Recent posts: A quick round-up #2
It's been a busy start to 2023 at Rock and the Beat Generation and here we share a whistle stop tour of our latest topics…
THE VIRTUAL presses have been busy at Rock and the Beat Generation headquarters as the new year unwraps with a string of diverse subjects and a clutch of star writers bringing new content, raising fresh debates, within these digital pages.
The conversation about Jack Kerouac’s state of mind, specifically during that summer 1956 when he headed to Desolation Peak as a fire watch, has been intense. Charles Shuttleworth is editor of the journals that surround that period and expressed a strong sense that bipolarity might have been evident in the author’s behaviour.
But Ginsberg accompanist Steven Taylor urged caution and the poet Jim Cohn was not yet convinced by the argument. You can follow the web conversation from a positive December review of Shuttleworth’s publication through the lively exchanges in the couple of months since.
We have also been pleased to share work by leading participants and commentators in the post-Beat world. Counterculture historian Jonah Raskin allowed us to reprint his 25th anniversary tribute to Allen Ginsberg, who died in 1997, and Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead penned a fine homage to his friend Hunter S. Thompson, who died in February 2005, in the last week or two.
We also unveiled a new series called ‘Beat Meetings’ in which individuals linked to this literary world talk about personal encounters with key figures from the original Beat Generation and, indeed, their significant heirs.
Steven Taylor recollected early connections with Gregory Corso and there are memories gathered relating to Herbert Huncke, William Burroughs and even Jack Kerouac to come soon.
Do look out for those exclusive articles in the months to follow, alongside more instalments of the always popular ‘Beat Soundtrack’ feature in which our contributors celebrate the connections between cult books and jazz records, hip poetry and rock songs, in a highly entertaining fashion.
Meanwhile, on the British front we have been considering the impact and staying power of the Angry Young Man and some of their creative descendants – the band the 1975, with their name’s Kerouac derivation, and Oliver James Lomax, a rising star of the North of England’s spoken word scene.
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