The Beat Generation: A Countercultural Ethos English 42 – Dr. Karen Rose

“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. A backyard bomb shelter in Garden City, New York.

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. For more on this, see John Clellon Holmes, “The Philosophy of the Beat Generation.”

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. Jack Kerouac

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.” To see a video of the legendary scroll unrolled, click here: The scroll was purchased by Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts in 2001 for $2,200,000. Jack Kerouac’s Typewriter

Published when Kerouac was 37 years old, On the Road is now regarded as one of the best expressions of the Beat Generation’s way of life. The young generation of the late 1940s is presented as a group of people in constant flux; they are restless and, fueled by drugs and alcohol, searching for “It.” On the Road also is often discussed as a study of the promise and shortcomings of America, a nation where “everybody’s doing what they think they are supposed to do” (On The Road, page 68) Kerouac in the Merchant Marines

On the Road is a 5-part, first-person narrative. A young writer, Sal Paradise, describes 4 road trips across the United States and into Mexico that he took between 1946 and At the center of the novel is Dean Moriarty, the exemplar of Beat life. A free- spirited social misfit, Dean is a fast-talking womanizer who possesses a heightened sense of adventure. Dean is interesting, but because he lives in the moment, he is unpredictable and unreliable.

While Sal sees Dean’s limitations, he admires Dean’s “ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being.” Dean is the “HOLY GOOF,” “the root, the soul of Beatific” who possesses “the secret that we’re all busting to find.” While Kerouac never clearly articulates what “the secret” is, On the Road’s anecdotes and images from life off the beaten path of American experience speak for themselves. Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, the model for Dean Moriarty

Most famous quote from On the Road. “But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

Kerouac died at age 47 of an internal hemorrhage related to his alcoholism. At the time of his death, he was living in St. Petersburg, Florida with his ailing mother and his third wife. He is buried in his home town of Lowell, Massachusetts. Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg at Kerouac’s grave

Watch the trailer here: A film version of On the Road starring Sam Riley, Garret Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams, and Viggo Mortensen is scheduled to be released in 2012!!!! This is the first film adaptation of the novel.

Allen Ginsberg was born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey. His father, Louis, was a poet and a high school English teacher; he was a conservative man who wrote “timid, conventional verses.” His mother, Naomi, was politically radical, idealistic, and emotional. When Ginsberg was 12 years old, his mother became delusional and paranoid. His parents separated and divorced. In 1947, doctors diagnosed Naomi Ginsberg with schizophrenia and recommended she have a lobotomy. Since her husband had divorced her, the legal responsibility fell to her sons. 21-year-old Allen signed the papers, and his mother had the lobotomy. Ginsberg was later overcome by feelings of guilt. His mother spent the rest of her life in an institution and died in Allen Ginsberg

At age 17, Ginsberg entered Columbia University and studied economics. He also wrote poems in an “academic style.” Soon personal experiences led Ginsberg toward a rebellion. Ginsberg came out as a homosexual. He struck up friendships with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, and through Burroughs was introduced to the use of morphine and Benzedrine, and to the “drifters” and “hipsters” of the drug scene.

In the Beat movement, Ginsberg saw a reckless, vibrant, exuberant life. Through drugs, orgiastic sex, and Buddhist chants, he sought to transcend normal states of consciousness and achieve mystical ones. He started to write about his feelings and lifestyle with unflinching candor, while at the same time, he started to condemn the social order. Throughout his life, he was actively involved in political protests.

In 1949, at the age of 23, Ginsberg was accused of petty theft. As an alternative to jail, Ginsberg was sentenced to several months in the Columbia Psychiatric Institute. While there, he met Carl Solomon, the American writer to whom Ginsberg dedicates “Howl.” Ginsberg viewed Solomon as mentally insane, yet the most brilliant person he had ever met. Ginsberg felt sympathy for Solomon, who he viewed as a true artist and genius.... and tragic hero.

In 1956, at age 29, Ginsberg published Howl and Other Poems. In 1957, Howl was the focus of a well-publicized obscenity trial. The book’s publisher was arrested and charged with disseminating “obscene literature.” This served as a catalyst for Ginsberg’s lifelong obsession with 1 st Amendment issues.

“A Supermarket in California” (1957) is viewed as a tribute to American poet, Walt Whitman, on the 100 th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass. Whitman is regarded as America’s first “original poet.” Not only did Whitman experiment with meter and rhythm, he was an eccentric personality. He was sexually expressive, and while he was not publicly “out,” he was homosexual and reveled in sexual freedom. Whitman’s poetry glorified nature; he despised the encroachment of industrialized society. Ginsberg viewed Whitman as a “kindred spirit.”

“A Supermarket in California” describes a narrator’s impressions as he walks through a supermarket where he finds Whitman and Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, among the patrons. The poem can be viewed as a lament for a better time, a time when people felt connected to nature and to people. It is a critique of consumerism, conformity, and the lack of meaningful contact among human beings.

What does the supermarket symbolize? What does Walt Whitman symbolize? How does the phrase “shopping for images” explain the poet’s problem in this poem? How might the world that the poet describes here be different from the one Whitman described in his poetry?

The title poem of the collection, “Howl,” is also a 1 st person, stream-of- consciousness narrative. The poem has three parts. Part I Part 1 may be viewed as a list of the atrocities that “the best minds of [Ginsberg’s] generation” have endured and their responses to the restrictive culture in which they find themselves. How does Ginsberg portray the “best minds of [his] generation? What happens to these “angel headed hipsters”? What are they driven to do? Who are the “three old shrews of fate” (line 39, page 1502)?

Part II Ginsberg names the cause of the destruction – MOLOCH (the poem’s antagonist) Who/what is Moloch? What does Moloch symbolize? What happens when people get caught up in Moloch’s power?

Part III The focus is on Solomon and his life in Rockland, the mental institute. What is life like inside Rockland? What happens to Solomon? What might Solomon symbolize? Ultimately, what is Ginsberg’s vision of America? What do we make of his representation of the Beat generation? Carl Solomon

In 2010 a film about Ginsberg’s life was released. The film is called Howl, and it stars James Franco as Allen Ginsberg. Watch the trailer here:

At age 70, Allen Ginsberg died in his apartment in the East Village of Manhattan, New York. He had liver cancer. In his celebrated career, Ginsberg received many awards, including the National Book Award (1973), the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished poetic achievement (1986), and an American Book Award for contributions to literary excellence (1990).

The End!