ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that depictions of men and women in works by male beat writers need to be seen within the wider context of sensationalist narratives of gender in beat textuality. It argues, iconic authors such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, who collectively make up the bulk of the beat legacy for the wider public, have used the hype to advance self-serving mythologies about masculinity and femininity. The chapter explores depictions of Joan Vollmer in iconic beat texts as illustration of the ways in which men write female subjectivity in beat discourses. The ironic reversals in the treatment of Vollmer—as both subject and object of fascination, as a woman whose story is both told and untold in the pages of beat texts, or as a figure who is realized both as a gap and as a symbol of beat textuality—serve as a good introduction to the way in which iconic male Beat authors write female subjectivity in their works.
