Encyclopedia
The
Beat Generation was a group of American writers who came to prominence in the late
1950s and early
1960s. Their most important works are
Jack Kerouac's
On the Road is a novel by Jack Kerouac [i], published by Viking Press [i] in 1957 [i] ...
,
Allen Ginsberg's
Howl , and
William S. Burroughs'
Naked Lunch is a novel [i] by William S. Burroughs [i]. ...
.
Meaning and usage
Kerouac introduced the phrase
Beat Generation sometime around 1948 to describe his friends and as a general term describing the underground, anti-conformist youth gathering in New York at that time to the novelist John Clellon Holmes . The adjective
beat had the connotations of "tired" or "down and out", but Kerouac added the paradoxical connotations of
upbeat,
beatific, and the musical association of being "on the beat".
Calling this relatively small group of struggling writers, students, hustlers, and drug addicts a "generation" was to make the claim that they were representative and important—the beginnings of a new trend, analogous to the influential Lost Generation.
In trying to define the "Beat Generation" it's important to note that "Beat Generation" was originally a reference, not only to Kerouac's inner-circle, but to the burgeoning counter-culture. The press attached to the name "Beat Generation" as a reference to only a small group of writers, friends of Ginsberg, Kerouac or Burroughs. Thus the joke among Beat writers persisted in various forms: "Three friends does not make a generation." The press also mistakenly pointed to Ginsberg and Kerouac as leaders. This often leads to confusion about who actually belongs in the so-called "Beat Generation." Writers who may qualify as part of the "Beat Generation" may deny they were ever a part of it based on this limiting definition the press had given it. For example, they'll say they're friends with Ginsberg and Kerouac, not followers.
This leads to two ways to identify writers as members of the "Beat Generation," a broad and narrow definition. A narrow definition of the Beat Generation would include only the closest friends who relatively consistently defined themselves as "Beat" writers; this list may include: Ginsberg, Kerouac,
Neal Cassady,
Gregory Corso, and
Peter Orlovsky. If "Beat Generation" is defined broadly, this smaller group is often just called "The New York Beats," though Orlovsky had little connection with New York.
William S. Burroughs, one of the most important figures of this group, always adamantly denied he was a part of the "Beat Generation," but an accurate list of the close inner-circle would have to include him. Even Kerouac in his later career denied he was part of the "Beat Generation." In this sense movements like the San Francisco Renaissance and the Black Mountain poets would be completely separate movements.
If we define "Beat Generation" broadly the definition would include other writers who reached prominence in the late 1950's, early 1960's, who shared many of the same themes, ideas, intentions, etc. . Friendship, or at least a brief association, with Ginsberg or Kerouac would be an indication that a writer belongs in this broadly defined list of "Beat" writers. This list would include: San Francisco Renaissance poets such as
Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Harold Norse, Kirby Doyle; Michael McClure;
surrealist poets Philip Lamantia and Ted Joans; poets associated with the
Black Mountain College such as
Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan ; New York School poets such as Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch; poets who are occasionally called the "second wave" of the Beat Generation such as
LeRoi Jones/
Amiri Baraka, Diane DiPrima, Anne Waldman; Bob Kaufman; Tuli Kupferberg; Ed Sanders; John Wieners; Jack Micheline; Ray Bremser and Bonnie Bremser/Brenda Frazer;
Ed Dorn; Jack Spicer; David Meltzer;
Richard Brautigan; Lenore Kendal; many previously underappreciated female writers who are now receiving more attention such as Joanne Kyger, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling, Janine Pommy Vega, Elise Cowen. And younger writers who were acquaintances of the aforementioned writers are occasionally included in this list. Charles Bukowski has a tenuous place on this list since his association is slight. Several older writers were very closely associated with members of the "Beat Generation" though their reputations were solidified so much earlier that it's difficult to call them part of the same "generation." They include Kenneth Rexroth the figure head of the San Francisco Renaissance, and
Charles Olson figure head of the Black Mountain School of poetry. Also, so many of these writers either studied personally with
William Carlos Williams or looked up to Williams as an idol and followed his admonition to speak with an American voice, that Beat writers are often seen as being the children of Williams.
By either definition, the members of the Beat Generation were new
bohemian ecstatic epicureans, who often engaged in a spontaneous creativity. The style of their work may seem chaotic, but the chaos was purposeful; it highlighted the primacy of such Beat Generation essentials as spontaneity, open emotion, visceral engagement in often gritty worldly experiences. The beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.
The first "Beat" work to gain nationwide attention was Ginsberg's "Howl." An obscenity trial helped fuel its fame. One of the most enduringly famous "Beat" works, Kerouac's
On The Road , which heralded the beginning of "Beat" popularity, was not published until 1957, in a sense capitalizing on the fame brought by the "Howl" obscenity trial. Burroughs' magnum opus
Naked Lunch likewise went to trial for obscenity. Both obscenity trials helped to liberalize what could be legally published in the United States. From then on if anything was deemed to have literary value it was no longer considered obscene.
Echoes of the Beat Generation run throughout all the forms of alternative/counter culture that have existed since then . Also, since the "Beat Generation" had so much direct influence on rock musicians they had a hand in fostering the image of the rebellious rock star. The Beat Generation can be seen as the first modern subculture and the first fully American literary movement since the Transcendentalists. See the "
Influences on Western Culture" section below.
History
The members of the narrowly defined "Beat Generation" met in
New York:
Jack Kerouac,
Allen Ginsberg,
William Burroughs, and later
Gregory Corso . Though endless travel around the country is part of their romanticized image, most of the central figures ended up together in San Francisco in the mid-1950s where they met and became friends with figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance such as Kenneth Rexroth,
Gary Snyder,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Harold Norse, Lew Welch, and Kirby Doyle. They met there many other poets who had migrated to San Francisco because it had a reputation as an important new center of creativity. They met there Bob Kaufman who was the first to actually be called a "beatnik." And they met there Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Tuli Kupferberg, and members of the recently dissolved Black Mountain College looking for a new center of communal creativity, poets such as
Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan.
Many writers were inspired by the publication of "Howl" and
On the Road and decided to join the group. The Beats met most of these writers when they returned to New York: John Wieners,
LeRoi Jones, Diane DiPrima, Anne Waldman. The New York School of poets, which had already been established as a movement in New York, found much in common with this ever-widening circle and consistently promoted one another's work.
Perhaps equally important were the less obviously creative members of the scene, who helped form their intellectual environment and provided the writers with much of their subject material: There was
Herbert Huncke, a drug addict and petty thief met by Burroughs in 1946 who introduced the word "beat" and a lot more junky lingo and the junky lifestyle; Lucien Carr who was key to introducing many of the central figures to one another; and Hal Chase, an anthropologist from
Denver who in 1947 introduced into the group
Neal Cassady, the hero and symbol of the American dream idolized in much Beat literature.
Also important were the oft-neglected women in the original circle, including
Joan Vollmer and Edie Parker. Their apartment in the upper west side of Manhattan often functioned as a salon and Joan Vollmer in particular was a serious participant in the marathon discussion sessions.
Columbia University and The Kammerer Stabbing
The original circle met at Columbia University; though they were later considered anti-academic artists, the seed for the Beat Generation was planted in a highly academic environment. For example, many of their early ideas were formed by arguments with professors such as Lionel Trilling and Mark VanDoran. It was the same environment where classmates such as Louis Simpson and Donald Hall became champions of formalism. This is where Carr and Ginsberg discussed the need for a "New Vision" to move away from Columbia University's conservative notions of literature. With the introduction of Burroughs, Huncke, and Cassady, the new focus became real life experiences instead of academic intellectualizing. Perhaps the most important early experience that drew most of the members of the Beat Generation together was the stabbing of David Kammerer. It's one reason Burroughs maintained his close-but-distant relationship with the rest of the Beats. It was an incident Kerouac tried to capture twice, in his first novel
The Town and the City and one of his last, The Vanity of Duluoz.
Burroughs was born in
St. Louis, Missouri in 1914; making him roughly ten years older than most of the other original beats. While still living in St. Louis, Burroughs met David Kammerer, presumably an association based on their shared
homosexual orientation and intellectual tendencies.
As a boys' youth-group leader in the mid-1930s, David Kammerer became infatuated with the young Lucien Carr . Kammerer formed a pattern of following Carr around the country as he attended different colleges. In the fall of 1942, at the University of Chicago, Kammerer introduced 17-year-old Lucien Carr to William S. Burroughs.
Burroughs was a Harvard-graduate who lived off a stipend from his relatively wealthy family. His grandfather had invented the Burroughs Adding Machine, though the amount of wealth in the family is often exaggerated .
The three became good friends, whose sprees got Burroughs kicked out of his rooming house and culminated in Carr confined in a mental ward after an apparent attempted suicide with a gas oven .
In the spring of 1943, Carr's family moved him to Columbia University in New York, where Kammerer, and then Burroughs shortly followed.
At Columbia, Carr met the freshman Allen Ginsberg, whom he introduced to Burroughs and Kammerer. Edie Parker, another member of the crowd, introduced Carr to her boyfriend Jack Kerouac once he came back from his stint as a merchant marine. In 1944, Carr introduced Kerouac and Burroughs.
Kammerer's fixation was obvious to everyone in the circle, and he became jealous as Carr developed a relationship with a young woman . In mid-August, 1944, Lucien Carr killed him with a boy scout knife in what may have been self-defense after an altercation in a park on the
Hudson river.
Carr disposed of the body into the river. He first went to Burroughs for advice, who recommended he get a lawyer and turn himself in with a claim of self-defense. Instead, Carr went to Kerouac, who helped him dispose of the weapon.
Carr turned himself in the next morning and Kerouac and Burroughs were both charged as accessories to the crime. Burroughs quickly got the money for bail, but Kerouac's parents refused to post it for him. Edie Parker and her family came through, with the condition that they be married immediately.
The Times Square Underworld
Burroughs had long had an interest in experimenting with criminal behavior, and gradually made contacts in the criminal underground of New York, becoming involved with dealing in stolen goods and narcotics and developing a decades long addiction to
opiates. Burroughs met Herbert Huncke, a small-time criminal and drug addict who often hung around the
Times Square area.
The beats found Huncke a fascinating character. As Ginsberg put it, they were on a quest for "supreme reality", and somehow felt that Huncke, as a member of the underclass had learned things they were sheltered from in their middle/upper-middle class lives.
Various problems resulted from this association: In 1949 Ginsberg was in trouble with the law . He pleaded insanity and was briefly committed to Bellevue, where he met
Carl Solomon. When committed Carl Solomon was more eccentric than psychotic — a fan of
Antonin Artaud, he indulged in some self-consciously "crazy" behavior, e.g. throwing potato salad at a lecturer on
Dadaism. Ted Morgan also mentions an incident where he stole a peanut butter sandwich in a cafeteria, and showed it to a security guard. If not crazy when he was admitted, Solomon was arguably driven mad by the
insulin shock treatments applied at Bellevue, and this is one of the things referred to in Ginsberg's poem "Howl" . After his release, Solomon became the publishing contact that agreed to publish Burroughs' first novel Junky shortly before another episode resulted in him being committed again.
Neal Cassady
The introduction of
Neal Cassady into the scene in 1947 had a number of effects. A number of the beats were enthralled with Cassady — Ginsberg had an affair with him; and Kerouac's road trips with him in the late 40s became a focus of his second novel,
On the Road is a novel by Jack Kerouac [i], published by Viking Press [i] in 1957 [i] ...
. Cassady is one of the sources of "rapping" - the loose spontaneous babble that later became associated with "beatniks" . He was not much of a writer himself, though the core writers of the group were impressed with the free-flowing style of some of his letters, and Kerouac cited this as a key influence on his invention of the spontaneous prose style/technique that he used in his key works . On the Road, written somewhat in this style, transformed Cassady into a cultural icon: a hyper wildman, frequently broke- going from woman to woman, car to car, town to town; largely amoral, but frantically engaged with life.
The time lags involved in the publication of Kerouac's
On the Road often creates confusion: It was written in 1952 — shortly after John Clellon Holmes published "Go", and the article "This is the beat generation" — and it covered events that took place much earlier, beginning in the late 40s. Since the book was not published until 1957, many people received the impression that it was describing the late '50s era, though it was actually a document of a time ten years earlier.
The legend of how "On the Road" was written was as influential as the book itself: high on speed, Kerouac typed rapidly on a continuous scroll of telegraph paper to avoid having to break his chain of thought at the end of each sheet of paper. Kerouac's dictum was that "the first thought is best thought", and insisted that you should never revise text after it is written — though there remains some question about how carefully Kerouac observed this rule. Although Kerouac maintained he wrote this particular book in one mad 3-week burst, it is clear from manuscript evidence that he had previously written several drafts and had been contemplating the novel for years. Also, the text went through many changes between the final "roll" manuscript and the published version- more evidence to suggest Kerouac's deviation from his dictum- although, to be fair, he had written the book before devising this code.
Gregory Corso
In 1950
Gregory Corso met Ginsberg, who was impressed by the poetry Corso had written while incarcerated for burglary. Gregory Corso was the young
d'Artagnan added to the original three of the core beat writers, and for decades the four were often spoken of together; though later critical attention for Corso waned. Corso's first book
The Vestal Lady on Brattle and Other Poems appeared in 1955.
San Francisco
Some time later there was much cross-pollination with
San Francisco area writers . Ferlinghetti became a focus of the scene as well as the older poet Rexroth, whose apartment became a Friday night literary salon. Ginsberg was introduced to Rexroth by an introductory letter from his mentor
William Carlos Williams, an old friend of Rexroth's. When Ginsberg organized the famous Six Gallery reading in 1955, he had Rexroth MC; in a sense Rexroth was bridging two generations. This was the first public appearance of Ginsberg's poem
Howl and is considered one of the most important moments in the Beat Generation: it brought East Coast and West Coast poets together; the reading itself quickly sparked a legend and lead to many more readings by the now locally famous Six Gallery poets around California. Soon after the Six Gallery reading, Ferlinghetti wrote Ginsberg a letter, saying, "I greet you at the beginning of a brilliant career. When do I get the manuscript?" This was an adaptation of Thoreau's comment about Whitman's poetry, a prophecy of sorts that
Howl would bring as much energy to this new movement as Whitman brought to 19th century poetry. This is also a marker of the beginning of the Beat movement since the publication of
Howl and the subsequent obscenity trial brought nationwide attention to many of the other members of this group.
An account of the Six Gallery reading forms the second chapter of
Jack Kerouac's 1958 novel
The Dharma Bums is a 1958 [i] novel by Beat Generation [i] author Jack Kerouac [i]. ...
, a novel about another poet that read at the event:
Gary Snyder . Most of the people in the Beat movement had urban backgrounds and they found Snyder to be an almost exotic individual, with his backcountry and rural experience, and his education in cultural anthropology and Oriental languages. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has referred to him as 'the
Thoreau of the Beat Generation". One of the primary subjects of
The Dharma Bums is
Buddhism, and the different attitudes that Kerouac and Snyder have towards it.
The Dharma Bums undoubtedly helped to popularize Buddhism in the
West.
Women of the Beat Generation
There is typically very little mention of women in a history of the early Beat Generation, and a strong argument can be made that this omission is largely a reflection of the
sexism of the time rather than a reflection of the actual state of affairs.
Joan Vollmer was clearly there at the beginning of the Beat Generation, and all accounts describe her as a very intelligent and interesting woman. But she did not herself write and publish, and unlike
Neal Cassady, no one chose to write a book about her; she has gone down in history as the wife of
William Burroughs, killed by him in a shooting incident.
Joan is mentioned in 'On the Road', in the chapters regarding the Kerouac and Cassady's visits to see 'Old Bull Lee' in New Orleans, and is pseudonymed as 'Jane'. She is described paradoxically as a distant woman who was 'never more than 10 feet away from Old Bull' at any given time, giving the impression that she is complex and difficult to get to know.
Gregory Corso insisted that there were many female beats, in particular, he claimed that a young woman he met in mid-1955 introduced Kerouac and Ginsberg to subjects such as
Li Po and was in fact their original teacher regarding eastern religion .
Corso insisted that it was hard for women to get away with a Bohemian existence in that era: they were regarded as crazy, and removed from the scene by force . This is confirmed by Diane di Prima :
- I can't say a lot of really great women writers were ignored in my time, but I can say a lot of potentially great women writers wound up dead or crazy. I think of the women on the Beat scene with me in the early '50s, where are they now? I know Barbara Moraff is a potter and does some writing in Vermont, and that's about all I know. I know some of them ODed and some of them got nuts, and one woman that I was running around the Village with in '53 was killed by her parents putting her in a shock treatment place in Pennsylvania ...
However, a number of female beats have perservered, notably
Joyce Johnson ; Carolyn Cassady ; Hettie Jones ; Joanne Kyger ; Harriet Sohmers Zwerling; and the aforementioned Diane di Prima . Later, other women writers emerged who were strongly influenced by the beats, such as Janine Pommy Vega in the 1960s, and
Patti Smith in the early 1970s.
Collaborations, Inspirations, and References
Collaboration and mutual inspiration are essential aspects of movements; this is certainly true for the Beat Generation. Here are a few examples of collaborations, mutual promotion and inspiration, and references in works by Beat associates to other writers of the broadly defined Beat Generation.
- Allen Ginsberg was a tireless promoter of the works of other members of the Beat Generation. He considered himself a pro bono literary agent for all of his friends and for those with similar ideas. For example, he was instrumental in getting William S. Burroughs' first book published. Ginsberg encouraged Burroughs to write in the first place.
- Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs collaborated early on a parody of hardboiled detective fiction called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks.
- Gary Snyder dedicated several poems to Lew Welch and has referenced other Beat figures, such as Kerouac, in his poetry.
- Frank O'Hara in his conversational poems often talks about eating lunch with "LeRoi" and often references other Beat writers such as Ginsberg and John Wieners.
- LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka occasionally references other Beats in his writing . Baraka and Diane DiPrima edited a magazine called Yugen which published many of the Beat writers.
Open Form vs. Closed Form Poetry
One way to understand why the Beat Generation was considered radical and a good way to measure their impact is to look at the literary establishment, specifically poetry, of the 1950s and how it was changed in the 1960s. Poetry in the 1950s was under the heavy influence of
T. S. Eliot's often misinterpreted idea of poetry being an escape from self and the
Modernist focus on objectivity. Similar to this, and perhaps an even more pervasive influence, was the ideas of the New Critics and their idea of a poem as a perfectable object; specifically the poetry of John Crowe Ransom and
Robert Penn Warren was highly influential at this time. Their focus on the formal aspects of poetry their celebration of the short, ironic lyric led to a rise formalist poetry and a preference for the short lyric. Three champions of this poetry. When the Beat poets came to prominence in this time they were damned as sloppy libertines, and at best only a passing fad fueled by media attention.
This conflict was framed by two rival anthologies. Three champions of formalist poetry, Louis Simpson, Donald Hall, and Robert Pack, were putting together an anthology of young poets called
New Poets of England and America.
Allen Ginsberg, believing at the time the Beat poets would be accepted by the literary establishment, brought Simpson, his old Columbia classmate, a packet of poetry including
Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Robert Duncan,
Ed Dorn,
Robert Creeley, Philip Lamantia, Denise Levertov, Michael McClure, and
Charles Olsen in hopes that they would be included in this new anthology . Simpson rejected all of them. The introduction for the anthology was written by formalist hero
Robert Frost. The anthology included poetry by
Robert Bly,
Donald Justice,
James Merrill, W. S. Merwin, Howard Nemerov, Adrienne Rich, Richard Wilbur, and James Wright. There is not a strict demarcation here between conservative and liberal poetry. The anthology also included poets associated with what is considered a movement parallel to the Beat Genaration, The Angry Young Men, poets such as
Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, and Thom Gunn. However, it did set a trend for who would become poets acceptable to academia and the literary establishment. For example, Robert Lowell and W. D. Snodgrass would be seminal in the creation of what later became known as Confessional poetry, which helped finally overturn the strict focus on objectivity .
Donald Allen of Grove Press accepted many of the manuscripts Ginsberg gave him for his rival anthology
The New American Poets: 1945-1960. Poets in that anthology included
John Ashbery, Paul Blackburn, Ray Bremser,
Gregory Corso,
Robert Creeley,
Ed Dorn, Kirby Doyle, Robert Duncan,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Allen Ginsberg,
LeRoi Jones,
Jack Kerouac, Kenneth Koch, Philip Lamantia, Denise Levertov, Michael McClure, Frank O'Hara,
Charles Olson, Joel Oppenheimer,
Peter Orlovsky, James Schuyler,
Gary Snyder, Jack Spicer, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, John Wieners, and Jonathan Williams. Don Allen framed the debate as "Open Form" vs. "Closed Form" . Though seeing it as a rivalry is overly simplistic , the development of poetry in the later half of the twentieth century is framed in these two anthologies.
These poets have had arguably equal impact on literature, and it can be said Beat literature has changed the establishment so that academia is more open to more radical forms of literature. For example, of the poets listed in this section, ten from
New Poets of England and America and nine from
The New American Poetry have been included in the
Norton Anthology of American Literature. But Jack Kerouac, despite his impact on American culture and his status as an American icon, has never been included in
Norton. Also, three poets from
New Poets of England and America have served as Poets Laureate of the U.S. No Beat poet has ever served as Poet Laureate.
The Beatnik stereotype
The term
Beatnik was coined by Herb Caen of the
San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 [i] as "The Daily Dramatic Chronicle" by teenage...
on April 2, 1958 as a derogatory term, and was probably a reference to the recent Russian satellite
Sputnik. Caen's coining of this term appeared to suggest that beatniks were "far out of the mainstream of society" and "possibly pro-
Communist". Caen's new term stuck and became the popular label associated with a new stereotype of men with
goatees and
berets playing
bongos while women wearing black leotards dance. It should be noted that thousands of young people on college campuses and even in high schools came to regard themselves as beats or beatniks in the late 1950s and very early 1960s and many of them behaved in a manner very similar to that of the popular stereotype; indeed they comprised a cultural movement of sorts, apart from the literary beats, and often were proud to be called beatniks.
Influences on Western culture
There are many authors who can claim to be influenced by the beats ; but the Beat Generation phenomenon itself has had a huge influence on Western Culture overall, larger than just the effects of some writers and artists on other writers and artists.
In many ways, the Beats can be taken as the first subculture . During the very conformist post-
World War II era they were one of the forces engaged in a questioning of traditional values which produced a break with the mainstream culture that to this day people react to -- or against.
There's no question that Beats produced a great deal of interest in lifestyle experimentation ; and they had a large intellectual effect in encouraging the questioning of authority ; and many of them were very active in popularizing interest in
Zen Buddhism in the West.
A quotation from
Allen Ginsberg's
A Definition of the Beat Generation as published in
Friction, 1 , revised for
Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965:
Ginsberg has characterized some of the essential effects of Beat Generation artistic movement in the following terms:
- Spiritual liberation, sexual "revolution" or "liberation," i.e., gay liberation, somewhat catalyzing women's liberation, black liberation, Gray Panther activism.
- Demystification and/or decriminalization of some laws against marijuana and other drugs.
- The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll as a high art form, as evidenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and other popular musicians influenced in the later fifties and sixties by Beat generation poets' and writers' works.
- The spread of ecological consciousness, emphasized early on by Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, the notion of a "Fresh Planet."
- Opposition to the military-industrial machine civilization, as emphasized in writings of Burroughs, Huncke, Ginsberg
...
, and Kerouac.
- Attention to what Kerouac called a "second religiousness" developing within an advanced civilization.
- Return to an appreciation of idiosyncrasy as against state regimentation.
- Respect for land and indigenous peoples and creatures, as proclaimed by Kerouac in his slogan from On the Road: "The Earth is an Indian thing."
The essence of the phrase "beat generation" may be found in On the Road with the celebrated phrase: "Everything belongs to me because I am poor."
Transition to the "Hippie" era
Some time during the 1960s, the rapidly expanding "beat" culture underwent a transformation: the "Beat Generation" gave way to "The Sixties
Counterculture", which was accompanied by a shift in public terminology from "Beatnik" to "
hippie".
This was in many respects a gradual transition. Many of the original Beats remained active participants, notably Allen Ginsberg, who became a fixture of the anti-war movement -- though equally notably, Kerouac did not remain active on the scene: he broke with Ginsberg and criticized the 60s protest movements as "new excuses for spitefulness".
The Beats in general were a large influence on members of the new "
counterculture", for example, in the case of
Bob Dylan who became a close friend of Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg as early as 1960 became close friends with 60's icon
Timothy Leary and helped him in distributing LSD to influential people in order to demystify drug paranoia.
The year 1963 found Ginsberg living in San Francisco with
Neal Cassady and Charles Plymell at 1403 Gough St. Shortly after that Ginsberg connected with
Ken Kesey's crowd who was doing LSD testing at Stanford, and Plymell was instrumental in publishing the first issue of
R. Crumb's
Zap Comix on his printing press a few years later then moved to Ginsberg's commune in Cherry Valley, NY in the early 1970s.
Cassady was the bus driver for one of the most important early Hippie groups, Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, which included several members of the
Grateful Dead. A sign of Kerouac's break with this new direction in counterculture occurred when the Merry Pranksters, with Cassady's insistence, attempted to recruit Kerouac. Kerouac angrily rejected their invitation and accused them of attempting to destroy the American culture he celebrated.
According to Ed Sanders the change in the public label from "beatnik" to "hippie" happened after the 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park . Ginsberg was also present at another important event in Hippie culture: the protest at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and was friends with
Abbie Hoffman and other members of the "Chicago Seven".
There were certainly some stylistic differences between "beatniks" and "hippies" — somber colors, dark shades, and goatees gave way to colorful "psychedelic" clothing and long hair. The beats were known for "playing it cool" but the hippies became known for "being cool" .
In addition to the stylistic changes, there were some changes in substance: the beats tended to be essentially apolitical, but the hippies became actively engaged with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. To quote Gary Snyder in a 1974 interview :
- ... the next key point was Castro taking over Cuba. The apolitical quality of Beat thought changed with that. It sparked quite a discussion and quite a dialogue; many people had been basic pacifists with considerable disillusion with Marxian revolutionary rhetoric. At the time of Castro's victory, it had to be rethought again. Here was a revolution that had used violence and that was apparently a good thing. Many people abandoned the pacifist position at that time or at least began to give more thought to it. In any case, many people began to look to politics again as having possibilities. From that follows, at least on some levels, the beginning of civil rights activism, which leads through our one whole chain of events: the Movement.
- We had little confidence in our power to make any long range or significant changes. That was the 50s, you see. It seemed that bleak. So that our choices seemed entirely personal existential lifetime choices that there was no guarantee that we would have any audience, or anybody would listen to us; but it was a moral decision, a moral poetic decision. Then Castro changed things, then Martin Luther King changed things ...
Drug usage
The original members or the Beat Generation group — in Allen Ginsberg's phrase, "the libertine circle" — used a number of different drugs.
In addition to the alcohol common in American life, they were also interested in
marijuana,
benzedrine and, in some cases, opiates such as
morphine. As time went on, many of them began using other psychedelic drugs, such as
peyote,
yage , and
LSD.
Much of this usage can fairly be termed "experimental", in that they were generally unfamiliar with the effects of these drugs, and there were intellectual aspects to their interest in them as well as a simple pursuit of hedonistic intoxication.
Benzedrine at that time was available in the form of plastic inhalers, containing a piece of folded paper soaked in the drug. They would typically crack open the inhalers and drop the paper in coffee, or just wad it up and swallow it whole.
Opiates could be obtained in the form of morphine "syrettes": a squeeze tube with a hypodermic needle tip.
As the Beat phenomenon spread , usage of some of these drugs also became more widespread. According to stereotype, the "hippies" commonly used the psychedelic drugs , though the use of other drugs such as amphetamines was also widespread.
The actual results of this "experimentation" can be difficult to determine. Claims that some of these drugs can enhance creativity, insight or productivity were quite common, as is the belief that the drugs in use were a key influence on the social events of the time .
Historical context
The postwar era was a time where the dominant culture was desperate for a reassuring planned order; but there was a strong intellectual undercurrent calling for spontaneity, an end to psychological repression; a romantic desire for a more chaotic, Dionysian existence.
The Beats were a manifestation of this undercurrent , but they were not the only one. Before Jack Kerouac embraced "spontaneous prose", there were other artists pursuing self-expression by abandoning control, notably the improvisational elements in jazz music. The bop form of jazz championed by
Charlie Parker and others was one of the biggest influences on many of the Beats.
Close analogies to the writings of the Beats can be found in the action paintings of
Jackson Pollock and the work of other
Abstract Expressionists such as
Willem DeKooning and
Franz Kline. It's not surprising that members of the New York School of Abstract Expressonism were friends with many members of the Beat Generation; they were so closely tied with parallel movements such as the New York School of poetry and the Black Mountain school.
Black Mountain was associated with many other artists in the post-war period who embraced a similar disdain for refined control, often with the opposite intent of suppressing the ego, and avoiding self-expression; notably, the works of the composer/writer
John Cage and the paintings and "assemblages" of
Robert Rauschenberg. The "cut-up" technique that Brion Gysin developed and that William Burroughs adopted after publishing
Naked Lunch bears a strong resemblance to Cage's "chance operations" approach.
The "cut-up" method may have its origins many years earlier in the poetry of
Dadaist/
Surrealist Tristan Tzara who recommended putting cut up words in a bag and pulling them out randomly to create a poem.
Dadaism and
Surrealism arguably had the most direct impact on the Beats: Dadaism with its attack on the elitism of high culture and its celebration of spontaneity; Surrealism with its transformation of the Dadaist rebellion into positive social intentions and its focus on revelations from the subconscious. Both movements, in a sense, developed as a reaction to WWI, just as the Beat Generation was reacting to the environment of post-WWII America.
Carl Solomon introduced the work of Surrealist
Antonin Artaud to Ginsberg. Artaud had a strong influence on many of the other Beats. The poetry of
Andre Breton was also a direct influence . Since
Surrealism was still in many ways a vital movement in the 1950s, the Beats had interactions with many Surrealists and former Dadaists. Beat associates such as Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, and Ron Padgett were responsible for translating a lot of the poetry from French and introducing it to English-speaking audiences. Several Beat associates, such as Ted Joans, were actual members of the Surrealist group; another example is Philip Lamantia who was close with Breton and was responsible for introducing a lot of Surrealist poetry to the other Beats. The poetry of
Gregory Corso and Bob Kaufman show the clearest influence of Surrealist poetry , though this influence can also be seen in more subtle ways in other poetry, Ginsberg's in particular. When in France the Beats met many Surrealists and former Dadaists. As the legend goes, when they met
Marcel Duchamp, Ginsberg kissed his shoe and Corso cut off his tie.
Many other other French writers still active in the 1950s had a tremendous impact on the writing of the Beat Generation, writers such as Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Jean Genet. Older French writers rank high on the list of shared Beat influences:
Apollinaire, for example. Beats also repeatedly invoke the spirit of Symbolists such as
