Advertisement

Generation hex

Reading Time:5 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0

Let's dispense at the outset with the most deeply abraded of all jumping-off points from which commentators leap when discussing the work of Gary Snyder. This states that Snyder was a Beat Generation poet who, with partner writers Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, constituted a cornerstone of that mythologised 1950s 'movement'.

This is at most only tangentially true. Snyder was part of the Beat scene - perhaps part of the scenery? - that still reverberates through literature. He recited verse at pivotal counter-culture poetry readings; he was the inspiration for Japhy Ryder, the protagonist of Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums, which examines Western interpretations of Buddhism. But there was, and remains, much more to life for Snyder than a briefly flaring (however golden) age, if not of Aquarius, then of a Bodhisattva.

''Beat' is a historical term and should be treated as such,' explains Snyder affably. 'It covers the late 50s to the early 70s and denotes a certain kind of writing. But it's not the kind of writing I do. The Beats were buddies of mine; I try to correct a little of how that's understood - but there's not much hope. Kerouac wasn't a journalist: some things in The Dharma Bums happened, some didn't. It wasn't journalism.'

Snyder is addressing local reporters and photographers at a press session hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin.

It is part of the wider, Baptist University-directed International Writers' Workshop programme that will see Snyder, author of numerous books of poetry, for which he remains best known, and prose, recite his verse to those thirsty for nuggets of wisdom. But as he enthrals, entertains and teases the press corps, it becomes clear that Snyder, 79 and still brimful of charisma, has an agenda bigger than literature. 'Al Gore was a little slow on the uptake,' says Snyder as the debate about the future of the planet, in which Snyder has long been cast as a white (or green?) knight, enters a new session. 'But he's not really our only hope: there are more articulate writers and commentators, like Bill McKibben, who are in touch.'

Snyder, with intimate connections to Asia cemented across decades, is particularly interested in developments in our extended backyard, having been 'involved in Japanese environmental issues for 25 years'.

Advertisement