For the past couple summers I’ve taught two versions of the same course, though with separate titles and a few tweaks that suggest multiple possibilities for ordering the material we examine. The undergrad version of the course is called Downtown Scenes, 1960-1980. It grew out of a lecture I’ve given several times in the Writing New York course Cyrus and I have taught since 2003. I also used this more specific course — which is a 2-week summer intensive, meeting 4 hours/day for 10 days — to help me prep for writing about Television’s Marquee Moon. The grad version of the course is called Literature in the Age of Warhol. It also focuses primarily on the downtown scene in the 60s and 70s, though in this version Warhol is more pronounced as a defining figure in the era. The first time I taught the undergrad version, Ginsberg emerged as a link between several of our readings. Here are a few links to prior material on the blog, especially about Ginsberg.
So is there something more to be said here about defining these decades variously as an Age of Ginsberg or an Age of Warhol? (For what it’s worth, I think we’re still living in the latter.) Are there other figures you’d suggest had as strong an impact on underground literary and artistic subcultures? I’m just waiting for either one of these fellows to get a cameo on Mad Men.
What about someone like Amiri Baraka? He starts off as part of Beat poetry, hangs out with Frank O’Hara, is sponsored by Edward Albee, becomes central to Off-Broadway theater with plays like Dutchman, interacts with Black Arts and jazz scenes.
Interesting choice — certainly someone who defines (or abandons) scenes rather than being defined by them. Do you think he defines the age in particular ways? Or stands for forces that do? I think the appeal of the ‘age of Warhol’ construct is that Warhol simultaneously exploited and helped define the engines of art/culture/media while at the same time insisting he had no personality. In a way he defines the age so well precisely b/c it’s hard to separate him from the forces that produced him & that he, in turn, amplified. It’s hard to grapple w/ Warhol without feeling that we still live in a world he helped create.