The Beats as Cultural
Others/Exotics in Recent Memoirs by Exile Poets
Thirty-fourth
Annual 20th
Century Literature and Culture Conf., Louisville, February 23-25, 2006
Poets who have come to the
Authors
such as Andrei Codrescu and Charles Simic
have published memoirs and poems detailing their fascination with
figures
associated with the Beat Generation. This paper examines the
representation of
Beat writers such as Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in Codrescu and Simic’s
texts,
and argues that the exile poets overlay the well-known figures of the
Beat
writers with yet another dimension of otherness and exoticism, in
effect
mirroring themselves and their own identity struggles as European
exiles in
these American dissident and non-conformist figures.