Page Twelve THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE Sunday, -March 30, 1958 eTAM 1 4 IE ROUAC A Fourth Class American Traveler And The Beat Generation THE SUBTERRANEANS. By Jack Kerouac. Grove Press. New York. 111 pp. Paperback, $1.45. By KEITH DEVRIES JVHAT IS the present younger generation? Crys of "conform- ists" and "non-committed" are commonly heard. Time magazine attracted much attention last fall with an article about the "No- Nonsense Kids" and recently Life ran a widely-read report on "The Unsilent Generation,' a condensa- tion from a book of the same title. What has become increasingly prominent, however, is an analy- sis which dubs us the "Beat Gen- eration." Briefly, the "beat" thesis is that the significant young man of to- day is a "hipster": i.e., he goes wild over jazz, motorcycles, hitch- hiking, sex, marijuana and little else. In most accounts he is pic- tured as "looking for something," often finding it in Zen Buddhism. Presumably it is this trait com- bined with his always present ex- pletive "gass" and "man" which keeps him from being classified in the old "Lost Generation." The scoffers usually sneer that these characteristics apply to on- ly about ten people in the coun- try, most of whom belong to the Keith DeVries, a senior in English Honors, was formerly a Daily staff writer. He makes his first, appearance in the Magazine with his review of "The Subterraneans." small group of San Francisco mu- sicians and writers who have pro- claimed themselves the official spokesmen for the "hipsters." WHATEVER the actual size and significance of the "beat" trend may be, it has received a re- markable amount of publicity. The slick magazines, Esquire, Playboy, Life, even Mademoisle, have de- voted considerable and excited space to its western prophets. In San Francisco the city govern- ment helped the "push" by at- tempting to ban as obscene the most famous "beat" poem, Howl, by one of the famous "poets". Al- len Ginsberg. The subsequent hearing, at which the ban was removed, was enlivened by the prosecuting at- torney, who apparently represents the rage of the bourgeoisie at the group. 'Can you tell me." he de- manded of the Bohemians and critics he brought to the stand, "what a line means like 'angel- headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the ma- chinery of the night'?" That does not seem so very difficult, but no one would enlighten him. The best answer he got was "you can't ex- press in prose what you can say in poetry." In spite of the lawyer and his fellow Philistines across the coun- try, the Movement has flourished. LAST FALL, another of the spokesmen, Jack Kerouac, a 35 year old citizen of the high- ways, had his novel On The RoadI FOOTWEAR 108 East Washington - Open Monday Nights Till 8:30 \ s Seen in GLAMQUA Lighft and / Bright Black Patent Turquoise Kid Scarlet Red Kid Pink Kid Yellow Kid Black Patent d ian (JS New Americana... a slim minimum of parfait pastel straps or patriotic combinations of red, white an4 blue, $mart fashion teams a pale solid-color shoe with a prino and vice versa, a pretty patterned shoe with solid colors. Fiancies offer you both in fohion abundatw, for as little as $12.95 SIZES41/-10 ... B-AA-AAA-AAAA Still worse there is really no meaning given to Percepied's troubles, not even the meaning of no meaning. Kerouac never both- ers to examine the standard Amer- ican ideals and values which have presumably brought his charac- ters into Bohemia. An occasion- al mention of racial prejudice and one comment on "midtown silli- ness" are his only attempts in that direction. Neither does he make the "beat" environment of North Beach a significant background. The people there, who get drunk con- stantly, play Gerry Mulligan con- stantly, and dance the Mambo naked are sillier than they are dreadfully or excitingly nihilistic. HE ONLY other conceivable : A.a excuse for the final cries of KEROUAC "I don't want to live in this beast- ..non-committed? ly world" would be an explora- tion into the individual deptavi- published. His second book and ties and failings of the central his first genuinely "beat" one, it characters. While Kerouac at- described a series of mindless tempts a little of this, he makes frantic wanderings across Ameri' Percepied's supposedly terrible be- ca trayal of Mardou only absurd. tHe ca. vpushes her into a taxi and sends The volume sold surprisingly her home alone so that he can well and fast, particularly after a get to a bar before it closes.) Mar- great number of magazine articles'gdo 'sbsubefent ylossMar- many inspired by the book, ap- dous subsequent betrayal is mere- peared towards the end of the ly justified and again a little stu- year. So extraordinary indeed was pid. its success that Grove Press de- As disappointing as anything cided to publish another of Ker- else is the writing. In hisintro- ouacs nvel, Te Sbter ensduction to Howl Allen Ginsberg uac's novels, The Subtes-rases', hailed Kerouac as the "new which had previously been rejected Buddha of American prose, who by the publishers. Soon Kerouac's spit forth intelligence into eleven frenzied fans received word of the books ... creating a spontaneous new book and bought out nearly bo prosody and original classic the entis'e first edition before it top pooyadoiia lsi reahed nter ed er literature." He doesn't live up to reached the retail stores, his billing. In the midst of all this excite- ment, it is a sad duty to report IT'S ONLY fair to say that in that The Subterraneans isn't a some passages, particularly very good book. those describing the affection be- Its plot is essentially a love tween Mardou and Leo, Kerouac story of a wandering "beat" nov- achieves a real beauty. Between elist in his thirties, Leo Percepied these high points, however, are and a Negro girl, Mardou Fox. All long, masses of uninspired, tedious that really happens is they sleep prose. together frequently, realize on ev- Early this year Kerouac turned ery other page the magnitude of up in New York to read Ginsberg's their love, question their rela- poetry to the accompaniment of tionship on the pages in between, jazz. The clothes he wore then, and finally drift apart. The effect brown slacks, brown shoes and a is to make the 111 page book seem shirt that glowed in the dark, were very long indeed, so decidedly non-cool as to raise fears among his disillusioned fans EVEN drearier than the plot are that he might have killed off the the moaning complaints Ker- whole movement. ouac makes about the awful suf- What he didn't do by his clothes ferings his hero goes through in he may well do through his book. an awful world. All in all, it just doesn't roll. ON THE ROAD. By Jack Kerouac. Viking. New York. 310 pp., $3.95. By DONALD A. YATES JACK KEROUAC. wanderer and lover of America, comes as close as anyone writing today to being the Thomas Wolfe of his generation. And we should have a Wolfe in every generation- someone to sing the praises and the glory of the country in terms of the poetry that Jamestown, Valley Forge, Gettysburg, and Chicago inspire, not in terms of machines and might and motion. Author Kerouac, as a fourth- class traveler of the U.S. has been close to what this country is un- derneath the generalizations and statistics. He can - and does -- speak to us of the power and beauty that lies in the heart of America, in the souls of Americans who have to"be reminded of what they really are - so far have material concerns removed them from their origins. Kerouac writes with great free- dom, and with surprising effec- tiveness. It would seem it is diffi- cult for him to write badly, even when he is obviously not writing consciously dramatic or descriptive pages. The reader wants to be- lieve in him as the seer and feeler of all the sights that he, as the author, has experienced and that he unselfishly reveals to us. Time and time again, our sym- pathies are won over by a line, an observation, written always on the same theme-America as a place where some people still live con- sciously and believe in the past. Here is an example of the love for what is American, of the au- thor's concern for what is at the soul center of the country: "I didn't know what to say; he was right; but all I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go and find out what everybody was doing all over the country." KEROUAC IDENTIFIES himself with the "Beat" Generation, the young idealless people who want to "dig" whatever's exciting and live, live, live. This novel tells what it's all about. There's no doubt that the "beat" group man- ages to get closer to the soil than the "Lost Generation" ever did. I VE TER AN'S CABS are now authorized by the Michigan Public Service Commission to transport passengers to both airports Number of Passengers per Trip A irports 1 2 3 4 ONE-WAY TRIP Willow Run $450 $300 $200 $150 ONE-WAY TRIP Wayne Major $100 $ $o $335 $2s50 "YOUR BEST BET-CALL A VET" 24-HOUR SERVICE for further information, phone NO 2-4477 NO 3-4545 NO 3-5800