/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6489410]

Why are The Beats held in such disdain by /lit/? Is it a cultural backlash against the reverence they've been held in for over half a century now? The Beats are by no means brilliant, but they aren't as awful as posters here make them out to be.

[Anonymous No.6489432]

>>6489410

It's just such a cowardly ethos. Things are changing so let's just roll over and talk about how 'beat' we are? No thank you.

[Anonymous No.6489447]

>>6489410
In my humble opinion, they were never good. Just media darlings, because they were "edgy."

If you're "edgy" you can get away with a lot of bullshit normal people can't because the "right" media people will promote you.

[Anonymous No.6489466]

>>6489410
They're all hacks

[Anonymous No.6489498]

>>6489410
The beats paved the way for the anti intellectualism and sophist posturing that permeates academia today. The attitude that "my ignorance is as good as your intelligence." was made possible by those dirty burnouts.

[Anonymous No.6489509]

/lit/ has this huge issue in which they can't ascribe credibility to people who live by their ideas. They assume that it's exactly the same to read Kerouac as it would be to read some random teen in /b/, the same process occurs when they can't distinguish between Ginsberg sincerely creating chaotic poetry and some anon rambling with no point. They just assume that there was no effort in it, against all evidence, because a simplified version that looks similar can be made with little effort.
If you check a poetry thread you'll see how the recommendations stop at correcting structure and rhyming. It's pretty much the same spirit in play, a disdain for any real human value behind a work. So they limit themselves at trying to be a perfect machine that happens to have random, unprogrammed, thoughts.

Also, a lot of teens pretended to be beat at some point and created a way of dressing and acting like idiots, because they were teens and needed some sort of group grounding. Caring about the followers and not the authors is idiotic and I'll go ahead and assume the smart guys in /lit/ don't do that.

[Anonymous No.6489510]

>>6489410
The "beats" were simply edgy pretentious hipsters. Read Mailer's "The White Negro" to understand.

[Anonymous No.6489556]

>>6489510
Why do you consider them pretentious? What should they had done to move from pretentious to sincere or active or whatever opposite you want?

>>6489498
>re-lighting the interest in forgotten authors
>opening the doors to asian and european intellectualism that was being completely ignored by the US
>rejecting purely hedonistic groups like the proto new-age and the subterraneans
>giving literature classes in jails
>giving away their books to bums

Where are you coming from with your anti-intellectualism idea?

[Anonymous No.6489562]

>>6489410
They're just not very good writers, that's all.

[Anonymous No.6489565]

>>6489509
>They assume that it's exactly the same to read Kerouac as it would be to read some random teen in /b/
No, we critical idiots think Kerouac was talented but overrated.

[Anonymous No.6489570]

>>6489509
>can't distinguish between Ginsberg sincerely creating chaotic poetry and some anon rambling with no point.
How is anon rambling with no point any less "sincere" or "human"?

[Anonymous No.6489577]

>>6489509
>/lit/ has this huge issue in which they can't ascribe credibility to people who live by their ideas.

Isn't it the exact opposite? Don't most people here shit on various philosophers for not living by their philosophy?

Also,

>all that strawmanning

[Anonymous No.6489612]

>>6489565
He wasn't either of them.
He lived his work, and in it you can see a whole man's life. That should be enough to care for it. And he isn't overrated, he is overhated by people who just read an introduction to his work and get mad at it for being an introduction. His prose was mediocre, bad at times and a bit too much at others, I understand if someone is put out by it but it isn't genius nor shit.

>>6489577
I've seen just a few threads about philosophers being fake and most answers were that they failed to understand how philosophy works, which is right since that's giving too much weight to morality which is a tiny branch of philosophy.

>strawmanning
I'm saying what I see. If I go out and see that a lot of women seem the think that yoga pants are okay to wear in the street I will share that impression. If I'm wrong I'll be open to see why and improve my ideas.

>>6489570
How is sincerity or humanity an issue in discussion?
Even though most anons randomly throwing words keep a layer of irony that makes it pointless (and not sincere, but I don't care about it), it's very rare that someone will actually sit down and create something that is both chaotic and with a point. For an example see Kerouac's poem Sea.

[Anonymous No.6489613]

>>6489577
>Isn't it the exact opposite? Don't most people here shit on various philosophers for not living by their philosophy?

I think it goes both ways, depends on what suits more. philosophers does not live that way, and writers, poets do. Both wrong.

Also, not exactly fan of beats, just of Burroughs.

[Anonymous No.6489627]

>>6489556
>Where are you coming from with your anti-intellectualism idea?
The beats themselves aren't necessarily anti intellectual (except Bukowski) more so their acolytes. I don't think you can fairly say they re ignited the interest in any forgotten authors (forgotten by whom?) and the influence of eurasian intellectualism would have happened regardless since the US had shed its policy of isolationism. Kerouac was the only one I am aware that eventually rejected the new age hedonists (on this I could be mistaken) although I think there is a case to be made they inspired as much post hoc hedonism as anyone else from the mid twentieth century. As to educating bums and convicts, while this isn't necessarily bad I don't think we have seen the fruits of this toil in the 40 years or so it's been happening.

My issue with the beats is the vague ideology of "everyone has a right to weigh in on a conversation" and "everyone has the right to earn a living." Also the implications that suffering and debauchery necessarily impart wisdom.

[Anonymous No.6489628]

>>6489612
>He lived his work, and in it you can see a whole man's life. That should be enough to care for it
I enjoyed Dharma Bums but I couldn't finish On the Road. Whether or not his life reflects his work, I don't really think his work is really that great.
Ultimately, that's my opinion. I'm not even trying to be edgy, I just don't think Kerouac is a great writer. Did he live a beautiful life? Was he a beautiful person? Was he a great friend? I don't know, I didn't meet him while he was alive so I don't feel qualified to comment on that. Neither should you, really. If he was, cool; that doesn't mean I have to sing the praises of On the Road.

[Anonymous No.6489630]

>>6489612
>How is sincerity or humanity an issue in discussion?
>>6489509
>distinguish between Ginsberg sincerely creating chaotic poetry
>disdain for any real human value behind a work

[Anonymous No.6489666]

Like anyone who enjoys outsized influence, Kerouac is a tempting target for aspiring iconoclasts to try to piss on. A lot of what he wrote is disposable, but at least three books are not. He doesn't get the credit he is due for his formal experiments, or for his influence on the generation of writers who came after him, whom Mailer could really claim no trace on.

The virtual baseball league he played and kept careful records of seems to me to have played some part in Coover's 'The Universal Baseball association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.'

As for Burroughs, lots of it holds little value for me, but I don't think the genius of Naked Lunch is in serious question.

[Anonymous No.6489683]

>>6489627
I get your point about the beat eurasian love being a result of their times, don't you think that the posterior hedonism linked to them could also be more about the context than the referents?
Kerouac was a hard working man, he rejeceted beat teens who tried to befriend him and even though he destroyed his body he kept a christian morality all along, giving it a "this is wrong" message. In junky you can see how Burroughs rejects the people that live just for the junk and respects authors without caring if they are cool kids who take drugs or not. Ginsberg had a short period of doing readings while under acid and he was quite ashamed of how dumb he looked, so he openly opposed taking drugs for non creative purposes.
Still, all of that could be understood as the first generation to be open to drugs after a very strict christian infancy. I doubt any author could exist outside of their context and you can't entirely blame them for what happened to other people riding that wave or the one after that.

>>6489628
>Did he live a beautiful life? Was he a beautiful person? Was he a great friend?
The answer to all of those is no. The magic of his writing is how the beauty fades away book by book.

>we didn't meet him
I think I could speak more about many non-fiction authors than about some friends of mine, even more when it comes to people you meet once.
That's sort of the magic of non-fiction.

>sing praises to X
I don't know which of the three posters you were. No, you don't have to. In that post I said how he was mediocre at best when it came to prose and in another post I mentioned how disliking authors is perfectly fine, just that you should explain yourself if you're gonna be presenting that idea.

>>6489630
Your greentext is as confusing as your point.
When I said
>disdain for any real human value
I was talking about /lit/'s lack of value to context and origin when it comes to analyzing someone's work, not in the production of it.

When I referred to Ginsberg's sincerity I was opposing it to doing a work without a point to it, exclusively in the case of free verse. It was a single example meant to illustrate part of a bigger issue, I'm sure a lot of anons create work that seems pointless and soulless intentionally and/or don't realize they are doing it and they aren't part of the issue I was describing over all.

>>6489666
I like you, satanic trips.