And in the grand scheme of things, it might make sense not to think of one movement influencing another but to simply look at writers going back to Walt Whitman and forward to Allen Ginsberg as being part of the unified bohemian opposition that arose out of necessity to the “Nightmare of Moloch” that has existed from the beginning of the republic with its slavery, genocide against the American Indian, and colonial wars. Louis Proyect
------------------- This is an important point, because none of these guys make sense without the other half of the scene---the oppressive, absurd, and hypocritical US of A wallowing in a mire of celebration for an utterly banal life. I suspose I disagree a little that the Moloch was all the past cruel realities of American history. That seems to romanticize what was so horrible about ordinary life. What was horrible was ordinary life---that was the Moloch. Of course we could debate what exactly were the features of a featureless evil, and that would be much more in keeping with that generation. I confess I wasn't much impressed with Ginsberg's poetry or his Be-in days, or the morphing into the drug culture as a political statement. The nascent political reaction to the same American Moloch in civil rights and Vietnam was a much better place to live. ... We need our own look back at them and obviously none of these films does the trick. CG _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
