Mad at the New York Public Library

“Disappointing” best expresses how I felt about the lecture we attended at the New York Public Library, which is unfortunate because I was really looking forward to learning from a Beatnik pro. I can’t say it was all bad though because I did benefit from taking down the names of a few more obscure Beat Generation writers. However, I thought the speaker didn’t really interact with the audience or seem interested enough in his mission, which is sad considering the fact that he had a room filled with an inspired next generation of Beatniks.

I also think that I was biased: the speaker praised Diane DiPrima, but I thought that was too obvious of a thing done to appeal to us young and righteous girls in the audience. Just because she was one of the few women part of the Beat movement (which sounds like a completely irrational statement I know, I know) doesn’t mean that her writing is truly praiseworthy. I had read (and hated) Memoirs of a Beatnik before taking this class, and found it lacked substance big-time. Ok, since it’s all about sex and drugs I get that it captures what was going on at DiPrima’s time and what her priorities were, but I hate that someone gets attention just because she’s a female writer whose work managed to survive and get published when so many other female Beats’ books were ignored or turned down. For some reason I became blind-sighted after the speaker’s comments on her, and wasn’t able to get past it in order to enjoy the rest of the lecture.