atane:
nathanfisher:
internetparty:
missveryvery:
I’d like to remind people again that Allen Ginsberg was a pedophile and rapist, got off on sexual abuse, and supported NAMBLA. That’s the face his victims saw above them. Think about him raping kids while you see how “deep” and “cool” he seems as played by Daniel Radcliffe.
Don’t see Kill Your Darlings.
I’m sick of seeing this utter shit on my dash and no discussion of this.
ugh i hate the beat poets
This.
(Text from Andrea Dworkin’s memoir, Heartbreak, FYI).
I remember having this really long, drawn out argument about the Beat Generation with an old college acquaintance who idolizes them, with the sole exception being Amiri Baraka, who he insists on still calling LeRoi Jones. This was in my more naive days, but I should not have been surprised that the lone black person was the problem in his eyes. He said he hated Baraka because he was racist against whites and abandoned the Beat movement.
This guy was willing to look over the fuckery of many of the Beats, but Baraka was just too much for him. William S. Burroughs shot his wife (Joan Vollmer) in the head, killing her. Some of his fans even say that this was the turning point for Burroughs, because it made him a better writer. Yes, put exactly like that. They just gloss over the fact that he killed his wife, or mention it in passing. Nothing brings out the writer in you like shooting your wife in the head.
Lucien Carr killed a man in Riverside park, and dumped his body in the Hudson river, and was then aided by Jack Kerouac in disposing evidence from the murdered man. Carr claimed it was self-defense from unwanted sexual advances. Yeah, but that still did not explain the whole chain of events after the murder. Ginsberg was a child molester advocate and proud NAMBLA member. He championed child rape, and he thought that the sexualization of children was fine, and that laws on the books against child rape was oppression. When I brought that up, my college acquaintance said “putting that aside, he was a brilliant man.” Yes, just put aside his penchant for fucking little boys.
Many of the Beats were fucked up, but they were white, so they get to be “tortured artists”. Nothing is put aside for Baraka though, and there is nothing Baraka has done that even comes close to what many of the white beats did. The hatred for him solely stems from him not wanting to be with the white beat poets, and breaking away to focus on cultivating the black arts movement and black nationalism. It started when Baraka became involved with the Umbra Poetry scene, and it radicalized him, and I mean that in the most complimentary way. ‘Radical’ is no pejorative from me. Baraka was angry, and rightfully so. I mean, he didn’t have civil rights. This act is seen as unforgivable and too much to bear. Almost treason like with many white groupies of the beat writers. The white beats though? They are free to murder, rape, steal, and molest. They still get a pass. Baraka won’t. Amazing how that plays out.
A small part of me dies when I see some black folks romanticizing the beat generation, whose non-conformity was a hodgepodge of appropriations from black culture, musicians in particular - especially black jazz musicians. Herbert Huncke, Burroughs, Kerouac and many in their circle were obsessed with black jazz musicians, and took liberally from the culture. They dressed like them, talked “jive” like them, and used dope like some of them. It was part and parcel of their identity, and the trendsetters were black jazz musicians. They weren’t going to see white folks playing jazz. No. It was Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Billie Holiday and other ambassadors of black hipness. Huncke even once got arrested with Dexter Gordon. An event that was meaningless to Gordon, but was not for Huncke. If you got arrested with a well known jazz man, you have a story to tell for the rest of your life. What was Gordon supposed to say? He was slumming with some ofay junkie derelict, trying to get a fix and ended up arrested by the cops? Not exactly reputation building stuff. Now, Huncke telling it on the other hand… Exactly.
Part of their non-conformity was not being in line with white society’s norms, so that meant emulating what the white mainstream rejected and what they considered to be “seedy” black culture, the polar opposite of who they really were; white people running away from squareness. Norman Mailer, who I don’t care much for wrote ‘The White Negro' in 1957, and it's pretty much an inside look into their minds and their behavior. It might be old, but it's still relevant today.
The beats also took liberally from various Eastern religions, bastardizing sacred beliefs and traditions in the process. Ginsberg, the child rape advocate claimed to be a buddhist and dabbled in hinduism. These religions were exoticism for them, and nothing more.
Back to Ginsberg, he’s really a despicable person. As if being a proud pedophile isn’t enough, he once said that the beat movement was responsible for black liberation and social justice. Yeah, tell that to Toussaint Louverture and Harriet Tubman. I really cannot associate with anyone that looks up to these people. The beats are the absolute worst. It really tells me a lot about you if these are your heroes.
tl;dr - Fuck Allen Ginsberg.