Lora Hates Spam

by John Tytell

As the title suggests, the book is a series of actual interviews with or about people who were a part of what is known as The Beat Generation. The original members of this elite company include Herbert Huncke, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

In the first interview, Huncke explains that the word 'Beat' refers to being exhausted, beaten down. Those of us who see this 1950s term as a reference to bongos and Maynard G. Krebs have a lot of enlightenment to catch up on and this book provides the facts. Huncke speaks candidly about his experiences in prison and the drug underworld and refers to the "terrifying honesty" often found in these counter cultures. He also relates his adventures on a tanker ship and about his pet monkey while working on the ship.

He speaks of known figures wanting to be gangsters in the criminal underworld and of circus people and how their associations are similar to these societies. He goes on to tell us about Chicago hipsters and the 'hip' element of the early 1930s, as well as meeting Doctor Kinsey and his contributions to the Kinsey report.

Some of the history and relevance of the book, The Cool World by Glenn O'Brien is explained and ideas about what it is to be hip. The early beatniks, dubbed by a journalist in parody of the Sputnik space exploration happening at the time, embraced the idea of being beaten down, the drug culture and the effects of becoming a social pariah.

This counter-altruism was sometimes poetic in its romanticist ideals.

The next interview with John Clellon Holmes mostly talks about Jack Kerouac and his book, On The Road, which according to Holmes brought a certain celebrity status to Kerouac and began to affect how the author related to people.

The book as a whole is very informative and tells much about the lives of legendary figured from a generation that is frequently misunderstood. It is sometimes poignant, telling how Burroughs became a recluse and fell into alcoholism, detailing relevant histories of names you don't hear much about in history class.

There is an actual interview with William Burroughs, who among other things, studied Archaeology much to my surprise. Between morphine addiction and associating with other names from the beat generation, we learn that Burroughs was once a farmer and the legend begins to look like a real person behind the public perception of him. The Holmes interview tells how the cult around Burroughs came to be and is followed by an interview with Carl Solomon, the man whom the poem, Howl was dedicated to.

There is also an interview with Alan Ginsberg and a touching tribute at the end that could almost make me feel nostalgic for an era that happened long before I was born. Overall an excellent look inside a significant subculture that helped to shape the counter-culture of the 1960s that would follow and mark a place in history when Western culture was forever changed.