Howl, by Allen Ginsberg

Howl was probably the most widely read and significant piece of poetry to come out of the Beat movement.

Certain lines in the poem were 'obscene' and so the poem was targeted for censorship. There was a huge scandal in which Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the owner of the City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Book, was brought to trial for obscenity. If a jury found the poem to be obscene, then Ferlinghetti could face jail time, and the poem would be taken off the shelf.

Much in the same fashion that police brutality against Occupy Wall St. protesters caused the movement to spread like wildfire, as it got it national attention, many people, including Ginsberg himself, question whether the poem would have become so successful and Ginsberg so famous if the poem hadn't been targeted for censorship.


There are parts of the peome which directly intersect with things that happen in On The Road. Both pieces of literature are semi-autobiographical, and both authors knew eachother, so it's interesting to look for moments of overlap.
Here are a few of the verses that are examples of such overlap:

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the               morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and nake in the lake, 
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, Neal Cassady, secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too

And,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes

Part 2 Blog Post on Madness

Probably the most famous quote from On The Road is, "the only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" (p. 6-7)

Throughout the book, this motif of madness comes up again and again, especially in relation to various people that Sal meets along the road, his friends, and the character of Dean Moriarty in particular. 

I'm going to list quotes from Part Two of the book that have this motif. 

"he suddenly had an explosive yen to see his sweet first wife Marylou again...He ran and found Marylou in a hotel. They had ten hours of wild lovemaking...Marylou was the only girl Dean really loved. He was sick with regret when he saw her face again, and, as of yore, he pleaded and begged at her knees for the joy of her being. She understood Dean; she stroked his hair; she knew he was mad." (p. 111-112)

"The madness of Dean had bloomed into a weird flower." (p. 112) 

"Dean was having his kicks; he put on a jazz record, grabbed Marylou, held her tight, and bounced against her with the beat of the music...The New Year's weekend began, and lasted three days and three nights. Great gangs got in the Hudson and swerved in the snowy New York streets from party to party. I brought Lucille and her sister to the biggest party. When Lucille saw me with Dean and Marylou her face darkened--she sensed the madness they put in me." (p. 125) 

"God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive--the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever." (p. 126)

After Dean tries to get Marylou and Sal to have sex while he watches so that he could know what she'd be like with another man... "Only a guy who's spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes; beseeching at the portals of the soft source, mad with a completely physical realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindly seeking to return the way he came." (p. 132)

"I expected [Dean] to take off on wings. I heard his mad laughter all over the boat--'Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!'" (p. 141)

"There the mystic wraith of fog over the brown waters that night, together with dark driftwoods; and across the way New Orleans glowed orange-bright, with a few dark ships at her hem, ghostly fogbound Cereno ships with Spanish balconies and ornamental poops, till you got up close and saw they were just old freighters from Sweden and Panama. The ferry fires glowed in the night; the same Negroes plied the shovel and sang. Old Biog Slim Hazard had once worked on the Algiers ferry as a deckhand; this made me think of Mississippi Gene too; and as the river poured down from mid-America by starlight I knew, I knew like mad that everything I had ever known and would ever know was One." (p. 147)

Marylou: "'I'm sad about everything. Oh damn, I wish Dean wasn't so crazy now.'" (p. 163)

"Marylou was watching Dean as she had watched him clear across the county and back, out of the corner of her eye--with a sullen, sad air, as though she wanted to cut off his head and hide it in her closet, an envious and rueful love of him so amazingly himself, all raging and sniffy and crazy-wayed, a smile of tender dotage but also sinister envy that frightened me about her, a love she knew would never bear fruit because when she looked at his hangjawed bony face with its male self-containment and absentmindedness she knew he was too mad." (p. 163) 

Dean: "'Sinah sold encyclopedias in Oakland. Nobody could turn him down. He made long speeches, he jumped up and down, he laughed, he cried. One time we broke into an Okie house where everybody was getting ready to go to a funeral. Sinah got down on his knees and prayed for the deliverance of the deceased soul. All the Okies started crying. He sold a complete set of encyclopedias. He was the maddest guy in the world.'"

"Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is...Now Dean Dean approached him, he approached his God; he thought Slim was God; he shuffled and bowed in front of him and asked him to join us...he'll join anybody but he won't guarantee to be there with you in spirit...I sat there with these two madmen. Nothing happened. To Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big orooni." (p. 177) 

*Note, I don't follow the standard norms for quoting (punctuation marks after the quotation marks) because the quotes are appearing just by themselves, and not around other sentences, like they would be in an essay. 

On the Road Characters

On the road is based off of Jack Kerouac's road trip, and all of the main characters in On The Road are based off of real life people, many of them others Beats of the Beat Generation.
This is a key for the characters in the book and who they are in real life:

Sal Paradise (narrator) - Jack Kerouac (author)
Jack Kerouac is one of the most famous writers of the 20th century, and certainly the most famous writer of the Beat generation. His most famous novel, On The Road, is called "the novel that defined a generation."
The dedication of Allen Ginsberg's book of poetry, Howl and Other Poems reads: "To-- Jack Kerouac, new Budha of American prose, who spit forth intelligence into eleven books written in half the number of years (1951-1956)--On The Road, Visions of Neal, Dr. Sax, Springtime Mary, The Subterraneans, San Francisco Blues, Some of the Dharma, Book of Dreams, Wake Up, Mexico City Blues, and Visions of Gerad--creating a spontaneous bop prosody and original classic literature. Several phrases and the title of Howl are taken from him."
Sal's Aunt - Gabrielle Kerouac

Rollo Greb - Alan Ansen


Old Bull Lee - William S. Burroughs
 William S. Burroughs was one of the authors of the Beat movement. In the dedication of the book of poems by Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems, it reads, "To--...William Seward Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, an endless novel which will drive everybody mad."
Jane - Joan Vollmer

Damion - Lucien Carr

Dean Moriarty - Neal Cassady
Neal Cassady was one of the authors of the Beat generation and good friends with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others. Much of Kerouac's writing is about or includes Neal Cassady. He is also featured heavily in Allen Ginsberg's famous poem, Howl. 
In the dedication of Allen Ginsberg's book of poetry, Howl and Other Poems, it reads, "To--...Neal Cassady, author of The First Third, an autobiography (1949) which enlightened Buddha. 

Camille - Carolyn Cassady

Chad King - Hal Chase

Remi Boncoeur - Henri Cru

Terry - Bea Franco

Carlo Marx - Allen Ginsberg 
Allen Ginsberg is considered the best, most famous poet of the beats. His most famous poem, Howl is to poetry what On The Road was to prose, in relation to the beat movement. 
He was gay, and had a very close personal relationship with Neal Cassady. This can be seen in the book in the very intense conversations that Carlo and Dean have. 

Inez - Diana Hansen

Hal Hingham - Alan Harrington

Laura - Joan Haverty

Marylou - Luanne Henderson 
Marylou is Dean's lover. He is often hurt by her though, as is all of Dean's lovers. At one point, Marylou tells Sal that she wants to become his lover in San Francisco, but when they get there, Sal realizes that she is truly just in love with Dean, and is trying to connect to him through Sal.

Ed Dunkel - Al Hinkle

Galatea Dunkel - Helen Hinkle

Tom Snark - Jim Holmes

Tom Saybrook - John Clellon Holmes

Elmer Hassel - Herbert Huncke 











*Note: This is the blog post for Part 1

Blog 1 Christian

 Blog Post 1
http://littourati.squarespace.com/storage/kerouac-files/kerouac_map.htm
This is a detailed map of Kerouac's journey across America. The whole first section of this book is devoted to an almost mythical idea of the west that Jacks representation in the book, names Sal, learns to find. Sadly as we learn at the end of this passage there is no holy west. Instead he finds himself in LA which is hardly the sort of place hat a non conformist like Sal could find comfortable. It seems as though his quest is hopeless and if he keeps heading west eventually he will just end up back home.