Chapter 17 - Beats, Black Culture and Bohemianism in Mid-Twentieth-Century New York City

Summary

This chapter tracks the fascination with mid-twentieth century New York black American culture through a reading of influential works by white writers. The second half of the chapter explores the role that New York–based African American writers Ted Joans and LeRoi Jones played in the development of the Beat Generation, a movement which began in New York City. While the Beats have long been associated with the triumvirate of white American writers who met at Columbia University in the late 1940s–Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs–African American writers played an important role in the development of what became known as the Beat Generation. As this chapter explores, while Mailer and Kerouac in particular viewed jazz as the quintessential sound-track for post-war New York culture, Baldwin, Jones and Joans developed a new jazz aesthetic in their writing which further explodes the myth of the Beat Generation as a quintessentially white phenomenon. And while Baldwin in particular was dismissive of the Beats’ interest in jazz, this chapter traces a less rigid trajectory between white and black culture, suggesting that bebop, arguably more than literature, became a vital text where issues of race, class, gender and authenticity were played out.