Nedward and Agnes Flanders
Ned's freaky beatnik parents in The Simpsons [1]
Did anyone ever actually describe themselves as a beatnik?
Or was the term purely a media invention [2]: a way of reducing members of the Beat Generation to a cool but cartoonish stereotype? Black turtleneck sweater ☑ Black beret ☑ Dark glasses ☑ Sandals ☑ Striped top ☑ Jazz album, bongo drums, or a book of poetry under the arm ☑
Amusingly, Allen Ginsberg wrote to The New York Times in 1959, deploring the use of the word beatnik [3]. And his pal Jack Kerouac wasn't pleased either to see their philosophy become just another fad. Both authors feared that a generation of illuminated hipsters, would be replaced by brainwashed fashionistas interested only in looking the part.
Indeed, so exasperated was Kerouac by the popularity of the term that he declared to a reporter in 1969 (shortly before his death in October of that year): I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic [4].
Personally, however, I'm more interested in the way the stereotype of the beatnik became part of popular culture, changing the latter and being changed by it, rather than Kerouac's spiritual convictions, or his quest for religious salvation.
And if, eventually, the term beatnik was used by all kinds of people in all kinds of ways and some of those people were frauds and some of those ways were false, well, it doesn't really matter and one gets tired of puritans demanding authenticity.
I mean, is there anything squarer than wanting to keep things real? [5]
Notes
[1] See The Simpsons episode entitled 'Hurricane Neddy' [S8/E8] (1996), written by Steve Young and directed by Bob Anderson, in which it was revealed that religiously uptight Ned Flanders is the son of anti-disciplinarian, freaky beatnik parents (Nedward and Agnes). Click here for a short (but hilarious) clip on YouTube.
[2] The term beatnik is usually credited to Herb Caen, writing in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle, in April 1958.
[3] See The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, ed. Bill Morgan, (Da Capo Press, 2008), p. 221. Commenting upon and quoting from this letter, James Campbell writes:
"The Beats dislikes the appropriation of 'beat', and its melding into 'beatnik'. 'The foul word is used several times', wrote Ginsberg in a letter to the New York Times Book Review [...] in response to an uncomplimentary article about Kerouac:
'But the 'beatnik' of mad critics is a piece of their own ignoble poetry. And if 'beatniks', and not illuminated Beat poets, overrun the country they will have been created not by Kerouac but by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash Man ...'"
In other words, Beat was a state of being or an identity; beatnik was just posing and dressing up. See 'The Birth of the Beatnik', in This is the Beat Generation, by James Campbell, (University of California Press, 1999), chapter 10, pp. 245-271. Lines quoted are from pp. 245-46.
Amusingly, I remember a similar discussion around the term punk in the 1970s, with Johnny Rotten rejecting the term as just another lazy label and form of media shorthand: click here to see what he says in a 1976 TV interview (go to 3.04). Punk was an attitude and not a fixed way of looking and thinking and real punks - who, like Rotten, often refused the term - were scornful and contemptuous of so-called plastic (or part-time) punks hanging around Kings Road trying to look trendy and pogoing in their bedrooms in front of the mirror (but only when their mothers had gone out).
For a fascinating discussion of the etymology and history of the word punk, see the essay by J. P. Robinson on medium.com: click here.
[4] This interview with Kerouac by Jack McClintock from 1969 was republished in the Tampa Bay Times (20 March 2013) and can be read online by clicking here.
[5] Amazingly, there are still some cats who get het up about the manner in which Beat became absorbed into the culture industry and commodified as a lifestyle or look. Denise Enck, for example, founder and editor of the arts and literature site Empty Mirror, published an article in July 2013 entitled 'The Beat Generation vs. "Beatniks"', in which she accuses the latter of being shallow and writes:
"The Beats were looking for real meaning, authenticity and a deeply
personal self-expression in their lives and work, not conformity in a
black turtleneck and a cheesy beret. [...]
The truth of it is that certain details associated with the Beat
Generation writers were picked up, twisted, and amplified, almost beyond
recognition and wildly embellished by the media and the marketing
departments, into the 'beatnik' stereotype".
To read the article in full, click here. Readers interested in this topic might also like to see a piece by Matthew Wills on JSTOR Daily entitled 'How the Beat Generation Became "Beatniks"' (5 May 2019): click here. This is a reading of the longer essay by Stephen Petrus, 'Rumblings of Discontent: American Popular Culture and its Response to the Beat Generation, 1957-1960', in Studies in Popular Culture,
Vol. 20, No. 1 (October 1997), pp. 1-17, which, conveniently, can also be found on JSTOR: click here.
Musical bonus: 'Beat-Nik' by Jimmy Van Eaton (Rita Records, 1960): click here Daddy-O!
