By Nitya Arora 

Abstract

This article talks about how post-war American society was awakened from its conservative haze of domestic bliss through the literary counterculture movement that emerged in San Francisco during the 1950s. It focuses on how the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg challenged the contemporary censorship clampdown and emerged as an oral and literary phenomenon that went on to define the writing of the Beat Generation.

The post-war American society was riddled with an imposition of ‘repressive culture.’ With everyone returning home after the scarring experience of World War II, the State actively propagated conservative values as the norm and foregrounded the blissful dream of a white-picket fence with its ideal family and traditional gender roles. The dissemination of this reverie was carried forward by any and all forms of media – advertising agencies, radio shows, television shows, magazine articles, and so on and so forth. The generation that grew up on the cusp of these idealistic fancies was left disillusioned by the harrowing discrepancy between the mass representation and the reality of this narrative.

The disenfranchised youth whose everyday existence was left out of the discourse surrounding the American dream, were grappling with the denied access to their own identity and the lack of its representation. They began heavily questioning the supposedly content lifestyle of a nation that was reeling from the effects of an excruciating war, a Capitalist haze, and the seemingly invisible discontent with the jarring reality of marginalized sections. This critique of the unabashed hypocrisy that they recognized in every possible form of media led to the emergence of a subsequent counterculture commandeered by youth who wanted answers and explanations for these objective fallacies within the contemporary system. This was the becoming of the Beat Generation – a subculture of literary expression that stood for the desertion of conservative narratives, politics, and economics. San Francisco, at the time, was the West Coast hub for the counterculture movement, especially in writing. One of the most significant moments in its history was the first reading of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg in October 1955 at San Francisco’s Six Gallery and this poem became the breakthrough that Ginsberg needed to go on and define an entire generation’s writing and revelations.

In his unreckonable, unusual way of writing, Ginsberg shocked audiences with his “emotional time bomb” and “nitroglycerine shrieks” and demands for “instantaneous lobotomy.” His appeal was to the post-war American capitalist society caught in a haze – to wake them up and make them see reality for what it was. This is what defined the main motif of the Beats – an alternative lifestyle embedded in the horrors of domestically blissed America.

Ginsberg’s “Howl” represented a certain kind of transgressive literature that became distinctive to the Beats. Its uninhibited imagery fueled the discourse surrounding taboo subjects such as drug use, homosexuality, mental illness, and the failure of mental institutions and is laced with an overwhelming sense of jaded resentment towards consistent systemic failures. Although “Howl” sought to encapsulate the experience of the Beats, it is also simultaneously heavily autobiographical and cathartic. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met on the first day of his admission at the Columbia Psychiatric Institute in 1949. Here, Ginsberg assumed unrestricted creative freedom to represent counterculture with a multifaceted approach towards his contemporary anxieties. Its significance was also tethered to the exact moment at which it was disclosed to the world. It was seen by some as a “subterranean celebration.” Gary Snyder even remarked that “Poetry will never be the same. This is going to change everything. Everyone who attended was set back. It was the power of “Howl” and the defining moment in all our literary careers.” As Michael McClure said, it was as though “A barrier had been broken, a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America.”

After the recitation, Ginsberg was approached by Martha Rexroth who, along with poet Robert Creeley, asked him for a copy of what he had read and mimeographed twenty-five copies. He had, without a doubt, enraptured and shocked audiences with his emotional intensity and vulnerability along with the vulgar representation in his words. It was just a matter of time before this sensational oral expression of a generation’s truth, anger, and pain was given to the masses to revel in during their own time and through their own readings.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the owner of City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Publishing, and a patron of Beat writing, wanted to publish it as a paperback and challenge the country with this radical poem that walked the tightrope of oppressive obscenity laws at the time. What Ginsberg recited at this reading consisted of what would become the first part of the poem. He published it with two other parts and a footnote, along with other poems in his 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems.

In March 1957, two undercover cops purchased this book from the City Lights Bookstore. Soon after, Ferlinghetti and the bookstore manager were arrested and charged under Californian law with the sale of ‘obscene and indecent’ material. The obscenity trial took place in San Francisco in June 1957. Ferlinghetti’s defence argued the literary and artistic credibility of “Howl” by calling expert witnesses, including English professors and critics, to give testimonies and justify that the poem should be protected as free speech under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The Prosecutor claimed that “Howl” was pro-communism, pro-homosexuality, pro-promiscuity, anti-capitalism, and anti-America. The trial became extremely popular in mass media at the time and with the popularity of the trial came the booming success of Howl and Other Poems. It became a phenomenon of its own.

The verdict of the trial was given in October 1957 in Ferlinghetti’s favour. The judge famously declared that “Howl” was not obscene but in fact, “socially significant and historically significant.” The eventual victory of Ferlinghetti resulted in “Howl” becoming a revolutionary representation of the counterculture of the 1950s and 60s. It set the precedent that allowed space in popular media for ‘freer’ literature and art. Now, it is eternally embossed for its win in favour of a cultural shift that sought to expand boundaries in artistic expression during a national censorship clampdown.

It is fascinating to see how literature like “Howl” became a roaring success as an oral phenomenon as well as a physical literary artefact. The dissemination of a text, as scrutinized as this one, reinforced the rebellious spirits of a generation that was choking on the American pipe dream being shoved down its throat. This text emerged as a revolutionary reckoning that still inspires a plethora of creative endeavours. It also helps re-examine works of a section of literature (Beat Literature) that has been criticized for its exclusion of certain communities as the revolutionary conversation evolves with time. Beat Literature has been criticized for its gender bias and limited representation of narratives. That is when the preservation of this text becomes vital so that we may never forget that cultural phenomena have to be criticized and analyzed to make sure that ongoing revolutions do not leave out essential people in their deliberations. For instance, the Beats glorified race differences and excluded women and their standpoints at a time when society was in the throes of the Civil Rights Movement and on the brink of the second wave of the feminist movement. However, contextualizing this poem helps us understand that at its time of publication, its amplification held unparalleled importance in terms of shedding light on the government’s crucial judgmental errors. This mass epiphany was made possible with the obscenity trial and its blatant clampdown of censorship and conservative worldviews in a post-war American society. We moved on from listening to the recitation of this poem and having collective cultural revelations to reading it individually and devouring the late-night internal revelations that it brought on under buzzing streetlights. The widespread circulation and consequent inevitable complications helped “Howl” subvert its identity as an initial oral counterculture depiction and become part of the canonized literary representation of counterculture itself.

Author’s Bio

Nitya Arora is a second-year student at OP Jindal Global University pursuing English Honours. Her areas of interest include literary studies, book cultures, and mapping cultures through their literary representations. 

Image Source: https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2021/howl-recording-release.html