US Society and Literature: Post-War to Digital Age

Posted on Mar 3, 2025 in English Studies

Unit 1: The War and After

Depression ends in 1941. 1930-1945 WWII. From 1939/1940, Americans thought that the war was not their problem. So they went from isolationism at that time and then they opted for interventionism. The incident of Pearl Harbor was decisive. The whole country turned into a war country. This war economy improved the industrial boom and prosperity. They vanquished unemployment. The factories turned into war factories. The USA army grew from 1.5 million soldiers to 15 million soldiers. The USA produced more weapons than all the enemy countries. They spent 2.950 million dollars every day on the war. They had larger industries of agricultural products. They had no invasion on its homeland, no bombing in its cities, and no mass killing of its civilians. They were out of the Great Depression. The middle class, women, and minorities took advantage of this situation.

There were social transformations like the consolidation of the Middle Class. The Middle Class was so strong by then; they earned a lot of money. They also had the belief that the Middle Class was a trap. When the war was over, the experience of war and the veteran culture was really present those days. A lot of men that returned to the USA were mentally injured; they had hallucinations or were alcoholics, etc. There was technological development. They did a lot of investigations in order to improve their military power. So the technology and the economy improvement turned into the development of society, medicine, etc. An excitement for technology grew, but there were also people who were scared of technology and those drastic changes.

For women, the 40s were interesting. The 50s were a bit disappointing for them. Women took men’s workplaces. Millions of women accessed the factories. The representation of women was stronger, independent, and ‘masculine.’ Women managed wearing the house and also working at the same time. This independence was like a threat for men at that time. Working before the 40s was only for single women. After the 40s, 70% of the working women were married. The 40s were very contradictory. The contracts of women said that once the war ended, they had to leave the job to men, so domesticity was perpetuated. The Beat Generation were more and more comfortable with diversity. They were more progressive. The world was more aware of ethnic minorities. When the economy is good, nobody blames the minorities. The exploitation of Mexican people started at this time.

Literature of the War and Postwar

There were three literary currents:

Southern writers: They were connected to the past. They were not so post-modernist. Their works were like gothic because of its darkness and sinister style. For them, the southern states were a place of evil and decadence. Their characters were focused on marginal, damaged, or disabled people.
Jewish writers: It was a mix of American and Jewish culture. They were like obsessed with the Holocaust because it was a trauma. They had like a sense of dislocation. They mixed different currents like modernism. They were experimental and pessimistic. Some writers were Saul Bellow (Herzog) and Norman Mailer (An American Dream).
The Beat Generation.

The three currents share the same characteristics. They complain about capitalism. They were like an opposition movement. They all felt that what was done before them was not as good as their work. They were a little bit of modernism, romantics, and realistic; to sum up, they were eclectic.

Unit 1: 1950s: The Beat Generation

The birth of materialism, consumerism. The happiness, that kind of feeling that you get from things was exactly what The Beat Generation confronted. So that’s the context about which the writers of this generation wrote. There was paranoia and fear about a third war. A lot of fear about communism started. You have to be traditional and conservative in order to be a good American. There was a movement named the Second Red Scare. They had fear of radical ideas like the ones from communism. You could be sent to jail only if they suspected that you were sympathizing with the communist party. This was started in 1950 by McCarthy and McCarran. They had fear of mass unemployment and depression. Because of that, the population swiped to the right politics. The 50s were a step back in society. A belief of women leaving children like ‘orphans’ because of they wanted to work was spreading. It also was when the baby boom took place because of the return of husbands from the war. Higher Learning started to be democratized, so 70% of students went to University. This economic boom was the beginning of the end of the New Deal Spirit. In the 50s, people were ready to spend their money, so there was a big demand for consumer goods. This was the time of an affluent society and big business. This was the time of the middle class and the prosperity of the suburbs. Thousands of families left the center of the city and they started living in the suburbs of the city. LA was a perfect example of this movement. This was an age of consensus. This time was also the beginning of spectator sports and television with only three channels: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Also, Hollywood western movies and Musicals started. The Beat Generation hated that so much, this kind of mentality of the celebration of consumerism and conformity. This was not the way of life they wanted; this was not for them. The Beat Generation were the parents of the hippie movement. That kind of rebelliousness and problematize against that kind of society.

The Beat Generation

Its origin was in the early 1940s: Kerouac, Burroughs (he wrote about his experience with sex and drugs mostly), Ginsberg, and Carr. They all went to university and that’s why they learned to hate university. They had a new vision of arts and literature inspired by Yeats, Auden, or Spengler. They supported expressing yourself in an uncensored way as the seed of creativity. Art beyond conventional morality. An expansion of the artist’s consciousness took place in this generation of writers. Sometimes people linked the beat generation with crime, drugs, delinquency, and immoral. They rejected the idea that they had no moral. They thought that they were becoming better. So this was really a generation since they were really a minority? They weren’t as cohesive as another generation of writers. They did not pretend to be a homogeneous group. Their coherence was based on mutual sympathy and inspiration. Kerouac was very conventional while Burroughs was more into science fiction. Still, they had some characteristics in common. They were a small group and their point of connection was their collective biography and collective affinities. They were incredibly creative and they did literature of experience (they always wrote from experience). They were highly spiritual people except Burroughs but never official religious (they rejected all the religions). They were obsessed with themes of drugs, addiction, mental diseases, and pathologies.

Origin of the word ‘Beat’: ‘It describes a state of mind from which all unessentials have been stripped, leaving it receptive to everything around it, but impatient with trivial obstructions. To be beat is to be at the bottom of your personality, looking up.’ – John Clellon Holmes, 1952.

The Big Three were Jack Kerouac (fiction and self-experience), Allan Ginsberg (the poet), and William Burroughs. The Beat Generation had a very critical vision of their country and society. They did not feel comfortable in 1950s America. For them, America was a spiritual wasteland; it was not authentic nor original. They had discontent for the passive well-adjusted consumer mindset. They were against corporate America and middle-class suburbia. Then, on the other hand, they were so into hedonistic self-indulgence, spiritual kinship. They gave importance to the radical lifestyle, liberation, and individual spirits. They were so into taboo subjects and oppositional attitude. Their characters were dangerous, amoral, psychopaths, impulsive, addicted…

The main topics of this generation were experiences with drugs, altered perceptions, and life experiences. They took drugs seriously. For them, drugs were a way to connect to reality and inspiration. They thought that if you don’t do drugs, you cannot understand knowledge, wisdom, truth, and authenticity. They were so into the autobiographical style. Liberation and being against sexual repression, spirituality, and mysticism (they believed that we are something more than flesh and that rejects occidental religion) were one of their more popular topics. They had an interest in madness and mental disease based on personal experience. They politicized the issue of madness. They thought that capitalism and the 50s produced mental instability. They dealt with madness and mental instability by the problematization of rational thought and reality.

About Beat Generation aesthetics, they were very straightforward. They were very free from conventions (they used to improvise) and used a spontaneous style. They were inspired by bebop jazz rhythm to write. They tried to write authentic texts and were against censorship and revision and also intellectual establishment.

The Beats and Gender

The memoirs written by women of the Beat Generation often draw attention to their secondary position or their limited mobility.

1990s: greater visibility of women and female poets and writers of the Beat Generation.

Diane di Prima: Intensely involved in the artistic and literary world: The Floating Bear or Poets Press. Her poetry is often woman-centered while being influenced by Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Frank O’Hara, and Buddhist practices. Her poem ‘Loba recovers the memory of mare’ partly appropriates the structure of rhythm of Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ to give expression to female experience.

ruth weiss: Economic language verbs and nouns over adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, etc. Interest in the brevity and centrality of the image in the Japanese form Haiku. Fragmentation, non-linearity, orality, and performance poetry.

Joanne Kyger: Associated with The Beats, The Black Mountain Poets, and San Francisco Renaissance. Her poetry is grounded in ordinary experience, everyday life. Form and shape based on content. Immediate and accessible speech.

African-American Beats: Attraction to the marginalization of black people and minorities.

Amiri Baraka: Early association with the Beats. With the rise of the civil rights movement, his poetry became more political. At the death of Malcolm X, he abandoned his ‘beat’ life and white wife and moved to Harlem and founded The Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School to create a ‘black aesthetic’ in theatre.

Bob Kaufman: Oral poetry performance poetry, improvisational, inventive, and momentary. Poetry influenced by Jazz and Bebop. He gave importance to invention and recitation. The themes found in his poetry were humor, satire, irony, and mockery.

Unit 2: The 1960/70s. New Journalism and Surfiction

From 1960 to 1968 took place The Liberal Era: This era was different from the 50s. The 60s were a very problematic epoch. Kennedy won against Nixon. Kennedy was a kind of symbol: progressive and young. Women, young people, and minorities voted for him. He was a war-veteran. He represented the born of a new era. He was slightly progressive but almost got the country into the third WW.

Johnson (1963-1968): He took advantage of the situation. His liberal legislation was named The Great Society. It was the end of conservatism. Immigration became more flexible. Took care of environmental issues. He achieved to put judge Warren into the Court. One person, one vote mindset. He lost the support of the whole nation because he decided to continue with the war in Vietnam. The 60s were an explosion of racial issues, protests…

Struggle for Black Equality

Kennedy stalls. The black community split in violence and non-violence ideals. March on Washington (non-violence way). The black power movement emerged as a reaction of the white movement. White racism started to spread. Watts riots evolved into people burning and breaking things. Police brutality was too hard. The head of this movement was Malcolm X. He started to develop the ideology of the Black Nationalism and the Nation of Islam. He supported the idea that black people had nothing to do with white people. He was killed by another member of the Nation of Islam. The Black Panthers (society for self-defense) were a radical military organization.

Vietnam War (1963-1975): The idea was to contain communism, so they sent anti-communist troops (five hundred thousand people, mostly young, were sent to Vietnam). Campus anti-war protests started spreading. TV was stable by the time and the conflict was documented by it (TV Coverage). The conservatives kept fighting there in order to put an end to communism (hawks vs. doves). This war put an end to liberalism; it produced a backlash and people became very conservative in the USA.

Youth Movement: This moment of liberal energy produced youth movements. The number of universities were a lot. Young Americans for Freedom (Trump ideology, young conservatives) vs. The New Left (they wanted to go further to the left than the democrats, they were younger and more radical). The Free Speech Movement was promoted by the time. It was specially associated with Barkley University. 1969: March Against Death. A huge demonstration that people were against the Vietnam war. Kent State shooting (1970) was provoked because police tried to stop students (none of the death students were radical). They finally created the counterculture.

The Counterculture: One of the most visible faces of the counterculture were the hippies. They were against individualism, capitalism, materialism, consumerism, war, nuclear technology… They were totally disassociated from mainstream society. They had a lack of social restrictions. Drug culture became a natural issue (marijuana, LSD). They wanted freedom (speech, sexuality, schooling (home)). Music started to have an important place in hippie culture with artists like Bob Dylan, Santana, Pink Floyd, etc. The disappointment was reflected later in literature.

Gender and Sexuality: It was fundamental in the 60s and 70s culture. Gender studies were born in the 60s and 70s. The redefinition of gender. This was the time of the second wave of feminism. The second wave was divided into two branches, one was NOW, it tried to influence people about women’s rights, it was a very educated and civilized feminism. They were trying to put women in political power. Feminine mystique (society against women) (velvet ghetto as houses, the silent question). The other branch was more radical and young feminism (it influenced communities and minorities). This movement was called the women’s liberation movement. Part of the hippies were with this movement. They were against the Vietnam war. The legalization of the pill took place there. Sex was disassociated from reproduction. 1973, the case of Roe v. Wade was resolved and abortion became a right in all the states. The Stone Wall was a club in New York; it was a kind of underground gay club. In 1969, police went there and started to arrest people and the gay collective decided to fight against the police. This incident led to gay liberation in American society. The gay pride is a celebration of that day.

New Journalism

They did not have complicated writing. The New Journalism movement is based on authenticity. It is literary journalism. It uses techniques usually related to novels. Stylistic nonfiction novels. It was like a marketing campaign of the 60s/70s. They were always working on the verge of fiction and journalism. It was a product of the 60s/70s, so it talked about issues of this time and that’s why nowadays is old-fashioned. It declined very soon and by the end of the 70s, nobody read that style. These writers filled an empty space of comprehensive literature.

Some characteristics: They created visual journalism because they felt that the writer cannot be bored. They invested in catching the reader’s attention. The idea is that they could produce writing crowded of factuality and entertainment. They came up with new resources and techniques. They wanted to be as informative as possible and also it gave you an introspective vision of the issue. Their works were not exactly novels. They published their works in magazines. It was very pop culture.

Narrator as ‘method actor’: The narrator is going to be a witness in the story. It is like a medium to cover the story. A kind of method actor (‘It is a matter, not of projecting your emotions into the story but of getting inside the emotions, inside the subjective reality of the people you are writing about.’ Tom Wolfe). The degrees of participation of the narrator varies. Sometimes it has a distance but sometimes it is in the middle of the action.

Four stylistic devices: They worked on the narrative voice and on the perspective. Most of them they narrate in 3rd person but they are changing the perspective all the time. They are going to use scene-by-scene construction without so much transition. This style gives a sense of immediately. New journalism is surrounded by dialogue which is a construction of the writer. They use an ironical and satirical style. The author is going to use status-life symbols in his writing. These kinds of symbols are little elements that have a lot of resonance and connotations. Clothing, contacts, furniture, trips, styles of walking. Punctuation and typography: They produced flashy texts. This innovation of typography and so comes from modernism. Sometimes it became cartoonish. It is a very sensationalist way of writing; it is about giving people entertainment.

Language and syntax: It is very light, casual, and colloquial. It rarely hints at self-consciousness. Sometimes this style of writing seems like a letter or an email. Their interest in the mind led them to use some branches of modernism. Another goal of this style is to capture the orality; they write very credible dialogues.

Organizational structure: The style is not linear and chronological. The stories sometimes are a bit messy because of the disjointed rambling. Sometimes it will be redundant. The idea that the chronology of the story should be always lineal is not what they want. They are against linearity. The stories are plagued by afterthought.

Tom Wolfe (1931-present)

The Pump House Gang (1968, essays), The New Journalism (1973), A Man In Full (novel). The looks of his writing: He produced a very polarized reaction in his readers. A lot of people said that he was demagogic and not true to the facts. But the majority recognized him as a very good writer. They felt that his style was very oral; it seemed that the story is talking to you. He had the influence of TV in his style. His writings reflected excitement, immediacy, and credibility. His writings were dazzling, rapid-flow, and non-linear prose. He criticized society in his works and tried to entertain the readers. His ideas: He located his writings in statuspheres. The 60s were the Happiness Explosion. He always is going to write against the old values. He thought that technology and media were better for people; technology was helping people to get out of their towns. Wolfe and McLuhan hated the typical intellectuals. Wolfe admired McLuhan and his ideals about the media.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968): The topics are focused the creation of special statuspheres of liberation and enjoyment, experiences and sensations over knowledge and intellectualism, and the rejection of traditional moral, political, and intellectual. The narrator is kind of ambivalent because you don’t really know if he is for or against some of the people that appear in the novel.

Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers: Radical chic: He criticized ‘fashionable politics’. White guilt and armchair agitation: rich white people have the ‘need’ to do the right thing because they have the guilt that they treated the other parts of society bad in the past so now they want to be more equal but with politics. It was like stylish radicalism because it was only like the image they wanted to give. Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers: Minority group intimidation (black communities being harassed). Nonsense of bureaucracy and political correctness. Is he a moralist or a satirist?: He is an elusive kind of writer, that’s why in his texts there are a lot of proliferation of contradiction. He is not political correct because he will criticize minorities so he is uncommitted and use a balanced rejection. He mocks about the styles and concerns of traditional culture. He celebrates the comic, pleasure-seeking, self-entered modes of the happiness explosion.

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

He is a hardcore patriotic nationalist individualist thinker. He has kind a republican with hippie and liberal mindset. This kind of individualism and patriotism describe his biography but also his writing. He had problems with police and government because he hated them (he destroyed a mailbox which is government’s property). He had problems with the authority (vandalism, sexual assault…). He was a really political thinker and writer. He was part of the Freak Power movement (he even ran for sheriff). He didn’t want to know anything about spiritual or mystical streams. He was part of drug culture.

Influences: His writings are connected to high modernism (he criticizes capitalism and high western values) (T.S Eliot). He is kind of an experimental writer. Two of his models were Kerouac and Ginsberg. His most known work is inspired, in a way, by On the Road. Explosion of language. He is felt like rock because his writings are loud and fulled, distortion and drugs. He was also influenced by these kind of writers that were journalism but novelist like Hemingway and Twain.

H.S.T and New Journalism: He was not comfortable with any label so he was co-opting into New Journalism. He is different from NJ and it is because the way in how he put ‘himself’ (kind of alter-ego) in the writings (the Duke), he is always in the center of the story which is an immediate difference with Tom Wolfe for example. Norman Mailer was an influence for him (he wrote about how cops acted at that time) but H.S.T went beyond. In his works, it is more clear in which part (opinion) is situated.

Gonzo Journalism: Sad category of New Journalism. Lazy, untidied, irregular kind of journalism. Gonzo means lazy or disorganized (ganso). In English is used to refer to the kind of writer that is inside the story. Double perspective that works both in the inside and on the outside (like Tom Wolfe) of the story. The style is separated from a regular style of New Journalism.

Style: It is a spontaneous outrage, fueled by chemicals. It is decentralized. It has broken-down prose of loose grammar and scattergun (chaotic) syntax. He uses ellipses and jumps in perspective or subject matter. His style is challenging journalism and fiction and it is formally subversive.

Writing as Bricolage: He called traditional writers ‘engineers’ and the new ones were ‘bricoleur’. His writings are like a collage (or pastiche) of written materials. He is spontaneous in his writings but it has a certain degree of editing. His writing is kind of schizophrenic discourse (almost hallucinatory and always in a constant state of change but not as the mental issue).

Celebrity and persona: He was popular because he was always controversial. In 1964, he became a cartoon in a comic. He hated that because he wanted to be unnoticed in order to intern himself in groups and investigate that to write new novels.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

It is inspired by when he was with Oscar Zeta Acosta investigating the murderer of Mecha (Black Panther leader) but Oscar tells him that they had to leave and they went to Las Vegas and that’s when the story starts. He had to go to Las Vegas to cover a motorbike rage and this novel was published in Rolling Stone. In the novel, there are novels that seem cartoon-like sketches because they are high. It seems like it has like a Quixote- Sancho appearance. The novel does not have a final objective or mission. He is criticizing himself because it is a failure of the counterculture in which he was living before.

Structure: Episodic and rudimentary plot. Undifferentiated object. It has repetitions with the topics of drugs, female and male victims, and the noise of Vietnam. The novel is placed in Las Vegas (metaphor to oppressive capitalism).

Haight-Ashbury: (mid 60s) It was a neighborhood in San Francisco that was like a utopian heaven for hippies and he was living there. The decline of this neighborhood started very soon in 1967. The cops discovered that it was a chemical boot camp of heroin and crime, disaffected youths (young people that abandon their homes and went there), hustlers, rip-off artists… Thompson leaves in autumn 1966, many of the ‘original’ hippies had fled the district by 1967.

Drugs: Drugs were not a spirituality or metaphysical thing. He was really realistic about drugs. He is against the whole mystical tradition (Coleridge, De Quincey, Huxley). He knows that drugs are part of an individualism experience. There is a myth that everything he wrote was about LSD but it is not really true.

Topics: Anachronism. He is aware that hippies are over so he writes about this kind of nostalgia. Also, he writes against capitalism and the new world. It seems a transitional moment between modernism and post-modernism. Las Vegas: It is not only about the superficial drug topic is more about of how capitalist is to travel to Las Vegas (gambling, money, prostitution). About Nixon’s attack on drugs: in a direct/indirect way. It is also a metonymy of consumerism. It is obviously a critique against the myth of the American Dream.

Gender & sexuality: It commits discrimination (homophobic, racist, sexist) and misogyny in order to show a critique against American values. It is a kind of novel that makes you uncomfortable.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (1972): It was about the campaign trail of Nixon and McGovern. He is writing American history with the Gonzo perspective. He shows in his coverage of the campaign how much an American election is like a kind of renaissance tragedy (ego, ambition, corruption) (Macbeth or Hamlet). It was published in Rolling Stone too. America is a society which is masochist for corruption.

Thompson/Nixon Symbiosis: He hated Nixon and wrote about how corrupt he was. They were like archenemies.

Post-Watergate writing: Nixon sent spies to steal documents from the counter party so he had to resign. Once it happened Thompson did not have much more to offer in the political aspect. He will write about his disgust at administrations, minorities, and dissidents. He will be a prosecutor and accomplice of the corrupted system. He will write for ESPM (columnist). Finally, he committed suicide because of his situation and limitations.

Surfiction: Experimental Writing 60s/70s

: Language is a reaction to reality. They started to problematise literature. Early postmodern sensibilities:
It is a new kind of voice, an experimental art stream. Modernism complexity is mixed with new forms of popular culture like comic books or TV. Post-modern sensibility mixed high and low (popular) culture. It had to be with the revolution in communication. There were a stream of paranoid cybernetics.Off-off-Broadway: Experimental plays and performed art. It was in a café. They called these shows ‘happenings’. 60s surfiction: Experimental (surrealism, perspectivism, interior monologue, idiosyncratic use of
language) Mixture of high and low culture: They are going to produce serious works but they will use colloquial concepts. Imitation and Pastiche: They are gonna produce text copying some styles. It was called the literature of exhausting because they cannot produce something new so they use other styles instead. These texts were the end of referential texts because they do not look like reality, writers are kind of ventriloquist of other writers styles. Meta-literature: Self-referential texts. Literature about literature. Texts about texts. Absurdity and Fatalism: Absurdity of humankind. Black humour, irony and parody: They enjoy jokes and black humour (death, so what?) Uncertainty/Undecidability: Where are we going? Where it is going as a nation? Surfiction authors:Thomas Pynchon (1937-)Novels: V (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Vineland (1986) Donald Barthelme (1933-1994) Novels: Snow White (1967), The Dead Father (1975) Kut Vonnegut (1922-2007):
Novels: Slaughterhouse Five (1972) Joseph Heller (1923-2007): Novel: Catch 22 (1961)

Jack Kerouac: His style is very casual almost natural. He called his style the ‘wild form’. He was influenced by the writing style of Neal Cassady. He always followed the same style since that. He was not as experimental as the other members of TBG but he had the skills to write in this style. They all come from towns, not the cities, but when they grew up they went to the cities with their provincial background.The Town and the City: Long bildungsroman, 5 books, memories of childhood in Lowell and his experiences in NY in 40s, already Roman à clef, first look at the underground postwar (marginality, depression) dislocation , already uses the term ‘beat’, more fictional than the other novels, no ‘first thoughts, best thoughts’ yet. In this novel he accepted to follow Columbia’s literary strictures .On the Road: The narrator is in 1st person, it is amoral and personal, nonjudgmental, clean version. Economical writing. Spontaneity and ephemerality and natural. The themes are escapism, mobility, individualism, friendship, sex, music, critics, speed, acceleration. The style: moving from one thing to the next without many connectors, blurring the line between facts and fiction, the writer is not really the creator; he is more like documenting something . The idealism of a new way of life in USA. During the novel there are periods of depression and sadness. Dean is like the archetype of the lifestyle of the Beat Generation, he is showing why capitalism is wrong. The ending is what saves the story, is not the typical ending that we can wait for, it shows that everything is temporary, they did not really make it at the end, their ideal did not really work out. Allen Ginsberg: Jewish Russian from Paddison, New Jersey. He did not come from a city neither. He went to Columbia University and met Kerouac. He had an affair with Cassady. He was gay. He reflected sadness and broken heart in his works, also mental issues. He was sent to psychiatric because he was homosexual. Criminality was present in his life because he went to jail. Ginsberg’s style: He used to write as flashes, units of thoughts, breaths. Repetitions and lists. He did referenced to popular culture and had a high modernist style, literary, religious and mythical references. His poems were lyrical and epic . He mixed those styles in his poetry. He was influenced by ºWilliam Carlos William and Kerouac’s ‘sketching’ technique. He was interested in the stream of consciousness . Ginsberg’s thematic interests: High/low: from transcendentalism to scatology. He used to include politics, religion and transcendence, mental instability and disease, consumerism, sexuality, homosexuality and vitalism.He get in trouble because the publishing of Howl, he went to trial. Some of his works were Kaddish, Reality Sandwiches, Planet News and The Fall of America. William Burroughs: One of the most prolific writers of the century probably. He is the darkest one of TBG. He lived ten years more than the others even he went more into drugs. He is like the most ambivalent: he is the most into TBG but also the most out of them. He had not that idealism and mysticism like the others. He only wrote about heroin and how bad is life because he is so pessimist, he even criticised TBG. He was the earliest member of the Beats. His sexuality is almost impossible to describe. He is like the epitome of TBG. He though that ‘you cannot escape from capitalism’. His writings sometimes seemed to predict the end of TBG. Burroughs’s style: He used to write in very different ways about the same thing. He went from uninflected journalism to sci-fi hallucinations even in the same chapter. He created the ‘inter-zone’: a mixed of USA and other places . Sometimes he is difficult to follow in his writings. He goes from popular literature to experimentalism. He is like the continuation of the modernist and he is believed to be the only experimental modernist author in the United States. Anti- heroic novels.

UNIT 8: Queer politics, writing and theory. Together with the political advances, there were also gay and lesbian cultural works (in art, literature, etc.) devoted to gay and sexual liberation. Fag Rag was a combination from the counter culture (sex, drugs, rock & roll); Gay sunshine was based in poetry, etc. The Advocate was based more on political analysis. Generally the early gay liberation produced less theoretical writing than feminism. Yet there is some cultural criticism and academic efforts at recovering gay and lesbian history and culture. In Literature, this had three different branches: 1st branch: Looking over the evolution of recent literature (specially the 19th century and beyond, when it became more expressive, spirituality, etc.). Sexuality has to be controlled on their work.
2nd branch: the rescue of neglected authors. Not orthodox for a gay perspective. Radcliffe Hall was very open with her sexuality. People think: it was about lesbian, so, who cares about their writing? Rescue them was part of their intellectual work. The 3rd branch is about looking at authors who were not necessarily gay but who include in their works gay and lesbian identified characters (i.e. Virginia Woolf). The 70s was a period when sexual liberation takes a lot of expansion. However, there were a lot of different tensions not only in the community with the rest of the world but within the community between themselves (i.e. between men and women, in which men tends to win and lesbians split off Gay movements or take part on radical feminist movements). Since gay and lesbian do not respect transsexual and transgender people they started a new small movement (S.T.A.R.) Queer Writing:Gay/lesbian and Queer writing arises partly from these developments mentioned before. Characters tend to be tormented, shameful, etc. However, that literature of guilt in the 70s turns into a different tone after the 70s: sexual differences are not something tragic, something you have to feel ashamed. It is the celebration of sexual differences. By the mid 80s we can make a distinction: the writing that gay/lesbian produces it is divided into: gay/lesbian from one side and queer from the other. Gay/Lesbian fiction Gay/Lesbian is assimilationist: very conventional characters, plots. Characters that have jobs, normal life. Centred on love stories, etc. Regular people (nothing particular on them). Everyday fiction. Family is a frequent point of difference, sometimes they try to create or confront (women that have children but they realise she is homosexual and start to meet a woman). No longer about isolation, exile or marginality. The style of this literature is very traditional, like a standard realism. It tends to be elegant and have a nice style. The writers tend to be very skilful. We are not expected to know these names (only comment on them in class): Edmund White has a beautiful style; Rita May Brown was a radical feminist. She wrote a lot of manifestos on lesbian issues, her writing is not very experimental; Tony Kushner… Queer writing It came from Queer politics. It is confrontational because of the topics (lifestyles, people who were marginalized or marginalized themselves because they do not want to be part of the mainstream). It is shocking and experimental, hard to follow sometimes. The beginning and the end are vague. The antecedents are Allen Ginsberg and Jean Genet. Sarah Schulman was a novelist, a New York based person. People in Trouble.

David Wojnarowicz He died with AIDS. He published different pieces in different places. He is more visual artist than writer. He is a figure that came from a hard childhood: an alcoholic father, he run away from his house many times, etc. His works are often very political and experimental. Close to the Knives: A memoir of Disintegration. Practise 6th December: In the shadow of American Dream

First person narrator. It is a very abstract text that it is about a journey from East to West. But not only that, it is also a journey in space and time. Travelling geographically and in what it is in his mind. A personal journey of his past (not only a journey through memories but also fantasies; sexual encounters with other men and experiences > psychological journey). Driving a machine is ‘sexy’. A journey is a continue thing. You do not know where you start and where you finish (p.26). He mixes the present with the past.

There are also fantasies of violence, destruction, something bad happening (i.e. he is in a building that seems to be a hotel, and there is a gay bathroom and there is a tornado). Moreover, he makes an anatomy of the nation (the description of the country). Learning something about the land. National anatomy: how he characterizes American culture: how he describes the states. The states mentioned had an importance in the conquer of the West (important in the American history). The second reason of why it is important the mention of the States is (p.35) based also in violence. He goes to the Air Force Museum. He was in New Mexico where the Americans made the atomic bomb. Topics: violence, death, etc. Insensitivity and irresponsibility is mentioned in this chapter: fathers who give birth to their first child and leave them to death in the Air Force. He finds this museum disgusting; it is an experimental moment that expose the hypocrisy of the museum because it talks about the invention of the bomb but not of the consequences. Sense of ‘destruction’ (p.37).

Another topic: people who try to maintain their falsities and ideas of perfection in their lives. And finally, there is experiences of oppression of some civilizations. A civilization is often about barbarism and oppression. There is always someone that is oppressed. Sub- plot: A Native American guy is trying to catch people with his car and the police is seeing it (p.30). It is a criminal act and it is not good but David Wojnarowics does not condemn it because his origins were very difficult and based on oppressions.

UNIT 7: Textuality and Gender. From Feminism to Queer Writing:

Feminism: a reform movement in the 19th century. It was a significant social movement. The most important figure at that time was Margaret Fuller, Women in the 19th century in 1842. Between 1830-1864 took place the Abolitionist Feminism, they seek for the right of vote, women not to be slaves of men.

Feminism is usually historicised in three waves:

1st wave: Female suffrage struggles.

The demand for the vote is contents throughout the 19th Century, but the ‘suffragette’ moment lasts from the turn of the Century to 1920. In that year, the 19th amendment of the US Constitution passed: women granted the vote. The leaders were Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Connected to suffragism, there were more feminist struggles like the protest for equal contract and property rights (women’s property ought to remain theirs, instead of passing automatically to their husbands). They cannot decide over their inheritances, properties and money.

Suffragism was accompanied by the development of a cultural type that was ‘New Woman’

2nd Wave Feminism: 1960s to 1980s (roughly).

It takes place after WWII. Arises as a response to a setback in women’s progress towards equality and emancipation. From relative independent in the interwar period to gradual retreat to the home, the family, husband, children etc after WWII. 1920s-40s: Rise in number of women in the professions, social and political activism, art… Bu there is a post-war backlash.

The ‘feminine mystique’: an ideology of femininity dominant in the post-war years analysed by Betty Friedan in the book of the same name. Feminine Mystique was a general notion that states that Rosie the Riveter should become Rosie the housewife. Betty Friedan noticed that media and ideology were the ones who ‘pushed’ women to think that a professional career or work cannot be compatible with the housewife life. This was the book that originated second wave feminism. Friedan was influenced by Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, this book studied the history of women in philosophy and culture. It was an exposé: expose something that has been hidden all the time before.

The Feminine Mystique dictated that women fulfil themselves as wives and mothers but not through education or work. Too much education makes women unsuitable for their true role and place in society. Careerism makes women neurotic, lonely and bitter. This idea was supported by the idea that home was a really lovely place.

The struggles of 2nd wave feminism are largely ideological. They consist of an examination of the functioning of the mind-set, convictions, prejudices etc that underpin patriarchy. Ideas have social effects. Society is the effect of ideology. Women are not ‘forced’ to live in a certain ways as much as expected to and they internalise these expectations.

Second Wave Feminism is usually divided into two branches:

– Equal Rights Feminism: More moderate and practical. It was merely against
discrimination in jobs and politics. But it was basically assimilationist: to incorporate
women into the mainstream of American life.
– Radical Feminism: It was more radical and exciting intellectual but less practical. It
connected feminism to other ways of repression. It links feminism to broader forms of oppression. They did not want to assimilate into the mainstream but to TRANSFORM the mainstream because the mainstream was already corrupted by consumerism and patriarchal ideology.
3rd Wave of Feminism (1980s forward):
It is a reaction to 2nd wave feminism. It grew out of a lot of ideas from RF and of minority criticism of 2nd wave feminism. So, what’s the problem?
2nd Wave Equal Rights Feminism was simplistic in the representation of women as a unified, homogeneous group. It was mostly white, middle class, and heterosexist (N.O.W was homophobic) and it did not take into account differences of class and race in women’s experience.
In 1981, African American critic bell hooks wrote that black movement was dominated by men and that the feminist movement was white and racist.
Third wave feminism integrated the perspectives of feminist of colour: bell hooks, Angela Davis, Cherríe Moraga… They claimed that sexism and patriarchy intersect with racism and imperialism and it cannot be separated. Sexuality must be thought within these wider frames. So feminism would be worthless without intersectionality and inclusion

UNIT 6: Hispanic/Latino Literature in the US .Chicano literature: This type of literature is clearly committed to Chicanismo (Chicano power, civil rights, history). It exposes racism, discrimination and marginality. It has similar aesthetic as Afro- American literature because of their political and social goals. It mixes tradition and experimentation (popular storytelling styles). Often it is trans-lingual (Spanish-English- native Mexican languages). Their writing should help to improve the understanding of the readers that are part of the community. Themes:The settings are often the barrio life (it is not necessary idealised or utopian), community and family life.The US-Mexican border (social, psychological, metaphorical, physical).In-betweenness by Homi Bhabha (mestizaje) (US-Mexico, North-South America, past- present, Chicano-mainstream culture, Chicano-other minority cultures…).
Also the sense of kinship with other minorities (Native Americans).Criticism of Anglo USA: spiritually void, swamped in consumerism, soulless.Touches of fantastic realism. The fantastic: an alternative way of knowledge, counterpoint to hyper-rationalism and disenchantment of mainstream US/Western culture. This also appears in queer and feminist literature.

Two landmark cases were famous about inequality with Mexican-American population:

– 1947 Mendez vs Westminster Supreme Court ruling: segregating children of ‘Mexican
and Latin descent’ from American descent was unconstitutional.

1954 Hernández vs Texas ruling: Mexican Americans and other historically-
subordinated groups in the United States were protected under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution (US citizens are entitled to full Civil Rights).

Digital culture affects literature in three ways

1. CGL:Computer-generated literature

Generated through or imitating computer programming. The first experiments were made in poetry in ADM laboratories. Alison Knowles was a visual artist but she also wrote poetry. She used a computer program called House of Dust, it uses some fixed sequences of words. It produces texts randomly generated. Oulipo (workshop for potential literature (random literature), sometimes they wrote collectively and signed the book as ‘by Oulipo’ but sometimes they wrote individully. They used the same process for numbers and formula so they generated a really new kind of poetry that sometimes was successful but sometimes not. One of the members of Oulipo was Raymond Queneau. He wrote a book about with 14 poems and in every line has the same rime and you can combine the lines whatever you like and all the possibilities are perfect sonets in French. The book itself is typographical interesting ‘Cent mille milliards de poems, 1961’. George Perec wrote The Art of Asking your Boss for a Raise (1968) it is a narrative about a people going to Africa. The text is not very natural but there are parts in which is more natural. Sometimes it avoid using some letters in different chapters or every word starts with the same letter. It has some of Kafkian style.

More recent iniciative called NaNoGenMo experiment and it is related to AMT. It is repeated every November and the best novel generated randomly wins an award. They had to publish the text and explain how they did it. Some of the results are sort of interesting. For example Michelle Fullwood did a version of Pride and Prejudice with tweets and she called ‘Twide and Twejudice in 2014. She left the Jane Austen’s descriptions but the texts of the dialogues are replaced by tweets.

2. CBL: Computer-based literature (uses or imitates digital capabilities)

Hypertext literature: It changes how the text is presented and connected. It is literature like a webpage. Hyperonym based.
Storyspace program used by Michael Joyce.
Shelley Jackson wrote A Modern Monster: Based on Frankenstein but more about a female monster. It was used like fragments of text in order to write it. It is like a metaliterature work.

3. LADE: Literature that describes a digitised environment (machines that act like human, humans that are part machines…)

The main example could be Cyberpunk science fiction. It is conventional as you do not need a computer to read it and you read it in an orthodox manner. What is not conventional is the kind of people that inhabit that fictional world and the setting. It is almost our world now. It was developed from the 1980s onward, at that time it was a futuristic environment. Bruce Bethke wrote Cyberpunks and invented the term in 1980. Science fiction it is very interesting and also very critical. A dystopian or utopian can be represented in this genre. It is perhaps the main postmodern form of literature because it makes popular themes with experimentation but the style it is not always easy to read and consume because sometimes it is not so transparent.

Other authors: Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker… Antecedents: Phillip K. Dick, William Burroughs…
– Societies of control and underground rebellion against them. – Bodies: Supplemented, modified by machines (and drugs).

1930s to 1950s hard-boiled crime fiction: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler.

The protagonists used to be male loners. Set in the low depths of society (or in the confluence of ‘high’ and low crime). Precise, incisive, carefully crafted style. It deals with more degradation problems like drug-addiction and prostitution. It is similar to Agatha Christie but more dirty. The style is quite experimental.

Cyberpunk: – Dystopian science-fiction – Urban settings: decaying, post-industrial cities ridden with crime and populated by marginal subcultures – Societies controlled by economic interests (multinational) and crime syndicates – No governments or control mechanism – No social cohesion – Governments are weaker than criminal groups or multinationals
In some ways cyberpunk is interpreted as a vision of the present in fast-forward: high technology, extreme social polarization, lack of civic responsibility or sense of community. In someway it can be characterised as the bad tendencies that the contemporary society follows.

‘Cyberpunk is the supreme literary expression, if not of postmodernism, then of late capitalism itself’. Fredic Jameson.

Protagonists are usually male. Hackers who have fallen in disgrace with some criminal association or multinational. They have technological modified bodies. This stories often have fatalistic endings. The genre as a whole combines a fascination with social decay with criticism of some contemporary policies (de-regulation, indirect private government)

New Journalism: They did not have a complicated writing. New Journalism movement is based on authenticity. It is literary journalism. It uses techniques usually related to novels. Stylistic nonfiction novels. It was like a marketing campaign of the 60s/70s. They were always working on the verge of fiction and journalism. It was a product of 60s/70s so it talked about issues of this time and that’s why nowadays is old-fashioned. It declined very soon and by the end of the 70s nobody read that style. These writers filled an empty space of comprehensive literature.

Some characteristics: They created a visual journalism (influence of television) because they felt that the writer cannot be bored. They invested in catching reader’s attention (reader immersion). The idea is that they could produced a writing crowded of factuality and entertainment (commercial and catchy). They came up with new resources and techniques (stylistic innovation). They wanted to be as informative as possible and also it gave you an introspective vision of the issue. Their works were not exactly novels. They published their works in magazines (Esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone). It was very pop culture (styled and sophisticated).

Narrator as ‘method actor’: The narrator is going to be a witness in the story. It is like a medium to cover the story. A kind of method actor (‘It is a matter, not of projecting your emotions into the story but of getting inside the emotions, inside the subjective reality of the people you are writing about.’ Tom Wolfe ). The degrees of participation of the narrator varies. Sometimes it has a distance but sometimes it is in the middle of the action.

Four stylistic devices:They worked on the narrative voice and on the perspective. Most of them they narrate in 3rd person but they are chancing the perspective all the time (shifting 3rd person POV) (influenced by the tv again (shifting cameras)).They are going to use scene by scene construction without so much transition. This style give a sense of immediately. New journalism is surrounded by dialogue (extensive use of dialogue) which is a construction of the writer (because the conversations are not literal what the characters said). They use ironical and satirical style.
The author is gonna use status-life symbols in his writing. This kind symbols are little elements that have a lot of resonance and connotations (ex: someone’s shoes can give you an idea of his ideology). Clothing, contacts, furniture, trips, styles of walking. Punctuation and typography: They produced flashy texts (lots of punctuations signs). This innovation of typography and so comes from modernism. Sometimes it became cartoonish (wham! bang!). It is a very sensationalist way of writing, it is about giving people entertainment.Language and syntax: It is very light, casual and colloquial. It rarely hints at self- consciousness (unlike Surfiction writers). Sometimes this style of writing seems like a letter or an email (casual and spontaneous). Their interest in the mind leaded them to use some branches of modernism. Another goal of this style is to capture the orality, they write very credible dialogues (fluid and natural). Organisational structure: The style is not a linear and chronological one. The stories sometimes are a bit messy because of the disjointed rambling. Sometimes it will be redundant. The idea that the chronology of the story should be always lineal is not what they want. They are against linearity. The stories are plagued by afterthought (that links new journalism with surfiction experimentalism).

Unit 4: Postmodern poetry: The New York School and Language Writing

Two distinct movements and moments:

New York School (1950s and 1960s): His most known artist was Frank O’Hara. John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest (she is not as them, but can be considered a member of the group). They collaborated with each other and read their poets. They are contemporary with the Beats (they began to rise at the same time), they are a little similar (rebellious, rejection of conventional, open about sexuality). This was a time of conservative society and politics and they are a sign of how this oppressive ideology (post-war consensus) was going to end. They were people that prepared the way to the 60s. They formed like a community (Giuseppe Ungaretti was important at that time too).

Their poetry was ironic (at times humorous) and irreverent towards established. Sometimes they can be insulting to authority figures. They ironically insulted T.S Eliot and called him ‘a modern dictator’ because everything he said was supported.

O’Hara, for example, was interested in spontaneity, he was not interested in measure, assonance and so on. He knew a lot about music because he was a good pianist.
They knew established culture well (they were very well educated, most of them went to university). Experimental and fiercely intellectual: make allusions to a broad cultural spectrum material (especially literature, music and paintings).

They were influenced by French poetry: Baudelaire (very experimental to his time), Apollinaire (he was one of the first writers that play with calligraphy (calligrams), surrealism, Perse (30s to 50s, he was well-known), Raymond Roussel, in fact, they founded the magazine ‘Locus Solus’, named after Raymond Roussel’s novel of the same title.

Their poetry is really personal, intense and diaristic (poems about their day life like O’Hara’s ‘I do this, I do that’ poems), often intimate (Chronicles sexual liaisons, friendships and falling-outs, parties, journeys, encounters… trivial, daily and gossip topics). Duality between life and works of art. They were fascinated with city life (a constant in 20th century experimental aesthetic), they were not from New York but most of them ended up making NY their home. They liked to be surrounded and embraced by the city but not consume the city as a tourist. A city is a museum, a depository of art and culture.

Poems often record their own making: poems about the act and circumstances of writing poems (meta-poetry). Their poetry occasionally has a narrative or dramatic bent (events, situations). Their poems sometimes have plots that make them look like mini-stories or micro-plays. They also regarded poetry as a game (playing with words and having a good time), they played with self-imposed constrictions (name of a river on every line, erase every other word, acrostics). Things like that were done before by the dadaists.

Poetry as a game: played ‘exquisite corpse’ (a line by each poet, without seeing what the previous one has written), start poems from an advertisement, quotation…
They were very receptive to popular culture (films, comics, jazz…). James Dean was a famous and intriguing figure for them, so they wrote poems about him. They also write poetic drama (O’Hara and Koch especially).

After Harlem Reinassiance: 4 moments2. Boom in the 1960s and 1970s: art and literature propelled by civil rights protects of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Black Panthers. This time was marked by the mobilisation for civil rights (1955 to 1965). The first protests against segregation in public services took place: Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott (1955-56), Rosa Parks. Lunch-counter sit-ins: late 1950s and through early 1960s. Martin Luther King was inspired by Ghandi (indian independent movement). Voter registration drives in the South ( three activists ‘freedom riders’, killed for this by local KKK in Mississippi), because of the inequality in voting with black and white people, in some cases black people needed a paper that justified that you have properties and studies.

The highlight of the movement was in August 1963, a march on D.C. Some gains that black people obtained was the Civil Rights Act (1964) that meaner the end of discrimination in services and facilities and Voting Rights Act (1965): Federal oversight of voting registration and electoral processes. But violence, discrimination, police brutality (especially), lack of public recognition for black culture all continue, also killings of civil rights and anti-racist militant like Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy or MLK. Even there were bombing to black communities like the one on Birmingham, Alabama in which four girls died. The owners of these crimes were not in jail because the only witnesses of these happens were black and their testimonies were not valid.

The Rise of the Black Panthers started in Oakland, California and spread across the US. This movement was inspired in arguments for self-defence (Malcom X and ideas of islam) and for self-determination and black nationalism. Black community was a big part of the wealthy of America so what they cannot have the same rights as white people? They wanted the community right to self-self-defence even from the police (the right to carry arms). The idea of peaceful protests was over with the Black Panthers but they were not just a violent group. They were a community organisation that brought local support. They organised free breakfast programs for children, adult education, help with social services, health services (free clinics), housing, tax and legal assistance, etc. They also promoted the defence of black culture by fomenting reading groups, lectures or concerts and solidarity with another communities like native Americans.

They were popular and successful between 1969-70. Leaders were framed, infiltrated, attacked, arrested and tried on dubious charges and even murdered.
COINTELPRO was like a trained organisation to be infiltrated in these minorities cultures in order to be informed about their strategies and so

The Black literature and culture was influenced by black militance (in ideology and practice) so the writers had political and social commitment and they dealt with topical issues and protests. Also they wrote about back cultural nationalism, pan-africanism, Afro-centrism, it also stressed the connection with American blacks and African ancients (follows up from Harlem Renaissance). This literature was about accessibility and community appeal. It has black vernacular (speech) and cultural references. It was in favour of performative forms (theatre and ‘oral’ poetry, something that will be consumed in community, that will be shared) and more community oriented. Fiction was important but sometimes was wrote as if was recited orally. In arts, they tended to do murals and poster arts. They wanted their works to be accessible so they did not want their works to be in galleries but in the street. They sold their works by cheap prices. Murals could be consumed by a lot of people at the same time. Literature was inspired in that feeling. Sometimes they did collective works, some of the most famous authors were the Umbra group and Black Art and Repertory Theatre (they did experimental and political theatre). As a result, the creation of black support networks arose. They also started editing and collecting past writing (anthologies, like Black Fire or The Black Woman).

Minimalism and Hyperrealism Differences and Characteristics: Minimalism: Minimalism in art and literature aims to reduce everything to the essential, eliminating unnecessary elements. In minimalist writing, concise and precise prose is used, with a focus on economy of words. Detailed descriptions are avoided, and suggestion and subtext are privileged. Minimalism tends to focus on ordinary characters and everyday situations, often associated with lack of ornamentation and simplicity.
- Hyperrealism: Hyperrealism is an artistic movement that seeks to represent reality in an extremely detailed and precise manner, often blurring the line between art and photography. In literature, hyperrealism involves highly detailed descriptions and meticulous representation of reality. Sensory aspects are emphasized, and the smallest details of human experience are captured. Hyperrealism can be descriptive to the point of appearing excessive or overly detailed.
African American Literature and Culture of the 1960s: African American literature and culture of the 1960s were profoundly influenced by the civil rights movement and the struggle for racial equality. During this time, prominent voices of African American writers emerged, challenging norms and exploring themes of identity, race, discrimination, and inequality. Some of the influential writers of this period include James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, and Amiri Baraka. African American literature of the 1960s reflected activism and the pursuit of social justice, becoming a powerful tool for the expression of African American experience and resistance.
Tom Wolfe’s Aesthetic: Tom Wolfe was an American writer and journalist known for his bold literary style and his focus on realistic storytelling with satirical elements. His aesthetic is characterized by vibrant and vivid language, detailed descriptions, and meticulous attention to visual and sensory aspects of narrative. Wolfe excelled at capturing the atmosphere and spirit of an era in his writing, often focusing on popular culture. His style is associated with “New Journalism” and is characterized by bold and provocative prose.
Ginsberg’s Style: Allen Ginsberg was an American poet associated with the Beat Generation. His poetic style is characterized by spontaneity, the use of colloquial language, and a focus on themes such as spirituality, politics, and sexual liberation. Ginsberg employed a writing technique called “automatic writing,” where he allowed his thoughts to flow uncensored. His poetry often featured long lines, unconventional punctuation, and a rhythmic and chant-like quality. Ginsberg’s style was deeply influenced by his personal experiences and his desire to express countercultural ideas.
Three Different Kinds of Literature due to Computers and Informatics Advancements: Computers and informatics advancements have had a significant impact on literature, giving rise to new forms and genres. Here are three different kinds of literature influenced by these advancements: Cyberpunk Literature: This genre explores the fusion of technology and society, often depicting dystopian futures where advanced technology plays a central role. Cyberpunk literature delves into themes like virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the impact of technology on human existence.
- Digital Literature: With the advent of digital platforms, literature has evolved to incorporate multimedia elements such as hypertext, interactive narratives, and digital artwork. Digital literature breaks traditional linear structures and offers immersive and interactive reading experiences. Science Fiction Literature: Computers and informatics advancements have fueled the growth of science fiction literature. This genre explores speculative futures, scientific possibilities, and the impact of technology on society. Science fiction often delves into themes of AI, virtual reality, space exploration, and human-machine interfaces.