OK, 'not enough' definitely better than 'please stop' …
I have taken note (thanks mac and TLF).
David, you do seem to have got it, which is a relief, but I
acknowledge it's a mere scamper . . . stay tuned!
Perhaps the Kerouac is a bit of a red herring . . . this is
more Edward Lear by way of Orson Welles, and I just happened to
be rereading On the Road - It's a marvelously involving
book, though river, where are these neologisms you speak of?
Kerouac seems to lay down a whole new aesthetic, imbuing
vernacular speech and cultural outcasts with dignity and
value. My sister thinks it's appallinly sexist - and it is! -
though Sal, the protagonist has a very egalitarian and
inspiring love affair with a mexican woman in the
opening chapters.
Have you read The Uses of Disorder by Richard Sennett?
- that definitely colours my reading - Sal is basically a
middleclass kid dabbling in bohemia - every time he gets in a fix
he wires his aunt and gets another $50. Even the more seasoned 'holy fools'
can all be characterised as immensely adolescent.
People think of this book as almost the source code of the
'beat generation' - but the journey is taking place in 1947 -
they are all fresh out of the war and now careening across
America, wide-eyed with love and appetite at unsafe speeds
with inadequate brakes - the recklessness, the hunger, the hope
are surely not unrelated to what they have all just witnessed
in Europe (interesting to compare this with Gravity's Rainbow).
Poet - thanks for the 'weird' … from you, a compliment
(I dig the invisible
brackets 'totally' and 'man')
river- you mention the rap context. There were unsuccessful attempts
to fuse jazz and beat poetry, and in a way rap picks up the baton, crucially
eschewing melody, the beat is now the heart and yes of course it's been
appropriated but there are under-documented and hugely popular
artists like MIA beginning to break out.
TLF - the Trump misreading is interesting . . . I am tempted. There's a transgressive
lineage via Thoreau, Melville, through Kerouac, Presley, Mailer to, god-forbid,
Trump. Of course people like Bo Jo and Trump are members of the elite
disguising themselves as rock 'n roll common men. They are certainly
less boring than the technocratic lawyers who used to hold sway (Blair/Clinton).
My vain hope is that they are only temporary 'Adrian Moles' recruited
for our entertainment (because we can) and not Oswald Mosleys about
to whip their masks off.
