V-2nd: The Whole Sick Crew

[Ron Judy]

Yes, I think you make a good point about pop representations...As
described in a 1952 New York Times Magazine article titled "This Is
The Beat Generation":

"Any attempt to label an entire generation is unrewarding, and yet the
generation which went through the last war, or at least could get a
drink easily once it was over, seems to possess a uniform, general
quality which demands an adjective ... The origins of the word 'beat'
are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More
than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of
being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately,
of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness.
In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of
oneself. A man is beat whenever he goes for broke and wagers the sum
of his resources on a single number; and the young generation has done
that continually from early youth."

http://www.litkicks.com/Texts/ThisIsBeatGen.html

This description fits the W.S.C. pretty well, I think, and seems it
should have been written 10 years later. Just shows, I think, that by
the time Pynchon was writing V. that the "Beat generation" was already
something of cliche, or so many stereotypes. "Types' that he's looking
back on (ironically) as, for example, "Rachel owned, back in '54, an
MG," etc.



On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 8:47 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> The issue isn't what we on the list know or don't know of the Beats.  It's what Pynchon knew when he described The Whole Sick Crew.  Between growing up on Long Island and dividing his time between the Cornell campus and the Navy before heading to California, it's unlikely he was part of any NYC literary or music scene, aside from occasional college-kid weekends or Navy liberties, where he was an outsider looking in.  The W.S.C. seems derived from a pop-culture mediated idea about "beatniks" rather than a personal familiarity with either the Beats or even Village coffee-house culture.  Do the various members of the W.S.C. strike you as faithful descriptions of real people?  Any analogs you can name?  Not being argumentative here - as someone who doesn't know much about the period, I'm genuinely curious.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com>
>
>>
>>The remarks on this list about Beats drives me nuts since they are
>>made by folks who apparently know nothing of the period.
>>Click on "The Gallery:"
>>http://www.beat-art.no/images1/galleriet/index.htm
>>
>>http://www.beatsupernovarasa.com/thebeats/pics.htm
>>
>>http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/mb/
>>http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/mb/bow2.html
>>
>>http://www.thebear.org/
>>
>
>