Shattuck compared the Beat Generation and French avant-garde

Evidence

Two weeks before, the Voice ran an article in which Professor Roger Shattuck compared the early twentieth-century French avant-garde and the Beat Generation, graciously noting that “the only organ which had begun to articulate the feelings and the context of the so-called beat generation and to oblige its members to see themselves without indulgence is a little newspaper in New York,” that is, the Village Voice. “In its informal interviews, heated letters from readers of all shapes and addictions, and unstereotyped literary and social criticism,” Shattuck continued, “one can begin to perceive what has happened. The total engagement in life which Existentialism taught immediately after the last war has evolved mysteriously into the total disengagement of the cool cat who doesn’t lift a finger for anyone and lives skin deep.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 28

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s recurring interest in what makes avant-garde scenes cohere — a small newspaper obliging its members to ‘see themselves without indulgence’ is a scene-making instrument, parallel to how the reader’s other books treat the institutions that bind subcultures.