Southern Illinois University Beat Course

Instructor: Bob Fox

I recently finished teaching a four-week summer course on the
Beats. It was well attended: twenty-eight students in all, about a third
of them grad students. We read Kerouac's THE SUBTERRANEANS and LONESOME
TRAVELER, a number of selections from Charters' BEAT READER, and various
handouts of other materials, including poems by Ted Joans, Bob Kaufman,
Kerouac's "Desolation Blues," etc. We met daily, which was good, but many
students felt that four weeks was too short a period for the kind of study
we were involved in. (I completely agree--but this was something my
department came up with. Ordinarily our summer classes last eight weeks
and only meet twice a week.)

Most of the students did quite well and a majority of them rated
the course as "excellent" in their evaluations. I was particularly pleased
with their essays and even their final exam. A number of them wrote
movingly about how they were moved by the material; some even did creative
work clearly inspired by the writers we read.

All in all, my appreciation for these writers deepens as a result
of teaching them, although we do try to subject them to a rigorous (but
loving) criticism. At least they took risks with their work--which of
course means risking failure, or risking being misunderstood.