Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted: An American Poetics/Beat Attitudes: On the Roads to Beatitude for Post-Beat Writers, Dharma Bums, and Cultural Activists

Wilson writes that "truckers, farmers, black nationalists, tattoo artists, boxers, confessional poets, baseball stars, supreme court justices, presidents, dharmabums, and economic hit men are all too driven by the tropes and dreams, energies, stories, codes, and sedimented figurations of the Am...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of beat studies 2012-01, Vol.1, p.123
Main Author: Theado, Matt
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
American literature
Attitudes
Beat Generation
Carver, Raymond
Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)
Dylan, Bob (1941- )
Kerouac, Jack (1922-1969)
Poetics
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Summary:Wilson writes that "truckers, farmers, black nationalists, tattoo artists, boxers, confessional poets, baseball stars, supreme court justices, presidents, dharmabums, and economic hit men are all too driven by the tropes and dreams, energies, stories, codes, and sedimented figurations of the American religious imagination" (2). According to the introductory notes, Beat Attitudes, published by New Pacific Press, "comprises an open-ended glossary and archive of citations and sayings expressing various meanings of 'beatitude' at the core of the Beat culturalpolitical and literary attitude: an unfinished archive broad and implicative, with sayings that emanate about and from states of written and acted-upon beatitude" (2). According to Wilson, when Jack Kerouac appeared on William F. Buckley's TV show in 1968, he defended his original conception of the Beat Generation, complaining that "in the papers they called it 'beat rioting' and 'beat insurrection.'" Kerouac actually said "beat mutiny," not "beat rioting." According to Wilson, John Clellon Holmes' "This Is the Beat Generation" contains this: A man is beat when he goes broke, and wagers the sum of his resources on a single number; and the young generation has done that from early youth.
ISSN:2165-8706