The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT The 'Beatniks' Of San Francisco By William E. Bohn SAN FRANCISCO MY FIRST PICTURE of the beatniks I got from Jack Kerouac. His books have been published by the million in hard...
...There is no race prejudice—apparently...
...There, at the door, sat a young man with a gleaming copy of THE NEW LEADER...
...I ate or drank in four or five of the San Francisco restaurants where the so-called beatniks make themselves at home...
...A few of the Negroes were big, husky fellows who looked as if they might be prize-fighters...
...He is a good, decent, respectable citizen, perhaps a flier or a student...
...If an angel had stepped down from heaven, he could not have been more astounded...
...As we entered San Francisco's well-known Bagel Shop, where we heard some deeply satisfying jazz, the four or five persons in our party were brought sharply to a stand...
...The fact that these modern eating-and-drinking places seemed less agreeable to me than the old ones may be due to the fact that I was young in the old ones and am old in the new...
...He has stood at the head of best-seller lists and has been boosted by columnists from one end of the country to the other...
...But very few of them," he insisted, "are willing to travel under the name 'beatnik.' You can go as far as vou like in San Francisco and every beatnik to whom you are introduced will tell you that it is all a mistake...
...A few changes have come about for technological reasons...
...nothing but juvenile delinquents from broken homes...
...after all...
...A general gloominess and hopelessness about life seem to be accepted as a proof of wisdom and superiority...
...There are always, of course, intellectual pretensions where such free-and-easy comrades assemble...
...The music has changed very little...
...It is some other fellow who is a beatnik...
...Beards—or attempts to produce beards—were common both then and now...
...One well-informed San Franciscan insisted that they are...
...Ill-fitting sweaters and what are now called levis have furnished the basic costume through the decades...
...And I solemnly promised to inform Dr...
...Niebuhr of this happy event the next time I happen to meet him...
...Chicago...
...We loved jazz as the music of the revolution—and these boys and girls still love it...
...I gathered, the boys and girls to whom we assign the name 'beatniks" are almost exactly like the free-livers and easy-goers of aforetime...
...Specifically, it was through reading the articles of Reinhold Niebuhr that he had been led to adopt a new philosophy...
...A number of them, on the contrary, were slender and quiet—even shy, as if they were on their good behavior...
...I noted, however, what seemed to be a conspicuous difference between these two types of colored people...
...Denver and San Francisco are fairly good imitations of the lively performers we used to see in the restaurants of Greenwich Village 50 years ago...
...When one of them had lecovered sufficiently to be capable of introducing me, it was the young man's turn to gasp and turn pale...
...But the Chinese young people who were taking their dinner or their drinks were conspicuously well-dressed and behaved with a distinct sense of superiority...
...If he can't give an accurate picture of this breed of cattle, who can...
...It turned out, of course, that our paper is his favorite journal...
...Externally...
...They seemed to be observing the rather crude manners of some of their white fellow diners with grins of amusement...
...But no character of his ever says anything about these authors which would lead the reader to conclude that he had any understanding of them...
...Negroes and Chinese seem to be welcome...
...But I must mention one reformed beatnik who presents a special case...
...My friends and relatives came near fainting with astonishment...
...Sartre and Proust...
...The real beatnik is always someone else...
...Relying on his evidence...
...This was the picture I put together from the books...
...I long ago decided that these youngsters in New York...
...Naturally, the young fellow and I had a long talk—and his further revelations were no less astonishing than the occasion of our introduction...
...But both the ancients and the moderns wore their hair long and their faces dirty...
...He opened the conversation by announcing that through the influence of our paper he had been saved from the beatniks and had adopted the Christian religion...
...We had no automobiles in my early days: now the heroes of beatnik novels go dashing across the continent at 110 miles an hour...
...Well, finally T reached the wonder city, San Francisco, the Golden Gate with its gleaming waters and shining streets...
...His books have been published by the million in hard covers and soft...
...Kerouac refers often to Nietzsche...
...After long sessions with the best experts, I found my strongest impression was still that we have always had the beatniks with us under different names...
...The sense of freedom, the noisiness, the general sloppiness took me back over the years...
...I can see nothing new or different in the way in which these young San Franciscans blow and tootle and beat the drums...
Vol. 42 • August 1959 • No. 30
