1. Rise of a Euro-American Counterculture The “best minds... destroyed by madness” – or Destroying Madness?

2. Paranoia, Conformity & Loss –The “Military-Industrial Complex” takes over the 50s Bill Moyers, Postwar Hopes, Cold War Fears –Materialism, consumerism, mass culture and loss of spirituality –Disillusionment of the post-WWII generation “White flight”: cultural wasteland of suburbs Adolescents warehoused in public high schools Rebel Without a Cause (1955) or Leave It to Beaver? –The decay, horror and excitement of inner cities –Identification with minority cultures –Nostalgia for the American Frontier – any frontier... All become material for Ginsberg’s “Howl” –The “Moloch” section as urban nightmare

3. The “White Negro” "This, the American, presents a strange picture: a European with Negro behavior and an Indian soul... a 'stuttering', or 'rhythmitized' European" -- Carl Jung (1930s?) from Collected Works Vol X Norman Mailer essay “The White Negro” (1957) –African American makes ideal model for “atomic- age existential hipster” because “the Negro was forced into the position of exploring all those moral wildernesses of civilized life which the Square automatically condemns as delinquent or evil or immature or morbid or self-destructive or corrupt.”

4. On the Road (1957) Jean-Louis (“Jack”) Kerouac (1922-1969) –Working-class French Canadian b. Lowell MA –Football hero, university student, merchant mariner, obsessive writer of “spontaneous prose”? –Novel part of projected mammoth autobiography Names changed, incidents compressed & intensified –The Six Gallery reading (1956) Dramatized in Dharma Bums (1958) “SF Renaissance” – poetry as oral, confessional, political art Youth culture as public demonstration “Beat” culture as male-oriented, mobile, fleeing home, family, job, middle-class society & conformity