Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era.[1] The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.[2][3]
For the subculture surrounding the literary movement, see Beatnik. For the play, see Beat Generation (play).
Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959), and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are among the best-known examples of Beat literature.[4] Both Howl and Naked Lunch were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States.[5][6] The members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.
The core group of Beat Generation authors—Herbert Huncke, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and Kerouac—met in 1944 in and around the Columbia University campus in New York City. Later, in the mid-1950s, the central figures, except Burroughs and Carr, ended up together in San Francisco, where they met and became friends of figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.
In the 1950s, a Beatnik subculture formed around the literary movement, although this was often viewed critically by major authors of the Beat movement. In the 1960s, elements of the expanding Beat movement were incorporated into the hippie and larger counterculture movements. Neal Cassady, as the driver for Ken Kesey's bus Furthur, was the primary bridge between these two generations. Ginsberg's work also became an integral element of early 1960s hippie culture, in which he actively participated. The hippie culture was practiced primarily by older members of the following generation.
Etymology[edit]
Although Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948 to characterize a perceived underground, the anti-conformist youth movement in New York, fellow poet Herbert Huncke is credited with first using the word "beat".[7] The name arose in a conversation with writer John Clellon Holmes. Kerouac allows that it was Huncke, a street hustler, who originally used the phrase "beat", in an earlier discussion with him. The adjective "beat" could colloquially mean "tired" or "beaten down" within the African-American community of the period and had developed out of the image "beat to his socks",[8][9][10] but Kerouac appropriated the image and altered the meaning to include the connotations "upbeat", "beatific", and the musical association of being "on the beat", and "the Beat to keep" from the Beat Generation poem.[11]
Significant places[edit]
Columbia University[edit]
The origins of the Beat Generation can be traced to Columbia University and the meeting of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Carr, Hal Chase and others. Kerouac attended Columbia on a football scholarship.[12] Though the beats are usually regarded as anti-academic,[13][14][15] many of their ideas were formed in response to professors like Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren. Classmates Carr and Ginsberg discussed the need for a "New Vision" (a term borrowed from W. B. Yeats), to counteract what they perceived as their teachers' conservative, formalistic literary ideals.[16][17]
Times Square "underworld"[edit]
Ginsberg was arrested in 1949. The police attempted to stop Jack Melody (a.k.a. "little Jack") while he was driving a car in Queens with Priscella Arminger (alias, Vickie Russell or "Detroit Redhead") and Allen Ginsberg in the back seat. The car was filled with stolen items Little Jack planned to fence. Jack Melody crashed while trying to flee, rolled the car and the three of them escaped on foot. Allen Ginsberg lost his glasses in the accident and left incriminating notebooks behind. He was given the option to plead insanity to avoid a jail term and was committed for 90 days to Bellevue Hospital, where he met Carl Solomon.[18]
Solomon was arguably more eccentric than psychotic. A fan of Antonin Artaud, he indulged in self-consciously "crazy" behavior, like throwing potato salad at a college lecturer on Dadaism. Solomon was given shock treatments at Bellevue; this became one of the main themes of Ginsberg's "Howl", which was dedicated to Solomon. Solomon later became the publishing contact who agreed to publish Burroughs' first novel, Junkie, in 1953.[19]
Greenwich Village[edit]
Beat writers and artists flocked to Greenwich Village in New York City in the late 1950s because of low rent and the "small town" element of the scene. Folksongs, readings and discussions often took place in Washington Square Park.[20] Allen Ginsberg was a big part of the scene in the Village, as was Burroughs, who lived at 69 Bedford Street.[21]
Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and other poets frequented many bars in the area, including the San Remo Cafe at 93 MacDougal Street on the northwest corner of Bleecker, Chumley's, and Minetta Tavern.[21] Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and other abstract expressionists were also frequent visitors of and collaborators with the Beats.[22] Cultural critics have written about the transition of Beat culture in the Village into the Bohemian hippie culture of the 1960s.[23]
In 1960, a presidential election year, the Beats formed a political party, the "Beat Party," and held a mock nominating convention to announce a presidential candidate: the African-American street poet Big Brown, won a majority of votes on the first ballot but fell short of the eventual nomination.[24] The Associated Press reported, "Big Brown's lead startled the convention. Big, as the husky African American is called by his friends, wasn't the favorite son of any delegation, but he had one tactic that earned him votes. In a chatterbox convention, only once did he speak at length, and that was to read his poetry."[25]
Participants[edit]
Women[edit]
Beat Generation women who have been published include Edie Parker; Joyce Johnson; Carolyn Cassady; Hettie Jones; Joanne Kyger; Harriet Sohmers Zwerling; Diane DiPrima; Bonnie Bremser; Lenore Kandel; and Ruth Weiss, who also made films. Carolyn Cassady wrote her detailed account of life with her husband Neal Cassady which also included details about her affair with Jack Kerouac. She titled it Off the Road, and it was published in 1990. Poet Elise Cowen took her own life in 1963. Poet Anne Waldman was less influenced by the Beats than by Allen Ginsberg's later turn to Buddhism. Later, female poets emerged who claimed to be strongly influenced by the Beats, including Janine Pommy Vega in the 1960s, Patti Smith in the 1970s, and Hedwig Gorski in the 1980s.[37][38]
African Americans[edit]
Although African Americans were not widely represented in the Beat Generation, the presence of some black writers in this movement did contribute to the movement's progression. While many of the Beats briefly discussed issues of race and sexuality, they spoke from their perspectives—most being white. However, black people added a counterbalance to this; their work supplied readers with alternative views of occurrences in the world. Beats like the poet Robert "Bob" Kaufman and the writer LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) provide through their work distinctly Black perspectives on the movement. Kaufman wrote about a number of his experiences with the racist institutions of the time. Following his time in the military, he had trouble with police officers and the criminal justice system. Like many of the Beats, Kaufman was also a fan of jazz and incorporated it into his work to describe relationships with others. LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) married Beat writer, Hettie Cohen, who became Hettie Jones, in 1958. Together with Diane di Prima, they worked to develop Yūgen magazine, named for the Japanese concept of yūgen. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were associated with several Beats (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso). That is, until the assassination of the Civil Rights leader, Malcolm X. During this time, LeRoi Jones branched off from the other Beat writers, including his wife, to find his identity among the African-American and Islamic communities. The change in his social setting along with awakening influenced his writing and brought about the development of many of his most notable works, like Somebody Blew Up America, in which he reflected on the attacks of 9/11 and America's reaction to this incident about other occurrences in America.
Culture and influences[edit]
Sexuality[edit]
One of the key beliefs and practices of the Beat Generation was free love and sexual liberation,[39] which strayed from the Christian ideals of American culture at the time.[40] Some Beat writers were openly gay or bisexual, including two of the most prominent (Ginsberg[41] and Burroughs[42]). However, the first novel does show Cassady as frankly promiscuous. Kerouac's novels feature an interracial love affair (The Subterraneans), and group sex (The Dharma Bums). The relationships among men in Kerouac's novels are predominately homosocial.[43]
Drug use[edit]
The original members of the Beat Generation used several different drugs, including alcohol, marijuana, benzedrine, morphine, and later psychedelic drugs such as peyote, Ayahuasca, and LSD.[44] They often approached drugs experimentally, initially being unfamiliar with their effects. Their drug use was broadly inspired by intellectual interest, and many Beat writers thought that their drug experiences enhanced creativity, insight, or productivity.[45] The use of drugs was a key influence on many of the social events of the time that were personal to the Beat generation.[46]
Romanticism[edit]
Gregory Corso considered English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley a hero, and he was buried at the foot of Shelley's grave in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. Ginsberg mentions Shelley's poem Adonais at the beginning of his poem Kaddish, and cites it as a major influence on the composition of one of his most important poems. Michael McClure compared Ginsberg's Howl to Shelley's breakthrough poem Queen Mab.[47]
Ginsberg's main Romantic influence was William Blake,[48] and studied him throughout his life. Blake was the subject of Ginsberg's self-defining auditory hallucination and revelation in 1948.[49] Romantic poet John Keats was also cited as an influence.
Jazz[edit]
Writers of the Beat Generation were heavily influenced by jazz artists like Billie Holiday and the stories told through Jazz music. Writers like Jack Kerouac (On the Road), Bob Kaufman ("Round About Midnight," "Jazz Chick," and "O-Jazz-O"), and Frank O'Hara ("The Day Lady Died") incorporated the emotions they felt toward jazz. They used their pieces to discuss feelings, people, and objects they associate with jazz music, as well as life experiences that reminded them of this style of music. Kaufman's pieces listed above "were intended to be freely improvisational when read with Jazz accompaniment" (Charters 327). He and other writers found inspiration in this genre and allowed it to help fuel the Beat movement.
Early American sources[edit]
The Beats were inspired by early American figures such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville and especially Walt Whitman, who is addressed as the subject of one of Ginsberg's most famous poems, "A Supermarket in California". Edgar Allan Poe was occasionally acknowledged, and Ginsberg saw Emily Dickinson as having an influence on Beat poetry. The 1926 novel You Can't Win by outlaw author Jack Black was cited as having a strong influence on Burroughs.[50]
French surrealism[edit]
In many ways, Surrealism was still considered a vital movement in the 1950s. Carl Solomon introduced the work of French author Antonin Artaud to Ginsberg, and the poetry of André Breton had direct influence on Ginsberg's poem Kaddish. Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, John Ashbery and Ron Padgett translated French poetry. Second-generation Beat Ted Joans was named "the only Afro-American Surrealist" by Breton.[51]
Philip Lamantia introduced Surrealist poetry to the original Beats.[52] The poetry of Gregory Corso and Bob Kaufman shows the influence of Surrealist poetry with its dream-like images and its random juxtaposition of dissociated images, and this influence can also be seen in more subtle ways in Ginsberg's poetry. As the legend goes, when meeting French Surrealist Marcel Duchamp, Ginsberg kissed his shoe and Corso cut off his tie.[53] Other influential French poets for the Beats were Guillaume Apollinaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire.
Modernism[edit]
Gertrude Stein was the subject of a book-length study by Lew Welch. Admitted influences for Kerouac include Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe.[54]
Buddhism and Daoism[edit]
Gary Snyder defined wild as "whose order has grown from within and is maintained by the force of consensus and custom rather than explicit legislation". "The wild is not brute savagery, but a healthy balance, a self-regulating system.". Snyder attributed wild to Buddhism and Daoism, the interests of some Beats. "Snyder's synthesis uses Buddhist thought to encourage American social activism, relying on both the concept of impermanence and the classically American imperative toward freedom."[55]