Beginning in the nineteenth century, the literature of addiction emerged amongst writers of the Beat movement, whose adherents willingly rejected their inclusion in the Postwar American facade of unity and happiness. William S. Burroughs, along with Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac, were perceived as literary outlaws because of their experimental writing methods. Interestingly, Burroughs and Kerouac's style of living and writing was rejected by the mainstream ideas of the 40s and 50s but in the 60s, their style became the mainstream. Burroughs’ novels, Junky and Naked Lunch were a big source of controversy because they examined the effects that the criminalization of drug usage had on users.
After World War II had cast a shadow on American society, the United States of America wanted to promote unity through conformity amongst Americans, meanwhile, immigrants arriving in America were completely isolated, discriminated against, and often murdered by Americans. Although Carlos Bulosan and Chester Himes lived under dramatically different social conditions, similar to the Beatniks, their novels were criticized because they were ugly narratives that decorated the divisions amongst races in America. Because these novels exposed the cracks in conformity and wholeness throughout the country, they could have been perceived as threats by the audience of American readers who were concerned with spiritual and social degeneration in their communities.
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While Kerouac and Burroughs developed this literary movement as an outlet for their nonconformity, Bulosan and Himes were not even recognized as human beings, much less had they had the chance to headline such movements. Although Bulosan and Himes published their protest novels a few years before the Beat movement began to gain traction, structural elements that were nonconventional saturated their novels. This deviation from the common American novel paralleled their attempt to escape the institutionalized racism that peopled the states. Perhaps, Kerouac and Burroughs believed that they could escape the inauthentic people and fabricated image of collective agency in America by leaving their luxurious lifestyles(in comparison to Bulosan and Himes’ lifestyle), becoming degenerates, and inadvertently glamorizing the bum lifestyle. Despite the dissimilar circumstances of these writers, it is important to recognize that through their literature, they were all able to develop a voice for themselves that did not go by the book. Burroughs and Kerouac managed to spark an entire movement of nonconformity because of their style of writing and rebellious way of living. Unfortunately, Bulosan and Himes were never offered the opportunity of integration, therefore it is likely they would appreciate any inclusiveness in society in contrast to the Beatniks.
To explore the literature that is rooted in nonconformity, rebellion, and protest, one must understand the circumstances that led to the Beat Generation, a group of artists who detailed their own experiences with the underworld drug culture, free sexuality, and Buddhism. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassiday met in New York in the late forties and were the pioneers of the Beat movement. In 1952, John Clellon Holmes published an article in the New York Times Magazine about the Beat Generation, defining them as having a “nakedness of mind, and ultimately, of the soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness”. Holmes writes that the Beats were the generation impacted by the war and victims of the depression, therefore they “distrusted collectivity” because “the peace [of mind] they inherited was only as secure as the next headline”. During the war, nationalism and unity had been promoted by the American government, and after the war was over, the government still echoed the same ideals in a war-torn society that had suffered because of these values. The Beats, also known as the Beatniks, were experimenting with recreational drugs, sex, and Buddhism not because they were disillusioned, but because they were trying to reinvent their ideals and define their purpose in the world, instead of adopting American morals. Although the Beatniks were a crowd of extremists, they did not directly challenge the false sense of unification in society, instead, they tried to remove all traces of it in their own lives.
I believe that Burroughs had no intentions to, but he managed to successfully capture the essence of rebellion and nonconformity through his novels amongst the Beat generation, whilst also demonstrating that artists involved in the Beat movement suppressed their privileges to create this bum lifestyle. Burroughs, similar to Jack Kerouac, was given an allowance by his parents until he was fifty years old and was an inheritor of the wealth from the Burroughs Corporation that his grandpa had started. Even though Burroughs was born into a pleasant American family, well-educated, and a Harvard graduate, he suffered from childhood traumas and was denied from serving in the army. He struggled with his homosexuality throughout his lifetime and revealed later in psychoanalysis that he had been forced to perform sexual activity on his nanny’s boyfriend. From sexual abuse to rejection, the audience(or at least those sympathetic towards those who struggle with addiction) can understand why he started on heroin in 1946. Although to Burroughs, drug addiction was a “state of being”, more simply put, “a way of life” (Burroughs, Junky 149).
For Burroughs, he believed that “the junk problem in its present form, began with the Harrison Narcotics of 1914” (Burroughs, Afterthoughts on a Deposition 2). Throughout Junky, Burroughs maintains a neutral tone and instead of critiquing drug use, his critiques are directed toward the deficiencies of particular drugs. The contents of Burroughs’ Junky did not have a specific purpose, but instead, it acted as confessional for him and turned into a novel of rebellion for the reader. Through his writing style, Burroughs believed that he could “disrupt the matrix of societal control structures” and “illuminate both addiction and deviant sexual identity” which were two ideas strongly present in his life (Whiting 153). Burroughs believed that the criminalization of drug usage only imprisoned more people, and perpetuated drug usage, and because of this, he wanted to change the language of addiction to be neutral instead of positive or negative. He believed that social anxieties towards drug use were not medical but moral. Society was not concerned with the well-being of drug addicts instead, they believed drug abuse was equal to spiritual degeneration. Beginning in the 1930s, society linked aberrant sexuality to drug addiction and so throughout Burroughs’ career, and specifically in Junky where he discusses his sexuality very little, he demonstrates that he did not want his drug addiction to define him, and have people believe that his homosexuality was a result of it.
Burroughs, along with the other members of the Beat movement, believed that one way to reprogram the societal control structures, like the false sense of unification in post-war America, could be to change the characteristics of “linguistic abstraction” (Whiting 153). Burroughs identifies “certain falsifications inherent in all existing Western languages” like the “Is” of identity and the definite article “The” which perpetuates the idea that an individual needs to be defined, and oftentimes these identifications are later inescapable. Something that stood out to me, was that in Burroughs’ exploration of the Western language, he was very concerned with the concept of “either/or”, and its implications of right or wrong and bad versus good. In Junky and in throughout his life, he refrained from using these types of expressions to avoid the implications of his opinions on other people’s actions. Even in videos of interviews with Burroughs regarding his success, he maintains an indifferent and relaxed attitude when questioned about his drug abuse, which he barely considers abuse. His writing style and his lifestyle are a powerful form of rebellion against the conformity that consumed 1950s America The Beat Generation decided that a different language was necessary to alter predetermined notions of identity, particularly sexual identity, and addiction.
In the 1950s, people were not sympathetic towards the troubles of drug abusers because they were more concerned with the personality of a drug addict. Today, it can be hard for readers to sympathize with Burroughs and Kerouac because they glamorized the “bum” lifestyle that writers like Bulosan and Himes only dreamed of escaping. Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 in Massachusetts and he reported that when he was in middle age, he had a mystical experience that made him realize that the “Beats” lived alienated, lonely, and impoverished lives but they were much more authentic and blessed than conformists. Kerouac was raised a Catholic but he loosely observed and practiced Buddhism. In his novel, The Dharma Bums, the narrator, Ray Smith does not explicitly say that one religion is superior to the others but Japhy Rider, the more radical of the two, blatantly rejected Christianity as the dominant religion because he opposed bourgeois American society. Ray Smith, the fictional representation of Kerouac, was practicing his definition of Buddhism that revolved around the “Truth”, but he acknowledged the fact that the “Truth” is the common element of all religions. One of the ways that Japhy Ryder protests against mid-century American society is by advising that Buddhism must be separated from Christianity because he did not believe that Christianity should be considered the religion of the nation. Edward Conze, a Marxist and Buddhist scholar, criticizes Kerouac’s interpretation of Buddhism because he explains that Kerouac “confuses mere self-indulgence with the disciplined spontaneity of the true Zen master”. Perhaps, Conze is trying to say that the Beat Generation disguised their selfishness, the disregard for the rest of society, and their self-indulgence in sex and drugs as their interpretation of Buddhism.
Kerouac never experienced a strong connection with the Buddhist community, and instead, his uncertainty about communities (because they imply conformity) was a principal element in the structure of The Dharma Bums. Ray Smith, the protagonist, is attracted to the sense of community but apprehensive about joining one because he is more comfortable in his spiritual journey as a lone wanderer, although he recognizes that community is a tenet of Buddhism. Kerouac’s reluctance to fully commit to Buddhism coupled with his spontaneous prose form (of writing) demonstrate that the Beat Generation valued individual agency in post-war America because, during the wars, the government's push for collective agency essentially helped society in no way.
In contrast to the Beat Generation, Carlos Bulosan not only suffered from the devastation of the war he was rejected by society altogether because he was Filipino. One can only imagine the experience of a Filipino in a postwar society that is anxious towards non-American ideals and people of color, but Bulosan’s narrative allows the audience to feel the emotional ugliness he describes. His autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart, documented his Filipino immigrant experience in America in 1930. While Bulosan was attending high school in the Philippines, there was a program called “Pensionado” that aimed to educate the Philippine children in an American way. This program made a lasting impression on Filipino children that there was equality amongst all races and classes in the United States (Mejia-Giudici 4). Bulosan, like millions of Filipino youth, was misinformed and disillusioned about the reality of America, so when he arrived in Seattle in 1930, he realized Filipinos could not enjoy the benefits of democracy in America. To make matters worse, the depression had made jobs scarce, and jobs were Filipino’s primary motive for coming to America.
In American Is in the Heart, Bulosan deviated from American literary conventions because he believed that “English was the best weapon” for social change when coupled with a non-traditional writing style (Bulosan 69). Perhaps, Bulosan’s novel produces disturbing feelings (and current) when reading it because its epistolary style makes it more than a piece of literature. Bulosan’s writing transgresses the time it was written in and brings into perspective the lives of millions of Filipinos who suffered from discrimination, racism, and extreme poverty. Both of the novels written by Burroughs and Bulosan are honest depictions of the realities they experienced in mid-century America, yet both are subject to controversy, demonstrating how Americans wanted to maintain this sense of collective agency that was not existent. Bulosan began to write America Is in the Heart as he sat down one day and “began piecing together the mosaic of our [his] lives in America” which is why the novel contains a fractured structure.
For Bulosan, writing was his power, an expression of community, and presented an opportunity to break free from the silence that suppressed the voices of the oppressed peoples in America. Throughout the novel, moments like when he writes a letter to a mother living in Arkansas but finds himself reflecting on his relationship with his mother, demonstrate that he had this multi-vocality that connected the different voices present in America. The epistolary style of this novel gives shape to his voice, making it reflective of all the oppressed communities in America and not just his own. Bulosan’s ability to make his writing both personal and impersonal stood out to me because when reading Burroughs’ Junky, I felt worlds away from the feelings he expressed and the actions that lead him towards drug abuse seemed so foreign. Bulosan managed to bring unity and coherence to the memories of his experiences (and the experiences of those around him) in two completely different countries that happened throughout his entire lifetime. As spectators of his loneliness, desperation, and rebellion, we can put this piece into perspective and feel overwhelming sympathy for Bulosan, but these same feelings did not come as easily when reading Junky and The Dharma Bums.
Similarly to Bulosan, Chester Himes documents his growing resentment towards being a black man in America during World War II. Lee Gordon, the protagonist, takes on a job as a union organizer but this only worsens his immigrant experience. Himes describes his writing style in Lonely Crusade as “messy” and mentions that after its publication. everybody hated it, “the left hated it, the right hated it, the Jews hated it” and even “the blacks hated it”. At the time of its publication, critics and audiences concluded that Himes must have thought that an ugly narrative would create a stronger reaction from people and earn itself the title of a protest novel more easily. Over time, Lonely Crusade had been categorized as protest fiction under the section of social realism. Himes' and Bulosan’s portrayal of the promises and failures of mid-century America required the unattractive truthfulness of their experiences and the emotional distress they endured. When writing a protest novel, the author must not hold back or be required to be sensitive towards a certain audience.
Before these novels about nonconformity and rebellion, written by the Beat Generation and outsiders of American society (like Bulosan and Himes), American fiction and language were to a degree dehumanizing because authors were afraid to deviate from the standard literary devices, essentially because they feared nonconformity. In contrast, these four authors deviate far from the continuum, the Beat writers even birthed a new literary style, because post-war American society did not support language that did not follow the guidelines. Ironically, people in positions of power wanted Americans to be happy, but they didn’t like art that revealed the cracks in the universal smile of America. Therefore when these authors published their writings, not only were their novels a strong source of universal dislike and controversy, but their personalities were criticized as well. When learning of the controversy these novels stirred, I find myself wondering whether it is possible to separate an artist’s work from the artist's or if it is necessary to analyze art within the context of the person creating it. Perhaps, Americans were the biggest critics of the protest novel because they didn’t want the rest of the world to see the tensions and unrest growing in the American people.
I conclude that Burroughs and Kerouac were able to fully break free from the conformity of the postwar period because they were white men born from wealthy families. Their experiences help highlight the fact that artists of color like Burroughs and Himes could not afford to self-indulge or reject their family's wealth because they had none of these advantages to begin with. In turn, Burroughs and Kerouac appear tremendously ignorant because they gave up all the rights, freedoms, and privileges that colored people were dying for. After reading these novels it is hard to not despite the post-war American identity. These representations remain extremely significant and valuable to contemporary readers because they allow us to realize how powerful the relationship can be, between social change and literature. Although Himes’ and Bulosan’s recollections did not directly bring about social change, they offer an emotional glimpse into the past and inform modern society of the promises it failed to keep and America’s failures throughout history which perpetuated racism. Not only do these pieces of history demonstrate the failures of America to the “others” of society, but they allow us to understand that collective agency is only possible when people acknowledge each other's agency and value everybody.
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