So we're looking at another passage in the first section of Allen Ginsberg's poem, Howl, and I'll just read the line. Who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse and the tanked up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion and the nitro glycerin shrieks of the fairies of advertising and the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors. And then I'll add this line, the rest of it because I love it but it's not quite relevant to the topic. Or were run down by the drunken taxi cabs of absolute reality. All right, what's the scene here? Burned alive in their flannel suits, with a flannel suit reference. Anybody know it? Uh-oh. >> The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. >> The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, which is not a very good novel, but it became a phrase. A vintage reference to what, fans of Mad Men? >> An ad exec? The ad exec, well or any nine to fiver in New York, Manhattan. Flannel suit, the man in the gray flannel suit was kind of a boring nine to fiver who commuted in. Yeah so what's happening here? Why burned alive? What's Ginsburg saying about that life? And what's the leaden verse and the tanked up clatter? He's rejecting the nine to five, and he's rejecting, the leaden verse could be that little pithy advertisement statement that they make about buying toothpaste or shaving cream. >> Could be. Anybody want to give an example of leaden verse that comes out of Mad Men. I don't mean the show, but Madison Avenue. Sort of really clumsy, tacky copyrighting. >> Not even clumsy, just very slick. I mean I think of, and this is a nonprofit setting here, so I don't mind saying this. But you know, when I was growing up in the sixties, Coke was called the real thing, and somebody would come on and say, Coke, it's the real thing. That's the kind of leaden verse that seems to be annoying him here. But what else do we have to say about it? What does it have to do with the iron regiments of fashion and the mustard gas of sinister, intelligent editors? What kind of New York life is he rejecting here, Ann Maurice? >> I think here we're finding the cause of death of the best minds of the generation that we referred to in the first phrase. >> This is what is smothering out all the individuality and intelligence and sense of freedom. >> It's autobiographical for Allen Ginsberg, who spent a little time trying to see if he could live a life in which he was sort of a low level advertising, I guess a copywriter or some kind of low level guy and a Mad Man in training. I like the idea of burned alive. It's almost as if now burned alive, there's something about flannel suits that made me think they're very flammable. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> Burned alive and then arose phoenix-like. As beat, as beatific. >> You almost have to burn your flannel suit to really get out of that. >> To get out of it, and then to reemerge, like a phoenix, burned and now released on the West Coast. Right. >> Or anywhere else in America. >> In a mental hospital, which is what's being written about in this home, or in San Francisco, one of those two. And it's true that Ginsburg went to his therapist at a certain point, and said, doctor, I just have to confess this. I don't want to have a job. I don't want to work a nine to five job. And it makes me feel ashamed because I'm an American. And I think I might want to, I think I might want to love men. And fortunately it was in San Francisco, and the therapist said, so why not? And this leads to scribbling all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations. It doesn't lead to it because the line comes earlier. Which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish. And so we have this kind of weird reversal, another reversal in how on Madison Avenue they stay up all night as in Mad Men. And they drink and they write and they leave in the middle of the night. And what they've written seems like it's awful. And they get in there in the morning all clean. And they realize it's brilliant, that Cadillac is going to want to sign up with our agency because we wrote this. For the beats it's the other way around. They spend all night writing, and writing, and writing, and it makes such great sense, and, in the morning, it's stanzas of gibberish, and they decide that's what we're going to publish, that's good. There's no place for them here in the advertising age, an age in which poetry had become Madison Avenue slogans. There is no place for them here except to be closeted and unhappy. Okay, so let's look at another section, really just a line. First of all before we do this, there is a string of who clauses. Right? So, it's the best minds of my generation and who, who, who, who. How does that work logically, structurally, grammatically all these who clauses with long lines, anybody? >> It's a little Whitmanian. >> It's not just a little Whitmanian. >> It's a lot Whitmanian. >> There's repetition and long lines, okay. >> And it's kind of like it's building, using all the whos connects all these statements and it builds and builds and builds and builds. >> So it's a catalog it's paratactic in that they're all equal, roughly. So, it's very, it's participating in the Whitmanian- >> Kind of all encompassing. >> Capaciousness. Yeah. And, but, what does it do, logically? >> Well, just going off on what Anna was saying. It kind of serves as a consistent anchor to bring you back from where you started. >> So that every time you see who, it takes you back to the best minds of my generation. >> Generation. But it's wide enough and ample enough and Whitmanian enough to make sure it covers every sort of corner of this alienation, of this kind of counter culture. And this is one of them who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism. Max, can you make sense of that? >> Well, there doesn't seem to be anything more Dadaist, than to throw potato salad at a lecturer on Dadaism. Or anything less Dadaist than having a lecture on Dadaism. >> Yeah, a lecture on Dadaism. I know that sounds obvious, but why don't we say. Dave, what is paradoxical or impossible? >> It's like preparing for spontaneous prose. It just doesn't make sense. >> [LAUGH] >> It doesn't as a matter of fact. So here this generation, Ginsburg and his pals, they go to CCNY. They didn't go to CCNY. He and Kerouac were at Columbia. CCNY is what? Anybody know? >> Community College of New York >> The City College of New York. Famous, inexpensive local urban college that a lot of intellectuals came through. It was a very lively place. But by the time you get to the 50s, it's possible to have a lecture on Dada. And so, he and his pals went and what did they do? >> They threw potato salad. >> They threw potato salad, indicating? >> That you cannot possibly have a lecture on Dadaism. >> And also indicating? >> This is what Dadaism is. >> You want Dada? I'll give you Dada. I've taught this line many times and years ago I was teaching a class to maybe 100 people in a big lecture hall. I wasn't lecturing, but I was still looked like a lecturer, and I used to wear a jacket and tie. I wasn't wearing black t-shirts. And, a student came with potato salad and threw the potato salad at me. >> [LAUGH] >> Was that your proudest moment? >> It was my proudest moment as a teacher, everything else has been downhill. Don't you dare over lunch buy potato salad. Alright, one last passage of this beloved poem, Howell, a poem that arguably really sort of solidified reader sense of what the Beat generation, what the Beat writers were doing. It's one of the last ones. Let's look at it for a few minutes. To recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected, yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head. Lets start there lets take a little extra time and figure out what this means. This is really important. Molly your first thought? >> It's a very vulnerable act of creating poetry directly from what's in your head. >> What are the signs of vulnerability that you see? >> Naked >> Naked. >> Shaking with shame. >> Shaking with shame. This is the real a big moment. Okay thanks that's a good start. Anna, anything you want to add to this? I think where we recreate the syntax and measure poor human prose and conform to the rhythm of thought. I think if you're thinking about the beats and sort of what this poem sort of is, recreating syntax like conforming to the rhythm of thought, that seems almost paradoxical. It seems counter to what we're actually doing. But it's really not, because conform to the rhythm of thought, it's doing exactly what Emily says in brain with its groove. You're supposed to be conforming to what your brain is just going to do. >> Do we have a synonym for conform in this context? >> Kind of just allow your brain to be in its groove and then be out of its groove, and make a new groove. >> Okay, what's a synonym for conform? Anybody? >> Constrain. >> Constrain, constrain oneself, I guess. Okay, so this is rejecting yet confessing. What's this notion of, what is the theory of writing that's presented in this passage? Ann Maurice? What idea of writing do we have here? >> I think it's lack of self censorship. A little bit before when he says speechless, I don't think he means silent there. He means embracing a comprehensibility, rejecting normal discourse. >> Recreating the syntax of human prose. This is a form of make it new. This is a resurgence. It doesn't have a lot to do with modernism directly. It's more harking back to mainism and getting to and make it a new thing through there. But it shares the sensibility of modernist manifestos in wanting to clear the space and start over. So, recreating the syntax and measure of poor human presence stand before you, who would you be? >> You the readers. >> You, yea, The readers. Speechless. I'm here, this is me, I'm on this page. Rejecting yet confessing. Dave, you want to deal with that paradox? Rejected yet confessing? >> Well I think it's really autobiographical for how outside of the mainstream Ginsberg felt. This is where it starts to get personal for Ginsberg. He's just talking about his shame, his personal feelings of rejection. Mm-hmm, okay so I want one more, somebody comment one more time on the implicit theory of the way writing happens. >> Well, if it's poor human prose, I mean, that could be kind of a move to recreate, in poetry, how people speak. >> Okay, that's possible. >> Instead of, if we think about Wilbur's Death of a Toad, he's not going up to someone and giving this fantastic metered elegy of the toad. He's saying, yo, today when I was mowing my lawn, I crunched up a toad. >> Okay, so you're talking about the kind of vocabulary and language, but I want to focus on the last part of it. Rejected yet confessing, out, out the soul, rhythm, thought, naked, endless. >> Well I think that kind of promotes the idea of not censoring yourself while you're in the process of writing. >> So writing happens how? Kerouac is going to have a lot to say about this. Writing happens how? >> It's unconscious. >> Where does it come from? From the thought. >> The soul, from the gut, from the soul, from the unconscious. It comes up and out. This is a theory of the way language works, that's not going to be. The chapter nine poets are not going to abide by this kind of naive theory of language. This is an almost theory of, a fantasy of transparent language. That if you get hepped up enough and if you have tapped into the best part of your mind, the part that the academy thinks is crazy and you didn't get suppressed by social conformity. If you liberated the mind to go where it wants to go, you can write a language that doesn't get in the way. >> Freedom in writing derives from a feeling of being rejected yet confessing out the soul. Yet, this is not what critics have said Beat writing is. It is not a call for total freedom. It is not a call for anything goes. It is not a call for pure spontaneity. It's a call for the language to conform to the rhythm of thought in the writer's naked and endless head. It is carefully wrought and yet, it abides by the theory that if you just do enough rejecting of social convention you will discover something better.
