> As for the Beats, I think their main legacy may be
the lives they led,
> as a sort of performance art, more than the words
they wrote, which
seem
> more and more dated as we get farther away. I think
it's kind of
> telling that there now seems to be so little
difference between the
> contemporaneous spoofs and much of the real stuff.
Give a listen to
the
> Rhino Beat Generation box set, for instance. It's
hard to tell who's
> serious and who's joking, except when the real Beats
take themselves
far
> too seriously about things they should be
joking.
>
> Mark
For some reason, Burroughs (& Selby, I guess) aside I
never really got into the Beats as a kid although (probably
because) my school buddies went on a big Kerouac kick - I
read one or two by Kerouac & couldn't get into it. Much
later I saw the famous footage of Kerouac reading from ON THE
ROAD on the Steve Allen Show, with Allen accompanying on
jazzy piano noodlings. That was a real revelation - the
reading brought out the jazz-inflected rhythms in the writing
& brought out an almost magical quality in the prose that
I'd never noticed before & it altered my perceptions of
his work significantly, although I still never got around to
reading ON THE ROAD.(I enjoyed THE SUBTERRANEANS).
Rene
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