Rack 'em: reading Polsky on the Beats

In Ned Polsky's sociological essay on the Beats in New York's Greenwich Village in 1960, he says this:

"In so far as most beats ... can be said to have a dominant intellectual interest, it is jazz music. And the jazz world is the single non-beat segment of American society that often attracts beats."

Dominant intellectual interest, eh? Well, I'll go with that. In fact, I'm typing this little blog under the mighty intellectual influence of some super-fast, dazzlingly-intricate Miles Davis jazz. Disc three of the Birthday Celebration 3-CD compilation, to be precise. Yeah, man! When in Rome etc ... Anyway, like a second-string player in a try-hard outfit pretending it's the reincarnation of the Miles Davis quintet, I fumbled my way through Polsky's 35-page essay over the weekend. (And I did this for no better reason than the Paul Newman/Hustler cover caught my eye among a few shelves of books that I haven't looked at properly for years).

Two ball in the centre pocket: Polsky's well-chosen cover image

And ... it's really interesting. His big point, it seems, is that the Beats are not synonymous with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg et al. These are the self-selecting "exhibitionists" and "publicity-seekers" beloved of the "square" sensation-seeking journalists doing magazine features. Instead, the majority of Beats are publicity-shy, wanting nothing to do with the conventional world of the media and all its trappings. Nothing to do with mainstream society at all, in fact. I was quite struck by this. Polsky reckons he spoke to about 300 Beats in and around Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side and this was a virtually uniform position. These were conscious - and very militant - dropouts and refuseniks. True, Polsky drills into their situation with a sociologist's data-driven insistence. The Beats are often "scuffling". Making money from selling drugs, living off girlfriends or well-off relatives. Often, they're also getting some work in restaurants in either Beat businesses/hang-outs (acceptable) or in square places (not acceptable, but sometimes necessary). Some are even begging on the streets and are virtually (or completely) homeless. Their philosophy is determinedly anti-work - even though, as Polsky neatly shows, their hard-scrabble lifestyles are actually often more demanding than ordinary jobs. And there's more ... a lot more. I won't try to summarise it all (badly, no doubt), but will just pull out a few other quick things:

*Polsky makes a distinction between true Beats and "hipsters". The latter, he says, are more like the media-friendly "operators" who parade their Beat-ness with flamboyant clothes and look-at-me hep talk. 

*He also says that the word "hip" (or hep) is from the world of opium smoking where the smoker lies on his/her hip - and is "on the hip" (and, by extension, is in the know about drugs and participates in that semi-closed world). He also pulls intellectual rank on his Beat interviewees by saying that none of them knew about this etymology (what mate, you don't even know your own history ...?).

*He also, rather startlingly, reckons that Beats as a sub-culture were instrumental in popularising marijuana use across other US sub-groups (middle-class college kids, so-called "ethnic" folk and rock-orientated youngsters etc). Also, apparently marijuana came into the USA largely via Mexicans in about 1910, including via Mexican cowboys. Put that in yr pipe and smoke it ...

"He mentions the very young age of many Beats ("many are teenage runaways"), which - I guess - lends a new meaning to the classic "teenage dreams, so hard to beat" line.

*And also, Polsky mentions (in one of his addenda inserted in a 1968 update to the original 1961 essay) how the Beats were from about 1960 first driven from their Greenwich Village strongholds by higher rents and tourist/media attention, drifting across to the Lower East Side, but then - it seems - slowly dissipating and turning into (or being obliterated by) the successor "hippie" and "folkie" movements. And I guess the writerly side of Beat culture has become the main historical legacy ...

Polsky has quite a lot to say about Beats and their relationship to writing (and other artistic endeavours), and one passage is worth quoting: 

"Most beat literature is poor when it is not godawful ... The beats have not significantly extended the range of old forms. And their contribution in the way of a new art form, if one can call it that, consists of bad poetry read to bad jazz, with not even an integration of the badness."

Don't hold back, Ned, say what you mean. I must say, having dabbled with Kerouac and some post-beat stuff like Hunter S Thompson and Lester Bangs, I'm not inclined to disagree. And, either way, it is - I must admit - quite enjoyable to read a writer like Polsky who appears to combine proper research with a few critical zingers. In fact, Polsky is a thoroughly good read. Mostly serious and slightly old-fashioned (careful explanations of methodology, references to other writers as "Mr" or "Miss" this or that), but also tough-minded, seemingly quite fair and, as I've said, also entertaining. Maybe it's because this university-based sociologist had a grounding in underground culture himself. He mentions he was a "thirteen-year-old zoot suiter" in 1942, and apparently he and his sharp-dressed teenage mates used to:

"Make the Harlem 'balcony scenes' - boosting Bessie Smiths and Hot Fives from the balcony of the Rainbow Music Shop before the wartime scrap drive wrecked the supply, going wild in the Apollo Theatre's sweet-smelling second balcony - odoriferous from pomade and pot, though we didn't know about the latter at the time - to a Basie-Millinder twin bill."

Yes, great times! It can sound cheesy taken in isolation, but I reckon Polsky's on the level man. Why do I think so? Because elsewhere in the excellent Pelican collection Hustlers, Beats And Others (1969), Polsky also says of himself that "his chief recreation since the age of thirteen has been billiards". I think he has that foot-in-both-camps quality - sympathetic to underworld types (the book also has chapters on pool playing, hustlers, and er, the sociology of pornography) but also schooled in properly dispassionate research methods. It's maybe a little like Jon Savage with punk. And in fact I think the way that the Beat scene intersected with the mass media world and sort of divided between the inauthentic celebrity ambassadors and more down-to-earth or uncompromising hardcore types is probably true of both the beat and punk scenes, albeit that the latter grew into something much bigger. Anyway, I mustn't bang on any longer - I'm already (ahem) behind the eight ball as it is. I leave Polsky's very enjoyable Beats essay with a fresh determination to read (I think re-read actually) his two chapters on poolroom players and semi-criminal hustlers, and also - mark this! - to actually play a bit more pool. Great game. I always wanted to be like Paul Newman ...