In eastern India there are ancient Hindu temples that are famous for the sexually explicit sculptures lining the outsides of the buildings, showing every conceivable act of intercourse known to the minds of ancient civilization. The purpose of these pornographic artworks are to distract those who are unworthy of entering the temples. People who are preoccupied with their carnal pleasures get stuck looking carefully at every detail and can never enter the inner sanctum where the divine cosmic truth is revealed only to those who have proven themselves worthy by bypassing the prurient carvings. These Hindu temples can act as an analogy for reading Diane Di Prima’s Memoirs Of a Beatnik. While this book is neither a profound work of religious faith nor a highly crafted work of classical art, the analogy still holds because if you get distracted by its sexually oriented passages you will miss out on the more significant writings about the bohemian life in 1950s New York City.
Some people have criticized this book for being pornographic. While it is true that some sections of each chapter have explicit descriptions that leave nothing to the imagination, it is not fair to call the book itself a work of pornography. Even though Di Prima’s depictions of sex are sometimes raw, vulgar, and even written with banal language, she does write with a certain sensibility and self-confidence so that it does not come across as sleazy. In the group sex passages, she and her partners transgress gender and racial barriers. In another part, she sleeps with two male friends because one of them is sublimating his homosexual desiresthrough her; she curiously even exhibits some sexual sadism during this encounter. One particularly harrowing chapter involves her lesbian relationship with a girl named Tomi; the author spends a weekend with Tomi’s family only to find herself in the middle of a nightmare involving alcoholism, voyeurism, sodomy, rape, and incest. Promiscuity and sexual experimentation have typically been parts of the bohemian lifestyle going back at least to the beginning of the 19th century and Diane Di Prima does not try to hide this aspect of the Beat Generation in any way.
Those explicit scenes can be taken lightly. The real thrust of this book is Di Prima’s coming of age story. In her late teens, she leaves her parents’ home to go to college. She drops out and does all the things you would expect a beatnik to do. There are coffee houses, jazz, dancing, pot smoking, parties, living n the streets, art, book stores, squatting, and whatever else you might expect from any given counter-culture. The content of her story is nothing new or surprising but she writes in a way that is frank and honest. The clear and simple descriptiveness never comes off as pretentious. The prose may not be complex but it is smoothly and finely crafted to convey a sense of freedom and loose living. Her prose is celebratory and liberating. Also, one personality trait that pervades all her writing is the motherly and nurturing care she provides for all her friends in the scene. Whether it is sex, food, shelter, drugs, or money, she gives of herself generously to all the ragged souls who wander into her charmed circle.
Diane Di Prima wrote Memoirs Of a Beatnik solely to make money at a time when she was broke. It was published in 1968 by the infamous and controversial Olympia Press. The semi-fictional sex was added it because the publisher demanded it. The unspoken rule is that real art is never made for the sake of money. So this book may not actually be completely authentic. But the author did draw on her own life experience to write some of it and there are certainly times when her sincerity shines through. This is not the best of Diane Di Prima’s writing though. If you want to know what she is truly capable of, read her poetry. She writes excellent poetry and unfortunately, she is terribly underrated.
If you’ve ever been part of a counter-culture, you have probably met a few people like Diane Di Prima and there will be a lot you can relate to in these pages. If you haven’t been part of a scene then it’s time to throw your cellphone away and start living for a change.
Di Prima, Diane. Memoirs Of a Beatnik. Last Gasp, San Francisco: 1988.
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