The Beats: A Literary History by Steven Belletto

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Beats: A Literary History by Steven Belletto Erik Mortenson Steven Belletto. The Beats: A Literary History. Cambridge UP, 2020. x + 463 pp. Beat writers are often seen as postwar isolatos—Romantic figures of rebellion who turned their backs on postwar conformism to forge boldly ahead in new literary directions. As compelling as such formulations might be, they hide the Beats’ indebtedness to the culture that produced them. Steven Belletto’s The Beats: A Literary History offers a fresh perspective on these time-worn assumptions. By placing well-known as well as lesser-known Beat texts into a useful dialogue [End Page 806] with cultural concerns, Belletto has created a book that is extremely relevant and timely—a much-needed overview of Beat writing, it provides a general introduction while simultaneously making important claims that deserve further exploration. The book is divided into four parts that examine the Beats as both writers and social phenomenon and is organized, for the most part, chronologically. The first part starts with an engaging reading of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs’s coauthored novel And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, written in 1945. Belletto effectively demonstrates that, far from a simple chronicle of the famous murder of David Kammerer, which has become a staple of Beat lore, the novel rehearses the act of narrativization in ways essential for understanding the interplay between representation and lived reality in the Beat canon. Belletto concludes the section by tracing the beginnings of the Beat movement, putting it into dialogue with other mid-century avant garde literary communities such as the Black Mountain poets and the New York School. In the next part, Belletto provides an engaging examination of early Beat novels, which are only now getting the attention they deserve, then moves into more familiar territory with an examination of classic Beat texts by writers such as Burroughs, Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg. Part 3, “The Beatnik Era and the Profusion of Beat Literature (1958-1962),” looks at early critical reviews, little magazines, and a series of discussions on lesser-known but equally-important Beat writers outside the Kerouac-Ginsberg-Burroughs triumvirate, from Diane di Prima and Gregory Corso, to the more obscure, such as David Meltzer, Ron Loewinsohn, and Sheri Martinelli. Part 4 is a shorter discussion of Beat politics but includes sections on Beat women’s writing, lesser-read Beat novels such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Her and Corso’s The American Express. It ends with an examination of how the 1960s Vietnam Era pushed many Beat writers into the overtly political, with special emphasis on Ginsberg and Ed Sanders. The work functions through a series of close readings coupled with either social or literary-historical contextualization, which provides readers with a sense of not only writers’ individual voices and preoccupations but also how they fit into the larger scene that is Beat. Ginsberg’s celebrated long poem Howl is discussed through an examination of publishing in and about San Francisco, the 6 Gallery reading and its aftermath, the textual construction of the poem, the poem as a “Secret history of the Beat Generation” (129), and its obscenity trial. This layered approach not only provides engaging new takes on Beat works but also reveals how Beat representations [End Page 807] are in dialogue with the contingencies of the postwar moment. At the same time, Belletto’s range is usefully broad. Readers are provided revealing discussions of classics such as On the Road and Naked Lunch but are likewise treated to analyses of seldom-discussed little magazines such as the parodic Sinking Bear, as well as important but unfortunately overlooked Beat authors such as Kay Johnson. Belletto includes those whose literary output was meager but who were nevertheless Beat figures worthy of attention and critical discussion. Though necessarily wide-ranging given its aim, the work could use more of a roadmap at times. Nevertheless, coupling interesting close reads with helpful contextualization makes for illuminating reading. Belletto’s approach has numerous advantages, not the least of which is that it allows him to sidestep problems that often plague other treatments of the Beats. Because of the confessional nature of their work and their...