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University Daily Kansan Monday, May 16, 1969
Commercialized Beats
Is the "beat generation" dying out? Or has it been moderated, shoved around and finally accepted by society as an integral part of the modern civilization of 1960?
A few years ago there appeared in San Francisco a colony of young people who were at odds with the hustle and bustle of the madly rushing world. These people, the beatniks, were completely withdrawing from society in a passive protest against modern civilization.
THE TRUE BEATNIKS' rebellion is social, cultural and economical. They won't stand to maintain the rigid standards necessary to be "socially acceptable" in this day and age. However, they themselves conform rigidly to the beatnik pattern to be socially acceptable to their beatnik friends.
True heatniks want knowledge, but they don't want to have to put forth the energy to seek it. The ideal situation is to sit on your rear end and let all of the reams and reams of discoveries worked out by other men sink in by osmosis.
The beatnik requires little in the form of monetary pleasures other than the bare necessities in food, clothing and shelter — and access to plenty of jazz music. Many of the beatniks are poets, artists and writers, all of whom can produce works of "genius" in their own good time. They strive for individuality in these works, it is said — but they all seem to come out with that special beatnik brand of quality.
AT FIRST PEOPLE merely laughed at the beatniks and expected the movement to pass over
quickly. However when the public saw that the movement was spreading instead of dying, the pressures of our complicated world began to press in.
Actually, the beatniks neither have died out nor have been totally accepted — they have been commercialized.
The poets, artists and writers have been quite successful. Names such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Lipton have come to mean fairly big money in the royalty returns column. That "way-out" music has come to be accepted the country-over.
VENICE WEST, near Santa Monica, Cal., and San Francisco's Columbus Avenue have become leading attractions for tourists on the West Coast. Beatniks daily are subjected to the prying and curious eyes of "respectable" citizens who don Bermuda shorts and dark glasses, pay $1.50 for a cup of espresso coffee and gape for hours as they listen to beat poetry and wild music by dim candlelight.
Even the topic of beankis is commercialized with national magazines publishing multi-page spreads on the rebellious culture.
Society has conformed to accept the beatnik but more — and this is certainly true to modern day trends — to twist the culture and situation to meet the desired needs of entertainment and commercialism of modern civilization.
How can you ask for a more compatible, agreeing little society than the one we live in today?
— Carolyn Frailey
Non-violent?
Editor:
I am a young man of 26, nonviolent in behavior, and a devoted disciple of the rather amusing personality of Gandhi. I have never committed violence against any form of life (except bugs, being an entomologist by vocation). I consider the Hindu Society's belief that cows when they become old and useless and that monkeys when they become sick, ought to be looked after properly is splendid. I am aware that this humanitarian policy very often creates famine conditions in certain parts of India, but that is of little significance. The consumption of huge quantities of food materials by old cows and sick monkeys has made India a classical example of poverty, but that is not very important either. After all India can always obtain foodgrain from the United States to fill the empty bellies of its teeming millions. Long live the generous people of these United States! Long live the old cows and sick monkeys! Long live the Hindu version of humanitarianism and the highly despicable Indian brand of non-violence.
I AM amazed that the followers of Gandhi in Delhi, who formulate the policies of the present Indian government should so blatantly betray the Gandhian principles of non-violence. My investigative and candid mind pictures before my wide-open eyes the long line of Indian aggressions and violence in various forms. Even after the Laiqat-Nehru Pact that guaranteed the protection of minorities in Pakistan and India more than six hundred communal riots have taken place inside India, resulting in the great injustices and injuries to the minority communities in that "secular" state. For me, a born humanitarian and a believer in non-violence, this is enough to accuse the Indians of their betrayal of
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
the Gandhian principles. But alas, this is not all.
The Indians, after the murder of Gandhi at the hands of a fellow Hindu, went wild. They aggrressed in Hyderabad, Junagadh and Silkim and Bhutan and they also aggrened in Kashmir where, as elsewhere, the aggression is not yet vacated. All this in defiance of UN and world public opinion. Whither Gandhi's non-violence?
**ROOF LEAKS, COLD IN WINTER, NEEDS FAINT AND IT'S MY MOST EXPENSIVE ROOM BECAUSE OF TH VIEW-THAT'S A GIRL DORM NEXO DOWR*
NEVERTHELESS, my hopes have once again been strengthened. The visit of Indian ambassador to this campus and his stimulating address to the KU students has led me to believe that India is about to reverse its course of aggression and violence and come back to the Gandhian way. I assume that India will vacate its aggression in Kashmir and elsewhere. She will try to right the wrongs done to the minorities in India. She will hesitate to support Russians if they decide to murder another European nation. The Indian behavior over Hungary was rather regrettable.
Farooq A. Siddiqui
Karachi, Pakistan
graduate student
I close my letter with optimism.
***
Bibler and Dirt
Editor:
I am inclined to come to the conclusion that the "campus humor" of such men as Mr. Bibler could easily be removed from the Kansan with little loss to the community. It becomes more and more disturbing to see the sociosexual and the educational aspects of our existence intentionally distorted and perverted with little or no purpose in mind — a sort of "dirt for dirt's sake."
Possibly we should express our hopeful "striving for maturity and meaning" by suggesting that the space now devoted to our "symbolic" Little Man on Campus be used for more constructive and purposeful ventures, possibly a humor relative to the supposed maturity of the college student; at least an expression with some sort of "content" worthy of "civilized" human beings.
Or possibly this IS the level of maturity of the college student. If so, I beg your pardon.
F. Roberts Searcy Shreveport, Louisiana, senior
We better not let anyone see us together in public
It Looks This Way...
By Jack Harrison
Our four-year residence in Lawrence is about over. We're grateful for all we've received from the University, in the way of facts, friends, brain stimulation and fun. But we don't feel it's been just a one-way transaction. We've left a few things for the city, too.
We have supplied a little capital for the Jayhawk Cafe, the Wagon Wheel, the Big Buy, a couple of theaters, several service stations and the local arm of Anheuser-Busch.
The A. & P. and Rusty's are still in business - due in no small part to our efforts to keep them going.
The Dine-A-Mite has a new juke box — a monument to our generous nature and love of good music.
At least one clothing store prospers because of us. We only buy clothes that are on sale, but this place has a good share of sales. Come to think of it, it had three "going-out-of-business" sales in the past year.
Sears and Roebuck no doubt will suffer when we leave. We have been happy to relieve them of two tires, a battery and a can of tennis balls in the nest
rew months. But we'll be kind to their cohorts in Salina come June. Last December, as we recall, we had the old Christmas spirit and spread our monetary blessings all over town, as we picked up gifts for the folks, our little brother — and sisters, too.
We're proud to hear that the Kansas Turnpike is now in the black. We feel we had a part in creating the prosperity which enables the Turnpike patrolmen to have air-conditioned cars this summer. A few hundred 35-cent tolls to Topeka add up, you know.
Green's newsstand should be grateful for our business, mostly in pocket books, ranging from Aldous Huxley's "Antic Hay," to Caryl Chessman's "Cell 2459, Death Row." The drugstore near our place also has been a regular recipient of a fair share of our budget — for newspapers — ranging from five to 15 cents a day.
There's a shoe store down on Massachusetts that has profited from our daily trek up Mount Oread. That worn-off shoe leather had to be replaced, and they did it — for a price, of course.
The list is unending — of all the places we have parted with our cash. It is sad. But that's what keeps the economy healthy.
Some persons may ask what keeps the fair city of Lawrence operating. We can only answer, with all sincerity, that for the past few years we've done our best.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50th St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the university year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Jack Morton ... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Douglas Yocom and Jack Harrison
Douglas Yocom and Jack Harrison Co-Editorial Editors
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