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Article: A Compact Guide to Sources for Teaching the Beats.(beat generation of American literature)(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- College Literature
- Article date:
- January 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 West Chester University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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That the Beats should be a subject of study in the established halls of learning is a peculiar, multifaceted irony. The Beats scorned stuffy academics, insisting that the literary establishment was boring. Various scholars and professors, distrustful of young, outspoken nonconformists, belittled the Beats. Neither group envisioned the Beat Generation as part of the curriculum in schools and universities.
In "Howl," Allen Ginsberg insisted that "the best minds of [his] generation" sought intellectual engagement but were "expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the window of the skull" (1956, 9). Finding no place in the halls of academe, ...