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arguchikapparently it's the 50th anniversary of on the road. maybe i should finally get around to reading it.
i have always felt ambivalent about the beats. even before i had much knowledge of feminism beyond a few bumper-sticker slogans, i found the beats a bit too misogynistic for my taste. i still feel that way. but i've read them anyway...and will continue to do so... i think it's kinda fucked to denounce something without reading it, and i never shelter myself from things i disagree with. hell, i sat through the entirety of dw griffith's birth of a nation, after seeing brief clips from it in a seminar a few years ago. i also think literary works (like the people who write them) are complex, multi-faceted, deeply layered, and at least potentially rewarding of my time and effort. (birth of a nation wasn't rewarding as a work of art...it was interesting as a historical artifact, though, even while deeply repellent.)
heh. i just mentioned this whole 50th anniversary thing to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glaucon, and said that maybe it's time for me to read it. he said just one word: "sucks." i said, "well...he wrote it in 3 weeks." to which he replied, "it shows." yeah, probably. but i'll check it out anyway.
i have always felt ambivalent about the beats. even before i had much knowledge of feminism beyond a few bumper-sticker slogans, i found the beats a bit too misogynistic for my taste. i still feel that way. but i've read them anyway...and will continue to do so... i think it's kinda fucked to denounce something without reading it, and i never shelter myself from things i disagree with. hell, i sat through the entirety of dw griffith's birth of a nation, after seeing brief clips from it in a seminar a few years ago. i also think literary works (like the people who write them) are complex, multi-faceted, deeply layered, and at least potentially rewarding of my time and effort. (birth of a nation wasn't rewarding as a work of art...it was interesting as a historical artifact, though, even while deeply repellent.)
heh. i just mentioned this whole 50th anniversary thing to
glaucon, and said that maybe it's time for me to read it. he said just one word: "sucks." i said, "well...he wrote it in 3 weeks." to which he replied, "it shows." yeah, probably. but i'll check it out anyway.
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Date: 2007-09-03 12:42 am (UTC)Those guys were my big literary mancrush replacement for Hemingway and F. Scott.
I probably screwed it up by lapping up too much biographical info on them, and this colors/kills any love I had. "When I Was Cool" by Sam Kashner did Ginsberg in for me. Shooting his own wife did Burroughs in for me.
If you haven't seen it before, there's a book called Women of the Beat Generation by Brenda Knight. Really only remember the Joyce Johnson and Elise Cowen parts. Poor Elise.