1. What do these movies have in common? Midnight Run Convoy Thelma and Louise Motorcycle Diaries Smokey and the Bandit Mad Max Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Cannonball Run Easy Rider Little Miss Sunshine The Muppet Movie National Lampoon’s Vacation Bonnie and Clyde Into the Wild Road Trip

2. What do these books have in common? Road Fever The Lost Continent Blue Highways Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Travels with Charley Into the Wild The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

3. Getting on the road— an archetype Have you ever taken a road trip? Why do people often decide to “hit the road”?

4. Find yourself Rebellion Dissatisfied with the times Need something new Looking for something Need to break away…

5. Why might someone have the need to do leave his or her milieu and look for something else “on the road”?

6. zeitgeist German. the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time. the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period of time.

7. zeitgeist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP29Baxs0K0

8. Zeitgeist of the 60s?

9. What is the Zeitgeist of your generation? Write down three characteristics of your generation. Remember— GENERAL TRENDS—moral, intellectual; GENERAL thoughts and feelings--not specific Wexford trends.

10. Share your characteristics with your group members. Work with what you have.

11. Post WWII Attitude Family, sobriety, hard work, material possessions Confidence in American Supremacy Pre-Civil Rights movement Antiestablishmen t Alternative lifestyle Experimentation Flexible sexuality Inventive arts Beat Attitude

12. Beat Beliefs Freedom Individuality Experimentation Style of writing Inspired by bop jazz “We love everything - Billy Graham, the Top Ten, Rock and Roll, Zen, apple pie, Eisenhower - we dig it all.”

13. Jack Kerouac Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation

14. What’s BEAT ? Times Square hustler Herbert Huncke introduced Kerouac to the term meaning “down and out, poor and exhausted”

15. BEATNIK Herb Coen coined the term to reference West Coast youth Fashioned after the Russian term Sputnik

16. Beat Roots “exhausted, at the bottom of the world, looking up or out, sleepless, wide- eyed, perceptive, rejected by society, on your own, streetwise” The Beatitudes Beat Generation: “describing a new sort of stance toward reality, behind which a new sort of consciousness lay.”

17. Kerouac’s other intended meanings Beatific—bestowing blessings, bliss, happiness A beatific vision—a direct knowledge of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven

18. Beatitudes Eight sayings of Jesus at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. The word is from the Latin beatus, meaning “blessed,” and each of the Beatitudes begins with the word blessed. They include “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”JesusSermon on the MountLatin

19. Kerouac’s Definition It’s a kind of furtiveness… Like we were a generation of furtives. You know, with an inner knowledge… a kind of beatness… and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world… So I guess you might say we’re a ‘Beat Generation.’

20. Kerouac on Steve Allen Show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzCF6hgEfto

21. Kerouac on the Beats But yet, but yet, woe, woe unto those who think that the Beat Generation means crime, delinquency, immorality, amorality... woe unto those who attack it on the grounds that they simply don’t understand history and the yearning of human souls... woe in fact unto those who make evil movies about the Beat Generation where innocent housewives are raped by beatniks!... woe unto those who spit on the Beat Generation, the wind’ll blow it back.

22. Jack Kerouac Born in Massachusetts in 1922 French-Canadian Family Profoundly effected by the death of his eldest brother, Gerard “Joual” was first language Inspired by “The Shadow” and Thomas Wolfe First published in 1950

23. Kerouac continued Received football scholarship to Columbia University Had a short-lived college career Joined Merchant Marine Married a total of three times Lived with his mother nearly his entire life Died in 1969 from complications from alcoholism

24. After two World Wars many Americans felt hopeless and bitter. Others hid under a façade of complacency and conformity— trying to become part of the American Dream

25. The Beats rejected society’s institutionalized religions and sought new spirituality through heightened individual experiences.

26. Drugs and the Beats Benzedrine (benny) Tea Amphetamines Alcohol

27. Kerouac had little patience with “hipsters” wearing goatees and berets—he referred to them as POSEURS and conformists Kerouac disassociated himself with the beatniks as they evolved into HIPPIES in the sixties

28. The Merry Pranksters 1960s (1964) Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) Lead by Ken Kesey—One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Thomas Wolfe--The Electric Kool- Aid Acid Test

29. Further… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDSes1bQjKM

30. Further

31. Ken Kesey

32. Ken Kesey with restored Further

33. Major Works On the Road by Kerouac Howl by Allen Ginsberg Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

34. On the Road Written in three weeks Interesting medium Semi-autobiographical Roman a clef Episodic novel

35. 120 feet long

38. Currently owned by Jim Irsay, owner of the Colt’s Purchased in 2002 for 2.2 million

39. Kerouac’s manuscript http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmyS1EEVFbs

40. Style Spontaneous prose Stream of consciousness Disregard of grammar

41. Roman a Clef - characters and their counterparts

42. Kerouac reading haiku http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMwAtOom7 CA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMwAtOom7 CA Steve Allen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9SZ0IVcwjw

43. ...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!” (Kerouac).

44. Madness in The Catcher in the Rye Pg. 1 I’ll just tell you about his madman stuff… 11He (Spencer) was mad about history. 35…snow…was still coming down like a madman. 41He (Stradlater) was mad about himself. 42I went right on smoking like a madman. 48 It just drove me stark staring mad when I thought about her and Stradlater…

45. More madness 49A couple of minutes later, he was snoring like mad. 73I apologized like a madman… 95She (Sunny) looked at me like I was a madman. 134I swear to God I’m a madman (for asking Sally to move away with me). 159…this big old madman desk… 165 She’s (Phoebe) a true madman sometimes.

46. Close read pages 1 and 2 in packet today. Complete in your notebook the free write task at the bottom of page 2 today. Close read pages 5, 6, 7, 8 and complete page 9 for homework—Due 2-6.