New York Historical Society & New York Public Library

I enjoyed hearing what the presenters at the New York Historical Society had to say and seeing what they had set out for us, even if much of it was not new to me. What I found the most alluring, though, was the extensive amount of information and ephemera that was available relating to individual persons. I was able to look up my great great uncle's phone number, address, and business listing and find some potential sources of information about his role as something of a real estate mogul in the developing city pre-WWI and onwards.

Of course, that was more of a personal thing than something related to Washington Square, but I'm excited to see what else the place has to offer in the way of historical documents and memorabilia. I'm very interested in the relationship between the university and the community over the years, and hope to be able to get a look at some of the contracts and negotiations that ensued between the two entities. It was also interesting to be able to see the mechanisms through which the city spread northward over the years.

All that said, while I did enjoy the visit to the New York Historical Society, I didn't have enough time there to find it truly inspiring or to dig up much on my own. Our Saturday visit to the New York Public Library to see the Kerouac exhibit, while overall less exciting to me (I'm not a big Kerouac fan) had significantly greater pathos and inspired with greater ease.

The Kerouac exhibit led me to think a little more in depth about something that had already been nagging at me a little bit, and that is the question of whether the Beat generation really filled a completely unique role in American history or whether theirs was a role that has actually been filled by some group or another in every generation over the last hundred years. There are obvious differences, but the beatniks certainly derived something from the flappers and gave a lot to the hippies, who in turn passed the torch along until it reached the grunge-generation and eventually trickled down into the post-grunge independent movement led by what we now think of as hipsters.

Kerouac's apparent obsession with dressing and living in the manner that people did just before his time, but editing out the parts of the old doctrine that were a little too "traditional" (mainly sexual containment) is something that has persisted for decades. Everything from the glasses and the paintings to the way he kept his notebook to the fact that he typed "On the Road" on a scroll, and almost as a stream-of-consciousness, no less, fits with the kind of counter-culture nostalgia for days-we've-never-seen that drives the modern day hipster movement. I'm increasingly fascinated by the similarities between the counter-culture movements over the years - I've read descriptions of beatniks as having been sucked into a faux-anti-mainstream tradition of writing exclusively in moleskines and doing their damndest to live in apartments with exposed brick. The similarities are almost a bit comical.

I don't see the Kerouac exhibit as something that will serve as particularly interesting to me in my final project or down the road, but it was a cool thing to see once. The New York Historical Society, I'm sure I can use and am excited to try to do so.