Minor characters indeed! I hope this blog does not sound
more like a rant. I
really had a difficult time with this week's blog on the
beat movement. I
understand Kerouac and his analogy that the American Hobo
could represent Americans love of freedom and personal
choice. The founding
fathers, mountain men, forty-niners, and adventurous people
often chose the open
road for their great adventure but the establishment pulled
them back into their
predicable routines.
I found both of the women's stories rather dated. I know
at the time it must have been shocking but I didn't find the
story of Bonnie
Frazer and her trip to Mexico and her seeking pleasure on a
crowded bus going to
Veracruz even slightly interesting. I did relate with her about how the woman
always takes the baby responsibility. ""Ah bitter, I was not about to
accept
with grace my maidenly burdened-by-baby responsibility at
this particular time"
(Frazer 2995).
Johnson's
story about her moving away "the meaning of her theft of
herself from her parents was clear to all."(Johnson
3000). I thought that
comparison very unique.
She goes on to say that she wanted sexually freedom. I
think this would have banned her writings from many public
libraries at the time
but now with Fifty Shades of Grey in any library today it
seems rather tame. I
know that the beat movement was the vanguard of the Hippie
Movement but I find that I would not like to read any of Timothy O'Leary's
writings either.
I think understand your perspective. That lifestyle is really not appealing to very many people after they reached a certain level of maturity. It doesn't even seem shocking now to mainstream American but maybe the reason it doesn't is because the writers of the Beat movement did do those things and wrote about them.
ReplyDeleteYou don't find the freedom of the Beat writers the least bit romantic? Even read against the stifling constriction of the Modern respectable life as we see it in Miller and Cheever?
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