|
|
Article: The cool and hip lives of the '50s beat generation
- Article from:
- Sunday Star-Times
- Article date:
- March 16, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1997 Sunday Star-Times. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
|
WOMEN OF THE BEAT GENERATION, by Brenda Knight, Conari Press
(distributed in New Zealand by Tandem Press), $49.95.
Reviewed by IAIN SHARP
TRYING to show off his skills as a marksman during a drunken
party
in 1951, William Burroughs instructed his drug-addled de facto wife
Joan Vollmer to balance a glass on her head. Then he fired his
pistol at the glass, missed and killed Vollmer outright.
She was the beat generation's first female martyr. She wouldn't
be the last, for beatnik men generally treated their wives and
girlfriends abominably.
In 1955 Natalie Jackson, one of Neal Cassady's many lovers, tried
to slash her wrists. Cassady believed his great pal Jack Kerouac
would be able to calm ...