in
domestic melodrama and
sociological naturalism,
is
to my
view most directly conveyed by
hipster apologetics. This should
not be entirely surprising; the
cruel sport of Beat baiting, after
all,
is
popular because the Beats
are popular. Their rebellion
speaks straight to the hidden
wishes of the vast middle class
-and it is to the missionary
zeal of the Beats that the wide–
spread interest in addiction must
in no small part be attributed.
The sovereign dogma of hip–
ster apologetics is that if you
score you know The Score.
Whether the 'addict enjoys cos–
mic insight, or social insight, or
both, depends on the New Bar–
barian you're reading at the
moment, but all the Beat writers
agree that the drug user, unlike
the square, sees profoundly and
truly into the heart of the mat–
ter. This is not to say that Beat
writers, lovingly minute clini–
cians in depicting its horrors,
necessarily proselytize for the
narcotic.
It
is to say that their
work invariably exalts the kind
of perception which they as–
sociate with the addict himself.
The Connection,
which for
artistic honesty ranks highest
in
the post-war literature of ad–
diction, affords a clear example
of the way -hipster apologetics
721
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~rJUbM1Jt4
G·
c.
Hugh Holman
EDITOR
THE SHORT
NOVELS
OF THOMAS
WOLFE
For the first time in one volume,
five of Wolfe's best short novels.
Introduction and notes.
$4.50
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THE MAGIC OF
THEIR SINGING
"A truly comic yet deeply
moral work . . . by one of the
more interesting, clever, rich,
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-DANIEL TALBOT,
N.
Y. Times
c.
P. Snow
TIME
OF HOPE
and
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THE LIGHT
AND THE DARK
Two early novels in the
Stran–
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sequence.
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