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J Bryant
J Bryant
2 years ago

Great essay. I used to think the 60s was the best decade ever in America. I wished I was in my teens or twenties at that time so I could have lived the counterculture life and experienced all that naked optimism (and sang “This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius” and believed it).
Now I view the 60s as the beginning of the rot that has mutated, sixty years later, into the modern progressive movement, the end point of narcissistic self-absorption. And I suppose, intentionally or not, Kerouac was its prophet.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

The 60s (and the 50s before them) were times of optimism – despite the assassinations, terrorists, violent demonstrations etc.) but what seems sweet now, looking back, is how society still held together. There might be huge arguments at home (‘you’re not wearing THAT to church’) or at work (about issues like abortion) but somehow it still felt as if we were still one community. Young people were developing their own rebellious culture, but still went to church and visited the grandparents on weekends. In most cases youth still respected age – well, we didn’t have any money so options were limited!
Even music was a shared thing – Motown and pop music was fairly universally liked, but we would still be watching Peggy Lee on the Dean Martin show. People read the same paper and everyone watched Peyton Place on TV. I guess people who enjoyed the Black & White Minstrels weren’t buying Janis Joplin albums, but generally it seemed like new directions without the fragmentation we have now.

Last edited 2 years ago by Russell Hamilton
Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago

Black & White Minstrels Lives Matter!

Terry Davis
Terry Davis
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

Brilliant!

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I think you are right about the 60s – however that decade also gave birth to lots of really great music and some excellent musicians

John K
John K
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Ironic that he died in 1969, I don’t usually go in for turning point theories of history but this does seem to have been a genuine one, so much of importance happened. Woodstock, the moon landing, Vietnam, the Manson murders, etc etc And Altamont in December that year was perhaps “the day the music died”.
The chronicle of events that year is astonishing.
1969 – Wikipedia

LCarey Rowland
LCarey Rowland
2 years ago
Reply to  John K

I was there, wrote a novel about it: King of Soul

Fredrick Urbanelli
Fredrick Urbanelli
2 years ago
Reply to  John K

68 was pretty tumultuous as well. The assassinations, the Prague spring, Mai 68 in France, the siege of Chicago, and my very first real girlfriend at age 14.

Will Cummings
Will Cummings
2 years ago
Reply to  John K

Not to mention that there was a deadly pandemic in 1969 during which over 1 million people died. In our own more enlightened age, everyone at Woodstock would be properly masked as they rebelled against authority and rejected bourgeois social constraint.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

The 60s and 70s were defining decades. Classic liberalism. Opening minds. Sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll. All my brain and body need. Humour.

R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

“There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago

a synthesis of what Kerouac called, in a 1957 essay, the “supercollosal bureaucratic totalitarian benevolent Big Brother structures” of postwar America with the permissive, therapeutic, spiritual-but-not-religious attitudes of the hippies.

Would have appreciated more on this. I was going to say “who, at the time, would have seen this coming”. But perhaps WilliamBurroughs did!
What’s very striking about the world we live in now is that no one wants to feel “outside” society. Everyone, however strange, wants to be accepted. At one time outsider status, however phoney and short lived, was a badge of honour. Now no one seems to want to leave mummy’s caring arms.

Hendrik Mentz
Hendrik Mentz
2 years ago

In 1968, Kerouac appeared on a panel on William F. Buckley Jr.’s Firing Line. The novelist, once known for his movie-star good looks, appeared drunk, bloated, and incoherent. A year later he was dead

The author didn’t link to the interview in question – possibly intentionally – but, anyway, here it is, because, for me, it brings it all home >> https://youtu.be/oaBnIzY3R00

Sue Sims
Sue Sims
2 years ago

It’s interesting how quickly Kerouac, the beatniks, hippies, etc, were absorbed by the Establishment, the Blob, the Man, or whatever you want to call it – epitomised (for me, anyway) by the fact that in 1994, On the Road was on the English Literature A Level syllabus.* I had to teach it…
*For non-British readers: A levels are the school-leaving exams for 18-year-olds.

Last edited 2 years ago by Sue Sims
Dermot O'Sullivan
Dermot O'Sullivan
2 years ago

A good writer IMHO. Try Dharma Bums.

Ian Burns
Ian Burns
2 years ago

Bukowski over Kerouac any day. Ginsberg could write poetry though.

Will Cummings
Will Cummings
2 years ago

Maybe he just got hooked on booze early on and died the long slow humiliating death of an alcoholic. It happens to plumbers and bank presidents as well.

Will Cummings
Will Cummings
2 years ago

Maybe he just got hooked on booze early on and died the long slow humiliating death of an alcoholic. It happens to plumbers and bank presidents as well.

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago

I’ve never read ‘On the road’ – is it any good? I’ve always had the impression Kerouac was a bit of a mediocre Jim Morrison level writer, especially when compared to other American writers of the 20th century like Robinson Jeffers or Hemingway. Perhaps I’m being unfair?

Regan Best
Regan Best
2 years ago
Reply to  Jeff Butcher

It was required in the class on Intellectual History I took in college in the early 70’s. The teachers opinion was that it was somewhat adolescent and that Kerouac was one of those people who never really grew up.

Richard Pearse
Richard Pearse
2 years ago
Reply to  Jeff Butcher

I read it in the 1970’s in my early 20’s (to locate my opinion in time and space) and thought it was fun, engaging, a good read etc. definitely different than anything I’d read before (maybe a hint of this perspective was in the alienation of Holden Caufield). So, I recommend it, since it explained (more epitomized) the mindset of the hipster generation (fast, furious and with a modicum of poetry, especially the last paragraph)

Richard Kuslan
Richard Kuslan
2 years ago

For a publication whose masthead claims to stand apart from the herd, this essay is yet another ironic proof of its conformity to the Generation of ’68 in matters of the arts. You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel and I’m not going to tell you what the barrel contained when it was full.
Kerouac, Ginsburg, Rexroth, Bukowski and that lot — reading their “work” is most unsatisfying for anyone looking for wisdom, for beauty, for literary competence, for command of form, etc. A box of Rice Krispies is more nourishing reading than these hype-merchants and loser-whiners who want to drag you into their mud and who fail miserably to enlighten — because they had discovered nothing but the broken world which they reveled in.
Why not an essay on a real writer — who is still alive — with great gifts and an understanding of language and form unparalleled by all but a few, such as Joseph O’Connor?

LCarey Rowland
LCarey Rowland
2 years ago

A tragedy, right up there with Death of a Salesman . . .
Death of a Libertine.