[youtube]https://youtu.be/rj17WbJ1k7k[/youtube] In 1968 Allen Ginsberg appeared on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. The topic was the Avant-Garde but it wasn't long before Ginsberg, who Buckley refers to as "the hippie's hippie, the bohemian prototype," turns the discussion to the power of the media, censorship and language. He points out how the language of the media is a far cry from the language of the everyday and how the language the police use "toward hippies and Negroes" never enters the public discourse so one can never get a true picture of what happened. This was almost 50 years ago!
Jack Kerouac: A Birthday Salute
First Edition of the On the Road, 1957 Today is the birthday of Jack Kerouac. Best known as the father of The Beat Generation his spontaneous prose style changed the game, bringing a fresh approach to the novel. Kerouac's iconic status shows no signs of letting up. All is books are still in print and his masterpiece On the Road remains a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations. On his spontaneous writing style: Many of his books exemplified the spontaneous approach, including On the Road, Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, Big Sur, and The Subterraneans. The central features of this...
The Beat Generation in the Big Apple
Carl Solomon, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs at the Gotham Book Mart, New York City, 1977 Calling all tour guides... The latest New York-centric map from Constantine Valhouli features the haunts, hangouts and related places of interest for the Beat Generation. From the library in Ozone Park, Queens where Jack Kerouac started planning his seminal road trip to the West End bar across from Columbia University which became "a college bar for the Beat poets" and all points in between. The map highlights 123 spots of interest with most falling within the boundaries of NYC. Link to...
Jack Kerouac reads from ‘On The Road’, 1959
[youtube]http://youtu.be/QzCF6hgEfto[/youtube] Published in 1957 by Viking, On The Road would quickly become a cornerstone work of the Beat Generation and the bible of the American counterculture. Here is Kerouac appearing on the Steve Allen Show in 1959. First we get a nice background of the book's history from Kerouac: 7 years on the road, 3 weeks to write, and that it was written on a continous piece of teletype paper. Then Kerouac gets reading and Steve Allen gets playing, providing a stellar piano accompaniment. Reading from a novel written "in a form that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz" with Allen and company...
George Herms, Joseph Conrad and The Librarian
The Librarian, 1960. Assemblage: wood box, papers, books, loving cup, and painted stool57 x 63 x 21 in. (144.8 x 160 x 53.3 cm)George Herms emerged from the heart of the Beat Generation to become one of the founding artists of the California Assemblage movement. Three years after assembling his first piece or "junk sculpture" he began a series of works based on real people and places.One of the first pieces in the series and now considered one of his most important was The Librarian. During a visit to the local library in Larkspur, California where Herms lived for a...