of post-World War II writers that is defined as the Beat Generation pushed forward a progressive agenda, their relationship towards women was rather a confirmation of the conservative and subordinate position of females within the “square” post-World War II society.5 Although there exists a wealth of critical resources published over the last decades,6 this dissertation aims to explore the specific field of gender studies with regard to the Beat Generation in order to determine how women were portrayed within this movement. In particular, the objective is to analyze how Jack Kerouac, in his chef-d’oeuvre On the Road, arguably the “hip-pocket bible of the Beat Generation,”7 takes a rather traditional Western view of women and thereby places them in a position of marginal importance and power. Wryly enough, this derogatory attitude of marginalization and objectification by the male Beat writer towards the other sex mirrors the general attitude of the male-dominant Beat culture that adopted patriarchal attitudes towards women and celebrated an idealized defiant 1 For an overview: IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/. 2 D. Fletcher, “Hipsters,” Time, 29 July 2009. Web. 16 April 2014. <http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1913220,00.html>. 3 C. Gair, The Beat Generation: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), 25; 146-147. 4 D. Halberstam, The fifties (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993), 295. 5 G. N. McCampbell and R. Johnson, Breaking The Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004); R. Bennett, “Teaching the Beat Generation to Generation X,” in The Beat Generation. Critical Essays, ed. K. Myrsiades (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 1-20. 6 K. Myrsiades, The Beat generation: Critical Essays (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), ix. 7 P. Tamony, “Beat Generation: Beat: Beatniks,” Western Folklore Vol. 28 No. 4 (1969): 274. 4 masculinity.8 According to some anthologies, Beat women writers have often found themselves positioned as women but not read as writers.9 By and large, it is fair to say that the voice of the female Beat has been censored by publishers, historians, scholars and indeed the male Beat, perhaps to serve the larger goal of phallogocentrism.10 In this regard, this dissertation seeks to re-evaluate a narrative work by a female Beat writer in order to compare how the depiction of and attitudes towards women in a work of a woman who herself experienced the gender inequality within the postwar society and Beat milieu contrasts with the work of a key male Beat author. In particular, I will methodically analyze second generation female Beat Joyce Johnson’s Bad Connections in contrast with Kerouac’s On the Road; this again with a focus on the representation of women and their societal position in the American post-World War II society and counterculture. Although Johnson’s work is set in a different social context than Kerouac’s novel, it can be seen as a feminist reaction to the work and values of the male Beats portrayed in On the Road. As a result, this dissertation intends to contribute to the hitherto limited academic research that has been carried out on the canon of female Beat literature. In this way, we found it of particular importance to examine a less well-known work of Joyce Johnson, an author who positioned herself at the center of the Beat Generation,11 and whose earlier works today are out of print or difficult to find.12 In addition, the decision to critically analyze Johnson’s work with regard to Kerouac’s On the Road is of even greater significance considering their two-year romantic relationship.13 Although the Beat Generation was adept at promoting homosocial voices, Johnson was one of the few women at the heart of the Beat Generation who was motivated by Kerouac to write14 and succeeded in publishing novels that –in line with the work of the male Beat – depicted the struggle against conservative American society. Despite the fact that Johnson, like many writers of the movement’s second 8 A. R. Lee, The Beat Generation Writers (London; East Haven, Conn.: Pluto Press, 1996), 201. 9 G. N. McCampbell and R. Johnson, Breaking The Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), ix. 10 G. Thomson, “Gender Performance in the Literature of the Female Beats,” Clcweb: Comparative Literature And Culture, Vol. 13(1)(2011): 2. 11 G. Thomson, “Gender Performance in the Literature of the Female Beats,” Clcweb: Comparative Literature And Culture, Vol. 13(1)(2011): 4. 12 G. N. McCampbell and R. Johnson, Breaking The Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 4. 13 G. Thomson, “Gender Performance in the Literature of the Female Beats”, Clcweb: Comparative Literature And Culture, Vol. 13(1)(2011): 4. 14 J. Johnson, interview by V. Partoens, 30 April 2014. 5 generation, undeniably was largely influenced by seminal works of Ginsberg, and Burroughs, and her former lover Kerouac15, she nevertheless decided to move away from the male Beats’ sexist construction of male identity16 and to formulate her own more feminist response to Kerouac’s On the Road. As a result, this analytical reading will allow us to study the position of the woman in a literary work of an iconic male Beat author like Kerouac and a female author who extensively has been guided and influenced by the former, yet who has reinterpreted his teachings and made them her own. In sum, a thematic analysis of both novels will