The lost Beats: The World War II labor camp origin of the Beat movement
Abstract
This dissertation relocates one of the principle origins of the Beat cultural and literary movement both geographically and temporally to one particular World War II era Civilian Public Service camp in Waldport, Oregon. The importance of this relocation or re-visioning is not only that it reshapes our understanding of what the Beat movement meant but, more importantly the influence it continues to have on American culture. At first blush, the temporal aspect of this relocation seems as if it would cause by far the more significant difference from the common theories of Beat origin, predating as it does even the first meeting of Ginsberg and Kerouac at Burroughs' apartment in 1943 by two years, the first reading of Howl in 1955 by more than a decade and the publication in 1959 of On the Road. However, the Waldport, Oregon camp served as an incubator, or more accurately, a pressure cooker wherein the philosophies and artistic beliefs later known as Beat were formed and put into practice. This earlier eruption of Beat culture clearly indicates that the forces so far assumed to have created Beat society were not only obviously active at an earlier date but were at least partially if not wholly misidentified. This geographic shift to the interior of a labor camp, more than allowing a closer, even microscopic, view of the growth of the group's artistic and operational philosophies, argues that the forces of alienation, isolation and re-establishment of community that formed camp society formed as well the basis of Beat society.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Curtis, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Modern literature|American studies|American history|American literature
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