The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature (Routledge Literature Handbooks)

Beat literature? Have not the great canonical names long grown familiar? Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs. Likewise the frontline texts, still controversial in some quarters, assume their place in modern American literary history. On the Road serves as Homeric journey epic. "Howl" amounts to Beat anthem, confessional outcry against materialism and war. Naked Lunch , with its dark satiric laughter, envisions a dystopian world of power and word virus. But if these are all essentially America-centered, Beat has also had quite other literary exhalations and which invite far more than mere reception study. These are voices from across the Americas of Canada and Mexico, the Anglophone world of England, Scotland or Australia, the Europe of France or Italy and from the Mediterranean of Greece and the Maghreb, and from Scandinavia and Russia, together with the Asia of Japan and China. This anthology of essays maps relevant other kinds of Beat voice, names, texts. The scope is hemispheric, Atlantic and Pacific, West and East. It gives recognition to the Beat inscribed in languages other than English and reflective of different cultural histories. Likewise the majority of contributors come from origins or affiliations beyond the US, whether in a different English or languages spanning Spanish, Danish, Turkish, Greek, or Chinese. The aim is to recognize an enlarged Beat literary map, its creative internationalism. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Information 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of contents 6 Notes on Contributors 9 Acknowledgments 15 Introduction 18 Beat Canon 18 Beat Counter-Canon 19 US Beat Abroad 20 International Beat 21 Beat Across Borders 22 Beat Anglosphere 23 Beat Europe 25 Beat North in Europe 28 Beat Mediterranean 30 Beat Asia 31 Perspectives 32 Notes 32 Part I Canada and Mexico 34 1 Canada Beats: A Complex Legacy 36 Notes 45 Works Cited 45 2 The Beat Presence in Mexican Literature 47 The Mexican Cultural Background in the 1950s: The Pursuit of Modernization 47 Modern Mexican Literature 49 Mexican Beat Writers 50 Conclusion 56 Acknowledgments 57 Notes 57 Works Cited 59 Part II The English-Speaking World 60 3 Beat Britain: Poetic Vision and Division in Albion’s “Underground” 62 Introduction: Opening the Beat Floodgates? 62 Beat Impressions and Transatlantic Tensions 63 “The tunnel ... in which all our voices echo” 65 The Way-Stations of Beat Britain 68 Performance, Humor, and Gender 69 Conclusion: Albion and Beyond 71 Notes 72 Works Cited 73 4 Cosmopolitan Scum: A Genealogy of Beat in Subaltern Scottish Literature 75 Works Cited 86 5 Beat Australia: Hydra to Balmain 88 Origins—Hydra and the Hinterland 88 The Bohemian Revolt in Australia 91 Dissidence and Dinginess in Balmain 92 The Age of Ginsberg and Whitlam 95 The Australian Sixties Legacy 98 Notes 100 Works Cited 101 Part III Western Europe 104 6 Êtes-vous Beat? Contemporary French Beat Writing 106 The Missed Connections of the Late 1950s and Lebel’s Influence 107 The Electric Gang 110 Sylvain Courtoux and Joël Hubaut 114 The Papy Beat Generation: Alain Jégou and Lucien Suel 115 Notes 118 Works Cited 118 Further Reading 119 7 Children of Anarchy: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Italian Beats 120 A Historical Backdrop 121 Milan and Turin 121 Fernanda Pivano 122 Gianni Milano 124 Rome 126 Aldo Piromalli 129 Women 131 Notes 132 Works Cited 132 Further Reading 133 8 Beat Influences in Dutch and Flemish Literature 134 Prose 135 Poetry 138 Flanders 141 Prose 141 Poetry 143 Notes 144 Works Cited 145 9 Transmuting Beat Energies in the Belgian Francophone Matrix: MaelstrÖm ReEvolution or the Brussels Reincarnation of ... 146 Francophone Belgium: An Exciting if Challenging Hybridity 146 Beat Energies Ready for Transmutation 147 Beat “Energetic Avatars”: A Brief History 148 The Local Is the Planetary: Towards a Beat Cosmopolitanism 150 Which Streams of Beat Experimentalism towards a “Second Breath”? 153 Coda: maelstrÖm as Beat Tribe 158 Notes 158 Works Cited 159 10 German Beats: Friendship and Collaboration 161 Beginnings 161 Carl Weissner 163 Jügen Ploog, Udo Breger, Wolf Wondratschek 165 Rolf Dieter Brinkmann 166 Jörg Fauser 168 Thomas Meinecke 170 Conclusion 171 Notes 172 Works Cited 173 11 Beat Authorship and Beat Influences in Austrian Literature 174 The Beat Bookkeeper: Ernst Jandl (and the Vienna Group) 174 Beat Theater: Wolfgang Bauer 178 The Beat Nobel Prize: Elfriede Jelinek 180 The Beat Teachers: Christian Ide Hintze, Christian Loidl, Fritz Ostermayer, and the Vienna Poetry School (and ruth weiss) 183 Works Cited 185 12 Beat Affinities in Spanish Poetry 188 Claraboya and the First Contacts 188 First Beats 189 Transitional Poets 191 Contemporary Beat 196 Conclusion 199 Notes 200 Works Cited 201 13 Activists and Stuntmen: Envisioning Polish Beat 203 The Rise of the New Wave 203 Stunting Stanzas 208 Notes 215 Works Cited 215 Part IV Northern Europe 218 14 Russian Beat: Wilderness of Mirrors 220 Notes 234 Works Cited 236 15 Denmark’s To Beat or Not to Beat: Turèll, Ulrich, Laugesen 238 Uncle Danny 239 Writing Silence, Writing Nothingness 240 Just Another Star in the American Flag 242 We Need Character! 243 Something Is Rotten in the State of Freeland 244 Carrying the Horn and Seeing the Light 245 Love, More, Much More 246 Jazz and Poetry 247 Laugesen Enters the Landscape 249 The Danish Triumvirate of Beat 251 Notes 252 Works Cited 252 16 Norwegian Beat Culture: Reading Beat and Being Beat in Oslo in the 1950s 254 Introduction 254 Norway in the Post-War Years 254 Beat and Avant-Garde Movements in Academic Literature 255 Introducing the Beats: Translation and Inspiration 256 A Norwegian Road Novel and a Court Case Against Literature 258 Beat Poetry and the Oslo Underground 259 Countercultural Venues: Club 7, Tronsmo Bookstore and Skippergata 261 Beat Culture in Art 262 Conclusion 264 Notes 264 Works Cited 265 17 Swedish Beat: Sture Darlström, Ulf Lundrell and the Influence of the Beat Generation in Modern Swedish Literature 267 Sture Dahlström 268 Dahlström in Sweden and the World 270 The Philosophy of Sture Dahlström 272 Inspiration from the Beat Generation 273 Ulf Lundell 275 Lundell’s Music 276 Lundell during the Eighties and Beyond 277 Beat Poetry in Sweden 277 Conclusion 278 Work Cited 279 18 Beat Poetry in Finland in the 1960s 280 “What Have We Become?” Anselm Hollo’s “Superman as Child” 282 Rewriting “Howl”: Pekka Kejonen’s “Other Howl” and Kalevi Lappalainen’s “They I-II” 285 Markku Into’s “Divine Comedy I” 287 Beat and Finnish Literature from the Global 60s to the Present 289 Works Cited 290 Further Reading 291 Part V The Mediterranean 292 19 The Beat Generation and Contemporary Greek Poetry 294 Notes 301 Works Cited 301 20 Beat Turkey: A Belated Influence 303 The Underground Re-Emerges 303 A Shared Challenge to the Mainstream 304 A Turkish Beat—küçük iskender 308 Continuing the Countercultural Struggle 311 Conclusion 313 Works Cited 314 21 Moroccan Beat Writers: Mrabet, Choukri, Layachi 315 Notes 325 Works Cited 326 Part VI The East 328 22 Beat Japan: Shiraishi’s Jazz Scroll and Sakaki’s Foot Trail 330 Beat Entrance 330 Kazuko Shiraishi 332 Nanao Sakaki 336 Perspectives 341 Notes 341 Works Cited 341 23 The Beats on China and Chinese “Beats”: Cross Cultural Influences, Impact and Legacy 343 Beat Literature in China 344 The Beats on China 345 Chinese “Beats” 346 Concluding Remarks 352 Works Cited 353 Index 356