Poetry Forum

hey guys

have been reading a bit of work by beat novelists recently, I really like Kerouac (on the road) and Ginsbergs poetry but am finding William Burroughs hard to grasp yet rewarding at the same time. am reading his last novel 'the place of dead roads' and will be reading naked lunch after it.

He has a really intersting style but it is quite hard to follo. Has anyone else encountered this and is anyone else a fan?

benjy

Hey Benjy,

I took hold of his cut up technique for a while - thinking I was beat n all. Alas, I lacked his drug crazed mind, so gave it up.

I used to own a PC game called Dark Eye - William Burroughs was the narrator, great voice.

Also did you know the Old Bull lee character from On the Road (a young man's wonderlust bible) was based on William Burroughs.

His Junky book is worth a read.

Yeh, a cool dude.

.

Saul

took your advice and tracked down a copy of junky, I quite enjoyed it but it was lot more conventional. Something which naked lunch wasn't and partly why I enjoyed that more so.

thanks for the advice

benjy

What I said isn't it? if you want more of the weird druggy, cut up stuff try

Interzone, Nova Express, The Ticket that Exploded or

Cities of the Red Night/The Place of Dead Roads/The Western Lands trilogy

I've been reading some JG Ballard recently, I don't know if you've heard of him but he's a British writer heavily influenced by Burroughs, The Atrocity Exhibition is very good and highly experimental. Check it out.

wicked will do. though at the moment bogged down with Geography essay's, shudder! so am drowning in geographical ethics, imperialism and child labour.

when i find time will hunt this guy down, sounds interesting

cheers for the advice

benjy

benjywenjy wrote:at the moment bogged down with Geography essay's, shudder! so am drowning in geographical ethics, imperialism and child labour.

This is what used to piss me off with Geography at school: all the socio-politics. If they're determined to maintain their niche, which of course they are, then in my opinion geographers ought to align themselves with geologists (and cartographers?): imperialism and child labour are subjects for historians and sociologists.

this is probably entirely irrelavent...but i read a book on Blake that Ginsberg wrote, i think it was actually taken from some lectures he gave. it was very helpful in trying to understand Blake for my exam lol. really great reading actually, i'll try and dig it up agaian and give the name of it as i don't remember right now.

K J ouch

Geography is the study of people and their relationship with each other and the environment over space. Geographers are very well equipped to deal with issues over space within different cultural contexts.

Imperialism defines the spatial organisation of the economy and resultantly human popualtions which resultantly has a bearing on the enivironment.

Geography has no niche to maintain, its strength is in its ability to thread together varying disciplines and embed them in spatial specific areas, in that sense a very psot modern subject.

Can I ask what discipline you did? or is this 'pop' at Geography just a personal tic?

benjy

Perhaps geography has to re-define its role in order to justify its own existence/ income. Perhaps the earth is pretty much geographed. Social geographic history. Right On.

Strictly speaking Benjy, geography didn't used to be 'the study of people and their relationship with each other'. It was, partly, the study of people and their direct physical relationship/ impact on the earth. Yes, social history is the cause to the effect, yet used to remain outside the geographers perameter. I think kj is saying that it should specialise, remain expert in its own field.

That's exactly what I'm saying, Minstrel.

Benjy, I don't see anything in your definition of geography which isn't better suited to, and richly covered by, another discipline. "The study of people and their relationship with each other" could apply to any number of subjects; "with the environment" is surely environmental studies; "over space" seems very bland and general - surely all human interaction is "over space"? Cultural contexts are dealt with by anthropologists and sociologists, the economy and its organising principles by economists.

Of course, synthesis of knowledge and inter-disciplinary learning are as important as ever, but I don't think you can (re)build a class of learning on this theme alone. You need to have a core speciality which sets you apart from other subjects.

I did an English Lit degree, but I'm not having a pop at geography, or trying to demean it. I just think that what a lot of geographers call geography isn't really geography at all - doesn't mean it's not valid scholarship. Just semantics, then, I suppose.

n.b. sorry for hijacking this thread on the Beats. Gary Snyder, check him out.

hey K-J

sorry about going on the defensive, I often get hear your views in uni and to be honest I prefer them to the usual 'Geography - colouring maps in, argument'.

The world has changed and Geography has to change with it. A lot of modern Geography is on cultural issues and how it affects peoples views on place's and their use of space. although each individual issue may have a relevant discipline Geographers bring a different view to it. Some subjects dont aknowledge varying contexts and as a discipline we tend to emphasise that, for example compare some globalisation scholars coming from an economic perspective saying Geography is dead, Geography will never die as spatial patterns always change.

lol, I guess its a touchy subject and I need felt I needed to defend it. Maybe it is a semantics issue.

cheers for the interesting points.

benjy

In retrospect I would say the best thing to start with for Burroughs is The Yage Letters Redux.

It acts like a scrap book for all of his types of writing. That way, you can see what you like and what you don't like and go from there. It also gives a reasonable section on his philosophy (explained by both himself and Ginsberg) which is helpful when you want to understand his aesthetics, like the cut-up method. Plus, it has an utterly superb letter by Ginsberg which may encourage you to read his stuff too.
But best of all, it has that laconic, witty understatement he seems to be able to manage without any real effort.

its been a while and have now read more by burroughs, kerouac and ginsberg. can anyone recomend lesser known writers, perhaps poets?

cheers my dears

ben

Ferlinghetti?

Try Gary Snyder.

I second Saul's suggestion of The Portable Beat Reader, helped broaden my horizons. Ferlinghetti and Snyder are good, though totally different from each other.

Yes, Burroughs is an interesting character, isn't he? He is a St. Louisian, but he has no star on the sidwalk of the Loop to match T. S. Eliot's. Alas, I suspect it was the wife incident, not some right-wing liberal-hating conspiracy that really kept his name off the sidewalk (much to the chagrine of my hippie professor). There are some things even a crazed writer can't get away with.

Though I'm not sure he's a "beat," Hunter S. Thompson is a good guy to read.

Just read Gary Snyder's Turtle Island. I really enjoyed it, it's very earthy. You can really feel his mix of buddhism, and a respect and love for the environment. What a truly interesting group of people the beat's really were, can anyone recomend any other interesting literary movements that are worth checking out?

It has new meaning in our environmentally challlenging times. Its a real inditement of the inertia of our society, that people were seeing the problems of a growth based socio-economic system 40 years ago and nobody has listened.

benjy

Jim Carroll ... perhaps most famously depicted in film of his book The Basketball Diaries..
one of my very favourite writers (and musicians) , considered by some as 'post-beat'.
Some of his work is bloody fantastic, well worth a look if you're into themes expressed by the beat generation

I read Kerouac's "On the Road" this year and was disappointed. It seemed inconclusive and plain, like Hemingway without a good story.