Author Interview Series: Larry Closs, Author of Beatitude, Discusses Men and Literature Among the Beats and Today

In the first of TLM's author interviews series, the Editors sat down with Larry Closs, author of Beatitude, a novel of friendship, love, and idolatry of the Beat Generation, to discuss themes of masculinity and literature, then and now.  A more detailed TLM review of Beatitude will appear in the coming weeks.  

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TLM: The prominent players among the Beats were all men. Is this a coincidence or is there something inherently masculine about the philosophy of the Beats?

Larry: You have to begin by viewing the Beats in the context of their times. The Beats were a product of—and a reaction to—the conformity, conservatism and materialism of the 1950s. In the wake of the abject austerity of the Great Depression, the relative prosperity of the fifties inspired a focus on suddenly affordable housing, cars and appliances and the development of a suburban lifestyle reflected in TV shows like Ozzie & Harriet and Leave It to Beaver. The new nuclear family was the ideal and every family member had very narrowly defined roles: Fathers were breadwinners, mothers raised the kids and took care of the house and kids did their homework, stayed out of trouble and aspired to be just like their parents.

The Beats tapped into a burgeoning feeling that there was something wrong with that picture. The Beat philosophy expressed itself in the rejection of repressive social norms and the embrace of an experience-for-experience-sake approach to life embodied by an open-minded attitude toward sex, drugs, relationships, religion, travel and the fellaheen—the outsiders.

Women were just as likely as men to feel stifled by the middle-class conventions of the 1950s. They were less likely to act on that impulse, however, because they risked far more severe repercussions. Also, despite the progressive attitude the Beats advocated across the board, they generally viewed the women in their world in much the same way as the world at large, confining them to girlfriends, housewives and mothers.

One could argue that Beat philosophy was inherently—even unabashedly—masculine, as evidenced by the fact that the great works of literature and poetry the movement produced were all produced by men. One could also argue that the Beat philosophy was inherently sexist, like the society itself, because the movement’s tenets were near impossible for women of the times to embrace.

There were Beat women (Brenda Knight’s Women of the Beat Generation profiles 40 of them) who injected a feminine element, but, with few exceptions—poets Diane di Prima, Hettie Jones, Ann Waldman—they are unknown even to Beat fans and best known for their relationships with Beat men rather than their creative contributions to the Beat canon. One of the best and most prolific, Joyce Johnson, wrote five novels that are no longer in print. However, her two memoirs—Minor Characters (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award) and Door Wide Open—both of which hinge on her brief romance with Kerouac, remain popular long after their release in paperback.

TLM: Kerouac's fiction and his life revolved around traditionally manly pursuits—football and railroading, the time spent as a lookout at Desolation Peak and even the freewheeling travels described in On the Road. Was this a part of his personality or part of a carefully crafted image?

Larry: The most famous photograph of Jack Kerouac is a broody black and white of him at 31, ruggedly handsome and pensively smoking a cigarette on a New York City fire escape in 1953. Jutting from Kerouac’s jacket pocket is the Brakeman’s Manual for the Southern Pacific Railroad, where Kerouac was working at the time. Allen Ginsberg snapped the shot, which he later aptly titled “Heroic Portrait”—aptly, because that photo more than any other evokes the image of Kerouac embedded in the collective consciousness. The “Heroic Portrait,” however, was taken before Kerouac ever had an image.

In 1953, Kerouac had only written two of the dozen or so books that would be his literary legacy and only one had been published—The Town and the City, in 1950, an indifferently reviewed homage to his hero, Thomas Wolfe. Kerouac had also completed what would become his most famous and revolutionary work, On the Road, in 1951, but it wouldn’t be published until 1957.

Until then, Kerouac went about his life like anyone else, unselfconsciously indulging in pursuits that interested and supported him. He wanted to be a writer since he was a kid. He was also naturally athletic. He played football in high school and went to Columbia in 1940 on a football scholarship, but when he broke his leg in the first season he refocused on his real passion, literature. He met Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, served in both the Merchant Marines and the Navy, married and divorced twice, crisscrossed the country with Neal Cassady, worked as a brakeman for the Southern Pacific Railroad and spent two months as a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout on Desolation Peak in Washington.

By the time On the Road was finally published—to instant acclaim—in 1957 and the Beat Generation emerged from the underground, Kerouac had already done everything that would contribute to his image, with no thought of doing so. The media would craft his image for him. While Kerouac called himself "a strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic,” the media called him King of the Beats, a reductive title he would reject and despise for the rest of his life.

TLM: What, in your opinion, was the nature of the relationship among Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg. How did they balance friendship and (unrequited?) love among them?

Larry: First and foremost, Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg were close friends—that was the basis of their relationship—friends who loved one another, who connected instantly on a subliminal level and admired and respected each other’s outlook, talents and heart. Beyond that, it was complicated, as recorded in their literary efforts and voluminous letters to one another, and as suggested by biographers reading between the lines of their lives.

In 1944, Ginsberg fell in love with Kerouac almost at first sight when Lucien Carr introduced them. Ginsberg was 18, Kerouac, 22. Both were attending Columbia and sleeping in the same dorm room one night when Ginsberg confessed his feelings, saying, “Jack, you know, I love you, and I want to sleep with you, and I really like men.” To which Kerouac said, “Oooooh, no.” Kerouac’s response was not a rejection of Ginsberg, but a comment on the complications he envisioned as a result of a one-sided love.

Two years later, when classmate Hal Chase introduced Ginsberg and Kerouac to Neal Cassady and his then-wife, LuAnne Henderson, just arrived from Denver, Colorado, Ginsberg fell head over heals with Cassady, who also promptly took to Ginsberg, “attacking him with a great amorous soul such as only a con-man can have,” as Kerouac writes in On the Road. “I didn’t see them for about two weeks, during which time they cemented their relationship to fiendish allday-allnight-talk proportions.”

In the end, their feelings weren’t mutual or equal. Ginsberg was infatuated with Cassady, and although they had a sexual relationship for many years, it was never a truly romantic one. Cassady was ultimately more interested in women, as indicated by his three wives (two of whom he married simultaneously). Still, Ginsberg was crushed by his unrequited love for Cassady, following him to Denver at one point and writing a collection of poems titled Denver Doldrums when he was once again rejected.

Kerouac was also infatuated with Cassady, but in another way: Kerouac viewed Cassady as a romantic, free-spirited masculine ideal who was everything Kerouac wished he could be. Likewise, Cassady loved Kerouac for his empathy, curiosity and discipline as a writer. They did what best friends do—they balanced each other, brought out the best in one another. What they shared was an enthusiasm for experience. As Dean yells out the window of a speeding car in On the Road, “Ah, God! Life!" Ultimately, they were brothers.

Whole books have been written about the complexities of Beat relationships—Ellis Amburn’s Subterranean Kerouac posits that Kerouac was torn between his attractions to men as well as women while Ginsberg claimed that he and Kerouac were intimate on several occasions. But no one can ever really know the nuances of Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg’s feelings. Who but them possibly could? What we do know is that they were an integral part of each other’s lives for much of their lives—despite the additional complications of other overlapping relationships—and that speaks volumes. They were each willing to sacrifice something of themselves for the sake of their love for one another and that’s about as pure as love gets.

Ginsberg wrote one of the most touching elegies in an Afterward to Kerouac’s Visions of Cody titled The Visions of the Great Rememberer: “Couldn’t ever hold on to that early Love, all bodies change & die, fall from life to life, but the sad heart now comes still expecting there was something more Neal & Jack could fulfill, or there was more love I wanted to give them than they would let me, and imagined delights in their presence they felt toward me, love & kisses they never laid on my timid body—except the sweet care they both offered me their little melancholy tender Allen….”

TLM: How are themes of masculinity and the relationships between men treated in Beatitude?

Larry: While I didn’t give any conscious thought to conveying ideas about masculinity in Beatitude, I did make a very deliberate decision about how I wanted characters to emerge—on their own, with no assistance from the author. I wanted readers to meet and come to know the characters by virtue of what they say and do, not by any editorializing. Several reviewers have described Beatitude as a dialogue-driven novel, and to some extent that’s true. I’ve always found that I learn more about someone in a few minutes of talking with them and just seeing how they move than any amount of description by a friend beforehand could ever convey.

Tied to that was a desire to explore how our experience and outlook can affect our interpretation of what we hear and see. In the same way that Harry doesn’t always perceive things as they are—doesn’t always want to perceive things as they are—I wanted readers to question their own assumptions. I wanted to smash stereotypes and reductive ideas, who’s likely to feel this way versus who’s likely to feel that way. The ultimate goal was to underline the importance of viewing the world through another’s eyes and heart. All three of the main characters ultimately come to that realization: Harry puts himself in Jay’s place, Jay puts himself in Harry’s place and Zahra puts herself in both Harry and Jay’s place. Each takes a step forward by doing so.

There’s a scene in Beatitude where I describe a television interview that Kerouac did with Steve Allen in 1959, after On the Road had catapulted Kerouac to fame and introduced the Beat Generation to America. Allen asks Kerouac how he would define beat. Kerouac pauses and says, “Sympathetic.” I think that single word expresses the essence of Beatitude.

Larry Closs is the author of Beatitude, a novel, and a New Yorker who often wanders far from home. Follow him on his website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram (larrycloss).

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Follow Larry Closs as his blog tour continues tomorrow, January 26, 2012, at The Picky Girl.

The Local Scene: The Other Side by E. Thomas Finan

The Other Side is a work of seven stories that comprise the debut collection from E. Thomas Finan, currently a lecturer at the University of Miami. Published by The Fieldnor Press in 2010, The Other Side treats various poignant moments in the lives of its characters. Finan experiments with a variety of voices and styles in bringing his characters to life and, because he is a strong writer with a talent for dialogue, he mostly succeeds.

My favorite story of the collection was, "Motley Black," which follows Jay, recently jilted and running from memory, as he leaves his home in San Francisco and travels by bus to Key West, where he hopes to begin the next chapter of his life. Anyone who has ever travelled by bus will appreciate the cast of well-drawn characters that Jay meets along the way, and it is obvious that Finan is writing from experience.

Others that scored points with me were the existentialist "Lucy di Sartoria," the obsessive "An Aria of Windrows," and the supernatural story, "The Other Side.". Overall, I found Finan's collection familiar and readable, with characters that elicit sympathy and make a connection with the reader. And I'm looking forward to more of Finan in the future.

The Dreamlike Beauty of an Expatriate Life: Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy

There is a dreamlike beauty to the expatriate life that Simon Van Booy captures perfectly in his debut novel, Everything Beautiful Began After, released today by Harper Perennial.

Rebecca, George, and Henry, have each come to Athens for different reasons, but all are content to become lost in its dusty streets and the hazy memory of antiquity. And it is a sandblown sort of fate that brings them together in that haphazard, thousand-causal-connections manner that typifies the joining of strangers in a foreign land and the binding of them together by common experience. But come together they do, and they eventually share an affection that is both real and enduring.   

When tragedy strikes, it is through these well-formed and emotionally-complex characters that Van Booy demonstrates how the intimacy of casual acquaintance and the despair occasioned by last goodbyes can hijack an entire life. Everything Beautiful Began After paints a portrait of a world almost outside of existence where affairs may capture the heart forever and the loss of a future once-envisioned can become all-consuming.

More than simply a painter of beautiful scenes, however, Van Booy is also a skilled professional. His prose is thoughtful and poetic as he describes Athens so vividly that the reader feels the dry heat of a noonday sun at the foot of the Acropolis. He cleverly plays with language, not just English, but Greek, French, Italian, and even Arabic, as a sometime reminder of how difficult it can be to communicate with one another, especially where the subject consists of our own pain. And though it takes some getting used to, the periodic use of the second person and the present tense allows the reader to share in the aimless wandering of Henry as he seeks some path by which to reenter the world that he once knew but has since lost forever.

Though it is sure to be enjoyed by the general public, in my opinion Everything Beautiful Began After is a must-read for anyone living abroad or with fond memories of having done so.

The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) (6.5/10.0)

If you sat down to create the personification of death, what characteristics would you attribute to it? It’s an interesting question, and not always an easy one to answer. I think that it’s difficult to attribute any range of emotion to death simply because the event itself is so charged with certain base emotions that we all share. And because of our shared experience, death personified would appear to be somewhat two-dimensional. Characteristics including heavy, brooding, powerful, stoic, contemplative, frightening, and even cruel, predominate in popular culture, from the Grim Reaper to Joe Black. And we’re so consistently exposed to these darker anthropomorphisms that it is difficult to imagine any variation from them. What would the world make of a personified death that grew profoundly sad at the birth of a human being and overjoyed at taking him back at death?

The personification of death is the conceit of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, a 2006 work which has received numerous awards in both young adult and general fiction categories and has been the recipient of positive reviews all around. It is death that tells the story of little Liesel Meminger s she struggles to make sense of the harsh words and actions of Nazi Germany under the Fuhrer and their effects on the people that she loves. In Zusak’s conception, death is one part stoic, one part curious, and one part sympathetic. He seems to have taken a unusual interest in Liesel, which he admits happens very rarely, and he follows her—collecting bodies along the way—through the long years of the war and beyond.

I admit that I liked the book as opposed to disliking it, but I found Zusak’s death as two-dimensional as any other representation, meaning that the novelty of the conceit wore off after the first hundred pages or so. And the human characters of the book were not very much more rounded, though it was impossible not to sympathize with orphaned Liesel and her adoptive parents, among others. The most interesting portions of the book for me were those that dealt with the hidden divide in German society during the war years and the mechanisms set up to root out and punish those that would undermine the Fuhrer and the war effort. At more than five hundred pages, I wish the book had included more of this. As it was, it dragged and I really had to struggle to finish it.

To tell you the truth, I really feel guilty about not liking this book more (especially given all the hype surrounding it). Perhaps it is simply a young adult novel from which I expected too much. Perhaps I am simply a bad reader. Or perhaps the book is simply overrated. I assume that most of you must have liked it. What was it that compelled you?

A Fierce Radiance (Lauren Belfer) (9.2/10.0)

I read Lauren Belfer's debut novel, City of Light, because it was recommended to me by nearly every relative and acquaintance from my days up north.  Like Belfer, my family hails from Western New York, where the winters are long, the wings are hot, and the beer is Canadian.  I myself inhabited the hills and forests south of the Queen City (that's Buffalo for the uninitiated) until I reached the age of maturity, at which point I promptly pointed my '78 Chrysler Newport south and didn't stop until I reached the warm sands of South Beach.  But don't get me wrong, I still love Western New York--especially its people, whom Belfer captured perfectly--and I will always consider it home.  City of Light, then,  is the fictionalized account of the social life of a young schoolteacher set against the backdrop of the development of electric power at the turn of the century and the political power struggles that surrounded it.  I consider it to be the best work of modern fiction that has been written about the region or its history.   

All of that is a buildup to my review of Belfer's new novel, A Fierce Radiance, which treats the development and mass production of penicillin during the opening days of America's involvement in World War II.  Belfer truly has a gift for writing period pieces.  I can only imagine the amount of detailed research that went into this account of New York City in the days after Pearl Harbor--her detailed descriptions of the architecture of the period is matched by her eye for social nuance among the medical professionals, captains of industry, politicians, and journalists that comprise the story's main characters.  And her prose has a sort of silky, gloved feel to it that lulls you into believing, if only just for a moment, that you have a clear feel of what it was to have lived in those frightening and heady days of America's ascendancy.

It's not all perfect, mind you.  There were times that I found myself shaking my head at the inconsistencies of a particular character or the contrivances that wrap up what is a complex and twisted plot line.  But at the turn of a page, I consistently found myself back among the stone skyscrapers and the soldiers preparing to head off to war, and any author that can transport me so completely can be forgiven a few faults.  Overall, I found the book very enjoyable, and I continue to find Belfer an author worth reading.  

Matterhorn (Karl Marlantes) (9.0/10.0)

Now, I’m not a big war-as-literature fan. I don’t spend hours watching the History Channel, and I still have trouble believing that there’s a market for a Military History Channel, though there clearly is or it wouldn’t exist. It’s true that I read Winston Churchill’s six-volume set, The Second World War (and I reviewed it here). And I read his abridged treatment of World War I, entitled The World Crisis, as well. But I read those books more because I find Churchill’s war-prose hypnotizing than anything else. And the action in Churchill’s accounts is largely on Downing Street, in the White House, or at the Kremlin, and not so much on the field of battle itself. And, of course, I enjoyed both The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls, but come on who didn’t? Anyhow, the point is that I’m not a big war-as-literature guy.

And yet here I am making another exception. Matterhorn, the 2010 debut novel of Karl Marlantes, is quite simply the best novel (war-based or otherwise) that I have read in several years. And I’m not the only one—The New York Times called it, “a raw, brilliant account of war that may well serve as a final exorcism for one of the most painful passages in American history.” I think the reason for its attraction is two-fold: (1) it is an intensely realistic portrayal of the conflict (you seriously feel at times that you are face down in the mud of the Vietnamese jungle with Marine Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas), and (2) it is, at bottom, a story of male relationships, both friendly and troubled, in the face of almost unfathomable hardship. The word on the street is that Karl Marlantes spent 30 years (that’s not a typo) on the book and the main characters (including the jungle, which is a character of its own) reflect a craftsman’s work.

The main plot revolves around the taking and retaking of Matterhorn, a hill that stands like a sentinel over a North Vietnamese approach from Laos. And there is plenty of super-realistic action as the hill is won, abandoned, and won again through the tremendously-sacrificial exploits of Bravo Company, Fifth Marine Division. But the subplots revolve around politics: the politics of advancement among officers and the politics of race relations among the grunts, which grows every bit as violent as the conflict in which it is set. And underlying all is a growing discontent with the war itself, the failure to identify a unifying goal, its lack of direction, and the tremendous cost in human lives.

Matterhorn may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I’m willing to bet that even most opponents of the war-as-literature set (like me) will find it a deeply enjoyable read.