Jack Kerouac: Feminist

No, Jack wasn't a feminist. That title was to get you to read this post.

I have officially had it with criticism of Jack Kerouac as an anti-feminist patriarchal misogynist, such critiques always leading to explicit or implicit pleadings to therefore shun his writings. If we are not allowed to read anything by a writer with flaws, then we may as well commence our cessation of reading right now.

Here's the message: YOU DON'T HAVE TO WASTE OUR TIME WITH BLOG DIATRIBES AND PAPERS FROM YOUR COLLEGE CLASSES COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW WOMAN WERE MARGINALIZED IN BEAT LITERATURE!

We know that! Anyone with a brain knows that. Or even half a brain.

Man! I'm just pissed off about this.

FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO SPEND YOUR TIME ON. Did you ever hear the phrase, "beating a dead horse"? I guess not.

We who love beat literature love beat literature and that's that. Your sophomoric attempts to persuade us otherwise with your novel (not) and withering (not) critiques of beat literature because it wasn't feminist enough are not going to work.

Here you go. Read this article by Dr. Audrey Sprenger. She's way smarter than I'll ever be and puts the matter to rest quite well.

I'm going to read what I want and I'm going to love the authors I choose. Did Jack Kerouac meet today's standards where a feminist perspective is concerned? No. Do I wish he did? No! It was the 1940s and 1950s. Our culture was what it was. He was a product of and a describer of the culture at that time.

Pick on someone else for a change. The beats are too easy a target where anti-feminism is concerned. How about looking into the U.S. Senate as an example of a current patriarchy? Write about that and maybe someone will listen.

What's really going on here is jealousy. Some people just can't get their heads around beat literature or its popularity, and reverse anachronistic potshots are the best they can manage for a critique.

Enough!