Who? Never heard of them....

[Roger Hicks]

... I read Kerouac, and Sartre for that matter to make me more interesting to girls ... . . .

Ah, yes. In Bermuda I had a girlfriend who said that she loved Catullus. So when we went back to school, I got a copy from the Latin master (I think I still have it somewhere). Three love letters later (I was at an all-boys boarding school in Plymouth, she at an all-girls boarding school just outside Bristol) I found that she had read him only in translation...

Cheers,

R.

 

[j j]

He got more popular in Europe in the eighties when the first beat literature revival kicked off, but my parents generation, the original European beatniks, could make little of him.

Yes, European youth in the 1980s caught up with and understood On The Road (and other influences from that direction such as The Velvet Underground and Nico) in a big way.

By that time Burgess was that old bloke on the chat shows. Clockwork Orange seemed to me to be clever but contrived and ponderous and dull; Kerouac was modern and Burgess was old guard (despite the chronology).

 

[kbg32]

Just read it again, no where in the text does it say that the person you refer to in the beginning of the post told they do not care....did they tell you they don't care or did you just assume they don't?

What you *did* write about someone caring or not is this, does not really refer to the young person you talked to now does it:



I don't know who Bravo is, but I am moving forward, that's for sure...

I don't think you read the post. I did mention that this person did not care about what existed before they were born.

Please, do move forward.

 

[jwc57]

This is the type of thread that keeps me coming back to RFF. What a interesting and great read.

I'm one that didn't know the names of photographers whose work I admired, and who influenced me, until years later. My father had books I would look through and admire the photos. I would recognize the photos later and put a name to them....Rosenthal, HCB, Capa etc.

Probably the very first photographer whom I knew both name and work was Bill Owens. I fell in love with his book "Suburbia". It documented the area I had moved to in 1976. Yet, I imagine not many know who he is.

Anyway, this is a great series of posts.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Yes, European youth in the 1980s caught up with and understood On The Road (and other influences from that direction such as The Velvet Underground and Nico) in a big way.

Which European youth would this be? You, you and your best friend, someone you saw reading it in a cafe, once? Everyone is entitled to an opinion but my opinion is that none of us should insult others by speaking ex cathedra.

This is the sort of sweeping generalisation for which the Wikipedia [citation needed] tag was invented.

 

[DominikDUK]

Sevo has a point after the war until the late 1960's american cars were a dream and a sign of being rich. From the 1970 on american cars of the muscle car type were called pimp mobiles (Austria) since this type of car was the favorite form of transportation for pimps in Austria. As far as I can tell Kerouac was never an Author of a generation like in the US, he was known in Europe but that's it. Furthermore I believe that on the road has little meaning to many Europeans since our roads are a lot shorter and we have to constantly cross borders if we want to drive for longer distances. Roads are less of a sign of freedom again borders than in the US.

 

[j j]

...none of us should insult others by speaking ex cathedra...

Ha ha! You say that with such authority Mr Prefect.

 

[Sparrow]

... the youths around me in the 80s were wearing Buzzcocks' teeshirts and spitting at each other

 

[pdh]

it's yer American culchural imperialism, innit

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

the youths around me in the 80s were wearing Buzzcocks' teeshirts and spitting at each other

Pretty much as I remember it, but it seems that a few of them are still around.

 

[kbg32]

The problem with this thinking is that there will always be someone more knowledgeable than we are. We will always be ignorant to someone. Just how much do we need to know to meet the OP's standard? Better to mind our own business, not judge others, and focus on improving ourselves and our work. The quality of a person is surely not determined by what they know, but rather by who they are and what they do.

John

I was not trying to judge or set a standard. I happen to respect this young. A hard worker. I just cited a few examples. This person is involved in the photography industry, yet has no knowledge base of the history of the medium whatsoever. I just cited the simplistic and some of the most well known photographers as examples not meaning to be "parochial".

When I was in elementary school, we learned the metric system for 30 seconds. Educators thought that the US should use the standard the rest of the world does. Then they decided to forgo it.

Since I live in the US, and not to demean anyone else, there was a Mexican photographer, that is what I used in conversation. Brandt, HCB, etc., would have been futile.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Pretty much as I remember it, but it seems that a few of them are still around.

Nah. The Buzzcocks teeshirts have worn out. The spitting, on the other hand...

Cheers,

R.