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Situated in North Beach, this marks my fifth sojourn to San Francisco, a city to which I find myself perpetually drawn. Columbus Avenue carves a diagonal path through the neighbourhoods of Chinatown and extends all the way to Beach Street, adjacent to the ocean. At number 261 on this bustling avenue, an indelible sign declares: “A Literary Meeting Place Since 1953.” People gravitate here for many reasons, not least of which is to absorb the ambiance of this bastion of alternative culture, and to appreciate the intellectual open-mindedness that continues to be advocated within its hallowed walls. This place is a living testament to the enduring legacy of the Beat Generation.
Constructed on the remains of a former edifice, razed by the conflagration that ensued the 1906 earthquake, the diminutive storefront of City Lights originally shared its premises with a miscellany of retail establishments. Gradually annexing the adjacent spaces as they became vacant, City Lights incrementally expanded its square footage until it eventually usurped the entire structure. The publishing house was officially inaugurated in 1953 by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who launched City Lights Publishers with the now-renowned Pocket Poets series. Today, City Lights boasts an oeuvre of over two hundred printed titles, augmenting its catalogue annually with a dozen fresh publications. It actively fosters an engagement with books and literary culture through educational initiatives and public events, thereby ensuring the sustenance of a vibrant community of readers, writers, and intellectual explorers.
City Lights rose to irreversible prominence following the obscenity trial levelled against Ferlinghetti. The owner of City Lights was reproached for publishing the anthology by the American poet and writer Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), “Howl and Other Poems” (City Lights, 1956). The work, unabashedly describing homosexual activity during an era when sodomy laws criminalised such acts, contains “Howl,” a poem within the tradition of Walt Whitman, and arguably Ginsberg’s most renowned piece, recognized as a seminal work of the Beat Generation. A scathing indictment against the horrors of capitalism, war, and industrialised civilisation, “Howl” epitomises Beat poetry. Ginsberg takes the reader on an odyssey through the underbelly of America, delving into the world of outcasts, addicts, vagabonds, prostitutes, and hustlers. Ultimately, Ferlinghetti was vindicated, resulting in an additional 5,000 copies of the text being printed to satisfy the heightened public demand elicited by the publicity surrounding the trial.
Allen Ginsberg was a vociferous opponent of militarism, capitalism, and sexual repression. He epitomised various aspects of the counter-culture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, disdain for bureaucracy, and openness towards Eastern religions. During his studies at Columbia University in the 1940s, he befriended William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) and Jack Kerouac (1922-1969). After attending Harvard University where he studied English and Anthropology, Burroughs enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during World War II in 1942. His subsequent rejection led him into the throes of heroin addiction. His novel, “Naked Lunch,” published in 1959, chronicles the escapades of William Lee, a fictionalised version of Burroughs himself and his nom de plume, a peripatetic drug addict. Like “Howl,” “Naked Lunch” was subjected to a high-profile obscenity trial in Boston, where its prohibition was eventually overturned in a landmark ruling, dealing a significant blow to literary censorship. In 1943, while living in New York, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
The latter, a novelist and poet, gained acclaim with “On the Road.” Published in 1957, this semi-autobiographical novel, rendered in a revolutionary, free-flowing style, chronicling the road trip of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, stands as the quintessential novel of the Beat Generation. Kerouac’s writings also delve into topics such as jazz, life in New York, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty.
These three luminaries of the underground literary scene would become the celebrated icons of the Beat Generation. Kerouac coined the phrase “Beat Generation” in 1948 to characterise a nascent, underground, nonconformist youth movement he perceived in New York. The adjective “beat” could colloquially denote “worn out” or “defeated” within the contemporaneous African American community, but Kerouac repurposed the term, infusing it with more positive connotations (as it was also suggested to originate from “beatific”), in alignment with its musical usage: being “on the beat” (in rhythm) and “the beat to keep” (maintaining the rhythm).
In the mid-1950s, amid the post-World War II disillusionment and the Cold War’s climate of hostility, alongside other writers such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-), Gregory Corso (1930-2001), Neal Cassady (1926-1968), and Carl Solomon (1928-1993), they constituted a cultural vanguard reacting against institutionalized American values, materialism, and conformity. These iconoclastic and politically dissident writers broached subjects such as sex, drugs, and hedonism. Highly controversial in their era, and simultaneously precursors to the 1960s counter-culture movement, they were also experimentally poetic, striving to write in an authentic and unhindered style, drawing inspiration from jazz musicians, surrealists, metaphysical poets, visionary poets like William Blake, haiku, and Zen poetry. This novel generation eventually settled in the Bay Area, especially in the neighborhoods surrounding Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Beat poet and publisher bookstore, City Lights.
Over the years, City Lights has published a broad spectrum of poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, and translated works. In addition to books by Beat Generation authors, it publishes literary works by authors such as Charles Bukowski, Georges Bataille, Sam Shepard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, and Noam Chomsky. Initially associated with radical left-wing politics and social justice issues, over time, it also expanded its repertoire to include political theory, cultural and gender studies, and it offers a vast selection of titles from small independent publishers.
In 1971, Ferlinghetti persuaded Nancy Peters, then employed at the Library of Congress, to join him at City Lights. “When I joined City Lights in 1971 and began working with Lawrence, it was clear that it was a hub of dissent, for revolutionary thinkers and individuals seeking societal change,” she recalls. “Once I started working at the modest offices at Filbert and Grant, individuals Lawrence had acquainted during the vibrant 1960s were continually visiting, such as Paul Krassner, Tim Leary — individuals involved in the underground press who were striving to provide an alternative to mainstream media. It was a period of persecution and FBI infiltration into these presses.” (quoted in “And the beat goes on,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9 June 2003). In 1984, amidst a financial crisis, Peters became a co-owner of the business. Ferlinghetti credits her with the subsequent survival and burgeoning success of the company. In 1999, she and Ferlinghetti purchased the building in which they were working. She retired in 2007, passing the baton to Elaine Katzenberger, while continuing to serve on the board of directors.
In 2001, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors designated City Lights as an official historical landmark — the first time such a distinction was granted to a business rather than a building — in recognition of the significant role it has played in the literary and cultural development of San Francisco and the nation, and for its “substantial contribution to the major developments of the post-World War II era.”
Nayla Tamraz
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