I’ve been in San Francisco with my family this weekend. Needless to say we’re having a great time.
While San Francisco is a relatively young city, it has a storied history regarding the arts. Notably for writers, it was the home of the literary movement known as the Beat Generation in the 1950s.
The Beats included writers like poets William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg and novelists Jack Keruoac and Neal Cassady. Their motto was liberty of expression and their style has influenced writers for the last 60 years.
The Beat Generation
In the early days of the Beat movement, one of its founding members, Lucien Carr, wrote a manifesto for the Beat Generation called “The New Vision,” which would define the movement. Their style hinged on three things, as explicated by Carr:
1. “Naked self-expression is the seed of creativity.”
The writing of the Beats is raw and full of meanderings and whimsy. The Beats often wrote whatever they thought in a rapid, manic stream of consciousness. They valued fresh perspectives and felt the careful structuring of earlier writing was an aberration of the truth. For example, here's a quote from Jack Kerouac's On the Road:
But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
Notice his long sentences full of exuberant repetition and freedom from the restraint of convention.
2. “The artist’s consciousness is expanded by derangement of the senses.”
Drug use was rampant among the writers in the Beat Generation as a way to to find unique perspectives.
While I would never suggest taking drugs, which I think end up stealing more creativity than they give—many of the Beats died very young—it's important for writers to find new ways to view reality.
Every great movement of artists have tried to find new ways to look at the world. Three things that help me to see the world in new ways are travel, relationships with people who are different from me, and isolation.
3. “Art eludes conventional morality.”
Believe it or not, before the Beat Generation, published works were censored by the government. Profanity was edited out and scenes with explicitly sexual content were redacted.
The Beats catalyzed the change in censorship laws in the late 1950s. So when you read 50 Shades of Grey, you should thank the Beat Generation.
What the Beat Generation reminds us is that we serve our stories, not morality. It's important for writers to be willing to break the rules of morality in our art. After all we have to lie to our characters, break their hearts, and even—gasp!—kill them off from time to time. You have to have a firm stomach for this kind of work.
That being said, Robert McKee points out that morality is essential to storytelling. We still always root for the good guys and want the bad guys to be punished. If you want to tell a good story, be willing to step over the bounds of morality, but ignore it at your peril.
Do you like the writers from the Beat Generation? What do you like about their writing?
PRACTICE
Write like a member of the Beat Generation.
Write for fifteen minutes. When your time is up, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, please be sure to comment on a few practices by other writers.
I’ve always wanted to be a writer, I mean, shit. Could you image that? It’s crazy how one move, a break-up, make-up, death, of a person that you don’t know, can’t know, because they don’t even exist can fucking wreck your mind. I mean, I’m no fucking J. D. Salinger, but I try to be. I’ve always admired the crazy ones. The ones where you just love them or you just hate them, like Holden. I love Holden, personally, but my Lee hates him. He says he’s a whiny brat, which I can see, but he’s not all that bad. He reminds me of one of my characters, Ash. I came up with Ash after my girlfriend dumped me for my weed dealer. Can you believe that shit? She dumps me, says it’s because of my smoking, an then hooks up with my fucking weed dealer. Holy shit!
This got a laugh from me. and that’s always good. “I’ve always admired the crazy ones.” With you there, especially in my case Kerouac and Ginsburg. And the former GF with the weed dealer is hilarious!
Thank you! I tried to let my inner thoughts flow and apparently my inner thoughts are those of a boy! 🙂 appreciate your comment! -Madison
I agree with jmf. Also, just from that one line I feel like I have a good idea of who Lee is, which I thought was interesting.
Thank you, thank you! That is quite funny, isn’t it? I know a few people who can’t stand Holden and they all seem to have similar opinions when it comes to literature. I appreciate the comment! -Madison
Steel strings in my head and I steer this pretty good copy of a car down the boulevard and turn in at the chain pharma the paperbacks calling my name so I’m out and stumbling through the sharp air toward the vacuous door and around my head steels, steals the hope I’ll find something about something other than fighting the scourge of international terrorism on the racks this time last time was the last time I’ll be taken in by the blurbs and this time a blast from the past calls to me in a ghost voice The Hobbitt by that guy with the three initials which I’ve never read and I have a winner stumping toward the check-out line and others already there and in walks a young mother with babygirl of three or four and she gets in line behind me as the guy behind the counter wishes a customer a happy holiday and mom behind me goes she goes why can’t they say merry christmas instead of happy holiday so I man I go I wouldn’t say either one and her response is a derisive sigh surrounded by a puff of gloomy laughter I am just a total loser to her and if there’s life it aint here, baby.
I have noooo idea what I’m doing here.
I tossed the change on the counter and grabbed the paper bag, the top fitted in my fist like my coat and shoes—my best friends, but before I scoot-scoot out the door, I put hand over my eyes, and it’s shaken’ like Little Willy after a pee, but I gotta protect my eyes from bright enemy outside because it’s the sun saying, “I told you so,” and that fucking, shitty guilt makes me hurry. I rushed out the door, ears
ringing, with my tongue playing peek-a-boo over my toothless gum and hairy lips.
I raced to the park by way of familiar alleys. I didn’t see Bluey on my day
bench, hidden by a statue with some spic on a horse. I beat the bastard. I settled on the hard, ridged bottom and opened the Gallo; six swallows soothed the hurting gut.
“Get off my bench, Porky.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He lunged at me, grabbed the neck of my coat and threw me to the ground. I held my paper bag high and thanked God I hadn’t spilled a drop.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know. Could have broken something.” I got up on all fours, using the side of the bench for support. “I’ll be back, Bluey.”
I wandered the back alley searching for a weapon. I wasn’t going to use my Gallo bottle. In a bin behind the Thai take-away, a brown, beer bottle sparkled on a mound of wilted cabbage. My eyes snapped around the area, seeing if it
was clear; I snatched the bottle and marched back to Bluey. He was snoring on my bench, face toward the back. I targeting his head. Bulls eye.
I grabbed his paper bag, pulled him off the bench and stuffed him under
it, laying his coat over his head and shoulders. I wiped the blood and glass off the seat with my sleeve and spread out, ready for a nap.
The fucking cunt.
This is hilarious!
Thanks Adam. I’m a newbie here. I’m not sure what we are doing in this
practice; backslapping historical, literary education, or taking the plunge
and putting down words like the “Beat” (and I hate to use this term), ‘generation’. I went way beyond my comfort zone using
four-letter-words, but wasn’t that the practice, part of the three? Does anyone offer constructive criticism,especially the helpful negatve? Is what
we write published on the net, like as ‘printed’?
A wonderful friend told me about the Right Practice, and I dove into it completely ignorant. Do reviews reveal only the positive? His
written practices came up as a plagiarism citation on Grammarly. I’ve given feedback, and received two. Thanks Adam, you are a sweet heart. Hilarious, and I hoped it would be.
I actually really liked the colorful language. *shrug* I’m a chick and I tend to curse like a sailor when I’m drinking. I suppose it makes me feel better to see another woman using it in her writing, because I do tend to stay away from the 4 letter words as well…but it’s how I talk sometimes so…yeah.
Thanks Julie, a neat tale of revenge in a suitably terrifying style! Out of my comfort reading zone too. I’m not sure the extreme language was needed as you set up the extreme situation so clearly. But like you say, that’s part of the practice…
I love this, Joe. Especially: “What the Beat Generation reminds us is that we serve our stories, not morality.” Man, that’s grist for the mill. I’m reeling. I want to steep myself in “On the Road”… again! I always come away from Kerouac feeling literarily feeble. It’s that “morality” issue. It grips me, but oh so insidiously. Pseudo morality owns me. It owned the Beats… that’s why they rejoiced in jetissoning it. They exploded. It’s so hard to explode.
I wonder what Robert McKee would have said to the Beats? I’m interested in that idea of pseudo morality and whether you think there’s a distinction between pseudo morality and “true morality”?
Joe… I’ve been thinking about “pseudo morality vs true morality”. I’m going to send you a longer response in an email, but suffice to say that, in my opinion, PSEUDO MORALITY is a product of our belief system, while TRUE MORALITY is like a gravity field drawing us upward. One is built on an idea, the other is tied in with the very purpose of evolution itself. Heavy duty!
Just received this quote from Tom Waits, which sounds very “beat-ish”: “The world is a hellish place. And bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.” I get the sense that the Beats wanted to do justice to their suffering, so they let it spill unspoiled from their heart and guts.
Mmm… good quote. I think you’re right, PJ. The beats grew up in a post war America, a 1950s before America was as wealthy as it would later become. I’m sure they were suffering, and I’m sure they wanted to write about it honestly.
We’d been friends for a long time. Longer that I could remember. There’d be nights where we’d just be sitting on my porch, smoking some cigarettes and drinking some beer, and not saying one single word. Because the thing is, when you and a person go so far back, you don’t need words anymore.
The other weekend, him, his name’s Danny, me and a couple other friends went up to Auburn, a town bigger than ours, but still smaller than most and hit some bars. I’d told them all that I’d be the D.D. for the night. I wasn’t feeling up to drinking too much. I had too much on my mind and didn’t want the alcohol to pull it out of me and shut me up for the entire night. That happens sometimes when I drink, I get so into my head, I’m silent. But I told them they could all get drunk as hell and go crazy. I egged them on in fact, asking whenever they didn’t have a drink in their hand, what they were going to get next, or if they had had any shots yet (my retort always being “well, a shot’s always a plus, do the math” with a little wink), or maybe a joint in the alleyway.
The first bar had this live band playing a bunch of hard rock 80s songs. It was a real rocking venue, even if nearly everyone there drinking and dancing was older than thirty. Our young blood, all of us in our early 20s, wasn’t even needed to get things going. The women dancing had a sureness you didn’t seen in our age. Maybe it was practice, or maybe it was them too far past giving a shit about the way they moved. They made it look fun, though and made me want to get up from my seat and dance.
We went outside to smoke some cigarettes and talk some politics when this homeless man walked up to us. He didn’t look good and I don’t just mean his clothing. His eyes had this dragging look to them like he woke up from a bad dream. He asked us if we had a phone, one of the usual questions you get from a fellow in his position, and we gave him a phone and a cigarette to try and cheer him up.
He went on talking. He jumped straight into just about everything I’d never want to think about. Apparently, his best friend had died just this very day. Poor guy was blaming himself because he left him in the city for some reason he didn’t specify. Me and my friends went on assuring him that it wasn’t his fault, that you could never know these things, when and where they were going to happen. Between the five of us, sitting out there in front of that bar with the music still blasting from within, there was this odd sense of connection between me and my friends. It must had been seeing this guy in such a terrible part of his life that made me think that all of my problems could be that much worse and that I really was grateful to be out with my buds on a night like this, being able to see them get shitface and wild and being the reason that they’d all get home safe that night. Poor guy. Poor, poor guy.
Great read, Adam. You got the voice of the Beats down. I think it would have been a bit better without the “some”s, although I know a case could be made for them. Anyway, I could totally see something like this in On The Road.
My attempt at Beat Poetry Allen Ginsberg style:
Global Warming, by
D. B. Mauldin
Earth as we know it is changing Volcanoes spewing Rain
flooding
Tornadoes twirling bringing destruction, yes, bringing
destruction
Lightning flashes Snow falling Freezing temperatures Ice
melts
Ocean trashing Fish dying Animals dying Women getting
liposuction
Lakes and Rivers turning inside out vomiting up its trash
and treasures
Wars and wars, violence all over the Earth some public
some personal
Earthquakes upon earthquakes more destruction more dying
And all the while Earth keeps
turning and people load up with arsenal
Will we ever learn will we ever
care will we ever understand
Creator put us here to take
care of the land animals each other
We are to live in joy and love
and love and love help and care
Show empathy show sympathy not
abuse then run for cover
We became a society of give me
give me take this take that
I want I want We have denied
and destroyed our very life
Never understanding the part we
played the things we destroyed
We dined we danced like there
was no tomorrow and ended in strife
We’ve no one to blame but
ourselves we’ve left everything hanging
First procrastinating then
denying then opening our eyes our minds
Our hearts but is it too late? Earth
as we know it is changing changing
As we keep fracking drilling
killing tighter and tighter our yoke binds.
Bravo!
Thank you.
Three a.m. and the door slams behind me as I whirl down the stairs. That much drink that it feels as if my feet skim the edge of each step. I make it to the ground floor before the hall lights, on a timer, go out. I pause for a minute trying to remember where the front door was. But I was so pissed when coming to a strange man’s flat seemed like a good idea that I can’t remember.
I hear his flat door jerk open, three floors up, and start scrabbling at the wall. There, the door, out into the late night air, one road over and I’m back, stunned, near the corner of Tottenham Court Road.
He is behind me, shouting something. I see a cab and wave it down even though his light is off. I’m off lovw, calls the cabbie through the door, but then he sees the state of me and unlocks. He’s after me, I say with great drama, and we move away before I’ve even shut the door.
Seventeen quid. Back to Manor Park in the far east, back to a scruffy shared house and indifferent flat mates and work in about three hours’ time. I don’t remember anything zbout the journey or the lies I tell the warm hearted cabbie who thinks he is rescuing a damsel in distress, but seventeen quid stays with me.
Home, dawn, some clothes missing and hardly any fags or money in my bag. Is this the end of the craziness, like I always swear it will be – or just another Tuesday night?
Man, this rocks! I love this energy that feels somewhat dangerous.
Thanks jmf! The Beat generation is MIA from UK lit so this was done based on what I gleaned from the article. Yes, that’s right: anyone more recent than Twain and Burney has yet to make an appearance on UK syllabuses…unless anyone there can tell me otherwise of course!
And apologies for the typos, I did this from my phone.
This *DEFINITELY* rocks!!!!!
Lost my practice again. 2nd time this week! AAargh
Oh no. Where’d it go?
Breaking and entering isn’t that bad, i mean it’s cool. First you break, then you enter. it’s simple. A hip to an old door, and before you know it, you’re standing in the ruins. Ruins are cool. All those people with perfect houses don’t know that if they leave their castles their castles would turn to ruins. Ruins are fun. That’s when your mind opens up and you start dancing around like you’re crazy and the spirits latch on and dance with you.
This place, i know this place. People died here. Old people. Sick people. You look at where you’re standing — a little room in the back of the ruins covered in graffiti and decades of dirt and you know it smells funny. Damp. Dirty. The smell turns me on. So i’m not alone — I brought my posse along: Sammy with the beer, Vic with the camera. We never do a caper without the proper tools. I bring the screwdriver. A big one with a beat up red handle. Vic asks, “Where were the dead people?”
“You think they were in here?” I asked.
“Nah, not in here. In the front room. They had them on display like art, like a Van Gogh, probably with a light shining in their eyes.”
“The light didn’t hurt them none,” Sammy said as he cracked the first beer.
We trekked into the front room. The shutters were closed on the windows, and it was dark, even in daytime. Fantastic. We stumbled through the pocket doors which were only partly opened and stood in the middle of the ruins. Furniture all over. A fireplace in the corner with logs, not all burned. i had a lighter. i lit the logs. Vic is running around like she’s crazy, taking pictures of our caper, me lighting the logs, Sammy cracking his second beer and laughing. he finds this place in front of a big window with rotting curtains just hanging there and flops down on the floor.
“I’m dead!” he screams. “Look at me! I’m dead in this house!”
“Cool!” Vic shrieks. She takes pictures of Sammy from all angles, laughing and hooting and making a fuss.
I’m working on the logs. The fire went out and i stab the logs with the screwdriver. Lighter. Flaming lighter. Dead logs.
OK, the party breaks up before we get upstairs to the beds. We are sure there are still beds in the house. They got to be old and full of dead vibes. Some nebby neighbor calls the cops. We scramble to the basement, black as a pit and stinky-musty. Wet. We find a way out, scramble up the steps to the yard like city rats smelling dinner in a Dumpster. We are lucky. We got the pictures to prove it.
This probably isn’t very much like beat poetry but here it is anyways
I stumble away from it all, the looks, the laughs, the kicks, the objects, but people wouldn’t leave me alone, I just want to be alone, they keep following me, laughing at me and calling me names, “go back where ya came from ya mexican cunt” Mexican? I’m not fucking Mexican, fucking stop it. These dumbasses think I’m a Mexican I’m tired of this shit. Even my friends won’t help me now, I thought they were there for me but that was a mistake, that’s why I usually don’t trust anyone, now look where I’m at, ‘bout to be pummeled for what I look like. I didn’t know having dark hair and eyes and tan skin made you Mexican, I didn’t know it made me Indian, I didn’t know it made me Chinese. Why does it make me that? It’s because of this world we let it make our perception change, heck it makes it stick and make anything else be wrong and incorrect. Fuck friends, fuck society, fuck this world, fuck it all, I was born in this world so why am I seen as an error, why am I out of all of them the problem that has to be fixed? I was born here you idiots, I am an American citizen and and I once was proud to say that but then I got older and realized this world is full of bullshit. I never should have gotten older, heck I haven’t even finished growing yet, how much more abuse will I take in this world till the real problems are fixed? I am a fucking person ain’t I? I breathe and dream and talk and I am whoever the fuck I want to be, so fuck off.
I’m a man and most days I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. For the last twenty years of my life has it really been fucking worth it. I despise myself. Is God listening because I could really use some advice. I have scars but not from hurting myself but dammit I wish I did. One for every fuck up that has done me in. I’m not a arsonist, I’m not a bank robber, I’m not guilty of any illegal things but my mind it haunts me to this day. If others had my thoughts maybe they would think differently about them the way that I think but who’s to know. When I was younger I felt like a pussy. I never got beat up. I was the tattletale. I should of let those three kids jump me when I was eleven, twelve years old. Maybe then today at some point I would of learned to fight back and be a man. Though I still am standing and still waiting fore some douchebag to push me down but now in life I think I could get at least one or two guys if three ganged up on me. Who the hell knows. Damn this was fun writting!