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The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History Of The Beat Generation (2010)

by Bill Morgan(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1416592423 (ISBN13: 9781416592426)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Atria Books

review 1: This is a wonderful book to learn about the history of the Beat Generation as a whole. Bill Morgan makes a firm argument that Allen Ginsberg was the central figure and social glue who held the group together, making crucial introductions, coordinating activities and encouraging his friends to write and submit their work to publishers. He also helped them with editing and supported them financially when he could. I learned that the Beat Generation began a lot earlier than I thought, and according to Jack Kerouac, it ended a lot earlier as well. The Beatniks, as imagined by the press and on TV (think "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" and Maynard G. Krebs) were not true to the group's original aims and spirit. Many of the founding fathers of the Beat Generation went on to have... more a powerful influence during the hippie generation of the 1960s. Ideas and beliefs that began in the Beat era extended into the hippie era and beyond.
review 2: Author Bill Morgan explains in the Introduction that his intent is to construct a chronology of the "Beats" following the model of Susan Cheever's "American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne", and "Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work". The plan is to show that the Beats, like the Transcendentalists, had a major impact on changes in society and American thought.The chronology of what they did, where they traveled and when their works were written/published shows Alan Ginsburg as central to the group. While Ginsburg's centrality may be a matter of opinion, the book shows him at the heart of intra-group communication; He is always writing, visiting and encouraging his circle of friends. Ginsburg is constantly promoting Beat poetry, prose and people and seems to be the only one (outside of Gary Snyder who is mostly hiking in the woods or in a monastery in Japan) sober enough to do so.Morgan clearly loves and admires the Beats. He credits them with leading everything from the post-war societal changes to the development of the video montage. While Morgan does a good job of piecing together Beat chronology and demonstrating the centrality of Ginsburg, he doesn't meet his goal of showing how society was changed by the Beats. He shows that Ginsburg was a father of free form poetry and that Kerouac was a pioneer of the narrator/conversational novel and that Lawrence Ferlinghetti took a big risk that resulted in a landmark ruling on behalf of free speech, but the Beats' role in the larger societal changes is not well drawn. The last chapter discusses the Beats as a catalyst, but the same can be said for many other forces or issues of the times.Ironically, another point the book does prove is a quote from Beats detractor Richard Kimball (p. xiii) "They were drug-abusing sexual predators and infantilized narcissists..." The behavior of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy towards their respective spouses and children is appalling and pales only to that of William Burroughs. Only Gary Snyder seems to be somewhat drug/alcohol be free. The Beats seem to be living in a state of perpetual childhood. They either can't or won't have paying jobs and if they don't participate in theft and seem to find it acceptable. While some of them made great art, by and large, they appear to be the ultimate free-loaders.I recently saw "Howl", a 2010 film covering the poem, its obscenity trial and Ginsburg's early life. It would have been best to have read this before rather than after. The film treats Ginsburg's romantic relationships in a much different way than they are shown in this book.This is a good contribution to the study of the Beats and their work. It's author has an interesting background as something like a free lance archivist for artists which, in itself, earns my respect. less

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