Thoughts on The Portable Beat Reader

A good friend of mine asked if I had ever read any of the Beats. The term "beatnik" has come up at various points in my life journey, but I never understood what it meant. Beat writers were never prescribed reading in the schools I attended. UMass must have had courses dedicated to, or at least included, Beat writers, but I never took any of them. Having recently become more interested in 20th century literature, valuing my buddy's tastes in cultural things, and not having any burning desire to read anything in English in particular, I searched online for Beat writers. At first I was inclined to just read one book to get a sense of the movement; instead, I decided that an anthology would be most appropriate. I asked for The Portable Beat Reader by Ann Charters for Christmas.

I had finished 2024 reading H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man and selected short stories by H.P. Lovecraft so I was already in the mindset to read works from the turn of the 20th century. The Portable Beat Reader summarizes the movement, identifies the primary and secondary participants, and provides excerpts of prose, and poetry, and criticism of the movement by the members themselves and by outsiders. It is an excellent introduction for someone like me who has not ready anything by Beat writers.

To me, the Beat generation is group of mostly precocious, energetic, young men who felt marginalized and dissatisfied with the post-industrial, post-WWII American society with all of its conservatism, consumerism, and classical literary formalism. Their ideals were broad enough to connect them to other types of counter-cultural movements like hippies, such as free expression, fairness, justice, and pacifism, but they had unique characteristics such as stream-of-consciousness prose, unorthodox (and sometimes shocking) unmetered poetry, an interest in eastern mysticism, and lawlessness. Also, the group wasn't merely bohemian, as John McClellon Holmes points out in his The Game of the Name essay:

Of course, Bohemians have always, drearily, derived most of their behavior patterns from attentively watching the bourgeoisie and doing the opposite, but the Beatniks, unlike most Bohemians, could admit that their need to shock the Squares was only the obverse side of the Squares' need to be shocked...

Based on what I have learned about the Beats, being Beat was more about action as opposed to boredom with the civilized world. It was about a passion for living rather than pure hedonism, though there was plenty of that to go around. Beats were more spiritual. There was more of an emphasis on Zen Buddhism, an openness to drug-assisted insights, a fervor for self-expression through literature, and the seeking of adventure. Imagine a group of Ivy League dropouts who huddle together in New York City, steal a car to race across the country to San Francisco to read poetry at open mic nights, then hitchhike all the way back, meeting all kinds of colorful characters along the way. And don't forget run-ins with the Law.

What I liked most about the Beat generation and their writing was the energy they had. It reminded me of my partying days in New York City where everything was so new and I thought I would live forever. The contagiousness of the energy of New York was something that I had never felt before because I grew up in a small town and went to college in remote cities. Reading the Beats brought me right back to Manhattan among the grid of buildings, busy sidewalks, underground bars, and beer flowing all around. It must have been so exciting to be part of this counter-cultural movement among friends, doing what they loved, loving each other, traveling.

I never read The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley, nor have I read many books about drugs so it was interesting to read excerpts from William S. Borroughs who spent many years addicted to heroin, searching for drugs in South America, and living cheaply in Tangier, Morocco. It is a lifestyle completely alien to me. The writings of and about Neal Cassady were my favorites. He is such an unusual character, a ball of energy, an inspiration that you would love to have in your group.

The search for belonging, for self-expression, for capturing the essence of experiences in the written and spoken word are all admirable because of the amount of censorship at that time. Society was not kind to non-conformists, be they literary, cultural, economic, or political. And unlike today when you can find any group with similar interests online, back then you had to physically seek out companions with the same mindset. That takes effort!

The sexism, alcoholism, and general lawlessness is not something I am sympathetic to, though I understand the time period was different. I also do not understand the poetry. I appreciate that Allan Ginsburg's "Howl" was revolutionary, but I just simply do not like it. To me his and most other poetry of the group seem like ramblings of inside jokes and time-bound cultural references. Add to that the lack of meter and rhyme and it's hard for me to enjoy. Perhaps if I was enrolled in a class where we dissected the works I would learn to appreciate it more.

The poetry did not draw me in as much as the prose and analysis. Jack Kerouac is my first choice for further reading as he was the standard bearer for the movement and because I enjoy his writing. He writes as he prescribes - frenetically, in a stream-of-consciousness, filling his writing with images that paint the picture of his escapades with his friends. The stories are action-packed. Charles Bukowski is another who I had heard of prior to reading The Portable Beat Reader and would like to read more of Notes of a Dirty Old Man. Others I would like to read more of: William S. Borroughs, Herbert Huncke, John McClellan Holmes, William Borroughs Jr., Carolyn Cassady, Norman Mailer, Neal Cassady, Jan Kerouac, Brion Gysin, Brenda Frazer, Diane DiPrima, and Alan Watts.