Do you consider yourself a latter-day "beatnik"? Even
young fans of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg proudly
christen themselves with the tag
beatnik these days, apparently unaware that word was originally coined as a
term of ridicule by San Francisco columnist Herb Caen. "Beat" was indeed used by Kerouac to denote both "beaten down" and
"beatitude" -- a state of revelation. He
first heard the word spoken by a Times Square hustler and writer named Herbert Huncke; then another writer, John Clellon Holmes, popularized the term "Beat" in a
New York Times article headlined "This is the Beat Generation." But the original Beats did not approve of the term "beatnik" -- combining "beat" with the Russian
"Sputnik," as if to suggest that the Beat writers were both "out there" and vaguely Communist -- as this
hilarious dialogue [note: MP3 link] between a very young Ginsberg, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and an excruciatingly square talk-radio host makes plain.
posted by digaman
on Jan 14, 2005 -
45 comments
