Review by Ron Dart.
It is 50 years this autumn since the Beat Movement was
launched at Six Gallery in San Francisco (October 13, 1955). Some of the
American Beats from the East Coast (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) and the
West Coast (Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
met and read together at this gathering. John Suiter rightly says, “The Six
Gallery reading has sometimes been called the first synthesis of the East and
West Coast factions of the Beat Generation” (p.148).
Kenneth Rexroth had hiked to many of the peaks in the North
Cascades in the 1920s. His rambling and tramping tales are well told in An Autobiographical Novel (Chapter 30). Gary Snyder worked on lookout peaks (Crater and Sourdough
Mountains) in 1952-1953, but he could not get work in the North Cascades in
1954 because of his affiliations with unions and anarchist left groups. These
were the McCarthy years, and Snyder was a victim of such a red scare. Philip
Whalen worked on lookout peaks (Sauk and Sourdough Mountains) in 1953-1955.
Jack Kerouac, a year after the Six Gallery reading (1956), spent a summer on Desolation Peak in the North
Cascades. The Dharma Bums (1958), Lonesome Traveler (1960) and Desolation Angels (1965) all reflect
much of what he saw and experienced on Desolation Peak.
The Six Gallery reading of 1955 was, therefore, a pivotal
event in bringing together the ecological Beats of the West Coast and the Bop
and Beat Tradition of the East Coast. Allen Ginsberg attended and participated
in the Six Gallery reading, and a year later, Howl and Other Poems was published.
The back cover of Howl,
in the City Lights Books, says “Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems was originally published by City Lights Books
in the Fall of 1956. Subsequently seized by the U.S. Customs and the San
Francisco police, it was the subject of a long court trial at which a series of
poets and professors persuaded the courts that the book was not obscene. Over
30,000 copies have since been sold”. There is no doubt Howl created a commotion and stir in the San Francisco area at the
time.
It is 40 years this year since George Grant’s Lament for a Nation (1965) was
published. Lament for a Nation, like Howl, created strong reactions. Many in
the New Left and Counter Culture in Canada were drawn to Lament for a Nation. Many in the political centre and political
right in Canada were offended by what Grant was saying in Lament.Grant was fully aware of what he was saying and doing at the
time, and he knew that his criticisms of the American empire (and the Canadian
colonial and comprador class) would not be taken well by the ruling
establishment and high mucky mucks at the time.
Lament has been
called “a masterpiece of political meditation”, and Darrol Bryant sees it as a
tract for the times that stands within the Old Testament prophetic tradition of
Lamentations. Kenneth Rexroth has
argued, in defending Ginsberg, his poetry stands “in the long Jewish Old
Testament tradition of testimonial poetry”. It is significant to note that Grant in his 1970
Introduction to Lament for a Nation
refers twice to the image and metaphor of Molech. Molech was seen by the Jewish
people as a devouring god that consumed and destroyed the life of one and all.
Molech is a central metaphor in Part II of Howl.
Grant also refers to the Beats and the Counter Culture in Lament for a Nation. Ginsberg and Grant
seem, at first glance, to be lamenting and howling against the same Molech. The
American empire seemed to consume one and all. The best and the brightest did
their best to oppose and resist such a monster and leviathan, but souls and
bodies were required to feed the ravenous appetite of such a beast. Was it
possible to live a meaningful life without bowing and genuflecting to Molech?
Howl and Lament for a Nation seem to be on the
same page and fighting the same enemy and opponent. But, are they? Ginsberg and
Grant do agree on what they want to be free from. Do they agree on what they
want to be free for? It is by understanding this difference that we will
understand the different paths taken between American anarchism (and Canadian
devotees of such a tradition) and Canadian High Tory nationalism. The different
paths hiked do lead to quite distinctly different places on the political
spectrum. Let us, all too briefly, light and linger at Howl and Lament for a Nation
to see how and why American anarchism and Canadian nationalism, although
seeming to have much in common at one level, have less and less in common at
more substantive levels.
It is significant to note, by way of beginning, to mention
who Howl and Lament for a Nation are dedicated to. Ginsberg offers up Howl to Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs
and Neal Cassady; all three were East Coast Bop and Beat poets and activists. Howl was written for Carl Solomon, and
William Carlos Williams wrote the Introduction. Kerouac is very much in the
lead in the dedication, and Ginsberg says, “Several phrases and the title of Howl are taken from him”. We need to ask
ourselves this simple question if we ever hope to get a fix and feel for
Ginsberg’s drift and direction: what is the essence and core of the East Coast
Bop and Beat ethos and how did Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassady, Williams
and Solomon embody such an ideology? There tends to be six distinct points to
be noted here: I) individual feelings and emotions are paramount (reason and
one dimensional science are the problem) II) protest and rebellion against the
American empire and Puritanism are dominant, III) uprootedness and unrootedness
are welcomed—being on the road becomes a new creed and dogma, IV) eclectic
spirituality becomes the new sacrament-a rather raw sexuality and spirituality
are fused, V) institutions (whether they are religious, political, cultural, economic)
are seen as the problem, and VI) anarchism is seen as the liberating way in
opposition to the authoritarian and repressive nature of all ideologies and
institutions.
Liberty tends to trump order, individuality repels the
common good, equality of desires is held high, raw experience banishes the
wisdom of tradition and spirituality is freed from the bondage of shackles of
religious dogmas and institutions. Needless to say, such a position becomes its
own ideology, creed and institution that cannot be doubted and must be defended
at all costs by its guardians and gatekeepers.
There is no doubt that Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady
embodied such a vision. Carolyn Cassady dared to expose and question such an
ideology in Off the Road: My Years with
Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg (1990). Even Kerouac was beginning to ask
substantive questions about the Beats and distance himself from them in the
early 1960s. He makes this quite clear in Lonesome
Traveler (1960) when he said, “Am actually not ‘Beat’ but strange solitary
crazy Catholic mystic”, and with the publication of Vanity of Duluoz (1968), Kerouac made it clear that much of the Bop
and Beat tradition was much more about a rather inflated vanity and egoistic
and indulgent individualism than anything else. But Kerouac still remained the
liberty loving and solitary Catholic mystic. The American DNA and genetic code
of individualism was still his master and guru.
Grant dedicated Lament
for a Nation “To Derek Bedson and
Judith Robinson: Two Lovers Of Their
Country: One Living and One Dead”. Who were Derek Bedson and Judith
Robinson,
and how, as Canadian lovers of their country, were they different from
Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady? Derek Bedson, unlike many of
the Beats, had a strong commitment to the Anglican High Tory tradition
both in
politics and religion. He was active in the Anglican Church of Canada
(ever the
gadfly to its emerging liberalism) and he worked in the area of both
federal
and provincial politics. Bedson, unlike the Beats, realized that both
political
and religious institutions (although always imperfect), were important
means to
work within for the common good of the nation and the people. Society
and the
State (both have their distortions and demons) when understood aright
should
and can work together, in an organic, just and ordered way, for the
commonweal.
The philosophic tradition of liberalism, in either its
American imperial form or its Beat reactionary form, was about individuals
using their liberty in a unilateral way to undermine and deconstruct those
things that, as people, we share in common. Grant turned to Bedson as a true
teacher and mentor who loved his country. Judith Robinson was a feisty and
fiery Red Tory who, as an animated journalist, challenged both liberalism and the
Liberal party in Canada. In fact, her relentless assaults on the Liberal party
lead to the Royal Canadian Military Police (RCMP) bloodhounds being turned on
her in the 1950s. Robinson thought the liberals were selling out Canada to the
USA, and she would have none of it. The Liberal party of St. Laurent and King
were an anathema to her. The American way (both in principle and fact) were
something she had little or no patience for. George Grant, therefore, when he
dedicated Lament for a Nation to
Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson knew what he was doing and saying.
Many Canadians have, I suspect, heard of Ginsberg, Kerouac,
Cassady, Williams and Burroughs. I question whether many have heard of Judith
Robinson or Derek Bedson. What does this tell us about our Canadian soul and how it
has been colonized by the American matrix?
There is little doubt that Bedson, Robinson and Grant stood
in a very different place on the political and personal spectrum than Kerouac,
Burroughs, Cassady and Ginsberg. Both clans could agree that American
imperialism, corporate capitalism, comsumerism, liberal bourgeois thought and
puritanism needed to be exposed and undressed. There was no depth to them. They
embodied Nietzche’s “Last Man” or Miller’s “Wrong Dream”. Surely there was more
to the good life than defining and defending personal peace and happiness. In
short, Canadian High Tories and American Anarchist Beats do agree on the fact
the patient is ill and ailing. They have much in common in their diagnosis.
But, they have quite a different way of healing the failing and faltering
patient. The prognosis takes Grant and Ginsberg down different paths and to
different places. What then is this different prognosis? Let us turn to Howl and Lament for a Nation to see what is seen. It is in this different seeing we will come to understand
some important differences at a root, core and genetic, philosophic and
practical level between Americans and Canadians.
It is 50 years since Howl
was published. It is 40 years since Lament
for a Nation was published. It is at such remembering points we are offered
the opportunity to see again what animates and tends to define the True North
from the empire to the south.
Howl is divided
into three sections and a “Footnote to Howl”. Section I opens with the
memorable lines than none forget once heard and read: “I saw the best minds of
my generation destroyed by madness”. The rest of the section is a prose-poem
that describes how these best minds were destroyed, and, equally so, how the
artistic and visionary nature of such minds were bent and broken on the anvil
of the modern world. Section I is both tragic and sad, and the ruined and
wrecked lives are amply laid out for all to see to the most graphic and
poignant of ways. We might ask, as we read Section I, whether these are the
best minds (given their end points), but Ginsberg has told us these are the
best and the brightest, so we heed and hear. Section II turns, in a penetrating
manner, to the place that has savaged such minds, and the potent image that
speaks of such an alluring and tempting place: Molech, Molech and Molech
becomes the destructive and dominant metaphor. The metaphor of Molech is
unpacked and unraveled in a variety of ways, but there is no doubt that the
best minds are defeated victims of Molech, and Molech will devour one and all.
Who is Molech? Ginsberg makes this most clear. It is all forms of tyranny and
authority that brutalize and are callous to the best minds. The USA is very
much in the foreground, though. Section III presses home the point in a more
urgent and not to be forgotten manner. Section III is directed to Carl Solomon
in Rockland. The political left is held high and idealized, and the USA is seen
as the place of repression and destruction. The language is raw and graphic in Howl, and social reality is neatly and
crisply divided into a rather simplistic either-or way of looking at things.
“Footnote to Howl” walks the extra mile to shout from the rooftops the Holy,
Holy, Holy theme. All is holy and needs to be seen as such. Ginsberg in this
section is doing his best to fuse spirituality and sexuality, street life with
city life. Nothing should be seen as unholy. All has goodness in and to it, and
when this is seen, eternity is in our midst.
There are other poems in the Howl collection, also. “A Supermarket in California” doffs the cap
to Walt Whitman, and “Transcription of Organ Music” takes the reader through
and beyond the purpose of organ music. The transcription and the organ are
meant to walk the attentive and alert to higher and deeper spiritual states.
This poem points the way to what such a fusion of spirituality and sensuality
might look like. “Sunflower Sutra” tells the tale of Ginsberg and Kerouac as
they see, through Blake’s sunflower, a sutra of insight in hard places.
“America” is a longer poem, and, true to form, turns on the USA. “In the
Baggage Room at Greyhound”, like other poems in the collection, take the reader
into the underground and underbelly of America. “An Asphodel”, “Song”, “Wild Orphan”
and “in back of the real” close off this final section in Howl and Other Poems. .
It must be remembered that these poems were published in
1956. The USA was in the thick of the Cold War, and anyone with the mildest
sympathies with the left was seen as communist. The raw sexual and sensual
language that permeates and pervades most of Howl and Other Poems is a frontal assault and attack on both middle
class bourgeois America and the puritan ethos the shaped such an ideology.
Ginsberg, in short, was pulling no punches. He thought the best minds in
American had been driven mad by combination of the military industrial complex,
anti-communist thinking and puritan and bourgeois ethics. He howled against
such a repressive way of being, and the state and police turned on him for
doing so. Howl (1956) and On the Road (1955) became sacred texts
and Bibles for the Beat generation, and Ginsberg became a high priest to such a
generation with his fusion of sensuality/spirituality, anarchist/protest
politics and a raw and in your face assault on middle class values. Howl became a lightning rod missive for
those who felt ill at ease with expectations laid on them they had no interest
in. Ginsberg’s Howl spoke what many
felt but had not yet put to words.
What are the points of concord and convergence between
Grant’s Lament for a Nation and
Ginsberg’s Howl, and, equally
important, what are the points of discord and divergence?
The 1965 edition of Lament
for a Nation is divided into seven chapters. It some ways it is a
prose/poem that deals with major political themes in Canada, and between Canada
and the USA. George Grant added an ‘Introduction’ in 1970, and Sheila Grant
(George’s wife) added an ‘Afterword’ in 1997. I will stick with the 1965
edition of Lament for a Nation. I
mentioned above that the very language of lament conjures up for the reader the
tradition of Jewish political thought. The Jewish prophet Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. The fact that Lament for a Nation is divided into
seven chapters reminds the reader of the seven days of creation in the Jewish
tradition. The fact the seventh chapter is theological means that the political
reflections have a deeper source than merely politics.
Chapter I in Lament
deals with Diefenbaker’s defeat by Pearson in the 1963 election. Grant saw this
as a source of much concern, since Pearson was pro-American and Diefenbaker was
a thorn in Kennedy’s side. And, more worrisome for Grant, most Canadians were
overjoyed to have Pearson as the new Prime Minister of Canada. What did this
say about Canadian nationalism?
Chapter II and III ponder both the follies and foolishness
of Diefenbaker and his nobility and heroism. Grant was no uncritical fan of
Diefenbaker, but he did think that Diefenbaker stood on principles, and his
nationalist political principles brought about his demise. Chapter IV touches
on both liberalism and the Liberal party in Canada, and why such a party has
tended to dominate much of Canadian political life (and the consequences for
Canadian nationalism).
Chapters V and VI, consciously so, walks the reader into the
realms of political theory and political philosophy, and why, at root and
ground level, Canadian conservatism (in its English and French forms) is,
almost, the opposite of American republican conservatism.
The fact that American liberalism (in its democratic and
republican forms) seeks to dominate the world raises for Grant a worrisome
question. Is there any way to oppose or resist this Molech? Is this, as
Canadians, our fate and necessity? What can we do given this stubborn fact?
Chapter VII opens up a dialogue about the difference between fate/necessity and
the good? How, as Canadians, can we live from something higher than what seems
to be our dominant fate? Is it possible to get out of the matrix of American liberalism?
Lament for a Nation
has been called a masterpiece, and it is for a variety of reasons. The tract
for the times moves from the facts of Canadian/American political history, to
Canadian/American political philosophy to theology. It is poignant and pungent
prose writing in the best tradition of political pamphlets.
How, though, is Lament
for a Nation similar and different from Howl,
and what can these points of concord and discord tell us about the differences
between Canadian and American thought and culture. There are five points of
convergence, and five of divergence.
First, both Lament
and Howl raise serious and
substantive objections about the American military industrial complex, the
power elite in the USA and the damage done by such an elite in various parts of
the world.
Second, both write in an intense, committed and accessible
manner. Ginsberg can be raw, crude and excessively graphic. Grant was much more
polished, incisive and delicately evocative. Grant and Ginsberg do communicate
through plain and direct speech, though, as participants in the tough issues of
the time rather than as detached and cool headed observers. Both are on the
ice. Neither is in the balcony or bleachers.
Third, both men were critical of the liberal bourgeois tradition
and a form of American Puritanism that justified such a smug view. Ginsberg
rebelled against this by indulging all sorts of desires and interests, whereas
Grant rebelled against the liberal bourgeois tradition by deepening and his
ordering his interests and desires towards the highest and noblest things. Both
could agree that Locke’s ‘life, liberty and estates’ and Nietzsche’s ‘last man’
was something they did not want to be. They disagreed on the best path to hike
when the puritan-bourgeois-last man was left behind. Plato is quite different
from Whitman, Coleridge from Blake. Grant was for the former, Ginsberg the
latter. Allen Ginsberg sent me a couple of letters in the late 1980s (Jan/1/89
& Feb/6/89). The first discussed the Beats, his involvement with Naropa
Institute/Buddhism/Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his rather negative and
reactionary view of the Jewish God. The second letter was a copy of his small
book on Blake (Your Reason and Blake’s
System). Both the long letter and the missive speak much about Ginsberg’s
commitments, and some of the distortions and caricatures he had of other
traditions because of such commitments. Both Grant and Ginsberg rebelled
against the American empire, puritanism and the bourgeois tradition, but they
turned to different wells to slake the thirst of their deeper longings and
questions.
Fourth, both men are distinctively and consciously thinking
from a religious and theological vision in more than merely a moral sense.
Ginsberg begins Howl by saying ‘All
these books are published in Heaven’, and Grant begins Lament by reference to Anglican parish life and ends with a
sustained theological reflection on the difference between necessity/fate and
the good.
Fifth, neither Grant nor Ginsberg offer much of a way out of
the problem. Ginsberg can howl and Grant can lament. This might be a good place
to start, but it is hardly a positive, creative and constructive way to end.
What lies on the far end and other side of howling and lamenting? There are,
sadly so, many who begin and end in such a place.
If Grant and Ginsberg can meet and greet at this
intersection place, where do they part paths and why? It is one thing to agree
on what we oppose and desire to say a firm No to. It is quite another thing to state what we wish to
affirm and say Yes to. There are many who often agree on what is not wanted,
but such people often part paths when a serious discussion (at both a
philosophical and practical level) begins on what is desired and wanted. This
is where Ginsberg and Grant go in different directions. What are their points
of discord and divergence, then?
First, Grant was Canadian, and he had a concern and
commitment to Canadians and the way Canada is being colonized by the USA.
Ginsberg was American, and he had little or no interest in the Canadian
political tradition. Lament for a Nation deals
with Canadian-American relations in a way Howl does not. When, as Canadians, we know more about Ginsberg than
Grant, it speaks much about a way of being colonized.
Second, there is no doubt that both Grant and Ginsberg had
deep commitments to a moral and mystical religious vision, but Grant, unlike
Ginsberg, would have argued that it is important to hold together spirituality
and religion rather than fragmenting them. There is a tendency in Ginsberg to
fly off into the mystical, visionary and contemplative ether, and, in the
process, such things as dogma and institutions are seen as the problem.
Needless to say, such a position becomes its own dogma and institution.
Ginsberg’s models and teachers were those like Whitman and Blake, whereas for
Grant thinkers such as Plato, Augustine, Hooker, Swift, Johnson and Coleridge
were his teachers and guides. We can see, therefore, the anti-institutional
mindset in Ginsberg, whereas, for Grant, institutions are important even though
a critical attitude must always be held towards them. The ideas that underwrite
this difference are important to note. Ginsberg’s sense of liberty and
individualism dominates the day (all so American) whereas for Grant order and
institutions are equally important.
Third, although both Ginsberg and Grant howled and lamented
the state of things in the 1950s and 1960s, Grant attempted through the
Progressive Conservative party, to challenge the American empire. Ginsberg never
rose much beyond anarchism, protest politics and moral outrage. Grant pointed
out, in Lament, how such an approach
is both allowed and easily co-opted by the power elites. Those who step out of
the formal political process merely facilitate, by their absence, the very
thing they protest against. What might seem the moral high ground can be, in
fact, a form of grave digging.
Fourth, Grant argued that, with the coming to be of
liberalism, we faced an ominous challenge. Those like Daniel Bell had agued (and
Grant noticed this) that we had come to the end of ideology with liberalism.
Francis *censored*uyama argued, in the 1990s, updating Bell’s argument, we had come to
the end of history with the end of the Cold War and the victory of liberalism.
There is no doubt that both Ginsberg and Grant opposed the unilateralism of
American military and corporate power. The aggressive notion of liberty and
rugged individualism that underwrote and justified such a stance was abhorrent
to both Grant and Ginsberg. But, and this is the catch. Ginsberg used the same
Americam notions of liberty and individualism in his anarchist and protest
approach as did the power elites. He applied such principles in more of an
anti-establishment and, of course, anti-authoritarian way, but the notions of
liberty, choice, individualism, protest, dissent were all there. Grant saw
through this charade. Ginsberg was just the other other side of the corporate
elite. They just used their liberty and freedom in different ways, but neither
disagreed about the priority of the American vision and dream: life, liberty,
choice and individualism. Grant dared to question the very philosophic
principles of American liberalism, and, as such, hiked a different path than
Ginsberg and the Beats. Canadian notions such as law, order and good government
take the curious and thoughtful to different places than life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Grant realized that when Canadians uncritically
genuflected to the American Beats, they were welcoming the American Trojan
horse into Canada is a more subtle way. There are more ways to be colonized
than mere military and economic pressures. The literary and cultural traditions
of the USA (the Beats) have done much to colonize many Canadians, and there
have been many Canadian cultural and literary compradors that have facilitated
such a process. Grant would have said No to Ginsberg for the simple reason that
Ginsberg was as much a devout and committed American, like a Noam Chomsky, as
the very Americans he howled against and opposed.
Fifth, Grant was a much more sophisticated thinker than
Ginsberg, and there is no doubt that Lament
for a Nation is a more substantive work than Howl. The level of political and philosophical depth in Lament opens up vistas of thought that
are just not there is Ginsberg and Howl.
Howl never rises much beyond rant and reaction, and, sadly so, Ginsberg’s
intellectual world tends to polarize between the evil and nasty power elite and
the good, pure and loveable anarchist, beat and protest types. It is a
simplistic interpretation of reality that Grant was much too wise to bow his
uncritical head to. He saw too much, and saw too far to worship at such a
shrine and to such reactionary priests, and he urged Canadians not to turn to
such a comic book view of the world.
In sum, Ginsberg and Grant, at first glance, seem to have
much in common, but, on deeper and further inspection, have little in common.
Both protest against many of the same things. Both agree on many of the things
that must be opposed. But, by day’s end, the American Beat anarchism of
Ginsberg is quite different from the Canadian High Tory vision of George Grant.
It is by understanding such differences that we can see why and how the
American and Canadian traditions create and make for different national
outlooks. It is somewhat sad and tragic when Canadians know more about American
models and take their leads from such fashions than they do from their own kith
and kind.
rsd