Edition: U.S. / Global

Lifestyle; Campus Cafes Attract 'Neo-Beatniks'

Published: September 16, 1990

All the superficial signs of beatnik redux are there: the long hair or bob, the goatee and clothes that run from tie-dye T-shirts and salvaged Salvation Army pieces to Guatemalan ethnic and basic black.

With the fall semester under way, at campuses like Yale, Dickinson, Duke and the universities of Georgia, Southern California, Texas and Wisconsin, new and newly popular coffeehouses are serving up poetry and progressive music in rooms heavy with smoke and intellectual pretension.

''We're seeing a minor renaissance of bohemianism,'' said Grant Kornberg, who owns the Hardback Cafe and Bookstore in Chapel Hill, N.C., a restaurant-bookstore where Duke and the University of North Carolina beatniks feed and read. ''We're selling a lot of poetry by guys who died before most of these kids were born.''

Topics of the neo-beatnik day are history, philosophy, political science and the environment. But these students will have none of the alienation that afflicted their forebears.

''We're not genuine beatniks'' who lived to retreat, said Ashley Quaine, designer of Java, a Los Angeles cafe popular with the U.S.C. crowd. ''Besides, they're all in their 70's. It seems like there should be a new name for us.''

Like ''slackers,'' coined at the University of Texas at Austin, ''townies'' at the University of Georgia in Athens, ''PCPs'' - politically correct people - at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, or the ''Bohos'' of Duke.

But the new beatniks defy such labeling with a ''don't fence me in'' insistence that would do Jack Kerouac proud.

''I don't fall into the beatnik category completely,'' said Mike Kimball, a graduate student in archeology at the University of Wisconsin who admits, however, to embracing freedom of expression and political values that are ''outside the mainstream.''

''We're looking for our own philosophy, something new,'' said Deborah Blanchard, a Yale freshman who has begun to frequent coffeehouses whose patrons become so involved in conversations that ''sometimes they'll even ask their waiter or waitress for an opinion,'' said John Massuci, a supervisor at Atticus Book Store and Cafe.

People labeled Rachel Curry at the University of Georgia a townie, she said, ''just because I wear black, dye my hair, smoke and listen to death rock and other progressive or alternative music.''

Ms. Curry, a junior majoring in magazines and child and family development, said that by her definition, beatniks are ''more normal-looking - jeans, shirt and otherwise unadorned - and into philosophy and poet mud wrestling,'' a favorite pastime at the Downstairs cafe in which anyone can stand up and read poetry aloud.

''I would say that a lot of people who work here fit the category and probably a lot of people who come here, too,'' said Arthur Silver, owner of Captain Quackenbush's Espresso Cafe in Austin, where from 7 A.M. to midnight, university students with long, slightly unkempt hair and Salvation Army clothes come to play chess, drink coffee, smoke and discuss the news of the day. ''But they're all different in their own way.''

Ms. Quaine of Java said: ''The original beatniks relished sitting alone in an intellectual reverie. I think they were laughing at their audience, thinking of them as people who couldn't understand what they were saying, who followed them around because beatniks were 'in.' ''

While the new generation is not immune to hollow imitation - ''Just because you're Beat doesn't mean you're not bogus,'' Mr. Kornberg warned - it seems determined to engage in the world, not run from it.

''The 90's beatnik is more politically aware because there is no place to run,'' said Christopher DeBarr, head cook at the Downstairs and initiator of poets mud wrestling. ''Just look in your own backyard and you see pollution. You don't want to fly, you want to fight.''

The only entanglements to avoid are college ones. Ms. Curry, for example, says she has never attended a football game, and she lives next door to the stadium.

''Some people automatically hate campus culture and want the opposite of the mainstream,'' said Greg Feller, a senior English major at Duke who manages the campus radio station and sings for a band, Talking of Michelangelo. ''But the true bohemian really does not care what other people think and appreciates a little of everything.''

Mr. Feller identifies bohemianism not only with art but also with an interest in the environment and healthful activities. Bohos, Mr. Feller says, bicycle.

Mr. Kimball at Wisconsin describes this state as a ''comfortable feeling of being different, but not alienated.''

''We learned something from the 50's and 60's, when beatniks in their rebellion thought they had the answer,'' he continued. ''I am never convinced that I have the answer. But I'm aware of my responsibility to do something. Maybe I'm a conservative beatnik.''

He is certainly one of a generation of modest and less self-indulgent ones. Even their beloved progressive music is described, when it can be described at all, as ''shying away from solos and displays of technical virtuosity,'' favoring lyrics that are ''not I-centered but oblique observations of the environment.''

The poetry is also less pretentious. ''People don't snap their fingers after a poem they like,'' said Peter Bilderback, a senior philosophy major at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and manager of the student-run radio station. ''There is no sense that we're trying to set ourselves apart from everyone else, who clap because they're square.''

But coziness does not breed accessibility. ''Especially at night, Yale students come in here loaded down with books,'' said Emile Turner, who serves customers at the Daily Caffee counter. ''They talk a lot about philosophy, psychic stuff, environmentalism. I don't know what they're really saying. Since I'm only in high school, everything just flies over my head.''

Photo: The scene at Java, a Los Angeles cafe. ''We're not genuine beatniks,'' says Ashley Quaine, its designer. (Bart Bartholomew for The New York Times); Kia White, left, speaking with Jodi Bodenhamer at Captain Quackenbush's Espresso Cafe in Austin. (Zigy Kaluzny for The New York Times)