A Movement?

Left: Jack Kerouac Right: Kenneth Rexroth

These two writers openly disliked each other. This fact is well documented, at least by Rexroth himself. Nonetheless, they both occupied, or are generally conceived of as having both occupied, a movement popularly known as "The Beat Movement." How can two writers with diametrically opposed aesthetics and conflicting social, moral, and political viewpoints occupy the same movement?

This might be a pivotal question in contemporary analysis of those we label "Beats." In order to best pose the question an amount of spacial and temporal layering might be necessary. To layer these two writers, along with others who occupy this same enclave, which is often and erroneously imagined as homogeneous, some new media tools might prove useful.

For my purposes a glog might be the best "venue" to present these layers, though it would prove to be only a gathering point. In this gathering point I would compile links and images that might suggest the particular social histories and literary influences each writer of the movement is drawing from. This would be done as a sort of amalgamation in order to show where each writer converges and diverges and how they interact in ways that suggest a movement, and in ways that don't.