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Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California

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"Here, down in Venice West, we have a new kind of beat, the real beat, the Beat Generation of the Future. I have called them by their true title, 'The Holy Barbarians,' and the report I have just finished making about them will be called by that name," said Lawrence Lipton to a British reporter. John Arthur Maynard, in his study of the Venice West beat community, writes of Lipton's 1959 book: "Its photo essay, verbatim conversations with 'real beatniks,' and handy glossary of hip jargon, made it a kind of do-it-yourself guide to the Beat Generation." It also provided thousands of Americans with an image of the Beats. And when Time, Life, Look, or ABC News wanted to do a beatnik story, they usually headed not for Greenwich Village, or the North Beach of San Francisco, but to Venice West in Los Angeles. Maynard's study of the Venice West bohemians (who didn't think of themselves as Beats) is a fascinating study of the people who created many of our perceptions of what Life's Paul O'Neil called "The Only Rebellion Around." The Venice community, writes Maynard, consisted of only two dozen or so writers and artists, of whom only one, poet Stuart Perkoff, was truly original. Lipton, says Maynard, tried to make the Venice Beats in his own image--his "holy barbarians" who will storm the gates of civilization "not with the weapons of war but with the songs and ikons of peace." Maynard provides brief biographies of the Venice West principals, including Lipton and Perkoff, and details the saga of the Venice West Cafe' Expresso (sic), where Perkoff had painted "Art is Love Is God" on the back wall. The last chapters chronicle the decline of the Venice West bohemian community in the 1960s and into the 70s. Most scholarly studies of the Beats focus on Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs--three very original writers. But they were perhaps too original for the news media of the 1950s. To understand America's perception of the Beats, we need to go to Venice West. John Maynard has allowed us to do just that.

I am an ex-student of Dr. Maynard's and have since graduated from the Cal State system. I feel that the statement by the Kirkus book reviewer that Maynard is a "self described historian" to be belittling and misleading. John Maynard is a a professor of History and his class on Modern California was excellent (I finished with an "A" in the class.) That a History professor would, in fact, refer to him/herself as a "historian" is a logical step and this is why it irks me that someone would insinuate otherwise in an attempt to undermine Maynard's work on the Beat movement in Venice. The review fails to mention Maynard has a doctorate in History and specializes in the Beat and Hippie California cultures. Because of this ommission, Kirkus gives Maynard an amateur-WWII-buff type of spin instead of his props.

John Arthur Maynard's book on the bohemians of Venice, CA in the 1950s is one of the most unique tomes in Beat Generation non-fiction lore. Maynard got all of the gritty details on a community of self-taught artists that were disillusioned enough with the "good life" to see past their own creative limitations, and to carve out an existence built on earnest self-discovery. Those guys found that living and expressing was almost microbiotic to being alive. I really admire what Maynard did here... not sure if people give him enough credit for this book. It lays out just how intense Venice was, because before, after and in spite of any promotional "beatnik" shuck, they lived a true nomadic lifestyle. Unlike the bohemians of Left Banke Paris or even the deified beats of Greenwich Village/North Beach, the men and women of Maynard's book are all the more powerful because of their lack of pretense.

In Greater Los Angeles, the beach town of Venice saw the most intense conglomerate of writers later dubbed "beatniks," who in reality despised the label. Venice was simply a cheap place to live out of the spotlight, with a long history of seediness and urban decay. At this edge of land's end, a small group of self-taught poets and artists experimented with art, drugs and their own survival in a way that was never flashy, while the results were more harrowing than most want to realize. This is what makes John Arthur Maynard's book so powerful to read.