Toby Litt : Beatniks : Shelf Life

Filed under: Chris Mitchell, Features, Novels   

Chris Mitchell gives the lowdown on Toby Litt

Who’s Toby Litt? “Britain’s answer to Douglas Coupland“, according to various critics. “If you don’t want to be him or have him, you’re dead” drooled Julie Burchill with her characteristic understatement

Our very own homegrown Generation X guru, then? Last year’s debut short story collection Adventures In Capitalism did manage to effortlessly surf the twentysomething zeitgeist, yes. But 29 year old Litt’s debut novel which came out in September is decidedly retro

What, the literary equivalent of purple velvet loon pants? No, thankfully way before that. Beatniks is being billed as “an English road movie”. It’s a sort of homage to On The Road - so much so that it hit the streets on September 5, 40 years to the day since the first publication of Jack Kerouac’s Beat Generation classic.

That’s a bit sickly, isn’t it? Mmm, but somehow Litt pulls off the story of two guys stuck in Bedford who become so obsessed with the Beats that they try to recreate the entire era in their bedrooms. Mary, the novel’s narrator, gets caught up in their suburban psychosis despite herself, eventually becoming the driver on the Heavenly Twins’ long-planned road trip

So two cats, one chick and the open road, daddio? Er, quite. Except the road isn’t that open in England, because otherwise you’d drive into the sea. Once they hit Brighton, disillusionment and bizarre love triangles set in with the usual seaside inevitability

Bizarre love triangles? How passe… They are trying to emulate the Beats. Certainly Beatniks’ love troubles are a lot more fun than the real thing. Carolyn Cassady’s Off The Road, recently republished to cash in on Kerouac’s literary anniversary, documents how both her husband Neal Cassady and Kerouac treated her like dirt for the best part of ten years. They weren’t so much beatific as just plain beat up on her

Sounds like the were real deadbeats, man Well, they are now

So why’s Litt dropped postmodern cool in favour of mythical Americana? Probably just because he can. The startling eclecticism of Adventures In Capitalism indicated that Litt isn’t interested in writing to a formula - he seems to want to do something different every time. Anyway, observing the impact of the beats on suburban Bedford is tres postmodern, ne c’est pas?

Enough of your Litt theory I’ll do the jokes, thanks

And how can I write like this, ahem, angel-headed hipster? Moulinex a Kerouac novel, add one teaspoon ironic cool, two lumps of quarter-century angst and three squirts of affectionate humour. Whip into a critical froth

Posted on September 1st, 1997.

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• Allen Ginsberg : Cosmopolitan Greetings : Cosmopolitan Greetings
• Barry Miles: The Beat Hotel
• UNKLE: Psyence Fiction
• Liam Howlett : The Prodigy: The Dirtchamber Sessions : Down In The Dirt