Book Review: The Paradox of Thanatos: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: From Self-Destruction to Self-Liberation by Tanguy Harma

Authors : Gillian ALBAN

Pages : 145-148

Doi:10.47777/cankujhss.1317166

View : 29 | Download : 116

Publication Date : 2023-06-30

Article Type : Other Papers

Abstract :Tanguy Harma’s monograph entitled The Paradox of Thanatos: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: From Self-Destruction to Self-Liberation, with its fascinating cover illustration by Vasil Stanev, “2 Sugar Skulls,” presents an in-depth study of the Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg as inheritors of the European Existentialist and the American Transcendentalist tradition. It elaborates these two writers’ struggle to achieve meaningful life in post-war America under hegemonic capitalism and consumerism, crushed beneath conformity and social control, as they struggle towards a more authentic self-expression and liberation beyond the restraints that curtail transcendence.
Keywords : Tanguy Harma, Paradox of Thanatos, Self Destruction, Self Liberation