Word: zane
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...Zane's novel is not particularly outstanding; but its deficiencies are less his than those of the movement and the life which he writes about. The paucity of thought and craftsmanship which mark the novels of Beatland (On The Road is the bible of this pagan country) betray the trivial superstructure which American beats have errected upon a set of basic and simple propositions about the society they reject and the values they seek to transcend. In short, the beat generation is a barren subject-matter, and the more one has to say about it, the more one becomes repetitious...
...uncommuncative discourse of the hipster are poor substitutes for sound thought and mature craftsmanship, whch explains why so few of the works of the Beat literati have been interesting, let alone readable. Easy Living, at least, is comprehensible, but the hippies who hop in and out of the beds Zane has made for them are, on the whole, lifeless forms. Rarely to they seem human; often they seem to be nothing more than sex machines. One more pot of hashish or an additional romp in the love bed could not save the book. Zane's monsters no doubt have read...
...Here is a story of a strange world and some troubled people," the dust jacket proclaims, "written by a young man who knows them at first hand." But how does Zane know them? Does he care? Does he approve? Does he condemn? Indeed, for the reader, does it matter? Wyeth and Steiner ultimately appear trivial and absurd. A child, at least, grows up; but the down-and-outs in Easy Living are adults gone to seed. They are grown men and women romping in diapers, shouting to attract our attention, aware of our criticism, scornful of our values, yet forever...
...Life's a gas, man," Wyeth remarks late in the novel. "You just gotta learn to compromise where it counts. Right?" But as Steiner points out, "The trouble is, where does it count?" This, alas, is a problem both for Steiner and Zane. Where does one draw a distinction between the moral and immoral? Neither Wyeth, Steiner, nor Zane seems to be particularly concerned with this question except to the extent that they raise it, then let it drop...
...bourgeoisie, certainly implies a moral judgment that leads us to ask why Steiner is justified in rejecting those social regulations which transform the chaotic into the orderly, or in condemning those who seem to be more principled and responsible than himself. No matter how often we ask, however, Zane leaves us in a moral haziness, which leads us in turn to suspect that he doesn't know how to solve the moral dilemma he has generated. Perhaps this is because he has known too well these strange people, because he has been too long in their strange world to distinguish...