Author's Response

Gentlemen:

(I trust that David Andrew Seeley will not object to being addressed so “squarely,” especially since it was he who called attention to the gentleness of all beat men.)

Having read and re-read carefully your comments, I truly respected the Forum's wisdom of having created the opportunity for written exchanges which, in contrast to time-pressured discussions at meetings, can be prepared at measured pace and therefore carry the value of due deliberation. I had time to ponder your critical observations without hasty defensiveness and acknowledge your contributions with great appreciation. Please accept my thanks.

I have to agree with Drs. Seeley and Berns that my concept of the beatnik (the ending nik, Professor Seeley, is Russian, not Yiddish, and connotes the equivalent of the English er, as in dissenter, heckler, sympathizer, etc.) follows popular and journalistic notions. The lack of a precise definition, and of proper categorization into teeny-boppers, beat surfers, folk beatniks, left beatniks and hippies, so aptly provided by son David Andrew, made the senior Seeley view the study—much to my regret, but very understandably, his being David Andrew's father—without proper premise, hence without substance and validity.

To avoid being “politically and morally catastrophic” the paper should have merely described certain conflicts of two intellectual adolescents and treated their detailed reports about their circle in a well-defined district of Seattle, Washington, with caution and privacy.

I must assume and admit with discomfort that my reflections applied at best to no more than the majority of my subjects, but would probably, as so often in group studies, be an inadequate template for the total. The large contingent of teeny-boppers or ‘fringe-fringies’ (my terminology) would certainly not qualify as serious beatniks, and were not at all included conceptually in my report.

In contrast to Professor Seeley and Dr. Berns and to some extent Dr. Berkovitz, Drs. F