The thing about being a writer is that there’s no one size fits all. I watched Kill Your Darlings because it is an example of dark academia, or so it’s sometimes presented. I have read some Beat Generation writers, but the movie made me feel very ignorant of that aspect of American counter-culture. The movie is based on true events and such things as coincidences of writers always makes me feel terribly alone. In case you don’t know the story (I didn’t) Allen Ginsberg came under the influence of Lucien Carr at Columbia. Carr had been surviving at the university by the writing of his one-time lover David Kammerer. Carr introduces Ginsberg to William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, and the four (excluding Kammerer) kick off what would become much of the Beats. Carr, however, kills Kammerer and Ginsberg, who has become Carr’s lover, must decide what to do.
Ginsberg grew up in a broken home, as did Carr. I could relate to their feelings of loss. Of course, the Beats relied on drugs and alcohol and sex to write, breaking the rules of institutions like Columbia. Now that I’ve written my “million words” (and more), posted for free on this blog, I think back to my literary friends. Both in high school and college I knew guys (I was awkward with girls) who dreamed, or at least talked, of becoming writers. Over the years this pool has dried up. Seminary and doctoral study were too focused to find those who really wanted to write. Academic books, maybe, but not forms of self-expression. Now, I’ve never used drugs, nor have I wanted to. I write nonfiction books that are creative forms of self-expression. Naturally, they don’t sell.
Many of us who write were raised in broken homes. With tattered dreams we set out to try to make something of our lives in a hostile world. My behavior in college wasn’t exactly conventional, as any of my roommates could attest. It often appeared that way on the outside, even as poems rejected from the literary magazine were called “too depressing.” So I pursued an academic career, but there was, whether anybody saw in or not, always a wink in my eye. The same is true of my writing since. This blog scratches the surface. There’s a huge pile of fiction, and yes, poems, underneath. They may someday be found, but I do have my doubts. Movies about writers will do this to me. Even if they don’t really fit my tastes in dark academia.
