Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation

Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation Introduction Jack Kerouac was responsible for spawning the literary movement that became known as the Beat Generation, a movement not only significant to literature, but one which incorporated music and visual art to chart a personal progression. Kerouac â€Å"was the leader of a literary movement and a way of life he thought was a passing fad.† The basic characteristics of â€Å"Beat† are defined in Kerouacs 1957 novel On the Road, a text which was to become a virtual gospel for the Beat Generation. As the author of this commandment, Kerouac became known as the â€Å"King of the Beats.† His reaction to this title is documented in an article printed in Playboy, â€Å"The Origins of the Beat Generation† (â€Å"Journal of Beat Poet Holmes recalls friendship, death of Jack Kerouac†). The term â€Å"beat† has a range of meanings, affording critics of â€Å"Beat† writing a rich array of ambiguities for their textual analyses. As an adjective, it was most famously defined by Allen Ginsberg, a member of Kerouacs close knit group, as â€Å"exhausted, at the bottom of the world, looking up or out, sleepless, wide-eyed, perceptive, rejected by society, on your own, streetwise,† while the word beat was originally used as a musical term by post-World War II musicians in reference to an individual or tune that was exhausted or downbeat. At the time, America herself was â€Å"beat†- the country had emerged from the 1930s disaster of economic depression only to find itself entangled in World War II, and having to deal with threats from the â€Å"reds† and the ominous propositions of McCarthyism. In one striking blow to Kerouac and other Bohemians, a definite link between smoking and lung cancer was confirmed in 1953. Kerouacs audience was a disenchanted, self righteous population, an unguided generation with no clear direction or idea of what they wanted form life and too powerless and world-weary to go out in search of the meaning of their existence. Such readers found refreshment and salvation in Kerouacs self-declared confusion, embodied most apparently in his definitive novel- On the Road. Kerouacs style, like all of the Beat writers, is defined simply and very easy to recognize. The Beat Generation â€Å"saw themselves on a quest for beauty and truth, allying themselves with mysticism. The works themselves were to be streams of consciousness written down spontaneously and not to be altered or edited† Kerouac himself simply stated, â€Å"if you change it†¦ the gig is shot.† Poets and novelists of the Beat Generation labelled Kerouac the embodiment of Beat and hailed him as leader of the movement, the â€Å"King† term is perhaps more carefully chosen than it appears, patriarchally loaded as it is. Other well-known authors of the Beat Generation include Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William S. Burroughs, and Ken Kesey. 1. Kerouacs â€Å"Spontaneity† and the Beats. While the title implies supreme spontaneity, Kerouac was never quite as deliberately spontaneous as his legend has insisted. His plan was to create a â€Å"giant epic in the tradition of Balzac and Proust†, but he never managed to determine a literary technique capable of welding the separate books of his Duluoz chronology into a coherent whole, â€Å"even if he tried†. Ann Charters is the voice behind much of the critical discussion of Kerouacs overwhelming legend-making aspiration, â€Å"He couldnt come up with any literary technique to help him fit all the volumes of the Duluoz Legend into one continuous tale. All he could think of was to change the names in the various books back to their original forms, hoping that this single stroke would give sufficient unity to the disparate books, magically making them fit more smoothly into their larger context as the Duluoz (Kerouac the Louse) Legend†¦[H]e wanted the books reissued in a uniform edition to make the larger design unmistakeable.† To claim that each individual novel is insufficient without integration into the larger context of the legend assumes a very conventional definition of legend. Not only is it linear and coherently chronological, it is also bound by the rules of time that govern reality. Of course there is no real reason why this should be so. Kerouacs â€Å"beats† create permanent and timeless impressions, and unending rhythms like Nature herself- the beat will go on if it is not bound by temporality or rationality, but, like a true legend, circulates and permeates the universal consciousness all the time, for all time. A legend can, after all, be many things: an unauthenticated story from ancient times; an allegorical tale of obvious exaggeration or fallacy; simple fame; an explanation accompanying an image or map- and, in music, a composition capable of relating a story- even without words. Charters criticisms fall away rapidly. Kerouacs work easily adheres to each of these versions of the term â€Å"legend†, as if he is unconsciously sensitive to the subtle multiplicity of the word, and feels obliged to fulfil the words promise. His work is carefully designed, indeed, he was preoccupied by the notion of design- the pre-styling of the free-styling- and perhaps not, then, the carefree and careless King of Beats. The assumption of wild abandon seems to arise from misunderstandings of the term â€Å"free prose.† The â€Å"free† to which Kerouac refers does not, in any way, signify a relinquishing of control. It is, however, rather like Wordsworths â€Å"spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,† which creates an impression of experimentation but really represents a highly contrived artifice to contain the exuberance of â€Å"natural† speech. Associating Kerouacs particular diction with what he has called, â€Å"the unfulfilled linguistic intentions of the British Lake poets,† Tytell asserts that Kerouac sought a diction compatible with the natural and irrepressible flow of any â€Å"uncontrollable involuntary thoughts† that he had to release. While Kerouac clearly hoped that his â€Å"Spontaneous bop prosody† would â€Å"revolutionize American literature†, just as Joyce had revolutionized English prose, â€Å"spontaneous bop† has musical implications far more than literary ones. Kerouac and the other Beat writers listened to music as they worked, and â€Å"bop† surely applies to the jazz which accompanied their writing, more than anything; the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonius Monk. In many ways Kerouacs literary technique is structured on a model of Jazz riffs- the impulse for both being to perfect a deliberate style that does not look deliberate, something which systematically generates an impression of spontaneity. Albert Murray has defined a jazz riff as, â€Å"a brief musical phrase that is repeated, sometimes with very subtle variations, over the length of a stanza as a chordal pattern follows its normal progression†¦Riffs always seem spontaneous as if they were improvised in the heat of the performance. So much so that riffing is sometimes seen as synonymous with improvisation†¦not only are riffs as much a part of the same arrangements and orchestrations as the lead melody, but many consist of nothing more than stock phrases, quotations from the same familiar melody, or even clichà ©s that just happen to be popular at the moment.† Such is the technical â€Å"improvisation† of Kerouacs prose. Despite his declared disinterest in music, Kerouacs writing evidences a profound identification of the creation of music with that of literary works. As he states in his Paris Review interview: â€Å"As for my regular English verse, I knocked it off fast†¦ just as a musician has to get out, a jazz musician, his statement within a certain number of bars,† and later likens the writers craft to that of the hornplayer, â€Å"I formulated the theory of breath as measure, in prose and in verse, never mind what Olson, Charles Olson says, I formulated that theory in 1953 at the request of Burroughs and Ginsberg. Then theres the raciness and freedom and humour of jazz.† In Kerouacs own terms, then, the beat follows the phrasing of the jazz model. In his theory of â€Å"breath as measure† he reveals his acute attention to the sentence- elsewhere denounced- and even acknowledges the control of cadence. His contemporary critics occasionally saw musical rhythm in Kerouac: Tallman found a version of sentimental thirties music in â€Å"The Town and the City†, where melody rather than a storyline, controls the work. â€Å"On the Road,† however, demonstrates a departure into bebop, â€Å"Where the sounds become BIFF, BOFF, BLIP, BLEEP, BOP, BEEP, CLINCK, ZOWIE! Sounds break up. And are replaced by other sounds. The journey is NOW. The narrative is a humpty dumpty heap. Such is the condition of NOW.† Its impossible to avoid the philosophical and religious implications of this kind of anti-chronology. Just as music appears endless, repeatable, circular and circuitous, such is the freedom of writing unshackled to narrative. In Kerouacs novel, Big Sur, the message appears to be that since Nature is a part of the self, and to fear it is to fear oneself. The two meanings of Nature become one: â€Å"human nature† is animalistic, and this novel is cautionary to the extent that it shows the dangers of failing to acknowledge this. Kerouacs nature/Nature synthesis represents the essence of his Buddhist sympathies, and this in turn relates to the literary theme of tracing a path. It is hard not to read this author without conflating the mystical with post-modern work on impasses, such as Derridas aporia, and the sense that however far we go we can never escape our selves. It recalls the Buddhist expression, â€Å"Wherever you go, there you are.† â€Å"I am beginning to see a vast Divine Comedy of my own based on Buddha-on a dream I had that people are racing up and the Buddha mountain, is all, and inside the Cave of Reality.† The immediacy of his writing adds to the sense of guru-like mysticism in Kerouacs work: his work spills out like revelations, if not beats, we certainly get the sensation that he is â€Å"King† of something. The work responds to deconstructive literary theory because of its very currency- it has almost completely evaded the conventional segregation and hierarchy of speech and writing. â€Å"My work comprises one vast book like Prousts except that my remembrances are written on the run instead of afterwards in a sick bed.† â€Å"Criticism is forced to be perpetually lagging behind the designs and dictates of the author, whilst the works language is seen as a simple means towards a referential end. Language is thereby devalued to the status of an instrument.† Barthess statement, â€Å"it is only through the function of the author as the possessor of meaning that textual reality is made obeisant to extra textual reality† is almost the antithesis of Kerouac. Kerouacs restoration program also depends on the authors willingness to disappear slightly and conduct meaning, but uniquely, Kerouac demands that the hierarchy of the â€Å"textual and extra-textual† be flattened. Not only this, but that the direction of realist discourse be inverted. As Barthes describes it, â€Å"the author is always supposed to go from signified to signifier, from passion to expression†¦the critic goes in the other direction†¦the master of meaning†¦is a divine attribute†¦from the signified towards the signifier.† Clearly Kerouac does not begin with the apparent and source its cause. He is the archetypal author, travelling from a source within himself a â€Å"passion†- towards a grand confection of layered expressive analogies. This critic is not working as an unseen evangelist of truth-in-nature, but uses nature as a space to unveil meaning, that is, to work from the â€Å"signifier† of the word, to the â€Å"signified† of the writing, like a painter signing his own name on the canvas. In fact, Kerouac is suspended between the conditions of observer and recorder. The recorders self is neither ejected nor declared in his writings, but rather encrypted- both in and as the writing. This partly explains the fascination that encrypted and marginalized author figures hold for Kerouac. His own experience of suspension and estrangement from easy linguistic categorisation, and from the body of conventional society, is unconsciously articulated in all Kerouacs writings. The very potent agency of unconscious in itself is of course another â€Å"natural† tie, binding this writer to the natural world. When, in Big Sur, he talks of the meandering river/path leading into/out of the picture, he is describing the same path into and out of meaning which he himself treads. As a fugitive of consciousness, he travels from work to signifier -in the sense of both meaning, and of the artist, the maker of meaning, and his conclusions merge meaning and its maker into a single signifier. As an author, Kerouac functions as a human conduit to bring external reality to â€Å"textual reality†- and is guided in this venture by the original source, the world outside. All this is reinforced, and microcosmically present, in Kerouacs easy fluctuation into and out of the page, int o and out of the rythm- all of which implies a certain arbitrariness of the page. This is not carelessness, but merely the flip-side of significance. It simply doesnt matter to Kerouac whether a symbol works in one direction or another, the importance is the motion- the action- itself. This is particularly evident in the repeated jazz references in â€Å"On the Road†. The musical analogy for temporal progression is made explicit as Kerouacs fundamental modus operandi. When he describes his unique philosophy of composition, â€Å"blow as deep as you want to blow,† it seems he imagines the writer as a kind of horn-player. He attaches his methodology to a rationale for his bizarre habits of punctuation, â€Å" Method. No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled with false colons and timid usually needless commas- but the vigorous space dash separating rhetorical breathing (as jazz musicians drawing breath between outblown phrases)† The words occurring between dashes resemble linguistic entities unaligned with the conventional subject-verb arrangement of English sentences. These linguistic configurations appear to obey a different notion of time to the â€Å"real† world, with its â€Å"real† language. Traditionally, a sentence fixes time by acting as a frame for the past-present-future sequence. The conventional sentence does not allow the motion, flash, and fluctuation of Kerouacs writing ambition. In this way, the musical analogy enables Kerouac to construct a notion of time outside of the temporal constriction of conventional literature. His work is less poetic, non-linear, and dislocated. A phrase need not refer to the outside world, for it can now begin and end with reference only to its own rhythm- a truly poetic quality, â€Å" measured pauses which are the essentials of our speech-divisions of the sounds we hear-time and how to note it down (William Carlos Williams).† So Kerouacs prose is measured with breath, and timing holds the key to its rendition. As he describes the process, â€Å"Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-wrds, blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image† On the Road is an attempt to solve the time/space problems Kerouac is troubled by, but his success is always qualified by what we might term psychoanalytic obstacles. However much he attempts to overrule the order of cause and effect, past and present, this author must remain subject to the government of his own past. His repeated attempts to perfect the form contradict the effort itself, of course- and this is Kerouacs paradox. The more he writes, the more he develops, and the more evident the writers evolution, the more it relates to a chronological dynamic. In the same way that labouring spontaneity foregrounds the labour, and consequently the authors hand, aspiring to defeat timeliness through constructing a series of books over years only betrays his inescapable mortality, tying him inextricably to the outside world in spite of himself. The writing brings to mind the words of art critic, Michael Fried, whose anxiety around the visually present world is everywhere present in his work, â€Å"†¦a means of evoking an experience of journeying corporeally through space as opposed to merely viewing a world present to eyesight but fundamentally out of reach.† It is clear that Kerouacs work is a melancholic writing of history i the most literal sense: his books create chimeras of invisible historical figures, and in so doing evoke their absence- an absence which inevitably feeds his unfalsifiable claims, and, unfortunately for Kerouac, the claims of unfalsifiability made against him. 2. The Beat and the Origin The life of every Beat Writer is characterized by a prolonged psychic crisis that is finally resolved by means of a sudden vision or insight James T. Jones, in his book Jack Kerouacs Dulouz Legend: The Mythic Form of an Autobiographical Fiction, argues forcefully for an Oedipal analysis of Kerouacs work. Grouping the Kerouac texts in the Freudian context, particularly the Oedipus myth, Jones reflects on ways in which Kerouacs depiction of family relationships and by extension, relationships in his personal life and as fictionalized in his prose may be explained through Freud. His look extends to the enduring relationship between Kerouac and his mother, the residual rivalry with his father, sibling rivalry with his older deceased brother Gerard, and eventually a succession of male colleagues. Big Surs alcohol-induced nervous breakdown is perceived as being induced by or symptomatic of his catastrophic attachment to his mother and obsession with the psychic tensions induced by the Oedipal family struggle. As Jones writes, Jack Dulouz , suffering from the effects of chronic alcoholism and sensing an impending nervous breakdown, seeks refuge at the oceanside cabinunfortunately, like the grove of the Eumenides in Oedipus at Colonus, it is full of reminders of both the cause of his misery and the fate that awaits him, The oedipal signifier works in two directions, then, standing outside of time. The â€Å"Origin† supplied by the grove recalls the past and anticipates the future. A visit to the canyon in which the breakdown took place, its rumbling surf and endless brook which babbles with vital noise, and the yawning canyon recall Kerouacs hometown of Lowell. We are reminded of the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the bridge across the Merrimack River there. Since Kerouac was introduced to it by his brother Gerard, the site, with its awesome mystical potency, is described with passion. The sounds seem to express, yet barely contain, the power of the place: as the river water cascades over the long weir, traffic roars in the background. All this combined with the anthropomorphically cragged vista of the grotto itself creates a sense of almost unbearably powerful otherness, an origin in nature now frighteningly alien to the human soul. Kerouacs realism in Big Sur may be summarised as the doomed ambition to structure impossible desire. The labour of the carefully constructed â€Å"Beat† pattern is present in the background, as a sort of displaced metaphor for the mental and physical effort of writing. Thus Kerouacs â€Å"Beat† takes the anti-mimetic definition of realism one step further- since writing does not have to relate to what it depicts, it will resist immediacy, but relate in specific and indirect ways to the authors private life. In many ways, Kerouacs enterprise resembles that of a visual artist at least as much as an aural or literary construction. Courbets paintings, for example, operate in a very similar way to Kerouacs works. They share this meta-symbolism, with particular interest in representing origins as water, or indeed as female genitalia- and also aspire to an impossible merging with lost roots. In Courbets art the impossible merger is one of body and work; for Kerouac it is the a rtifice of language and the unruly inevitability of the natural- taking him as close as anything ever can to his father. An erotics of the word and image is then inevitable, and Kerouac finds one fully-formulated and ready to use, in Freudian psychoanalysis. While studies on Courbet resituate sexual difference within the (male) painter-beholder, rather than between him and his representations, Jack Kerouac does something subtly different. Through its emphasis on the writing/experiencing incommensurability, Kerouac resituates sexual difference within the (male) writer/reader rather than between the artist and their work. The authorial voice is only ostensibly the source of psychoanalytic narrative- in fact the same narrative can be sourced through theoretical channels (backwards â€Å"into the page†) to the writer, and, if we believe him, to the reader too. â€Å" It grew exceedingly hot and strange†¦We were going though swamps and alongside the road at ragged intervals strange Mexicans in tattered rags walked along with machetes hanging from their rope belts, and some of them cut at the bushes. They all stopped to watch us without expression. Through the tangled bush we occasionally saw thatched huts with African-like bamboo walls, just stick huts. Strange young girls, dark as the moon, stared from mysterious verdant doorways,† Psychoanalysis corroborates Kerouacs general preoccupation with the fantasy of origination, in the case of Big Sur, the origination as personified in the figure of the father. In this imagery from On the Road, the dark girls are linked to the moon, loaded words like â€Å"thatch† and â€Å"bush† are always used alongside â€Å"machetes† and eery expressionlessness. Reading Kerouac like a goya painting or a poem, we can easily recognise the guilty violence involved. Kerouacs unedited unconsciousness reveals his sense of alienation, as the girls who are so strange are like the moon- nature is female- irresistible, unfathomable, untouchable. The horizontal â€Å"thatch† or â€Å"low bush† of the women is disrupted by the weapons and interference of the vertical agent of the male machetes. The interference in the body of water is the same- or at least, linguistically symmetrical- to the interference on reality that the act of writing always engenders. I f female bodies and contrived spontaneity are references to the origin and the unconscious ambition to merge with the origin; then any discreet writing surface is fetishised as an oedipal object of impossible desire, always disrupted, interfered with and disfigured by the very desire that defines it. Kerouacs Freudian desire to merge with the source must disturb the way he perceives himself. In fact, it illustrates and literally reflects the way in which we, as readers, percieve ourselves in so far as we are reflections of our origins- how it is only through disturbance that we can become aware of the source. If any reflection were perfect, with no material interference, we would have no way of knowing that it was a reflection. Kerouacs tireless autobiography project is not only a non-narcissistic event, but an entirely natural one. In Hegels Aesthetics such self-portraiture is established as a primal impulse of self-identification. According to Hegel, for man to become self-conscious he must first â€Å"represent himself to himself†, and second, â€Å"man brings himself before himself by practical activity†¦this aim he achieves by altering external things whereon he impresses the seal of his inner being and in which he now finds again his own characteristics. Man does this†¦to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy the shape of things only an external realization of himself.† Hegel goes on to describe a childs impulse to throw stones into a river: there is no reflection involved, none of the self-annihilating narcissism of â€Å"passive desiring seeing†, but a declared primacy of action over seeing. Kerouac is invoked by Hegels wording, â€Å"the continuity between ordinary action and the action of producing works of art is already implied by the image of the drawing of circles in the surface of the water.† These circles are inscriptions of objects on flat planes that require a certain maturity of consciousness to interpret as the effects of a (manual) cause. Here, Kerouacs dormant reference to, and defence of, his own ideal situation as a realist author is very evident. In a later paragraph from Fried the message that the self is best quietly discovered through displaced descriptive action is completely inescapable, â€Å" the effacement of the very conditions of resemblance (the breaking of the mirror-surface of the river) also means that the boys relation to the spreading circles in the water might be described in Flaubertian language as present everywhere but visible nowhere.† A sentiment repeated in Kerouacs poetry, which â€Å"breaks† the reflective power of water by introducing the contrasting element of heat and dryness, â€Å"Describe fires in riverbottom sand, and the cooking; the cooking of hot dogs spitted in whittled sticks over flames of woodfire with grease dropping in smoke to brown and blacken the salty hotdogs, and the wine, and the work on the railroad.† The desire to identify with the origin, whether through disturbing the water, impersonating the father, or labouring to represent oneself to oneself, may always end in action, but it is only ever the action of wrenching open the facture of desire. The impulse to create will always be driven by a lack, and Kerouac is most conventionally â€Å"Realist† when he recognises this. Kerouac, after all, is aiming to reorganise an imbalance of power, and to characterise a sense of the monadic â€Å"other†. Philosophically, Kerouacs work is incredibly resistant to the Other, to the point that he scarcely needs the anterior of an audience. In spite of his evident veneration of the â€Å"Natural†, the world beyond that of writing/reading is so unbearable that Fried has trouble imagining it, levelling the differences between interiors and exteriors and converting all mimetic imagery into narratives of action or narratives of material: surfaces to be read. To the extent that it is a self-sufficient sign-system (and I am arguing it is far more than this) Kerouacs work evacuates the reader and effectively â€Å"reads itself†. It fits Derridas conception of autobiography, â€Å"My written communication must†¦remain legible despite the absolute disappearance of every determined addressee†¦for it to function as writing†¦to be legible. It must be repeatable, iterable, in the absolute absence of the addressee† Again, this supported by the assertions of one anonymous online Kerouac archivist, â€Å"Almost everything he wrote was autobiographical. Like Thomas Wolfe, he saw writing as identical with introspection. The word fiction does not really describe his work. It was more like self-directed psychoanalysis, except that his outlook was more religous and tragic than psychological. His books are crowded with his friends, lightly disguised behind new names. Allen Ginsberg, for instance, appears variously as Carlo Marx, Adam Moorad, Irwin Garden, Leon Levinsky and Alvah Goldbrook. Late in his life, Kerouac even considered publishing a unified edition of all his works, with all the characters representing himself appearing under a single name, Jack Duluoz (French for Jack the Louse).† This homogenising impulse, the need to resist difference and integrate everything, drives the rhetorical case which Kerouac makes in an attempt to show that outdoor scenes are actually the same as indoor ones. It is affected spontaneity of language which Fried cites as the connection between the inner and the outer. Indoor and outdoor scenes are treated as having the same character and affect, to the extent that they have a rhythm and no inherent narrative. Kerouacs holistic ambition repeats itself on every level- here the very scene of representation is moulded by the realist theory. The internal and external scenes, like the internal and external levels of a psyche, become one, as they are united in common, necessary pain, of the disfiguring theoretical intervention. Applying psychoanalysis to Kerouac, this does look like an attempt at integrating the repressed inner and outer of the psyche, where the first might be characterised as darkness, depth, recession, primordial instinct, and the past, and the second as light, shallowness, presence, and surface agency. Farewell Sur- Didja ever tell him about water meeting water-? O go back to otter- Term-Term-Klerm Kerm-Kurn-Cow-Kow- Cash-Cach-Cluck- Clock-Gomeat sea need be deep I see you Enoch soon anarf in Old Britanny Say yes. Say yes to the sea. Say yes to chaos. Say yes to eternity. Say yes and let it all go. Go, go to the sea. To the waiting open arms of the sea. You and me you and me the sea. Yes. Let us be. There is light.† Reflections are also the assertion of the horizontal. In spite of the violence metaphorically wrought, and acknowledged by his writing, Kerouacs work is concerned with empowering the natural within the man. The vigorous negation of comfortable feminine origination in his poetry refuses to allow the implied horizontality of the original sheet of paper to be wholly superseded, and in effect suppressed, by the verticality of the outside world. Psychoanalysis works through poetry subliminally, appealing to the subconscious by encoding itself in visual puns like reflections. 3. Missed Beats – Misunderstandings and misnomers It has been claimed that, for at least one definition of the word, Kerouac was not a â€Å"Beat† at all. Mayer writes, â€Å"A â€Å"keen observer rather than a confident insider,† Kerouac never really was a member of the Beats though he was among them from the beginning and as a chronicler cast their emergence into prose. When Daniel Belgrad remarks that Kerouac â€Å"would attend parties only to sit silently in a corner, listening intently to the multiple conversations and noting them down in his memory,† he is in line with a comment by Ginsberg, â€Å"I guess [Kerouac] felt more like a private solitary Melvillean minnesinger or something.† â€Å"Subterranean Kerouac†, a biography by Ellis Amburn, develops the oedipal theme in his work, referring notably to his â€Å"dream-fear of homosexuality.† Claiming that Kerouac became a â€Å"homophobic homoerotic† by the early nineteen forties, Amburn insists that in the fifties, while an increasing misogyny came to pervade writings like Some of the Dharma, â€Å"his homophobia was increasing in direct proportion to his homoerotic activity. , † a development which might have been facilitated at least partially by Kerouacs worsening dependency on alcohol. Kerouac is known as the king or the speaker of the beat generation and his writings are probably the most widely read works for anyone studding the beat culture, but there is real evidence that he resisted the title of â€Å"King†, particularly the patriarchal overtones. Even in 1952, John Clellon Holmess book â€Å"Go† presents Kerouac as Gene Pasternak, railing against â€Å"all that free-love stuff, that liberal bohemianism, between friends.† Kerouacs 1958 novel â€Å"The Subterraneans† features a narrator whose sexual hang-ups are barely known to him. Ben Giamo has termed the narrators stance in the novel as â€Å"a curious form of approach/avoidance.† The authors avatar in â€Å"The Subterraneans†, is French Canadian. His name is â€Å"Leo Percepied† and it has been appropriated for psychoanalysis. Kurt Mayer claims that as his first name is that of Kerouacs father, and his last, literally translates asâ€Å"pierced foot,† the characters name is an obvious Oedipal reference. The characters destiny echoes Jacks, as he abandons pretentions to being middle class, and ultimately returns to his mothers house. Jack, of course, always returned to â€Å"Memà ©re†- Gabrielle Kerouac, what Mayer refers to as the â€Å"only consistent relati

Development of T-DNA Essay

Question: Describe the development of T-DNA-based vector systems from the Ti plasmid and the mechanisms of their delivery into plant cells. Answer:   Tumor-inducing plasmids (Ti plasmids) are used extensively in the construction of vectors and transgenic plants (Binns and Thomashow, 1988).   Ti plasmids are ~200-kb in size, derived from Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Gram-negative phytopathogenic soil bacteria that deliver DNA and proteins to plant cells at wound sites, resulting in crown gall tumorigenesis (Chilton et al., 1977). The generation of tumors depends on the induction of a set of Ti plasmid-encoded virulence (vir) genes acting through a virA/virG regulatory system, which primarily responds to monosaccharide and phenolic levels released by wounded plants.   The transferred DNA (T-DNA) of Ti plasmids is randomly integrated into the plant nuclear genome through a process known as non-homologous recombination (NHR) (Offringa et al., 1990). T-DNA is a single-stranded DNA molecule produced by a virDl/D2-encoded site-specific endonuclease that nicks within two border sequences of 24-bp in length, flanking the T-DNA   (van Haaren et al., 1987).   After cleavage and excision, the T-DNA binds with the DNA-binding protein VirE2 and the resulting complex is transferred to the plant cell via type IV-type secretion (Zupan and Zambryski, 1995). For genetic engineering purposes, the T-DNA region is modified into a non-tumor generating DNA segment by removal of genes that encode enzymes controlling auxin and cytokinin synthesis.   Cloned genes may be inserted into the T-DNA of a Ti plasmid that will eventually be introduced into cultured plant cells, leaf discs or root slices by infection.    Genes for antibiotic resistance are also incorporated into the T-DNA to facilitate selection of transformed cells.   Transformed cells are cultured in media containing auxins and cytokinins for growth and a specific antibiotic to aid identification of transformed clones.   There are reports of successful introduction of foreign genes for disease resistance, herbicide resistance and salt tolerance into commercially important plants.   Another way of transforming plants is by immersion of whole plants in a solution containing engineered-Ti Agrobacterium (Bechtold et al. 1993). Transformation may also be performed by exposing whole plants to a solution containing Agrobacterium that is carrying engineered or wild-type Ti plasmids. The plants must be treated in such a way to allow the Agrobacterium to enter tissue, either by applying a vacuum or by treating with detergents. The Agrobacterium penetrates the floral tissue and transforms the developing ovules. Isolation of seeds from these Agrobacterium-exposed plants yields up to 2% of the seeds that are transformed with the T-DNA. This approach is very useful for molecular genetic studies, such as for characterizing DNA sequences involved in the control of gene expression, or constructing large libraries of insertional mutants. Question:   Explain why transformation of certain species has been problematical and to what extent this has been overcome. Answer:   Ti plasmids encounter compatibility problems wherein closely related plasmids exclude each other.   The repABC genes have been identified to play a major role in this incompatibility.   This problem has been overcome by a curing method (Uragi et al., 2002) which is based on three steps.   Firstly, a curing plasmid is introduced, followed by a screening for Ti-less clones by either opine utilization or hybridization by using a highly conserved region of the virulence cluster as probe, and lastly, detection and deletion of the curing plasmid. Question:   What improvements can be made to the expression systems to overcome some of the objectives of the GM technology? The transformation mechanism of Ti plasmids is so powerful that it becomes a concern on whether other crops might be accidentally modified and propagated.   Termed as â€Å"xenogenic† plants, these plants result from the insertion of laboratory-designed DNA for which no naturally evolved genetic counterpart can be found.   Such DNA segments may integrate into the plant genome causing rearrangements in the nuclear material which may later result in species differentiation.   A silencing mechanism should be constructed to the expression systems of Ti plasmids to overcome such freak accident in GM technology. References Bechtold, N., Ellis, J. and Pelletier, G. (1993):   Agrobacterium mediated gene transfer by infiltration of adult Arabidopsis thaliana plants. C. R. Acad. Sci., 316: 1194–1199. Binns, A.N. and Thomashow, M.F.,   (1988):   Cell biology of Agrobacterium infection and transformation of plants.   Annu. Rev. Microbiol.,   42:575-606. Chilton, M.D., Drummond, M.H., Merio, D.J., Sciaky, D., Montoya, A.L., Gordon, M.P. and Nester, M.P.   (1977):   Stable incorporation of plasmid DNA into higher plant cells: The molecular basis of crown gall tumorigenesis.   Cell,   11:263-271. Matzke, A. J. M. and Chilton, M-D. (1981) Site-specific insertion of gene into T-DNA of the Agrobacterium tumor-inducing plasmid: An approach to genetic engineering of higher plant cells. J. Mol. Appl. Genet. 1: 39–49. Offringa, R., De Groot, M.J.A., Haagsman, H.J., Does, M.P., van den Elzen, P.J.M. and Hooykaas, P.J.J.   (1990):   Extrachromosomal homologous recombination and gene targeting in plant cells after Agrobacterium mediated transformation.   EMBO J., 9:3077-3084. Uragi, M., Suzuki, K. and Yoshida, K.   (2002):   A novel plasmid curing method using incompatibility of plant pathogenic Ti plasmids in Agrobacterium tumefaciens.   Genes Genet. Syst.   77:1-9. van Haaren, M.J., Sedee, N.J., Schilperoort, R.A. and Hooykaas, P.J. (1987): Overdrive is a T-region transfer enhancer which stimulates T-strand production in Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Nucl. Acids Res., 15: 8983–8997. Zupan, J., Muth, T., Draper, O. and Zambryski, P. (2000). The transfer of DNA from Agrobacterium tumefaciens into plants: a feast of fundamental insights. Plant J.,   23: 11–28. Zupan, J.R. and Zambryski, P. (1995): Transfer of T-DNA from Agrobacterium to the plant cell. Plant Physiol., 107: 1041–1047.

Risk Management and Service User

Anita Byrne ACV5222 UNIT 504 DEVELOP HEALTH AND SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT POLICIES, PROCEDURES AND PRACTICES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE OR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE SETTINGS (M1) 1,1 understand the current legislative frame and organisational health, safety and risk management policies, procedures and practices that are relevant to health and social care or children and young peoples setting. As an organisation that manages health and safety we recognise that the relationship between controlling risks and general health is at the very centre of the business itself.The starting point for managing health and safety in the workplace which: †¢ demonstrates the practices commitment to health and safety and sets out aims and objectives in relation to this †¢ identifies the individual health and safety roles and responsibilities and the communication channels with-in the practice †¢ Summarises the practical way in which health and safety is managed and objectives met. The org anisation is required to have a health and safety policy in place in order to comply with the health and safety at work act 1974.The act is the primary piece of health and safety legislation within the UK. It is an enabling act often referred to as the umbrella act, which means that regulations can be introduced with-out eh need for additional primary legislation. The Health and Safety at Work Act also says that employers must, so far as is reasonably practicable provide †¢ a safe place to work †¢ a safe environment and adequate welfare facilities †¢ safe equipment and systems of work safe arrangements for using, handling, storing and transporting articles and substances associated with work †¢ sufficient information, instruction, training and supervision for employee The act is supported by many other regulations and pieces of legislation, one of the most significant being the Management of Health and Safety at Work regulations (MHSWR) 1999. A crucial element of these regulations is the requirement for employers to have in place systems to manage health and safety.The technique of risk assessment – used to identify hazards, evaluate risks, support planning and put effective control measures in place – underpins such systems. In recent years, the risk management has been influence by the growing awareness of the number of errors, incidents and near misses that happen in social care practice and the effect of the safety of service user’s and the consequence has been the development of service user safety initiatives which have given a ‘service user focus’ to the management of risk within the social care setting.The health and safety at work act underpins this aim and clearly describes the employer’s duty of care not only for staff but towards the persons other than employees such as service user’s, attached staff visitors, and member of the public, contractors and delivery personnel. The princi pals and duties outlined in this policy apply, therefore, to anyone affected by the practices activities. 1. 2 nalyse how policies, procedures and practices in own setting meet health, safety and risk management requirements. The main piece of legislation affecting the management of health & safety is the Health & safety act at work 1974. This act provides a framework for ensuring the Health & safety of all employees in any work activity. It also provides for the Health & safety of anyone: †¢ Risk assessments with the working environment †¢ Adult protection & safe guarding †¢ Person centre planning & risk managementWhen working in line with the organisations policies and procedures to ensure that the staff team create a safe working environment and service user care plans and risk management plans don’t impact on their freedom of choice but they ensure that they are safe with the life style they choose to live, I need to balance those choices against our risk m anagement plans for example we have a service user who lives in her own flat within the complex of the home and feels that her bed is to high and asked her family to put the mattress on a pile of bricks rather than have the bed frame lowered.When staff discovered this, they informed senior staff who tried to explain why their actions could not be allowed to carry on as staff who helps the service user make her bed may sustain an injury. The family could not see that we have a legal requirement to work within the safety of the health and safety legislation. I did suggest that we highlight a repair/maintenance job for the bed to be lowered that is safe to use for both the service user and staff.Also within the workplace before an activity can be undertaken we are required to complete a risk assessment and any areas where we need to put safety measures in to limit the potential risks then this must be done before the activity can take place as well as demonstrating that we need to moni tor staff’s working practices and review and update the risk assessment at the appropriate times. In delivering a registered care service all staff must have mandatory health and safety training before completing any given task whether this be fire safety, food hygiene, manual handling, infection control, first aid etc. f staff have not received this training then they cannot complete the task, thus ensuring that all service user’s welfare are giving top priority in line with quality and safety outcomes. As the acting registered care manager I need to complete regular health and safety audits and maintain clear records to demonstrate competence and that we are meeting the requirements of the law. At times when carrying out an audit I have noticed that a food safety check as not been completed or a fire test got missed and in line with my roles and responsibilities I must address my findings with the senior team, the kitchen staff etc.This will be done in our staff and team meetings. Minutes of these meetings will be taken and stored in the named files so that they can be used for further audits and inspections that are required in line with our policies and procedures, duty of care and relevant legislation. 4. 3 evaluate own practice in promoting a balanced approach to risk assessment. A good standard of record keeping is imperative to support our quality audits and framework for our risk management plans, risk assessment and person centre practice to lead a lifestyle of their choice.When evaluating our own practice and our documentation I will look at:- †¢ Policies, protocols and guidelines to keep staff and management informed †¢ Information regarding, health and safety, care delivery and CQC outcomes for best practice and positive outcomes for service users †¢ Information about systems, for example risk management plans, incident reporting. Complaints. Service user care plans Other ways to evaluate own practice is through regula r audits and regulatory inspections which enables a systematic assessment or estimation of the process or outcome of a work activity, to determine whether it is : Effective: making progress towards a particular goal †¢ Efficient: achieving a particular target with the least effort †¢ Economic: achieving a successful outcome with the minimum cost Essentially audits measure what the staff team are doing against what they should be doing. Internal and external audits involve systematically looking at the procedures within the practice that are used for diagnosis, care and support measures to our service user that enable them to lead a life of their choice, by examining how associated resources are used and nvestigating the effect carer has on the outcome and quality of life for the service user. Conversely, research is concerned with the identification of best practice, where a audit establishes, whether agreed best practice is being followed, and according to Smith (1992) Re search is concerned with discovering the right thing to do:† audit with ensuring that it is done right â€Å" and that we are involving service users in line with our person centred approach.Another system that we use to evaluate our practice for promoting a person centred practice that includes a balance approach to risk management is in our statutory care review meetings where the service user, their family, staff and other professionals will review the care plan and risk management plans to ensure that we are sill meeting the service user needs and that they are happy with the level of activities and levels of support they are receiving.Also these meetings may raise concerns and these concerns will be addressed to ensure that safety and wellbeing of the service user is being met either from staff within the home or by others. These changes will be recorded in their care plan and reviewed in line with our evaluation procedures. Any changes to a service users care plan will be discussed in our daily handover sessions and staff meetings to make sure that all staff who support the service user know of these changes and the additional resources and support that is being put in by the people who are supporting the service user.As the manager I will also use staff meetings, supervisions and training sessions to evaluate my own and others within the teams performance to ensure that we are meetings our health and safety requirements as well as promoting a person centred approach that ensure a balanced approach to risk assessments that cover the working activities in running a registered care home. 4. 4 analyse how helping others to understand the balance between risk and rights improves practice.To analyse and help to understand the balance of service users and the public involvement is part of everyday practice in the NHS (DH 2005b) who have identified a number of principles that underpin the delivery of resident – led services. PRINICIPLES OF RISK AN D RIGHTS FOR IMPROVMENTS HAVE BEEN TO UNDERPIN THE DELIVERY OF RESIDENT LED SERVICES †¢ Provide residents with the correct information and choices that allow them to feel in control – understanding that they are the best judge of their life/how they wish to live their life †¢ Ensure everyone receives not just high quality care, but care with consideration for their needs at all times. Treat people as human beings and as individuals, not just people to be processed †¢ Ensure people always feel valued by the service and are treated with respect, dignity, and compassion †¢ Explain what’s happening if things go wrong and why, and agree a way forward At the home when we complete our risk management plans we will involve the service user, their family and others who maybe supporting them from the wider community. I will discuss each task and outline any concerns that we may have and how these concerns can be addressed without imposing on the service users rights, dignity, choice etc. ut I must make sure that I protect the service user and the staff in carrying out the task etc. I feel this process of informing others, discussing the issues can go a long way in helping others to understand why things can be done and or cannot be undertaken unless additional measures are put in place. This process also assists others in seeing where the potential risk of harm may take place and why we are constantly reviewing our work activities and the abilities of the service users to cooperate with staff when carrying out an activity etc.The same process will be used in staff meetings to ensure that the team can fully understand their roles and responsibilities and reasons why additional measures have been put in place. Also when staff understand the culture of the organisation and the home they themselves will undertake the process without thinking and therefore ensure that the working environment is safe for everyone. By allowing others to unders tand the balance between risks and rights, you improve practice because they know what is acceptable and what isn’t.This makes work more positive and makes the care that is given more effective and more suitable to the service users that require it. By helping others to do this, you are helping them improve their job, and helping them develop with their own knowledge, which they can pass on to other employers; this is peer learning. 5. 1 obtain feedback on health, safety and risk management policies, procedures and practices form individuals and others. The polices, procedures and practices at the home have been developed, reviewed and updated in line with health and safety legislation and our CQC registration requirements.This ensures that the homes working practices are monitored, audited and inspected throughout the year and feedback from the records and reports are discussed and recommendations are implemented. These are reviewed yearly by the organisation and any feedbac k given is used to promote and improve the services within the home. The context of feedback can be used as a learning tool. The practice of over-learning produces reinforcement of a sense of achievement before moving on to the next stage, it can enable a person to move towards independence in a particular skill.The principles of feedback include beginning and ending with positive comments, any suggestion for development that focus on negative aspects of the skills should be included in the middle. The reason for that learning is closely associated with self-esteem and motivation for ensuring that the working environment is safe. CQC’s the essential standards of quality and safety consist of 28 outcomes that are set out in two pieces of legislation: The health and social care Act 2008 (regulated activities) Regulation 2012 and the Care Quality Commission (registration) regulations 2009 and for each regulation, there is an associated outcome – the xperiences that will b e expected of healthcare professionals as a result of the service and care provided and feedback for each outcome must be addressed by the manager. I will also get feedback from various health and safety contractors, visitor’s to the home who carry out regular maintenance work within the home, environmental health inspections etc. With all these visits to the home I will receive feedback on our good practice and compliance as well as areas in which we need to improve upon and non-compliances.This feedback is important to ensure that the team and I meet the required standards and that the home and our activities are undertaken in a safe manor. 5. 2. evaluate the health and safety and risk management policies and procedures and practices within the work setting At the Manor House, we have numerous policies and procedures in place, all spread over a wide variety. They include – †¢ Accident and Incident Reporting and Investigation †¢ Asbestos †¢ Building Mai ntenance †¢ Care Services Construction Management ~ Site Access and Surveying †¢ Consultation and Communication †¢ Contractors †¢ Electrical Safety †¢ Fire Safety †¢ First Aid †¢ Food Hygiene ~ Safety in Food Preparation Areas †¢ Gas Safety †¢ Grounds Maintenance †¢ Handling and Disposal of Waste †¢ Hazardous Substances ~ COSHH, Radon †¢ Health and Safety Information and Training †¢ Health and Safety Management ~ Monitory and Review, Inspections and Surveys †¢ Health and Wellbeing at Work ~ Alcohol, Drugs, CommunicableDisease, Immunisation, Pre-employment medical, Pregnant Women, Smoking, Stress, Work related absenteeism and Young persons. †¢ Manual handling †¢ Office safety ~ display screen equipment †¢ Personal Protective Equipment †¢ Personal safety, violence and lone working †¢ Property management ~ security and visitors, workplace standards, welfare facilities †¢ Risk Assessment †¢ Safe use and maintenance of equipment at work ~ lifts and lifting equipment, vehicles at work †¢ Sheltered schemes †¢ Water management †¢ Other guidance †¢ Definitions †¢ Amendment record Accidents and incidents – index of incident records form, RIDDOR reporting form, servite incident reporting form, care services residents incident reporting form o Workplace moving and handling assessments – moving and handling operations preliminary risk assessment form, moving and handling operations risk assessment form, moving and handling care plan o Workplace risk assessments and young person at work risk assessments – scheme/office/kitchen/staff room workplace risk assessment forms, copy of schemes contractors risk assessments or method statements, young persons at work risk assessment form, new and expectant mothers risk assessment, night worker health assessment form o Moving and handling equipment inspection record, moving and handling equipment inspection record, moving and handling equipment defects record o First aid records – first aid record sheet, first aid kit maintenance defects record o Water treatment records (including temperature monitory, flushing and de-scaling) – shower/spray flushing and de-scaling record sheet, water temperature record sheet o Food safety records – fridge and freezer temperature record sheet o Electrical test records (portable appliances and building installation – visual electrical inspection of void properties form, portable electrical equipment visual inspection record sheet, record of portable test, redundant equipment disposal form, dopy of building installation report and certificate o DSE assessment records Asbestos survey reports – scheme asbestos survey report o Gas safety records – record of reasonable steps taken (when no access granted) form, regional committee report on the progress of gas safety inspections form, gas servici ng report, copy of gas certificate o Control of substances hazardous to health assessments and safety data sheets – copies of safety data sheets for every cleaning product used at the scheme o Health and safety audit and survey reports – health and safety survey form, schemes health and safety audit report completed by the health and safety team o Passenger lift inspection records – copy of certificate, passenger lift inspection and insurance reports o Personal protective equipment maintenance records – reports o Lone worker alarm maintenance record – reports Remote alarm/pendant checks – pendant check form, remote alarm check form o 3rd party forms o Waste o Pest o Business continuity arrangements The positives of having all these policies, procedures and risk managements in place is that it covers everything, meaning that we know what is considered wrong and what is considered correct. The negatives are that because there are so many in pl ace, some can be left out or not remembered, leaving the work setting unsuitable for service users perhaps, or leaving the standard of care low; but because we have them all, and are all used frequently, they are all understood, this is a positive out of the negative situation. SEE AC 1. 2 5. :- identify areas of policies, procedures and practice that need improvement to ensure safety and protection in the work setting Here, there are few areas of policies and procedures of/and practice that may need improvement, this is because they are good, but not at the best standard I think they could be. These are: health and safety audits, the medication rounds, maintenance of equipment and staff training. The medication rounds could be improved by making them faster, or by having more staff working on it, to increase the speed of residents getting their required medication. The maintenance of equipment could be improved by having it done sooner rather than later, so there isn’t as mu ch of an issue if the equipment is required and cant be used as it isn’t working.Health and safety audits can be improved by making them more frequent and detailed, so you can understand the issues more and also notice where the good aspects are. Staff training can be improved by making it more important and motivational, and by making it more frequent to allow better development of career work. 5. 4 recommend changes to policies. procedures and practice that ensure safety and protection in the work setting The changes that I recommend would only be improvements, and the improvements would be to make the policies and procedures more ‘spread out’, so they cover more areas of the work setting, so everything has a policy or procedure to make it more effective and reliable.Reviewing the policies and procedures would be a start to see where the changes could happen and be recommended, to ensure safety I would recommend a change to the health and safety act policy, to give it a wider variety of protection of the work setting, to add more ‘safer’ equipment and make the environment safer, by having less dangerous objects around that could be harmful in anyway to a resident, visitor or staff member. I would recommend a change in the frequency of procedures dealing with forms and assessments, to make sure everything is checked frequently, to make sure there are no problems or issues that are missed if they are only checked every now and then, this would be like risk assessments, fire safety, equipment checks or kitchen assessments etc. There isn’t a lot I would recommend to change, but if I had to, it would be most likely to do with frequency or variety.

Racial Inequality And Mathew Weiner s Smart Yet Subtle...

A lot has been made of Mad Men’s take on the period’s fashion and culture. From the ad agency, the alcoholism to beards, racial inequality and Mathew Weiner’s smart yet subtle dialogue. His AMC drama uses setting to bolster character, and character to bring to light many predominant themes. One of the show’s distinctive qualities is its tendency to use side characters in order to underline the show’s thematic goals. This has mainly been applicable when with Mad Men‘s queer characters. Where a less complex show might utilize a homosexual character randomly, the queers on this show reflect an evolution which reflects the changing of the society as a whole. In this way, everyone from season one’s quiet and â€Å"in-the-closet† Sal to Season 6’s more aggressive Bob Benson drives viewers forward through a quickly changing, and increasingly sexual time. (I watched ahead.) The year was 1960 when we met Salvatore Romano, but 1950s standards and values remain attached to the new decade. Initially, Sal is a gentle giant closet case who claims to have never had sex with a man. Over three seasons, he keeps up his â€Å"straight† faà §ade by dating and marrying, then has his first gay sexual experience but maintains his position at Sterling Cooper until Lee Garner Jr., a client, propositions him. Sal is fired when he refuses Lee’s advances and in his last scene, he calls his wife from a pay phone. Behind him, a small crowd of seemingly gay men head for undergrowth of trees, the image suggests aShow MoreRelatedManagement Course: Mba−10 General Management215330 Words   |  862 Pagesand other assets that were once the primary management emphasis. This profitability and growth also entails their integration with the effectiveness of a company’s human strengths, customer and supplier relationships, brand names and technology, and sm arts of knowledge and intellect. Most important, this profitability and growth means the successful implementation of these leading-edge initiatives in hands-on organization wide actions that provide measurable competitive advantage on a continuing basis