Dreams, Death, and Bottle-Break

Modernist Ethnopoetics and the Beatnik Quest for Ascesis

Authors

  • Raj Chandarlapaty American University of Afghanistan Author

Keywords:

Beat Generation, Amiri Baraka, An American Dream, jazz aesthetics, race and modernism, masculinity and selfhood, beatnik poetics

Abstract

The Beatnik quest was fundamentally one for essential humanity. The Amiri Baraka Papers serve as a catalog which inspired Norman Mailer to write An American Dream. Parallels with Beatnik writers and with Blackness mean to establish this very normative trend in the character of Congressman Steven Rojack.

Author Biography

  • Raj Chandarlapaty, American University of Afghanistan

    Raj Chandarlapaty is Assistant Professor of English at the American University of Afghanistan. He is the author of one book, The Beat Generation and Counterculture, and has published articles on Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Paul Bowles and Mohammed Mrabet. He is currently working on a second monograph on the videography and music of Paul Bowles. Dr. Chandarlapaty was awarded the Most Promising Teacher Award at AUAF during 2012-13. He has taught American Literature, World Literature, and Composition.

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Published

2026-10-09

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2013): A Double Life • Mind of an Outlaw

Section

Articles