The Beat Generation - A Countercultural Ethos – part 2

“The Beat Generation” is a term that applies to a group of American poets and novelists of the 1950s and 1960s who rebelled against American culture and values.  They viewed the United States as conservative, imperial, and constrictive.  The atom bomb, the war in Vietnam, and ecological pollution were sources of great concern that fueled their unease and disillusionment.  For the young generation, it was an “age of anxiety.”

The writers’ disillusionment also stemmed from pervasive features of the U.S. social and economic order:  bureaucratic impersonality, material glut and waste, the sense of powerlessness in relation to the large organizations within which a person typically works, the feeling of being manipulated by advertising and publicity.

To many writers of the Beat Generation, it seemed that Western civilization and its cultural ideas were spiritually bankrupt. The writers who identified with the Beat Generation scorned the complacent, hypocrisy of American Life.  They felt that America was a place that stifled individuality.

Beat Generation writers expressed their revolt in works that were loosely structured, employed slang and vulgar diction, and included images of graphic sexuality.  The tone was one of rebellion and expressed a state of mind embodied in the Bohemian atmosphere of New York City’s Greenwich Village and San Francisco’s North Beach and Haight Ashbury. Leaders of the movement were Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso.  There were no people of color; there were no women.  In fact, the Beat Generation authors are often accused of being chauvinist, even misogynist.

The term “beat” was coined by Kerouac for its punning reference to “beaten down” and “beatified.”  “Beaten down” suggests exhaustion, being at the bottom of the world. “Beatified” has a religious implication, as in a “beatific vision.”  In Christian theology, this means seeing God face to face – not imperfectly through faith.  A beatific vision occurs when a human soul is actually looking at God. Hence, “beat” takes on a connotation of blessedness, a state of exalted exhaustion. 

The concept of illumination was central to their view of life.  It might result from drunkenness and abandon, from hallucinogenic drugs such as peyote and LSD, from sexual ecstasy, from Buddhism, from live jazz music, from anything that increased the sensation of a heightened receptivity to life. Their goal was release – from the confines of social and moral judgment, from a conformist and materialistic society, and from the conventions of literature.

Jack Kerouac was one of the first writers to bring the Beat Movement into public attention.  Born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac was an excellent athlete who earned a football scholarship to attend Columbia University.  In New York City, he met William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.  On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958) are the most popular of Kerouac’s many novels. 

Kerouac did not write using pen and paper; he used a typewriter.  Convinced that his “verbal flow” was hampered when he had to change paper at the end of a page, Kerouac taped together 12 foot-long sheets of paper and fed them into his typewriter as a continuous roll.  When he was done, he taped them together to form a 120 foot scroll, and this was On the Road.  This unique method of composition facilitated what he called “spontaneous writing.”

The Beat Generation – part 1

1-                      The term describes two concepts. Explain which ones.

The Beat Generation is a term used to describe both a group of American writers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the cultural phenomena that they wrote about and inspired (later sometimes called "beatniks").

2-                      What are the origins of the term Beat Generation?

1948: Author Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation". Kerouac was generalizing from his social circle to characterize the underground, anti-conformist youth gathering in New York at that time. The press often used the term "Beat Generation" in reference to a small group of writers…

3-                      What do you know about Jack Kerouac in terms of …

Fame: Amongst the best known of the writers known as the Beat Generation.

Popularity: Kerouac's work was popular, but received little critical acclaim during his lifetime. Today, he is considered an important and influential writer who inspired others.

Major work: Best known for On the Road (1958).

4-                      What can you say about Kerouac’s novel On the Road in terms of…?

Genesis: Based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America.

Origins: It is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences.

How it was welcomed at the time: When the book was originally released, the New York Times hailed it as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and most important utterance" of Kerouac's generation.

5-                      What do you know about Allen Ginsberg?

He was another well-known writer in the Beat Generation. He was best known for Howl (1956), a long poem celebrating his friends of the Beat Generation and attacking what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States at the time.

6-                      How is the poem Howl constructed?

It was written in 1955; it consisted of 3 parts.

7-                      Quote a famous line from that poem:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix; Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”

8-                      Name 2 other famous writers of the Beat Generation and their works:

William S. Burroughs: He was a primary member of the Beat Generation, he was an avant-garde author who affected popular culture as well as literature. Much of his work is semi-autobiographical, drawn from his experiences as an opiate addict. He wrote The Naked Lunch. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. It was drawn from Burroughs own experience in and his addiction to drugs. The way that the novel is written is interesting, with many sub-stories all feeding into the plot.

Gregory Corso: He was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers. He spent several of this youth in jail where he read constantly. He met Ginsberg (who recognized Corso’s talent) when he got out jail. He was the 1^st Beat writer to actually be published: The Vestal Lady and Other Poems (1955, poetry) This Hung-Up Age (1955, play) Gasoline (1958, poetry) Bomb (1958, poetry) The Happy Birthday of Death (1960, poetry)

9-                      Why is the Beat Generation so important?

The Beats represented a part of American society that rebelled against the status quo of the 1950’s.

Echoes of the Beat Generation can be seen throughout many other modern subcultures, such as "hippies" and "punks".