Kerouac died 7 months later. He may be drunk but every word he says has more value than anything that comes from the sociology professor. And nobody on the stage has much of a good word to say about hippies.
Speaking of death, Buckley opens the show with: "The topic tonight is the hippies an understanding of whom we must I guess acquire or die painfully...."
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Hippies are easy to understand. They want. They take. They have no intention of deserving anything they want or take, and demand respect for their bold stand against society's organization.
This episode came to mind immediately when you mentioned Kerouac in the other post. It's the sad picture I have of him, because none of his youthful energy, none of that magnetic magic that he was renowned for, remained - and it hadn't been captured on film when it happened, earlier. And by the time he appeared here, with Buckley's snottiness, it had all been bleached out by the booze. He became an object lesson for his generation, and the one to come.
I've never read a word of his beyond snippets that people quote.
I have read a lot of Vidal, who claims to have buttfucked him.
"It's the sad picture I have of him, because none of his youthful energy, none of that magnetic magic that he was renowned for, remained - and it hadn't been captured on film when it happened"
Oh balderdash. Learn to read. It's captured forever in the words, the beat... His medium wasn't television. Hth.
I'm still wending my way through On The Road. Maybe about 20% is brilliant writing IMO, the remainder is just kind of boring.
"It's the sad picture I have of him, because none of his youthful energy, none of that magnetic magic that he was renowned for, remained - and it hadn't been captured on film when it happened"
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He "buttfucked" everyone. Is that your measure? I imagine there are a lot of Italian boys "who were paid well" whose memoirs you should start working through...
I like Vidal too, but are you saying only the "tops" are worth reading? lolol
"Maybe about 20% is brilliant writing IMO, the remainder is just kind of boring."
Wasn't boring in the 1950s, remember. Insert yourself into the time it was written when reading. Of course, you have to know a bit of history to be able to really read... that's why studying some books under people in the know -- professors -- adds to your comprehension. But for too many profs today, you could just do the reading on your own. Not creative enough to wrestle with the materials themselves, offer up a new take, or even understand the context in which the text is produced. Hence all the cancellations and people "self educating".
The famous Truman Capote line when informed that Kerouac had written on the road on a continuous role of shelf paper. "That's not writing, that's typing." Not a big fan of Kerouac but not due to his low opinion of hippies. I always thought that "On the Road" was more of a cultural document than a novel. Of course, it would be possible to describe a novel as a "cultural document," so maybe I got out over my skis when I was an undergraduate.
Sad that Jack and WFB didn't have an hour long show, instead of his being stuck on a panel with Jack and 2 dullards. IRC, Ginsburg did get an hour long interview. Of course, maybe Kerouac didn't want a solo interview, given he's drunk and doesn't say much.
And why is Ginsburg there? This guy was always hanging around Kerouac and making off money off the beats, even though he wrote one good poem, and that's about it.
I actually liked the Dharma Bums and Big Sur more than "On the Road". You have to skip around with "On the Road". It needed an editor.
I cant think of any two people more different than Capote and Kerouac. In terms of art or personality. Capote belonged to the Jet set, not the beatniks.
When I started reading the title I was expecting Pynchon. Others same?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD9IzjESnvQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgTJmGJLvyg
Ed Sanders’,“Wide, wide river (of shit)”
A classic from back in the day.
https://youtu.be/svPDzNO6GQk?si=zLXSYfKYAFTgQJ7O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_VMwVpx4GI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxoWC9fgI00
Interview with Ben Hecht and Keroauc in 1958. There's a silly interview with Steve Allen too on Youtube.
Sorry, Kerouac is not a good role model. On the Road is one of the most overrated novels of our time.
"I Want to Know" who would ever want to hear Fugs music at any price - it all sounded the same, really bad at any price. But perhaps Ed Sanders' poetry was better in his "Fuck You" mimeographed literary magazine. He was involved with the Youth International Party, which did not run for any office but became famous in New York as the Yippies, but the Hippies were more infamous.
The sociology professor was not quite as bad as our hostess suggests, I think, but Buckley would have done better to skip all three of these guys and interview Joan Didion. The title essay in her 1968 book Slouching Towards Bethlehem gives a cool-headed, depressing view of the aspirations and exploitations of (for want of a better term) the hippie movement.
The hippy guy is lying his head off. They attacked the police in Chicago, not the other way around. They advertised their violence in advance. They showed up with pipes and other weapons. They paralyzed a DA, and then Bernardine Dohrn, later Michelle Obama's longtime groomer and professional mentor, sang a song mocking the man at the same gathering where she celebrated the murder of actress Sharon Tate, gloating about how her killers murdered her nearly-born baby in the womb. Dohrn's two-fingered celebration of infanticide and torture-murder was reproduced in hippy magazines and manifestos.
Magilla: Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem is stunning. I keep wanting to re-watch Panic in Needle Park.
I think Mad Men used her essay to make the show when Betty Draper visits the hippies.
Sanders wrote an excellent book about the Manson Family, back in the day
Hunter S. Thompson--back when he wrote for a mainstream encyclopedia-- wrote in 1968:
"The best year to be a hippie was 1965, but then there was not much to write about, because not much was happening in public and most of what was happening in private was illegal. The real year of the hippie was 1966, despite the lack of publicity, which in 1967 gave way to a nationwide avalanche in Look, Life, Time, Newsweek, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Saturday Evening Post, and even the Aspen Illustrated News, which did a special issue on hippies in August of 1967 and made a record sale of all but 6 copies of a 3,500-copy press run. But 1967 was not really a good year to be a hippie. It was a good year for salesmen and exhibitionists who called themselves hippies and gave colorful interviews for the benefit of the mass media, but serious hippies, with nothing to sell, found that they had little to gain and a lot to lose by becoming public figures. Many were harassed and arrested for no other reason than their sudden identification with a so-called cult of sex and drugs. The publicity rumble, which seemed like a joke at first, turned into a menacing landslide. So quite a few people who might have been called the original hippies in 1965 had dropped out of sight by the time hippies became a national fad in 1967." link
In the same article he wrote:
"The British historian Arnold Toynbee, at the age of 78, toured San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and wrote his impressions for the London Observer. 'The leaders of the Establishment,' he said, 'will be making the mistake of their lives if they discount and ignore the revolt of the hippies and many of the hippies' non hippie contemporaries on the grounds that these are either disgraceful wastrels or traitors, or else just silly kids who are sowing their wild oats.'
Toynbee never really endorsed the hippies; he explained his affinity in the longer focus of history. If the human race is to survive, he said, the ethical, moral, and social habits of the world must change: The emphasis must switch from nationalism to mankind. And Toynbee saw in the hippies a hopeful resurgence of the basic humanitarian values that were beginning to seem to him and other long-range thinkers like a tragically lost cause in the war-poisoned atmosphere of the 1960's. He was not quite sure what the hippies really stood for, but since they were against the same things he was against (war, violence, and dehumanized profiteering), he was naturally on their side, and vice versa.'
link
There was an instacart shopper at Costco that was glaring at everyone, seemingly just for existing. That sociology professor looks uncannily like him.
I though On the Road was brilliant, and brilliant writing. And while Kerouac is a little Kamalaed here, he retains all of his insight, verve and wisdom. Even half-cut, he absolutely smokes the other two guests, and dazzles Buckley as well.
I listened to On the Road on tape, a 65 year old man while driving across the country. I didn't read it in my twenties as I guess I should of, but was too much a snob. But no matter. It made me smile to myself and shake my head from side to side whether I wanted to or not, the unabashed romanticism, the sheer innocence and naiveté of it all, and when I was finished I knew it for what it undoubtedly is: a classic right up there with Huckleberry friend, the kind of book that could only have been written in America at a particular moment of time.
I watched the first third this morning and finished up just now.
WFB was his usual snotty self; Kerouac made little sense, even for a drunk; Yablonsky was the picture of the earnest uptight academic; and Sanders seemed like a well-brought up young man.
The takeaway is that American culture eventually assimilated Hippiedom (however defined), as it does every other alternative movement.
IIRC, George Harrison visited Haight-Ashbury and was, to say the least, not impressed.
I also thought of George Harrison when reading this. He thought that Haight Ashbury would be filled with artistic creative people. When he got there, he found out that the inhabitants were what he called "horrible spotty drop out kids on drugs". That was when he decided to quit taking LSD.
"I have read a lot of Vidal, who claims to have buttfucked him."
Gore Vidal claimed a lot of things. About 1/4 of them were true. He never let the truth get in the way of a good story, or vicious hit on someone he disliked.
Kerouac had a drinking problem, that's what's killed him in his 40s. Tpp much booze caused a Liver problem then resulted in internal bleeding and vomiting blood. Should have gone to the ER immediately, but delayed it. Died on the operating table.
John O'Hara, another big drinker, had a similar incident but he was in downtown Manhattan, his girlfriend/wife insisted on driving him immeditatly to the hospital. And he quit, and lived to 65.
Kerouac looked lost, Buckley looked amused — and the whole thing felt like the end of an era.
I think, but Buckley would have done better to skip all three of these guys and interview Joan Didion. The title essay in her 1968 book Slouching Towards Bethlehem gives a cool-headed, depressing view of the aspirations and exploitations of (for want of a better term) the hippie movement.
I'm ashamed to say I've never read Didion.
I keep wanting to re-watch Panic in Needle Park.\
I'd never even heard of that movie! A lot of art slips through the cracks. This was Al Pacino's breakout role.
"Vidal claimed a lot of things."
You don't say!
He was far more amusing than Jack, on the stage and on the page.
I haven't seen that interview in years, but I remember being impressed by the Fugs guy.
As for Didion, she'd have been great for Buckley. Especially in those years. Much changed in her writing in the late '70s, when she focused less on America and American sociology.
Anthony said...
I'm still wending my way through On The Road. Maybe about 20% is brilliant writing IMO, the remainder is just kind of boring.
I think I made it about half way through before giving up.
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