BEAT GENERATION MEET THE DIGITAL GENERATION

Like many 18 year old college freshmen, I discovered the Beat Generation and their culture of coffee houses and writing. Historically, cafes were places where conversations happened and ideas were exchanged. I was in the early 1980s but I envied the 1950s culture of coffee houses as a place to bring people together for impromptu exchanges of ideas and discussion. I imagined sitting in Greenwich Village cafés, holding poetry and book readings, drinking coffee and delving into eastern religion.

This past Saturday, as part of my book promotion I was lucky enough to appear in a college town coffee house, named after a famous beat writer. When I walked in the door, I thought I was about to time travel back to the 50s and steal a moment of beat culture. The place had the look and feel of comfy old furniture, dark lighting, used records, and books with Lenard Cohen playing over the sound system. I'd made the arrangements by email with the owner who told me to hold my reading in the room next-door to the bar. It had a small stage with lighting. I looked in and every table was occupied by students with laptops with a few in pairs. Even this stage had a table on it with a student engaged on his laptop. The owner had said just make an announcement when you’re ready to read, and the students will move off the stage. I’m thinking this is a good start--the room was full and this being a cafe with coffee infused with the spirit of the beats I’d have some fellow writers and readers in the audience.

About 10 minutes before I was going to do the reading, I spoke to the room and said I'll be doing a book reading and I encouraged everyone to stay and listen. By the time I was ready to read most, everyone had closed their laptops and shuffled out of the room. At this point, my audience consisted of four people, one high school friend and a couple that had been encouraged to attend by a second high school who couldn't make it in person. With an audience of three I stepped down off of the small stage, opened the folding chair, and read to my audience.  The whole discussion and reading lasted about an hour, but as I did the reading, some students filtered back into the room, pulled out their laptops, and began working again, oblivious to the book talk. One student began quietly talking to someone on his device located somewhere else in the world. I wanted to jump up and down a yell, "Hey, a live person over here reading from a book I created" but somehow this probably would have been going in the wrong direction.

When it was all over I wondered what Lawrence Ferlinghetti or Jack Kerouac might have thought of the event. They gravitated to cafes as places where spirited conversations could stretch for hours into the night. Things had changed in the decades. Now this was a cafe but now it was a place to be alone with your device or connected to others in other places while sitting next to strangers.

Before I sound like a total cultural Luddite, there is a plus I need to mention. For the high school friend who couldn't attend in person, the couple she encouraged to see me set up their phone for live streaming so she could participate virtually.  Her virtual attendance increased my audience by 25 percent.

Beat Generation meet Digital Generation.