If one does a search in the MLA
database for “off-beat” as a title
word, the number of hits is limited to four different entries. This can
mean one of two things: Either the notion of “off-beat” is seriously
under-theorized and something needs urgently to be done about it; or
else the notion of “off-beat” is completely marginal to literary and
cultural criticism and should best remain so. This talk proceeds in the
belief that the former is closer to the truth and that a venture off
the beaten track is always worthwhile, and not merely another exercise
in academic beating off. Let us therefore examine the etymologies of
beat and off-beat, and use them for a discussion of Jack Kerouac and
his cultural politics and poetics.
Was Kerouac a cool Beat
road-tripper, womanizer and drinker of rot-gut wine?
Or - was Kerouac the sensitive
writer type, intelligent, rugged, yet handsome?