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We have no desert. We have no endless highways. Jazz is not the music of subversion, The drugs are different, nastier in so many ways. We have pubs not bars so we lack for barflies. We probably don't even have the Presses willing to take publishing chances. Alexander Trocchi went to the Paris and the US to be swept up into the literary Beats. Though the Beats were clearly read in the UK, they could only ever be an import, not a homegrown movement.

The only thing our current retro-Beat hipsters may share with their idols, is an alacrity to eschew any political analysis. "Howl" is exactly that, a primal scream of political frustration that has nowhere to nail its colours, so curses a pox upon all houses and shambles off into the drop-outsville of self-indulgence and desultory hedonism. An inquiry into the nature of pleasure can be a political inquiry as well as a philosophical one. But the Beats just threw up their hands in surrender.

Dan, thanks for a wonderful post, and I can't wait to see 'Howl' If it's anything like as as good as 'Capote' we're on for a real treat.

I'm also intrigued about "On The Road" I see Kristen Stewart is in the movie, I thought she was very good in "Into the Wild' and having such a big movie star in the film should help bring the Beats to a even bigger and younger audience..

Dylan, is going to be the soundtrack to my day.. Ginsberg's favourite Dylan track was Desolation Row.

The problem with filming all this history is, it reduces everything to a lifestyle. While there certainly was an element of how they lived their lives (Bukowski, Kerouac, Burroughs the heroin addict) that fed their work, film rarely is able to grapple with the written word and do it justice; the Beats were nothing if not their language and rhythms; can't see celluloid (or is it all digital these days?) doing justice to that.

Simon, it was a pleasure to put this together.

Marc, I don't know I agree about Howl. Well, maybe I on agree on the analysis but not the negative spin. I think that's the point I was making by tracing it back to the mystics and the desert - everything was personal to those guys, and everyone who was not holed up in the desert well, like you say, a pox on all their houses.

I know we disagree on where that leads us. For me all attempts to "be political" will fall flat in a sea of well-meaning vagary, and the absolutely personal IS the only real political, the only thing that stands a hope at achieving a wider reach than the author's own woolly intentions.

My favourite shop in the world is called The Albion Beatnik, a store devoted to jazz and the Beat poets (it opens at lunchtime, and closes at around midnight and is THE hub for literary and spontaneous music nights in Oxford). The owner's big complaint about the Beats is the same as yours, Marc, in your second comment - and here I DO agree: there's too much lifestyle. Too much posturing and posing. Sadly the Beats became somewhat caricatures of their own lifestyles, and there is a real danger that the retro-Beat as you call it focuses on that at the expense of the words and rhythms

We don't really stand on different ends of the spectrum. What is the politics of the personal if not a study of (political) relationships, 1-to-1 and wider? The politics of the personal doesn't stop with the individual.

I've been dreading these films for a long time. There are some things that Hollywood should be banned from touching. It would make Kerouac crawl his way out of the grave just so he could drink himself to death again.

Not sure personally. For me either we have to contextualise oursleves with EVERYTHNG or with nothing. I feel really uneasy looking at "one to one or wider" unless that wideness is infinite, which isn't possible. That was the drift of the paper I appended to Songs - that the moment we think of ourselvs in categories we're done for (although, of course, practically we HAVE to) - it has to be all or nothing to be meaningful, fluid, and truly personal. So I think we may use the same language but actually disagree :)

Cody, I disagree, what is wrong with making movies about the Beats, our culture shouldn't be preserved in aspic but continually reinvented and remixed . And if the movies bring more people to the source material, so much the better. (look at Capote)

And it's not as if the original material ceases to exist, just because Hollywood decides to make a movie of it. On The Road is still on your bookshelf.

I think Kerouac would crawl his way out of his grave to drink himself to death all over again, if he was being ignored by the most important cultural force on the planet. Hollywood!

lord save us from cultural mash-ups...

Dan - interesting post.

I was getting really annoyed until I got to your last two paragraphs. Not least it gave me hope that the "We as a society have tried..." comment was ironically written rather than seriously intended.

But I can't join in the reverence of "The Beat Bunch".

There is always some variation on the "more authentic than thou" theme going on. "We aren't phony we're authentic". Beat is another cycle of that isn't it?

Authenticity is to be found among the labouring workers, rough gamekeepers, South Americans, the petty criminal, the outsider, the primitive, or whatever it is this time.

So long as the sexy excluded ones are only interpreted by the sensitives, the illusion of authenticity is sustained.

Heaven help the sensitives if the authentics get to be authentically authentic: sports-channels in HD, burbery everywhere, WAGs, and the EDL. They aren't with the programme at all.

Still if spontaneous unique rebellion is what we want, capitalism bless it will package it as an-experience-to-have-before-you-die. I suppose now that the boomers parents are dead or dying they think it is distant enough.

Beat et al after all depend entirely on 'straight' society for its definition. All hitchers, no drivers is not a transport strategy.

Howl? Give me a poem about what it feels like to raise children to be mostly sane and mostly happy but not always, while holding down a normal job in a normal town. Just living a decent life as a person with an inner life, getting on with the living, loving, breeding and dieing. No more special than the rest of us, but no drone to be mocked.

Simon, I must disagree. It's not that things should be preserved in aspic, but it is crucial that the material be respected. Kerouac drank himself to death, originally, because he felt misunderstood by the majority of his fans - he denounced anything to do with "beatniks" and used to come raging out of his house to scare off the "hippies and beatniks" camped out on his lawn. It's all there in his diaries. He'd rather have been obscure than misunderstood, monetized and co-opted.

David, yes, this is something I've debated a lot and thought about a lot. I'll probably ramble rather than being cogent so apologies.

First, yes, there is a LOT of posturing and wannabe cool in the literary scene that associates itself with angst and outsiderdom because they are perceived to be the in thing. It's slick corporate surface sell-out nonsense.

And YES, there is very little of the authenticity of the every day (although that WAS very popular, wasn't it, with The Corrections et al a while back?).

BUT there are still vast swathes of stigmatised groups in society whose voices need to be heard. Drug addiction is NOT all heroin chic; mental illness is NOT all designer bipolar; self-harm is NOT all emo accessorising, and the fact that there IS so much posturing makes it harder still for the people for whom these are a reality to be heard.

I am certainly not advocating "spontaneous rebellion" - that wouldn't be spontaneous, would it? I love Howl. I hate corporate Beatnikness. As a writer what I advocate is people saying what they want to say, stating their truth, whatever that is. What I really dislike is people saying they (dis)like something because they think they should - which applies to anything from celebrity culture to Dan Brown to the Beats. It's not about authenticity. It's about having a mind of one's own and not being afraid of being shouted down for speaking it.

Hmm, much rambliness, and I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you - just thinking aloud.

Cody, yeah I DO agree with Simon when I said there are worse things than getting people reading Howl BUT I'm with you on this - I love what the Beats wrote, not the later hippy shit that people slathered onto it. It's a shame that we've lost the former and that all we're focusing on is the latter - I think that was exactly the point I was trying to make.

I think the worst thing is that people forget how the original authors felt about it - and that is paramount when treating the material with respect. Ginsberg was much more easy going about things, but Kerouac was vehement in his opposition to it. If we're using Kerouac to sell Levis and making Hollywood films out of his work, we've lost the plot. And it's his plot. It deserves respect. Watching the last interview he ever gave is pretty heartbreaking, but speaks directly to this kind of thing.

Cody I will defer to your knowledge of Kerouac, but I think you're jumping the gun, criticising the film before you've even seen it.

Walter Salles who is directing 'On The Road' did a fine job with 'The Motorcycle Diaries, Sam Riley was excellent in the Ian Curtis biopic 'Control' and Kristen Stewart is a fine young actress.. And I'm sure that will show the material the "respect" it deserves.

But what ever happens, the film will NOT have hurt the book in anyway, it will still be on your bookshelf, and if they do a great job a whole new audience will be buying the book from Amazon.

And that can only be a good thing?

Thanks for such an informed and passionate guest post, Dan.