I was born in Greenwich Village during the Beat era. What a pathetic waste of human potential.
Re-your comment #1...fantastic! That would be worthy of Tom Waits.
“daring us to look at life the way the sensitive kid from New Jersey does...”
Is Jersey known for its weak kids now? That’s depressing. Must be all the unnecessary Ritalin.
Carolyn Cassady, who was married to Neal Cassady, the model for Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty, recently passed away. Her book, Off The Road, detailing her experiences with Kerouac and Ginsberg is now out in Kindle format. Excellent reading if the inside view of the “beat generation” interests you.
The only thing worst than “intellectuals” are the second and third rate ones.
Bad poetry can do in anyone.
I like the MAD Magazine parody of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, as a beatnik would do it.
Friends, Romans, hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under;
So let it lay with Caesar. The dude Brutus
Gave you the message Caesar had big eyes;
If that’s the sound, someone’s copping a plea,
And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs,—
For Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats,—
Come I to make this gig at Caesar’s lay down.
He was my boy, the most and real gone to me;
But, like, Brutus pegs him as having big eyes;
And old Brutus is a real cool cat.
He copped a lot of swinging heads for home,
Which put us way out with that loot;
Does this give Caesar big eyes?
When the square cats bawled, Caesar flipped;
Big eyes should be made of more solid megillah;
Yet Brutus pegs him as having big eyes;
And Brutus is a real cool cat.
You all dug that bit at the Lupercal scene
Three times I bugged him with the King’s lid,
And three times he hung me up; was this big eyes?
Yet Brutus pegs him with big eyes;
And, sure, he is a real cool cat.
I don’t want to double-O what Brutus gummed,
But, like, I only dig what comes on straight
You all got a charge out of him once,
So how come you don’t cry the blues for him?
Man! You are real nowhere,
You don’t make it anymore. Don’t cut out on me;
My guts are in the pad there with Caesar,
And I gotta stop swinging till they round-trip.
“Allan Ginsberg said he saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness. I have seen the best minds of my generation go at a bottle of Anacin with a ball-peen hammer.” —P.J. O’Rourke