Ginsberg 1993 Oslo Interview – 2 (Beat History)

Allen Ginsberg’s interview with Audun Engh, recorded in Oslo in 1993, continues from here 

AE: Returning to the early days of the Beat Generation, how did you react to this term when it started to spread?

AG: Well that’s a later time, not earlier. You see the period of gestation that I was talking about was 1944, ’45, ’46 to ’48. The term “Beat” came into circulation maybe eight, nine years later, at a minor level, as a sort of literary term, but didn’t get a public foothold till 1958-59 – so that’s ten years, fifteen years after we’d all met. So we’d already… sort of a firm foundation, created something of a foundation in actual writing. By the time the Beat Generation was a media stereotype, Kerouac had already written fifteen, sixteen books (which then could retrospectively be labeled and stereotyped as “Beat”,  but they weren’t written under any Beat rubric). And I had finished several books of poetry which retrospectively were called ‘Beat”.  Burroughs finished Junkie, Queer, Yage Letters and most of Naked Lunch before the term began to be applied. So actually it was more or less of a publicist’s media stereotype with which to label people and reduce them from a fresh view that they might present and box it up and put a red wrapping around it so it could make a sound-bite. So the question then was whether to resist (to waste time on other people’s bad poetry), or honor the term by continuing to create work that was worthy of being called “Beat”.

AE: I think that I thnk on the surface there are differences between you and Burroughs and Kerouac…

AG:  Oh yeah.  Oh, totally different, we’re all different.

AE: …especially in Burroughs writing, an element of self-destructiveness.

AG: Well I don’t know. Before you go any further now, remember Burroughs is eighty-years old (1993 – sic).  So you might watch what you’re saying in that way.  I hope I live to be eighty!

AE: I’m thinking of Jack Kerouac’s  On The Road, a novel of desperation, desperately leaving a life almost..

AG: I don’t think.. I think that’s a..  I really don’t agree that there’s an element of desperation in On The Road. I think there’s a joyousness and an enthusiasm, but the desperation is….  Everybody’s desperate at one time or another, particularly if you have a fight with your wife or your girlfriend, or run out of money, but I don’t think in mortal desperation. I just think it’s more a question of energy and joyousness in On The Road. I think it’s misread as desperation but maybe you could point out a passage which seems desperate, I would say exuberance, and there’s a big difference between exuberance and desperation. I would say that maybe neoconservatives would like to say that exuberance is desperation

But I would say that certain kinds of quietism and the fear of activity and openness are characteristic of desperation. In fact, I think Mr Thoreau said ‘most men live lives of quiet desperation” – [Editorial note – the exact quote -“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” (from the opening pages of Thoreau’s Walden)]

AE:  And there is definitely in the Beat literature a strong lust for life

AG: Yeah

AE: But even then..

AG: I think it’s more inquisitiveness rather than lust. Inquisitiveness and enthusiasm.  Lust is again this obsessive desperate thing you’re laying out. You know “Lust For Life” is actually the title of a book by Irving Stone on the suicide (of) Van Gogh.  So do we have to constantly be using stereotypes from one genre onto another is my question. And I, as a poet, who has to invent things and “make it new”, and stay fresh, and try to keep things straight, I find myself constantly sort of at swords-point with media and trying to clarify the language and use the language of poetry rather than a language of older stereotypes, and I would say “Lust for Life” is one. It’s the title of a book by Irving Stone, thirty years ago about Van Gogh.

to be continued (tomorrow)

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