Word: beatnik
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Wanted: Junior Flips. Not working has always been a reasonable dodge of bohemians, but Lipton has elevated the beatnik's indolence to the dedication of a mendicant order. "Only poverty is holy," he quotes approvingly. "Moneytheism" is the tail-finned dragon that the tattered saints are fighting. All such beatnik absurdities would not matter if their writings and paintings had some value. But most of the art that Lipton's shaggy sufferers turn out is not better, he admits, than the weekend seascape by the vice president of a spark-plug firm...
During the course of the question period which followed the reading, Mr. Ginsberg and Mr. Corso entertained the audience with some amusing observations on the "beat generation." Mr. Ginsberg allowed as how he thought "being called a beatnik is a real drag: I'm a poet;" and called spontaneity the foundation of his work--"Writing poetry is like going to the bathroom...
Would they like to make any comment? 'Yes," said Corso. "Fried shoes. Like it means nothing. It's all a big laughing bowl and we're caught in it. A scary laughing bowl." Added Gregory Corso, with the enigmatic quality of a true Beatnik: "Don't shoot the wart hog." Chimed in Allen Ginsberg: "My mystical shears snip snip snip...
Shaw & Mother. With the crashing madness of a Marx Brothers scene run in reverse, the Beatniks read their poetry, made their pitch for money for a new Beatnik magazine. The Big Table, and then stalked out. After a late night on the town, they made a mystical pilgrimage to Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo (which has no wart hog and no laughing bowl), turned up next evening at the Sherman Hotel, read more poetry for a curious crowd of 700 (who paid $1 and up), this session sponsored by Chicago's Shaw Society...
Neither in San Francisco beatnik saloons nor Manhattan dives could this inspired narrative have been heard last week, but it echoed through Munich jazz cellars. U.S.-style rock 'n' roll, with its clog-shoe tempo and its far-out jargon, is sweeping Germany and leaving the language in Teutonic tatters.* Along with the new lingo, a new generation of singers (or shouters) have appeared, all of them alarmingly young. Where U.S. rock 'n' rollers are well along in years (19-25), Germany's top practitioners are in their early teens, and at least one solid...