Sexuality in the Beat Generation

Sexuality in the Beat Generation :

-the role of sexual identity in literature and social movement

1. Introduction

When most of us think of the rough era of the United States, most popular image which
coincides with that keyword is 1960s with the issue of war in Vietnam and the generation
symbolized with hippie culture. However the post war era, 1950s, was a period of time with
much social issues and movements also. In the shadow of vigorous growth of economy and
population, and the establishment of the middle class, existed various social matters such as
segregation and nationwide government campaign against communism.

There emerged the Beat Generation; group of young writers characterized as a reaction
against the monotonous standardized, mass society created by the post war government. The
Beats did not approve of the atmosphere of fear and commonness created by the Cold War.

The Beats exposed themselves to the values that went against the standards set by the state
government; alcohol, drug, homosexual relationship and music are such examples. Many
works of Beat writers contain such contents; Allen Ginsberg openly mentioned homosexuality
in his poems, and William Burroughs in his autobiographical novel revealed his usage of the
narcotics. On the matter of homosexuality in particular, the Beats approved of homosexual
relationship and homosexual experiences, not only on their literary works but also in the form
of action. For an instance, Allen Ginsberg was an active member of the Beats who
participated in the sexual rights movements. The places where the Beats emerged and
developed such as bars in New York and San Francisco also has been a significant icon for
the sexual rights movements.

In this paper I would like to focus on the homosexuality in the Beat Generation, how they
influenced their work, what it meant to them, and how did it influence the issues surrounding
sexuality in the United States.

2. Homosexuality in Beats

a) Homosexuality in practice

The writers of the Beat Generation, majority of them, were either identified(by oneself) as a
homo/bisexual or were exposed to such relationships. Their literary works at most of the time
were typical self-portrait or auto-biographical, and so they admit the fact, it is an widely
known that the practice of homosexuality was common among those writers.
English: Allen Ginsberg with partner Peter Orlovski, Frankfurt Airport, 1978. Deutsch: Allen
Ginsberg mit Peter Orlovski, Frankfurt Flughafen, 1978. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Allen Ginsberg, one of the biggest icon of the Beat Generation and the antecedent of the
hippie movement, is probably the most widely known homosexual in the Generation. He
openly claimed that he was a homosexual, insisted that he discovered within himself
mountains of homosexuality in 1943. He was with his life-long partner, Peter Orlovsky, who
is his spouse in the Whos Who entry.

Ginsberg is seen as an opening of gay literatures because his works are frank and realistic on
the matter, while the previous writings spoke of or hinted it in their literature rather than
expressing it openly.

Although he became an icon of the sexuality movement, Ginsberg was still not adjusted
sexually in 1950s. The social prejudice and contradicting values put Ginsberg in a position of
considering himself with the possibility of insanity, thus persuaded himself that he was
essentially straight. He found a female sexual partner, but it was occasional just as his self-
deception. Ginsberg found himself drawn to Neal Cassady, a strong heterosexual inclined
man, who is the most repeated theme in all his works. Although he devoted much time to
Cassady, writing letters and trying to have communication with him, Cassady did not show
much attention, and Ginsberg arrives at one point realizing he was in love with the idea of
being love with Neal Cassady as much as he was in love with a real man. Cassadys ignorance
and indifference caused Ginsberg to make abjections of himself; The glare of unknown love,
human, unhad by me. Ginsberg wrote to Kerouac in 1954, mentioning how Cassadys future
wife Carolyn Cassady stole Cassady from him. shes a kind of deathshe doesnt dig new
things. Shes a hysteric type.

Another big icon of the beats, William S. Burroughs, was also claimed bisexual, and he
published a novel called which is utterly personal and which he claimed was based on his
personal experiences in Mexico. Although Burroughs admitted him engaged in homosexual
encounters, he set; I have never been gay a day in my life and Im sure as hell not a part of
any movement. Although he experienced homosexual desire long before he became a drug
addict, the belated publication of his second novel did nothing to put Burroughs identity as a
queer on a par with that as a junky.(Oliver Harris, 2010, introduction to Queer 25th
anniversary edition) Although Burroughs admitted his homosexual encounters, he never
labeled himself as a homosexual just like he never did it with anything else.
Jack Kerouac, who we still call the King of the Beats today, was never labeled homosexual,
nor he did claim so. However it is believed that he had homosexual encounters although they
were occasional. Kerouac in his letters exchanged with Allen Ginsberg questions his sexual
identity, but at the same time he was not in a great favor of homosexuals. Kerouac, in his
novel cites several instances of his road companion Neal Cassadys bisexuality, and it is
difficult to hide his attraction towards him. About Neal Cassady, he wrote: With the coming
of Neal there really began for me that part of my life you could call my life on the road

Kerouac had three wives in his life and preferred heterosexual relationships with female
partners, but many of the letters shows that he had occasional homosexual encounters whether
there were a intercourse or not. The famous story of Jack Kerouac had an intercourse with
Gore Vidal, which insists Vidal, is an widely known story, although according to William
Burroughs it is not true since Vidal was a liar.(Paul Maher Jr., , 2007).

Lucien Carr (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The relationship between Lucien Carr and David Kammerer is another famous relationship of
the Generation. Lucien Carr, at the age 14, met David Kammerer, who was a childhood friend
of William S. Burroughs, who was the teacher at that time. Kammerer was leading a group of
youth which Carr was a member, and quickly attracted to the teenage Carr. Over the next few
years Kammerer pursued Carr by following him to any school he attended, and Carr would
later insist that he had been sexually hounding Carr with a predatory persistence that would
today be considered stalking. (Adams, Frank, Columbia Student Kills Friend and Sinks Body
in Hudson River, The New York Times, August 17, 1944) Jack Kerouac biographer Dennis
McNally mentioned that Krammer was a Doppelgnger whose sexual desires Lucien would
not gratify; their connection was an intertwined mass of frustration that hinted ominously of
trouble.( McNally, Dennis, Desolate Angel, Da Capo Press edition, 2003, p. 67) At the end
Carrs mother brought her son to New York City and enrolled him at Columbia, however
David Kammerer quit his job and followed Carr to New York, moving into an apartment in
the west village, where later on Burroughs also followed the course.
b) Homosexuality in Writings

As many of the literary works of the Beat writers contain explicit contents, some of the big
icons like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and their works were brought to
obscenity trial. Allen Ginsberg in his famous poem <HOWL> mentioned homosexual sex,
and William Burroughs wrote <Naked Lunch> contained use of narcotics and pedophilia,
which objected the value of the conservative society of the United States back then.

One characteristic of the Beat literature works all share is that they are very personal, intimate
and sometimes were written for designated audiences. For example <Howl> of Allen
Ginsberg was first performed at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955, in front
of the small audiences who were familiar with the writer . <Howl> contains several
metaphors and portrayals of the incidents of Ginsbergs personal life and the life of people
around him, including the emitted further explanation of the lines such as who threw potato
salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism. In the very poem appears key terms such as Turkish
Bath and Ginsberg used them to describe the homosexuality in detail. Considering the
intimate connection between his works and his life, and given the fact, it is no question that
Ginsberg applied his homosexual identity and experiences in his works. In his other poem
<On Neals Ashes> he describes his affection towards Neal Cassady in detail, lamenting his
lost. Delicate eyes that blinked blue Rockies all ash / nipples, Ribs I touched with my thumb
are ash / mouth my tongue touched once or twice all ash / bony cheek soft on my belly are
cinder, ash

As a sequel to his previous novel <Junky>, William S. Burroughs wrote <Queer> which was
written between 1951 and 1953 but not published until 1985 because of the obscenity matter
and being uninteresting to publication. Jack Kerouac admired this novel, mentioning that it
would appeal to east coast homosexuality critics. <Queer> includes Burroughs experience
in the Mexico City, awaiting trial for the accidental homicide of his former wife Joan
Vollmer. It primarily talks about the main character Lee searching for homosexual encounter
in South America, and ending up engaging himself in a relationship with a man named
Allerton, a recently discharged American Navy serviceman, whose character is based on
Adelbert Lewis Marker (1930-1998) who Burroughs befriended during his residence in
Mexico City. Unlike his masculine aspects and dry, descriptive styles of writing, Lee, who is
a surrogate for Burroughs himself, is a very timid and shy man with submissive attitude when
it comes to the relationship with Allerton. In <Queer> he describes homosexuality without
aesthetics, as well as suggesting the inspection of sexual identity.

A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall
never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glandsthe lymph glands that
is, of coursewhen the baneful word seared my reeling brain: I was a homosexual. I thought
of the painted, simpering female impersonators Id seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be
possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a
light concussionjust a minute, Doctor Kildare, this isnt your script. I might well destroyed
myself, ending an existence which seemed to offer nothing but grotesque misery and
humiliation. Nobler, I thought, to die a man than live on, a sex monster.

Neal Cassady (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Unlike Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac never asserted that he was a
homosexual nor he intended to set his sexual identity through his works. Still people question
about his sexual identity by the characters surrounding him, including Neal Cassady and Gore
Vidal. Kerouac most of the time did not suggest regular homosexual encounters in his works,
however it does appear in several occasions, which are mostly homosocial rather than
homoerotic. In his famous <On the Road>, like in his other works, it is suggested that Neal
Cassadys sexual orientation was bisexual, however two main characters, Sal Paradise (Jack
Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady), do not appear to be engaging in homosexual
relationship with one another. Their relationship is rather of that what we call today
Bromance, which is a non-sexual homosocial intimacy.

3. Where does homosexuality stands in the Beat Movement

The Beat Generation was the reaction to the oppression of the model society set by the
government of Eisenhower, as a manner to empower the authority. The perfect portrait of the
suggested civil life would be the television show <Leave It to Beaver> which was first aired
in 1957 on CBS. The show presents a suburban family with a housewife and a working
husband, which is an ideal family of the era. Each gender had his/her own designated role,
and as a tool to standardize this there were beauty queen contest hold, commercialization of
female figure.

Meantime, a shocking report on American Sexology appeared by Dr. Alfred Kinsey with the
publication of his works <Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948)> and <Sexual Behavior
in the Human Female (1953)>. According to the report of 1948, it is stated that nearly 46% of
the male subjects had reacted sexually to persons of both sexes in the course of their adult
lives, and 37% had at least one homosexual experience. Instead of three categories
heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual the seven categories Kinsey Scale was used to
understand ones sexual behavior in terms of both physically and psychologically.

The publication of <The City and the Pillar> in 1948, by Gore Vidal, also brought sensation
to American society, for treating the matter of a young male discovering his homosexual
orientation. This is recognized as the first post- World War II novel whose protagonist is
openly gay but not killed at the end because of the social norms. It received criticism for
being printed in the age where homosexuality was considered immoral, and became a major
scandal. Vidals portrayal of homosexual man as masculine was different from the
homosexuals depicted in the works up until then, transvestites, feminine and lonely. He
purposely set his main character to challenge the stereotypes and prejudice about sex in the
United States.

In San Francisco, gay bar sub culture and homophile activist movements slowly started to
emerge, and the Beats had symbiotic relationship with such bars, as described in their literary
works such as <On the Road.> With the underground culture of gay leatherman was about to
emerge, local news coverage of the Beat generation as a hedonist symbol started to appear.
Soon the homosexuality became the part of the north beach scene, including the famous Black
Cat Caf (which was one of the settings of <On the Road>) that brought the political
attention, and formation of home to lesbian and gay bars.

As seen above, 1950s society was already confronting the challenge of sexual identity, even
being oppressed by the social norms. It is natural that the Beat writers took on the path to
experiment it as a way to express rage against normalized society.
The Beat writers were not the first one to experiment the abnormal actions and obscenity
as a method to go against the society. Writers of French Bohemian culture also had similar
behaviors; After the French Revolution the culture Romanticism enriched with the
contribution of writers and artists. Probably, the most significant figure of the literature of
post-revolution era is Arthur Rimbaud. Rimbaud, who Victor Hugo described him as an
infant Shakespeare, was a part of the decadent movement, and he influenced modern
literature, music, arts, and prefigured surrealism. It is a widely known truth that he had a short
homosexual affair with Paul Verlaine, a Symbolist poet. Their time together was spiced by
absinthe and hashish. The homosexual relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine overlaps
with the relationship between Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, although the latter was rather
homosocial, for sharing the similar factors vagabond lifestyle, alcohol and narcotics.

Rimbaud in Lettre du Voyant, in May 1871, describes the objective of such experiments and
exposures are a method to broaden poets senses to lead himself to other vision, which will
affect their literary work:

A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized

disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches
himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences.
Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he
becomes all men the great but unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich,
more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the
understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his
ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they
will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!

Paul Baudelaire, who was described as a cursed poet, in the prefatory poem of
<The Flowers of Evil> , mentions about the same issue:

If poison, arson, sex, narcotics, knives / have not yet ruined us and stitched their quick, /
loud patterns on the canvas of our lives, / it is because our souls are still too sick.

As an indirect descendent of the French bohemism, the writers of the Beat shared the
similar visions, understood the position of the poets as a visionary that were proposed by
the antecedent writers. It did not limit just in homosexual encounters but also narcotics and
alcohol, road trips all of them were methods to give oneself different point of view than
ordinary, as a responsibility of poet.

4. Conclusion

Throughout the 1950s the Beat Generation became a sensation, affected the social ambience
by starting a movement, which gradually spread into various parts of American society, and
eventually developed into a hippie movement in 1960s.

Homosexuality in the Beats was clearly a big issue, since they engaged with the gay culture
across the US, also affecting the homosexual aspect of San Francisco poetry Renaissance. It
also brought the political movement of sexual rights for the existence of such activists as
Allen Ginsberg. On the other hand of expressing the revolt against the oppression of the
society, Homosexuality for the Beat writers was also a method to stimulate ones senses to
gain the vision that the ordinary people cannot have, which they believed would lead them to
the different level in terms of literary aspect. Overall, homosexuality in the Beat Generation,
as an experiment/method and also as an identity, had an effect on both change of the society
and impact on American literature and cultures aspects.

References

-Gays and Beats(http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Gays_and_Beats) , Black Sheets magazine

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred Kinsey ISBN 978-0-253-33412-1. p. 656

Lettres du voyant, Arthur Rimbaud, 1871,(

http://abardel.free.fr/petite_anthologie/lettre_du_voyant.htm)

Howl and Other Poems (1956) Allen Ginsberg ISBN 978-0-87286-017-9

What Allen Ginsberg Told His Friends, Richard Canning,

(http://www.glreview.com/article.php?articleid=77), The Gay and Lesbian Review

Jack Kerouac and Gore Vidal Hook Up in the Village, The Last Bohemians, August 2,
2011, http://lastbohemians.blogspot.jp/2011/08/jack-kerouac-and-gore-vidal-hook-up-in.html

-Queer(1985) William S. Burroughs

-Junky(1953) William S. Burroughs

-Naked Lunch(1959) William S. Burroughs

-On the Road(1957) Jack Kerouac

-On Neals Ashes, from Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems & Songs 1949-1993, Vol. 4 Ashes &
Blues(1994) Ginsberg Recordings.

-The Twilight of Romanticism(2008), John David Wells. IUniverse.

Written by JungMin Lee

Posted on January 31st, 2013