Playing Moloch’s Advocate

There is a fairly accepted theory of literary analysis that it is possible for a text to have a thematic effect apart from the goals of its creator. Hermeneutics aside, authorial intent cannot feasibly be fully reconstructed in most cases, because the interpreter doesn’t possess a totality of knowledge concerning the author. It’s with this in mind that I’ll start this by making a stand about Part I that runs in direct opposition to what Ginsberg likely intended, before I discuss the other parts. Part I was pretty clearly meant to celebrate “The best minds of [Ginsberg’s] generation” as being the dissidents and rebels that the conservative elements of his society labeled as the worst. I think that the text read a different way can completely contradict that. To elaborate, this section of Howl seems to me to be dripping with an odd irony or sarcasm. Amidst Ginsberg’s celebration of all things counter-culture, he makes frequent reference to his great minds’ depravations (a fact that the cynic in me insists is included simply to make this thing edgy, but that my rational side insures me is deeper). That’s not what I’m talking about. But when I read lines referring to these characters like, “Who studied…bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,” I can’t help but sense a wave of accusation from the text. For lack of a better term, these characters seem like poseurs. They come from Kansas because they felt an arrogant centrality and gathered to The City to have that feeling pandered to by philosophies and by the people with the talent, by Ginsberg and so forth. No lack of drug references in this part of the poem further suggests that this feeling is drug induced, not genuine. I’ll counter the response that this generation celebrated drug use as enlightening rather than debilitating by saying that I realize that this interpretation views the poem through a modern lens and I’ll ask: why shouldn’t it be viewed that way?

Of course, this interpretation suffers when the poetic ambiguity of Part I is clarified (or castrated) by the Footnote. I can’t find any way to interpret Ginsberg’s cacophonic “Holy’s” as anything but worship of his companions and himself. That fact actually makes me wonder whether the sections inclusion is partly intended to ensure that those misinterpreting Part I, where things are less explicit, are set straight (or to destroy the possibility of the very interpretation I’m positing). The popular wisdom suggests that the footnote answers Part II, and admittedly, the parallelism is pretty obvious, but I think that it interacts with Part I as well. Its list, “Holy Kerouac holy Huncke Holy Burroughs Holy Cassady,” and so on is clearly exonerating the same people that are called best minds. Still, the sectionalism itself could be viewed as a thematic suggestion of viewing. Why are these things broken into sections, and why is the footnote separate (excluding the obvious literal reason of it being written later, I’m talking purely about theme here). Why is the footnote so far from Part I, where the interpretation it needs to debunk can be formed? If you come to the footnote with the cynical sense of irony that the interpretation I’m taking about breeds, even the Footnote itself can seem ironic. Like a sad little mockery of the “Holy” philosophies, those ones that above caused the poseur to continue his charade. That interpretation wouldn’t be possible if these texts weren’t sectioned off and presented in precisely the order they are.

If this darker interpretation is accepted, than these two parts become a condemnation of a false enlightenment, an accusation against the untruth of the whole movement. Coupled with Part II, which essentially attacks everything else, the whole piece becomes somewhat nihilistic. I don’t know if that’s in tone for a Beat poet, but I don’t think it is.