That in the process the Beats dismantled conventional ideas of masculinity, disavowing the roles of breadwinner, husband, and father and incorporating homosexual, even “feminine” traits into the masculine ideal, has seemed to many feminist critics less important than their sometimes openly misogynist ethos. Johnson was drawn to the Beats’ “pursuit of the heightened moment, intensity for its own sake,” but she soon learned that they found this intensity only with each other. The greatest love affairs of the early Beat Generation, whether sexual or platonic, transpired between men. Ginsberg and
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