Oregon Humanities

The Beats and Punk Rock Founding Fathers

Do you remember the first time you discovered something outside of the mainstream, outside of what your parents or teachers or the television told you about? I’m not talking about the first time you listened to Bob Dylan or when your cool older friend told you about Led Zeppelin. I mean the first time you truly understood the existence of a counter culture, and your eyes opened up to those roads not often taken where that culture has always existed.

I was a junior in high school. It was the early ‘90s, and I was living in a suburban middle-class world that Seattle’s alternative grunge scene had already seeped into. I wore black tights and flannel shirts every day just like all my alternative cohorts, but it was all pretty superficial, and certainly not unique or statement-making. In private I was still obsessed with Anne of Green Gables and old 10,000 Maniacs records, and there was one song that I listened to a lot: “Hey Jack Kerouac.” I probably knew the name Jack Kerouac and maybe the title of On the Road, but nothing much about either one. All I knew about the beatniks was the one Audrey Hepburn played in Funny Face. As adorable as Audrey is, she’s all parody and stereotype, and could in no way legitimately be a card-carrying member of the Beat Generation.

But this song had piqued my interest. I checked out On the Road from the school library. And once I dug a little deeper into the actual writings, themes, and creeds of the Beat Generation, it was like I saw the world through a completely new lens. Beat writers found their legitimacy by calling into question the mainstream, the beaten path, the norm. At the same time they wanted to see the bigger picture, the universal, the truth, whether it was by searching for meaning through Buddhism or by experimenting with mind-altering substances. Of course, the more popular the Beats became, the more they lost the credibility that being outsiders gave them. And sadly, this bitter irony was partly to blame for Jack Kerouac’s own beat-down depression that haunted him until he drank himself to death (eerily similar to grunge spokesman Kurt Cobain’s untimely end).

But getting back to the good news, this new way of seeing the world and culture led me down a path of wanting to find out who the beats were before the Beats. As I kept studying and reading, I learned about similar movements started by the Abstract Expressionists, and before them the Dadaists, and before them the Impressionists (who were surprisingly radical for the art world of the late nineteenth century. And going even further back I saw, for lack of a better term, a “punk rock” spirit in some of the writings of our Founding Fathers, and way, way back to ancient secularists, agnostics, scientists, and philosophers whose work laid the foundation for many modern thinkers.

The ability of certain artists and cultural icons to challenge the status quo of their day is often what winds up defining their generation. It also allows them to stand the test of time, turning on a new group of devotees and illuminating the unbeaten path to every generation to come. It makes me wonder who the timeless artists from our generation will be.

About Laura Becker

Laura Becker is the office administrator of Oregon Humanities and, according to her new business card, a troubleshooter, merry maker, and pundit.

06 October 2009 | Posted by Laura Becker in New Ideas
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