Stewart, Katie Jennifer (2007) 'A kind of singing in me' : a critical account of women writers of the Beat generation. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2805/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] 'A Kind of Singing in Me': A Critical Account of Women Writers of the Beat Generation Katie Jennifer Stewart Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the University of Glasgow Department of English Literature June 2007 © Katie Jennifer Stewart, 2007 ABSTRACT This thesis provides a critical account of women writers of the Beat generation. Writers such as Diane di Prima, Hettie Jones, Joanne Kyger, Joyce Johnson, Bonnie Bremser, and Janine Pommy Vega were part of the 1950s Beat literary culture and had social relationships with the more famous male Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. To differing degrees the women writers have also been influenced by the aesthetics of the male writers, and since the 1950s their work has been contextualised alongside the men's in literary magazines, anthologies and more recent academic studies. But in such responses the women writers appear overshadowed by the male Beats, as 'minor characters', to quote the title of Joyce Johnson's memoir ofthe 1950s. The issue of women's 'minority' forms the premise of this thesis, and I introduce the minority debate through reference to the Beat canon and the issue of revisionism in relation to the wider literary canon. I cite theoretical models such as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's 'rhizome' and 'nomadology' to support my argument. In their spatial form and terminology, these models express movement, which is pertinent since physical movement characterises the lifestyles, texts and myths of the Beat writers. Deleuze and Guattari' s theory can also express the destabilising which the notion of the woman writer brings to these images and myths. I argue that instead of proposing women writers as Beat writers we look to their difference. By reading the women's texts in relation to various themes -literary influence, the literary bohemian world of the city, the parental generation, and body, sexuality, and the road - I suggest difference is expressed in their writing. But rather than positing a distinct 'gynocritical' tradition in the terms set out by Elaine Showalter (1979), I highlight the differences between the women writers. By nature of its focus on little known texts and authors, and the critically­ undeveloped area of Beat literature and culture, this thesis is part literary history, part cultural history, part biography, as well as offering close readings of the texts. The texts discussed in this thesis have not only received little critical attention, they have not been read and contextualised against each other. In this thesis I do so, taking the broad historical and literary overview that women of the Beat generation have not received, as either writers or subjects. 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgements 111 Introduction I Chapter 1: 'Merely Being (T)here': Exposing the Critical Debate of 'Women ofthe Beat Generation' 30 Chapter 2: Community and Difference: Territories of The New American Poetry 62 Chapter 3: Daughters of the City: Flanerie and Other Inner Flights 115 Chapter 4: Beat Foreign Bodies: Immigrant Family History and 'Postmemory' 173 Chapter 5: Internal Journeys: Home, Domesticity and Embodied Subjects 209 Chapter 6: For Love on the Road 251 Conclusion 312 Bibliography 317 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Joyce Johnson and Jack Kerouac, 1957 33 Cover of Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters 35 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the AHRC for their funding of my research. Also, the staff of The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, and Delinda Buie for her assistance with accessing the Diane di Prima archive at the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville. I would like to thank my tutor Dr Vassiliki Kolocotroni for her support and attention to detail with regard to my research and the preparation of this thesis. Support and insight also came from my colleagues Rachael McLennan, friends from the American Literature Seminars at the University of Glasgow, Alexandra Ganser, George Mouratardis, Jason Anthony Levi, Polina Mackay and Rodrigo Toscano. Other help and academic insight came from Professor Geoff Ward, Professor Susan Castillo, Dr Nick Selby, and Dr Jim Stewart. Kate Harvey at Bloomsbury Publishing Inc and Sabrina Veroczi at the Irene Skolnick Literary Agency assisted in giving prompt permission for the reproduction of the photographs. I am grateful to Kevin Killian for his assistance in contacting Joanne Kyger, and Ms. Kyger herself for her interest in my research. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their support and care. III INTRODUCTION This thesis began as a project of 'rescuing' a group of unknown and marginalised writers - 'Women of the Beat generation'. In recent years this has been a growing area in the field of Beat generation studies, but the names of the individual women writers are usually unknown outside the specialised areas of Beat studies and various schools of avant-garde American poetry. But during the later stages of my research, I was faced with the recurring thought that perhaps they were not a 'group' at all. Such doubt could be defined by the following lines of questioning. Firstly, did their work and lives present enough similarity to bring them together? Secondly, what were their actual relations, both social and literary, to the 'Beat' generation - the very designation by which the group is constructed? The word 'Beat' brings with it confusion and contradiction. So I present it as a historically-inflected term which did not signify in the late-1940s to mid-1960s period as it does for readers today. In the words of Loma Sage, the Beat generation was a 'media "fix'" of the 1950s (1992: 116). The writers Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), and Gregory Corso (1930- 2001) became the names and faces of the Beat literary generation. As Michael Davidson states, the 'public exposure' they received, 'turned them, as writers, into signs' (1989: 31). This snapshot belies the disorder and nuances of a multidisciplinary cultural scene of the mid-twentieth century. The attempt to place order on chaos is evidenced in the confusing and conflicting definitions and redefinitions of 'beat' and the 'Beat generation' over the years, in relation not only to its members but to its I timeframe. 1 While acknowledging the origins and continuing allure of this reductive snapshot I will map out the wider literary-cultural domain, placing my women writers therein and offering alternative literary and cultural lineages. Such revisionism has been a developing strand in Beat studies, with gender being a point of entry into the debate. Outside their status as 'Beats', gender is the common factor in the creation of 'women of the Beat generation'. Keeping the question of their status as a group in mind, I now introduce each writer by providing brief biographical material, noting her major works, and placing her within the Beat generation by referencing her social and literary connections to its major figures. I I follow the convention of academic and popular sources in capitalising 'Beat' when it appears in relation to the 'Beat generation' or a specific 'Beat writer'. Of course, this capitalisation results in the tendency to take its meaning as read. The lower case verb 'beat' appears when its original slang usage is conveyed, that of an existential or physical state i.e. 'dead beat' or 'beat-up' (Charters 1992: xvii). 2 Part I: Biographical Introductions: The Fifties Girls Most ofthe women writers discussed in this thesis were born in the mid-1930s and as young women of the 1950s were drawn to the bohemian enclaves of New York City and San Francisco, creating their own identities before these areas became identified with the Beat generation.2 In several cases the male Beat writers would not be the first literary 'fathers' they took. But in this milieu they became aware of Beat writers and the landmarks of Beat, for example, the publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (1956) and its censorship trial, the publication of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), and the appearance of the 'beatnik' phenomenon.3 They were familiar with Beat writers socially and had a positive reaction to Beat aesthetics while nurturing their own aesthetics. The women writers show both empathy and frustration with the presence of the Beats. The various freedoms which the male Beats helped to spread - going on the road, the practice of Buddhism and other Eastern religions, experimental writing techniques, drug experimentation, and relatively liberated sexualities - were adopted and rejected by these women to differing degrees. 2 In Chapter Three I ground my writers' 'bohemianism' in terms of historical bohemianism. But for the moment, we can understand 'bohemian' as the prevalent term before specific terms such as 'Beat', or the later 'beatnik', appeared. 3 It is generally agreed that the term 'beatnik' first appeared in popular discourse in the San Francisco Chronicle's local interest column written by Herb Caen in April 1958.