Suspicious Signs Exercise
Shapiro Undergraduate Library
University of Michigan
The paper below was constructed to be representative of a problematic paper turned in by a first year student. Please read the paper and note which elements arouse your suspicions.
Joseph Miller
Prof. Davis
English 125
The Beat Movement
The "Beat Movement" in modern literature has become an important period in the history of literature and society in America. Incorporating influences such as jazz, art, literature, philosophy and religion, the beat writers created a new and prophetic vision of modern life and changed the way a generation of people sees the world. That generation is now aging and its representative voices are becoming lost to eternity, but the message is alive and well.
The Beats have forever altered the nature of American consciousness. The Beat Generation of writers offered the world a new attitude. They brought to society a consciousness of life worth living. They offered a method of escape from the stultifying, unimaginative world we live in, through the exploration of one's intellect. Beat has had many different contemporary implications in music, poetry and literature. Literature has been liberated considerably. The poetic form has been changed to inaugurate a new poetic form, an American form. "There was less emphasis on tradition and more emphasis on the individual talent. (www.rohan.sdsu.edu)"
One of the most important contributions to contemporary verse was to take poetry out of the classrooms and into non-academic setting—coffee houses, jazz clubs, large public auditoriums and even athletic stadiums. Poetry is more popular and more read than anytime in history, not
only spoken poetry but also sung poetry of a high order. "The literature, coordinated by pop music, with a way of dressing, with a way of life, it something that has influenced the youth of the world not only in Western countries but Eastern countries as well. (www.charm.net)"
Many writers of Generation X have been influenced by the writing like Andy Clausen, Eliot Katz, Geoffrey Manough and Ed Sanders. There are many writers that have been influenced but have not been included in the Generation X section. These writers took up the flame of the Beat flavor, keeping it strong. James Wright was one of the writers that kept the flame going. "He was much admired poet of his generation...(www.rohan.sdsu.edu)" His works have a "sense of Midwestern American bleakness...(www.rohan.sdsu)" One of his poems goes like this "My bones turn to dark emeralds Your hands turn yellow in the ruins of the sun Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom (www.rohan.sdsu.edu)"
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Kerouac, a French-Canadian child on March 12, 1922 in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts. Ti Jean spoke a local dialect of French called joual before he learned English. The youngest of three children, he was heartbroken when his older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine.
Ti Jean was an intense and serious child, devoted to Memere (his mother) and constantly forming important friendships with other boys, as he would continue to do throughout his life. He was driven to create stories from a young age, inspired first by the mysterious radio show 'The Shadow,' and later by the fervid novels of Thomas Wolfe, the writer he would model himself after (Stephenson, p. 56).Another such writer with Beat flavor would be Adrienne Rich. "Rich's work established the importance of gender in shaping a poetic consciousness and she became a mentor to thousands of women, enabling them to 'speak the
unspeakable,' to authenticate their unique experience of reality. (www.rohan.sdsu.edu)" Beat writing has made a great impact on the writing of today's generation. It has allowed people to be more open with themselves and the people that are reading their works. It is also allowed people to be more open minded to new ideas that these works brought to the surface for everybody to see. Where early writing was stiff, beat writing allowed for the writing to come after it to beat to a different drummer. Beat writing has expanded the world of literature, poetry and music to a higher level for people to enjoy.
Works Cited
Stephenson, Gregory. “'Infinite Resignation': Jack Kerouac's Tristessa .” NMAL: Notes on Modern American Literature, 1983 Winter, 7 no. 3.
BIB http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/Topics/BeatGen.html
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