Gregory Corso from Variations on a Generation (1959)

[ghostparades]

-What do you think about the Beat Generation?
-I don't think it's anything. I don't think it exists. There's no such thing as the Beat Generation.
-You don't consider yourself beat?
-Hell no! I don't consider myself beat, or beatified.
-What are you if not beat?
-An individual, nothing.
-They say to be beat is to be nothing.
-I don't care what they say, there's no Beat Generation.
-Don't you care about the existence of the beat?
-Hell no! man!
-Don't you love your fellow men?
-No I don't love my fellow man in fact I dislike them very much, except the individual if I get to know him; I don't want to govern or be governed.
-But you are governed by laws of society.
-But I'm trying to avoid that.
-Ah, by avoiding society you become separate from society and being separate from society is being BEAT.
-Oh, yeah?
-Yeah.
-I don't understand. I don't want to be in the society at all, I want to be outside it.
-Face it, man, you're beat.
-I am not! It's not even a conscious desire on my part, it's just the way I am, I am what I am.
-Man, you're so beat you don't know.
-Oh, yeah?
-Yeah.
-Crazy, man.