I had a conversation with my mother recently about the nature of reading. She said that kids being exposed to television makes them want to read less, but I don't believe that's true. My little brother, only 11 years old, knows who Janis Joplin is. Not because he's heard her music but because on his favorite show, Doctor Who, David Tennant says "Janis Joplin gave me that coat!"
I began to think about all of the things that I had read, because I was influenced by a TV show or Movie. (I had to finish each Harry Potter book before I was allowed to see the films.)
And I think this gives a new outlet for literary introduction, which is not a bad thing.
If we look at the Beats, artists from 50 years ago that many american high school students have never heard of. ( Sorry, but that's the nature of public school) So when Jess and Paris in Gilmore Girls are arguing about whether the beats were new-wave or just 'angry hippies' and he pockets a copy of Howl, they are introducing an entire new generation of readers work they may not have been familiar with. Work they may see and think "If Jess is reading that, then maybe I should..." My personal favorite example of this is when Lindsey in Freaks and Geeks goes on a rant about Kerouac and On the Road.
The Beats are credited for inspiring movements from Second-wave Feminism to French surrealist films, so how can it be bad that we are exposing young readers to this work, even if it comes in the form of television?
I asked my sister why she was reading The Longest Yard. She said "because I liked the movie." I asked my brother why he was reading a history book about sharks. He said "I like Shark Week." So maybe television isn't ruining reading for the next generation, but giving a new medium for literary inspiration. Connecting readers to books and artists they didn't know before because "she was reading it on iCarly," or "Anne Kendrick said it was good." So if I pick up City of Tiny Lights, to read before the movie comes out next fall, then perhaps television isn't killing the literary word, but helping it. Thoughts?
I thought it would be pertinent to talk about one of my favorite artists from the Beat era. Margaret Keane is the creator of "Keane Eyes" or "Big Eyed Waifs" and has been painting for over 60 years.
She was born in Nashville in 1927 and loved to paint as a child. The beginning of the popularity of her work was in San Francisco’s North Beach in the 1950s. Margaret’s work drew little accolades from art critics but was loved and admired by the world. Andy Warhol said, “I think what Keane has done is terrific! If it were bad, so many people wouldn’t like it.” Keane would soon be one of the most successful living artist in the early 60s.
Margaret’s art gained wide favor and started a big-eyed movement in the early 60s, "influencing a large crop of big-eyed artist such as Lee, Gig, Maio, Ozz Franca, Igor Pantuhoff, and Eve." Her designs also influenced a bunch of children's toys and cartoons, such as the Powerpuff Girls, and inspired many modern neo-artists like Tim Burton. One of Margaret’s favorite artists is Amedeo Modigliani, and his art has had a major influence in the way she’s painted women since circa 1959. "Throughout the years Margaret has also been influenced by Van Gogh, Henri Rousseau, Leonardo da Vinci, Gustav Klimt, Edgar Degas, Picasso, Sandro Botticelli and Paul Gauguin." Each of these artist have influenced Margaret’s use of color, dimension and composition. Along with these great and awe inspiring artist, Margaret’s own creative genius of Big Eyes and women has continued to influence and inspire countless artist today.
At one point she was asked to paint a portrait for the giant UNICEF gallery at the worlds fair, but the commissioners found her work to be too "haunting" for the public.
However what she is perhaps more contemporarily known for is the scandal with her husband, when they married in the 50's her husband insisted her art wouldn't sell because she was a woman. He took control of her art and her life, and it wasn't until after their separation, with the support of friends and family that Keane took her husband to court in 1990 to fight for the ownership of her work and her name. She was awarded both, as well as $4 million in damages, and has since then been commissioned by an overwhelming amount of people to paint for them. Last year, Tim Burton wrote the biographic film Big Eyes, at the permission of Keane, to recount her life as a mother, her art, and finally becoming the rightful owner of her work.
My mother is an artist and when I was little she use to show me portraits by her favorite painters and I would try to recreate them on my tiny easel with Crayola paint. Her favorites and mine were Georgia O'Keefe and Margaret Keane and it wasn't until I got older that I found out about the struggle she went through to get credit for her incredible work. I think she's a brilliant artist, and she still paints every day even though she's in her 90's!! https://keane-eyes.com/about-margaret/ http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2014/11/robert-moses-rejected-this-terrifying.html
Juliana Spahr reading a selection from An Army of Lovers.
I think this book is a great and optimistic modern experiment with some of the beatitude concepts Rob touches on in his book Beat Attitudes. The novel seems to play with the idea of influx and efflux, a spiritual breath that brings the soul and mind together to beatific states when realizing the interconnectedness of all of existence; this cultivation of awareness and mental and spiritual bliss is then exhaled in a form of poesis. The efflux is seen by the end in the form of an army of lovers.
Okay guys, time to whip out the soap box before all chances are lost. I know many of you are still in it for another year or more, but many of my peers and I are just about done at UCSC, and with only a few days left, it is really easy to pop on into high school senior mode and tune out. And that is obviously fine - we have all worked pretty damn hard to get where we are. But here is my request - don't let that last.
Not a lot of UCSC students are from Santa Cruz originally. That is simply the fact of a university built in a small town. And many, like me, have made the 7+ hour jaunt up from Southern California to get here, more than likely several times a year. I myself have driven those roads too many times to count. I have taken just about every route and detour, as well. Historic route 1, wine country up the 101, the dreadfully boring I-5, and even the 99 for a quick stopover in Yosemite. And unless you have taken a plane for every single trip (which you really should consider driving one of those highways at least one time in your life), you have surely driven past the seemingly endless miles upon miles of fields. America's produce section is at our doorstep. Watsonville, Castroville, Fresno, Salinas, Oxnard, et cetera et cetera ad infinitum. Miles upon miles of them bursting with artichokes and strawberries and lettuce and grapes and almonds. Just about anything that grows is grown right here. So have you noticed them? Have you taken a good long look? Have you been guilty, as have I, of letting these fields so often turn into nothing more than one enormous green blur between here and the fields of Los Angeles gray?
My real hope would be that, as we all commute back to our respective homes across this state (or further), that we take some time in this next week or so to really LOOK at what we so easily take for granted. And some of you may be staying right here in Santa Cruz - take a short drive. I implore you. Not far; you don't have to go far. Ten or twenty minutes north or south along the Cabrillo Highway should suffice. Take a sunny weekend and drive down to Moss Landing. Elkhorn Slough is beautiful this time of year - chock full of otters and sea lions and seals - and the produce stands are a steal.
And that is the point, right?
Cheap food equals cheap labor, and it is right there in the open for us all to see. And when something is so open and obvious, it is a reflection of the society in which it exists just how well that really open thing is treated. If your neighbor was beating his dog, or starving him, or leaving him out in the sun for hours on end without access to water, what would you do? Would you hide yourself inside and do your best to never look into the next yard? I would like to think I would act - call the authorities or take it into my own hands to confront the indifferent owner. I would probably feel like some damn white knight savior. I would buy myself a beer.
So why do I care for the dog and not for the human?
Have I convinced myself that it isn't all that bad? That the labor is fair and the paycheck is good?
Then why aren't there any white folks out in the fields? Why don't I take a summer job picking fruit for my fellow man? Is farming not the exalted and pride-invested pursuit that it once was?
These are all rhetorical questions, of course.
While running the risk of becoming really preachy and holier-than-thou, I want everyone to take a second this summer to really think hard about the kind of world we want to live in. Do we really want equal opportunities and freedom for all, or just those of us lucky enough to be born on the right side of a fence? After two years in Santa Cruz, I feel like I know the average UCSC student. I don't feel qualms about saying that these are good people. Damn fine people. So if anyone in this country is going to become the spearhead that speaks for the ones who cannot speak, it is going to have to be the really damn good people. I've said it before and I will say it again: If university students aren't pushing these kinds of issues, who will? Politicians? Lobbyists?
Exactly.
And as you consider these things, remember that everything local is also typically global. The contado of America in the twenty-first century has no limits. It reaches all around the world and even into space. Yes, these are big and difficult problems to solve. But only we can do it.
p.s. I know this video is technically farm workings IN Mexico, but the imagery is pretty much the same, and I liked the quality on this better than the other videos I found.
This isn't explicitly connected to anything in the course, and is mostly a response to the previous post, but it may very well be the most powerful and introspection-provoking article I've ever read, and I wanted to share it with you all. It is also strongly connected to the themes and feelings of the Dharma Bums, speaking to the inner compulsions that drove Ray and Japhy into the solitude of the wild, and explaining why such an escape is becoming more and more discouraged in our modern society of interconnectedness. This article hit me hard, especially as someone trying to make a living out of creative pursuits, and because I saw a lot of what it discusses in my own life experience. This isn't the most cohesive post, but I'd encourage you to read the article, it made me much more explicitly aware of an ongoing struggle I find myself engaged in(and think most of us are engaged in) with myself and my social programming. The End of Solitude
It has been a number of months, but at some point before this quarter was underway, I recall reading an excerpt of Dave Eggers's newest novel The Circle. The story revolves around Mae Holland, a new hire at an enormous, monolithic social networking company that shares its namesake with the novel. She is excited and somewhat intimidated at first, but the balance quickly shifts towards the latter when Mae starts drowning within the all-encompassing nature of her work. At The Circle, everyone alive is ranked on a kind of social scoring database based on their social networking activity. As an employee, Mae is subjected to constant examinations and employee check-ins to push her to stay constantly and totally socially active. Parties become work and work is treated like some creepy kind of party. There are strong allusions to 1984 - "Secrets are lies. Sharing is Caring. Privacy is theft."
"The Circle" seems pretty clearly to be the dystopian version of the modern day tech corporation mega-campus a la the Googleplex. This is a rich topic, in part because not many of us outsiders have ever had a real good look inside this hermetically sealed bubble world. I would say that the idea of work blending with life is reasonably frightening. Corporations like Google have a stake in their workers staying at work - it helps the bottom line. But what is the result when we blend our social identities with our work personas so intricately? What is the future of individuality and personal freedom in a society so constantly entwined with their technology?
I clearly don't have these answers, and I can't say if Eggers does either, but this is a topic worth discussing. I know many people personally, both in and out of the liberal arts, who have already dedicated themselves to careers in tech and social media, at least for now. It seems to be increasingly the case that to live in the Bay Area requires some kind of daily interface, if not downright immersion, in the world of tech. And this world is expanding quickly. I don't mean to fear monger, because I probably love my technology as much or more than the next person, but being so near the heart of things, we owe it to ourselves to play an active role in deciding how to move forward.
I am really interested - is anyone thinking about going into the tech industry? If so, let us know what you plan to (or would like to) do in that field.
In terms of participating in political activism that can truly change current society, I am a firm believer that Hack-tivism as used by such groups as "Anonymous" is a strong and effective way to show those in positions of dominant power, the power of public community groups. I recently read an article that I will reference below about the vulnerability of the US Power grid to a cyber attack. The article quotes a report prepared last year for the President and Congress that "emphasizes the vulnerability of the grid to a long-term power outage" saying that "for those who would seek to do our Nation significant, physical, economic, and psychological harm, the electrical grid is an obvious target." I mean, this is insane. It is crazy to think that something that America is so dependent on in almost every aspect of public and private life is so vulnerable to attacks from outsiders and, if we are to believe everything we read in the media, America sure has some enemies. This notion of hacking into the grid goes beyond the FBI retaining personal information as it means an entire country could be at the mercy of another because of the accessibility of the power grid to those who know how to access it. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about hacking or code or computers so I will refrain from trying to explain but there is some pretty amazing stuff in the link below if any of you are interested.
Like many of my blog postings, this article and this idea of accesibility relates to the idea of the right to space or the claiming of space. Once you realize that something your society is so dependent on (the power grid) is so accessible, you realize that that having "right to space" is no more than a fickle human construct around which we base much of our societal constructs.
"Place-hacking" is a phemonena that entials reclaiming space by entering 'restricted' places. It was popularized in the book Explore Everything: Place Hacking and the City written by cultural geographer Bradley Garrett. In the Russell Brand podcast (linked below), Garrett says that "the idea is that the world is a closed system and in order to get behind the code, the underbelly of this system, you have to find a little loophole and you've got to exploit it. So that's the hack." To me, "Place-hacking" combines two major themes that we have discussed throughout the course. The first being the "Occupy" movement and the idea of reclaiming the right to occupy space and the power that comes with that right. The second being the City (in Garrett's case, London) witholding access to public space by loading its people with what Garrett calls "social conditioning." He says "we are carrying around all of this social conditioning in our bodies all day long and we don't realize how we censor ourselves and what we're finding is when you cross over that boundary, all of a sudden that social conditioning breaks open. You find yourself able to think about the world in a different way and to do things you wouldn't normally do and that is what the hack is all about." So, "the hack" is more than reckless trespassing but involves reclaiming a physical space in order to access "censored" parts of ourselves. Garrett claims to have climbed up every major construction site in London, including the Shard. He assures that he "would never trespass into a residential structure." Insisting that the project is about "hacking public infrastructure and at times corporate infrastructure." But he claims that sometimes, place-hacking brings you to true beauty. He describes being in North Wales and finding a quarry, filled with cars that the council had dumped there in the 1970s. "We got to the bottom the quarry and there was a lake down there, crystal blue, and there were about two dozen cars piled up inside the lake reaching toward this sunbeam that was breaking though the ceiling."
"The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the Earth and men do not see it." -- Gospel of Thomas Saying 113
This past summer, I held an internship that goes directly against the book I decided bring onto an airplane to read while on the way to a trade show. This book was of course "The Dharma Bums" by Jack Kerouac. I have yet to read on the road but I wanted to pick up something that wasn't so famous, so I choose this one.
My mind was blown into another dimension of eastern philosophy merging into a western world and I didn't know if I could truly understand what Ray was talking about. As I read more, I began to feel the pull of his words bringing me closer to enlightenment (whatever it can be) and I began to really feel zen. I don't know if it was because I was so high up in the air but with phrases like, "Here, this, is it. The world as it is, is heaven, I'm looking for a Heaven outside what there is," (141) and I can't forget, "Everything is empty but awake! Things are empty in time and space and mind," (144) I really felt lifted. The environment that I was raised in never let me enable this type of thought process and while I was flying through the clouds going north away from California, I felt the presence of the possibility of an after life or even just enlightenment though death as being heaven itself.
These aren't good thing to think when I have to be responsible and work for someone because it just makes me want to wander around and say fuck it.
Give a chance to listen to a modern interpretation of "Howl" that most likely relates to all of you because it makes fun of the dull existence that makes up internships and 9-5 full time jobs that are going to swallow up our children. This is what we have to do to make a living right? We have to embrace technology and let it help us but not let it take over our ability to love the simple things in life, like trees and stars and human interactions. It's in no way trying to imitate the spontaneity of Ginsberg since I rhyme a lot and cant really make powerful ellipse in a song. If your annoyed by the quality or find it too quiet, please listen with headphones.
This is one of the most interesting narratives that I have read so far in school because of how unique the the way Kington has drawn her character of Wittman Ah Sing. I was thrown off right away at the first page because I was lost with who was talking and confused as to how the narrator can plunge into Wittman's thoughts without having to address it.
It became more apparent that this is written in a free indirect discourse that not only allows the narrators thought, but also the inside thoughts of Wittman. I like this because it plays into the complex environment in San Francisco and having to deal with racial judgement and living in their respected neighborhoods. Since this is supposed to take place in the 60's, there is supposed to a lot of free love, but Wittman doesn't really see too much of that as he flaneurs around the bay. My favorite passage in the book is, "He put her on her back with her arms and veil and legs and white dress raised, and the monkey on top of her. Her legs held it hopping in place and clapping her with its cymbals. Her opened and shut as the monkey bumped away at her" (65). The way that this is worded makes it seem like this is a fantasy of Wittman's because it shows that he wants what he cant have, while at the same time making a mockery of it in front of a child. It shows how he keeps getting fed up with his demands from his superior white and normal friends and the narrator adds mystery and positivity even though he just lost his job.
Some of my Thoughts on Beat Lit.
Beat Literature as a whole does not interest me as much as Beat History as a History of three friends living in New York, searching for new ideas about literature and life, and new ways to express themselves; and the journeys this desire, of essentially spiritual freedom, takes them on across the world. Like the beginnings of Zen, these Lunatics would deviate from conventional norms and approach life and enlightenment directly. If I were asked to define it, that's what Beat would be to me: American Zen: Direct Expression of Self: Enlightenment: No Way All Way Any Way Freedom of Self - but not little self: No! Big Self Baby! Big Big Big Self! Buddha Self! All Universe Open Heart Love Self: that's why Kerouac said Beat meant to be Sympathetic: Sympathy is Compassion: Compassion Is Enlightenment: Zen came over from Japan, but that was Japanese Zen; and the spirit of American Zen, the Universal Eternal Buddha Nature, was always here with Emerson and the Transcendental Maniacs: Just like the Buddha was always in China with Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu much before Bodhidharma brought the Language over: Then Huang Po and Lin Chi did exactly what Kerouac and Ginsberg did: they made it their own: Buddha Nature Now - Poems written on Stone Houses and Cold Mountains: that's what American Zen is: It's Beat. Zen is Chan; Chan is Dhyana; Dhyana is Meditation: Meditation is Real Buddhism; it's Buddha; it's Lotus Sutra Direct Transmission: who can see this? Clouds Flow overhead, and Chan Beat Buddha Lunatic Mystics Sing and Sing and Sing and Sing in the Eternal Love Blue Infinity: that's Beat: it's America Saying YES HERE IS MY ENLIGHTENMENT! Buddha Buddha Buddha!
Here is a beautiful Chorus from Kerouac's Mexico City Blues:
140th Chorus
Fifty pesos
3 Cheers Forever
It's beautiful to be comfortable
Nirvana Here I am
When I was born Tathagatas
Assembled from all universes
And chanted in my ear
The gray song of Nirvana
Saying "Dont Come Back"
Then my Angel Gerard
Protected and comforted me
In the Rainy Misery
And my mother smiled
And my father was dark
And my sister
And I sat on the floor
And I Void Listened
To the Eternal Return
With no Expression
I wanted to share this because it represents, to me, Kerouac's lonely mysticism and his love of Buddhism. There is an idea in Buddhism of Emptiness: all things are inherently empty. What this means though is that all things -- mountains, trees, rivers, you and I, have no inherit separate existence. Kerouac emphasizes this in his being born not 'a' Tathagata, but being born Tathagatas: he is all Tathagatas, as are we. A Tathagata is one who has attained Nirvana; that is one who has relinquished attachments. Nirvana has been described as an Extinguishing of Self, or Leaving the Wheel of Birth and Death: another meaning for Tathagata is one who has gone.
Kerouac channels this Tathagataness when he says "I Void Listened/To the Eternal Return/With no Expression. To be without expression is to be void, is to be free of attachments; the eternal return being both the Buddha Nature and Samsara, the World of Life and Death, and Illusions.
I like to bring this up because I think it's really worth reminding ourselves that Kerouac's spirituality was the core of his writing: he was a self proclaimed christian mystic with a deep and reverential love of Buddhism.
The San Francisco Contado has been a major point of interest in our lectures. We have returned to it more so than any other subtopic: why?
If I remember correctly, a contado is defined as: that surrounding land that a central hub draws its resources from; and in doing so, the surrounded land and its citizens traditionally gain some benefits from the central hub. We have applied this to San Francisco, and we have discussed numerous times how San Francisco draws from its surrounding lands, almost as a sort of maelstrom; sometimes at the expense of nature as was the case with mining. But what has this to do with Literature? It's possible that it might have everything to do with Literature. If San Francisco Literature is dependent upon San Francisco; and San Francisco is dependent upon its contado; then it logically follows that San Francisco Literature is dependent upon the contado.
The contado provides, or it has in the past, San Francisco with its stability. Stability, though not totally necessary, is one of he greatest helps to the flourishing of culture and art. Both Athens and China, in brief periods of peace, experienced gigantic culture booms that would still be felt centuries later.
Considering such, it's interesting to wonder as to how much art we have in our history which is dependent upon the stability of empires. Certainly, peace and stability are not absolutely necessary for art. But, the production of art takes time; and time is not guaranteed. It's easier to make art when your kingdom isn't being raided; or when you're not constantly concerned with how you're going to get dinner. Or rather, it's easier for gigantic cultural eruptions of art to take place when the circumstances of your culture can afford the stability and the means to produce such art.
In the Infinite City map "The Right Wing of the Dove" Rebecca Solnit discusses how San Francisco has cultivated a strong liberal, eccentric, artistic and peaceful image that it has become widely associated with, and how this leads people to overlook its powerful and immoral military-industrial presence. As part of the San Francisco contado, Santa Cruz has fallen into a similar pattern, largely romanticized as the "hippy surf town, full of college kids and stoners." As with San Francisco however, Santa Cruz has a strong and mostly overlooked right side, which I see exemplified in two current issues facing the community. The Santa Cruz community was recently polarized by the police departments spending $250,000 of funding to acquire a Bearcat--an armored assault vehicle that is essentially a small tank. The public was not made aware or given a chance to offer input on the process until after citizens discovered that it was underway and began to protest. While the police department claims that it will be used only for rescue and other sensitive operations (of which they struggled to find any relevant examples in the past 15 years), the vehicle's name itself: Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter-Attack Truck--lends credence to the public outcry that heralds it as the militarization of the police force. The presence of the vehicle creates a militarized atmosphere in which the community, rather than being held as the subjects of protection and service, are viewed as potential combatants. Protestors fear that the bearcat will be used against rallies, protests, and other public demonstrations, and while the police chief has stated that the bearcat won't be used against "peaceful demonstrations" the police's definition of what constitutes a peaceful demonstration is often different from the public's. santa cruz hopes to calm tension over bearcat. The second example is not so much an issue as a presence that the vast majority of the community is unaware of. Empire Grade winds up past the west entrance of campus and nearly an hour into the mountains before it ends, and while exploring it I recently discovered that at the end of this beautiful redwood road is none other than a Lockheed Martin system design, manufacture, and test facility. For those unfamiliar with Lockheed Martin, they are the largest defense contractor and weapons producer in the world. It has been described as the world's most powerful corporation, and is undoubtedly the largest war profiteer on the face of the planet. Lockheed Martin is responsible for donating millions to groups supporting various wars and US military engagements, including their former vice-president holding the position as chair of the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq. They have been convicted of multiple violations of US criminal law. They're pretty much awful, which should go without saying about a company whose entire existence is predicated on the continuation and development of war. The Santa Cruz facility has refused to allow even limited public tours or groundwater and soil toxicity tests of the facility or its surroundings. There is very little information available about the facility or its director, the interestingly named Byron Ravenscraft, but it has been revealed that the facility is involved in producing Trident II missiles, a thermonuclear warhead with a range of 4000 miles. Unsettling, to say the least.
Rob has mentioned this venue a few times in class, and it's one of my favorite places to go see concerts in San Francisco, so I thought I'd give you guys some of its history. The theater opened in 1922 primarily as a vaudeville venue. It became insanely popular in the 70's and 80's due to Bob Dylan performing several of his shows there. Dylan gained a lot of popularity due to his shows at The Warfield, and it is due to his presence there that the venue is now considered one for Rock music. Other than greatly impacting Dylan's career, The Warfield became the primary venue of The Grateful Dead. Many of the band's celebratory shows, like their fifteenth anniversary, were performed at The Warfield. Due to the venue's great acoustics and relatively small size (it fits about 2000 guests), a lot of bands have used the venue as a place for secret shows, Guns N' Roses being a primary example, as they used the venue to perform a few secret shows before launching one of their tours.
The Warfield on Nov 10, 2009
It's incredible how one venue can have such an impact on a musician's career. It's even more incredible when a venue does so for several different bands. The Warfield is an integral part of the history of Rock music in San Francisco, and by association a big part of the beat movement as well. I'll supply a link to their website so that you guys can find more information about their history as well as some upcoming artists and bands performing there. If you haven't been to a show at The Warfield yet, I definitely recommend it. http://www.thewarfieldtheatre.com/
Ginsberg’s Moloch is probably one of the best-known motifs
of “Howl” and also seemed to be the most thought provoking for our class and
section. Maybe it’s because we are all fed up with capitalism’s toxic enslavement
or find the poetry in this section to be especially genius, it’s safe to say
that Moloch is a very moving and visceral portrayal of the sick nature of late
capitalism.
Ginsberg, in his clever manner, used Moloch’s biblical status to portray all
that is wrong with the world in his time and ours. The figure is thought
provoking and excellent at personifying our current day struggles against the
temptations of decadence and consumerism. In class, hearing Ginsberg himself
read the poem aloud made me shiver. It was quite powerful.
Here’s a rendition of the poem from a 2010 film adaptation of “Howl”. I have to
say that James Franco’s whiny delivery of the piece makes me cringe, but the
animation and sound felt quite complimentary to the poem’s tone. Does it
compare to Ginsberg himself? Obviously not. It’s still a very cool
interpretation though.
Dharma Bums was probably my favorite thing we read all
quarter. I was a bit concerned at first when I saw it on the syllabus since all
I knew of Kerouac was On the Road (not a book I am very fond of to say the least)
but when someone explained that The Dharma Bums was the opposite side of On The Road's radical chase of life’s meaning through indulgence and decadence, I was
a bit more optimistic.
Dharma Bums, for me, was a quite eye-opening novel. I’ve never been interested
in Eastern philosophy or religion (admittedly, I have an issue with white bobos
and their fetishizing of the East) but this book turned me onto the ideas of
Zen. I liked its balanced characters and more positive outlook on the search
for meaning in life. Its tone and voice reminded me a lot of a similar novel by
Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge,
which also dealt with the same themes as Dharma
Bums.
I think Kerouac’s writing style makes the novel work so well. In the end, I
liked the book because of Ray’s voice. I really enjoyed his seemingly
skeptical, albeit eventually inspirational narrative style. Ray’s quote sums it
all up quite nicely for me “Now there’s the karma of these three men here:
Japhy Ryder gets to his triumphant mountaintop and makes it, I almost make it
and have to give up and huddle in a bloody cave, but the smartest of them all
is that poet’s poet lying down there with his knees crossed to the sky chewing
on a flower dreaming by a gurgling plage,
goddammit they’ll never get me up here again.”
I’m pretty tempted now to check out On the Road due to my familiarity with Kerouac’s style and the
monolithic nature of that novel.
If you had asked me anytime before I took this class what my
associations of Literature and San Francisco were, I’d most likely have said
“Jack London” and be hard pressed for more names. Maybe it’s since I have never
been into Modern/Postmodern literature or because I have never been exposed to San
Francisco’s great literary scene – either way I was clueless.
Jack London at his desk
Jack London is of course one of our most well known and respected authors in
the American cannon, and most people are consequently exposed to one of his
novels or another by the time they have finished high school. For me, the
defining “San Francisco” novel of his would have been “The Sea-Wolf”. Although
it takes place on the ocean, the starting location being in and around the SF
Bay definitely gives the story an interpretation that can see the characters’
struggles against Nietzschean Übermensch ideals as the struggle of a working
class with the aristocracy. This is a pretty decent analog for San Francisco’s
history and I feel sums it up quite well.
Maybe I’m just caught up on that novel but I found its underlying themes quite
Bohemian in nature, albeit slightly outdated. Most of the works we read in
class this quarter dealt with this power struggle in some way and in my opinion
embodies a certain San Franciscan attitude that was revived in the Beat
movement.
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