Perhaps you are in love with perpetuating the grandeur of black and white morality from the 1950′s that is so colors your view of everything. In but a cursory glance of the New Criterion I find your analyses, “your” referring to the publication as a whole, to be as dogmatic as you accuse the Beat culture of being. The New Criterion, you say is to promote ideas of high culture, and honest criticism. It seems you seek to promote traditional values, by implication of your insipid analysis of the Beats as the moral degradation of your society. You seek to declare that the new art forms emerging in this time, such as those of the works of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William s. Burroughs (who I am shocked you did not mention given your zeal) which granted have had an impact on our society since the 1950′s and the 1960′s, are in fact those which have added to what you consider moral degradation. Yet, I ask of you, what you truly consider is moral degradation? Is reflecting a time of resistance, perhaps veiled during the 1950′s, all of what the literature of the Beats, as you say, in ovo,contained, degrading? The reflection in art of the problems of drug addiction, and sexual exploration, as in Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1959), are reflected in grotesque, vile imagery, yes…and seems willfully and consciously so, but does this not reflect an insider’s analysis of what you would probably refer to as “moral degradation,” and thus a valuable source for guarding against moral degradation? Perhaps if Naked Lunch were written as though the problem of sexual identity was exciting,or drug use romanticized as an escape as in a novel of narrative cohesiveness,if we are to use Naked Lunch as the seminal example of Beat writing, you would be correct in stating that art forms like this would lead to degradation. But the novel was written in a manner that rejects such romantic forms of the novel, (which you, at the New Criterion would perhaps favor, being advocates of high culture, of course as the Beats did wish to reject old forms that they found constrictive. Was this immediately truly accepted, were people lured in to blindingly accepting this all? As you say, there was some resistance in the 1950′s to the work of the Beats,and in the early sixties, obscenity charges against Naked Lunch and even the “critical Left’s” dismissal of the book on the same grounds. Perhaps more and more people began to gradually accept the new art forms, but to call this a chapter in the moral degradation of society seems erroneous. Of course, if nay new idea is introduced, dozens of dilletantes will attempt to echo the same views, resulting in perhaps some of the same literary techniques by Burroughs’, a resistance to war by virtue of the artist’s resistance to war, etc. But how is the social reactionary, citing the times of moral clarity, the subscriber to the ideas of maintaining the original novel form, art in the original sense, a purveyor of black and white morality any different. How is it more morally degrading to stand behind someone like Burroughs than J. Edgar Hoover? Both were men with distinguished qualities and intensely interesting sociological theories, and my bias lies with Burroughs admittedly, but is it not the evil of any cultural movement taken out of context applied to the masses in a sheep like mentality that you are truly lamenting? To call the Beats actively bad simply because they reflected a certain feeling about the country at the time is to impose cultural elitism beyond its use. Yes, mediocrity is to be avoided in the arts and culture, the constant celebrity focus in our new post-postmodern culture where everything seems to be a reflection of everything else within an enclosed spectrum. But your cultural elitism extends far beyond that. Are the Beats actively bad and mediocre because they reflected a time abstractly, with what you call the romanticization of art over life? If you define mediocrity based on the art form’s focus and its content alone, and impose that on a national level, you and you newspaper are nothing short of what Orson Welles would define as a tastemaker, (and perhaps you unabashedly admit so). There is no doubt that the 1950′s was a ferment of culture, but you yourself seem to mention the Beats as a prime example. It seems you do two things here: argue that the 1960′s was a far more conformist time than the 1950′s simply because there was not, as you claim, such a clamoring for new and different ideals, and the opposition to the Vietnam War, and also argue that the Beats, who facilitated that ferment of culture, left us with a culture that is actively bad. It seems like you’re obsession with the 1950′s leaves out the 2 and 1/2 cheers you mention, and only the witheld 1/2 cheer, (which I assume is the cheer witheld for the the Beats)shines through. The Beats are therefore not artistic antimatter,as they are given enough value to be mentioned in a textual form in your “criticism” of an article that is far more of a grandstanding for your own agenda and that of your publication than anything else. You cannot deny then that what you believe to be their destructive force must also be a creative force. You admit to this on another level, as you admit the Beats created what you call the “Beat church.” What concerns me is not artistic antimatter as you call it, the intentionally destructive, powerful work of the Beats, which you admit to by default of giving them so much attention. What concerns me is critical antimatter, forces created in a “church” of their own by social reactionaries such as yourself to demean movements of the past that do not fit your political or social beliefs, while clinging to the black and white morality of that past as a soapbox. This is not criticism, but rather self advertisement of a belief. This is far more dangerous than a work of art that you designate as antimatter. The antimatter work of art is subjective and therefore can be denied at its form level. Your analysis is your opinion offered in essay form, with your picture indicating by your horrendous yellow bow tie and large glasses that you must be taken seriously. You offer the image of an academic, present an image of credulity that I can deny based on your ludicrous analysis, but that creates a wave of New Criterion “churchgoers” who view your analysis based on your vigilance of the news and the art world, that you must know what you are talking about. I offer the claim that the Beat writers wished to further an art form, be it by offering artistic antimatter, reflecting the reality as they saw it. You simply further yourself and an unhealthy nostalgia with your horde of yellow bow tie disciples trailing behind you off a cliff into clear waters in which you will drown in an attempt to escape murky reality.