It is a term describing a group of young American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s and the cultural phenomena that they wrote about and inspired. The central elements of “Beat” culture are:

1. A rejection of mainstream American values

2. Experimentation with drugs and sexuality

3. An interest in Eastern spirituality

"Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose.“

~ Allen Ginsberg

"John Clellon Holmes... and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said 'You know John, this is really a beat generation'; and he leapt up and said, 'That's it; that's right!'“

~ Jack Kerouac

(Left to right) Bob Donlan, Neal Cassidy, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVinge, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti stand outside Ferlinghetti’s bookstore in San Francisco in 1956. The Beat writers were a small group but were also highly connected to the publishing industry and had a tremendous impact on later American literature.

Their revolt attracted many young people in a very short time.

1. They were a small group of friends first and a movement later.

2. The nucleus of this group met at Columbia University in NYC in the 1940’s.

3. They had connections in the publishing industry.

4. Publishers began to take their work seriously in the late 1950’s.

5. They had a big influence on contemporary American literature and the youth movement of the 1960’s.

6. The Beats were of tremendous social importance in the 1950’s.

7. They came to be regarded as a threat because they questioned suburban, corporate, conservative values.

8. The Beats questioned and challenged the system.

9.

“Howl,” by Allen Ginsberg is considered to be one of the principal works of the Beat generation.

“Howl” was originally considered by many to be obscene. Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested for publishing it.On October 3, 1957 a judge ruled the poem was not obscene.

I saw the best minds of my generationdestroyed by madness, starvinghysterical naked, dragging themselvesthrough the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

Jack Kerouac in 1958

Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road is considered the best of the Beat novels.

It is a story of traveling across the U.S., both alone and with friends.

Written in 1951; published in 1957

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He typed it on what he called “the scroll,” which was 120 feet of tracing paper sheets which he cut to size and taped together.

“The Scroll” was purchased by a private collector in 2001 for 2.1 million dollars and has been on public display several times

“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.”

Born 1920

First published in 1940’s

Then he did not publish for 20 years.

During that time he bordered on insanity and death – two prevalent themes in his poetry.

Although he did not associate with Ginsberg, Kerouac, and other Beat writers, his style is very much that of the Beat writers.

1966: co-founded “American Writers against the Vietnam War”

"I arrived in Chi quite early in the morning.... I dug Chicago after a good day's sleep. The wind from Lake Michigan, bop at the Loop, long walks around South Halsted and North Clark, and one long walk after midnight into the jungles, where a cruising car followed me as a suspicious character.... The fellows at the Loop blew, but with a tired air, because bop was somewhere between its Charlie Parker ornithology period and another period that began with Miles Davis. And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which bop has come to represent for all of us, I thought of all my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same backyard doing something so frantic and rushing about. And for the first time in my life, the following afternoon, I went into the West."

“... one night we suddenly went mad together again; we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who's always saying 'Right-orooni' and 'How 'bout a little bourbon-arooni.' In Frisco great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar and bongo drums. When he gets warmed up he takes off his undershirt and really goes. He does and says anything that comes into his head. He'll sing 'Cement Mixer, Put-ti Put-ti' and suddenly slow down the beat and brood over his bongos with fingertips barely tapping the skin as everybody leans forward breathlessly to hear; you think he'll do this for a minute or so, but he goes right on, for as long as an hour, making an imperceptible little noise with the tips of his fingernails, smaller and smaller all the time till you can't hear it any more and sounds of traffic come in the open door. Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, 'Great-orooni ... fine-ovauti ... hello-orooni ... bourbon-orooni ... all-orooni ... how are the boys in the front row making out with their girls-orooni ... orooni ... vauti ... oroonirooni ..." He keeps this up for fifteen minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can't hear. His great sad eyes scan the audience.”

Suddenly I found myself on Times Square. I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic horror of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream—grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City. The high towers of the land – the other end of the land, the place where Paper America is born. I stood in a subway doorway, trying to get enough nerve to pick up a beautiful long butt, and every time I stooped great crowds rushed by and obliterated it from my sight, and finally it was crushed. I had no money to go home in a bus. Paterson is quite a few miles from Times Square. Can you picture me walking those last miles through the Lincoln Tunnel or over the Washington Bridge and into New Jersey? It was dusk. Where was Hassel? I dug the square for Hassel; he wasn’t there, he was in Riker’s Island, behind bars. Where’s Dean? Where’s everybody? Where’s life? I had my home to go to, my place to lay my head down and figure the losses and figure the gain that I knew was in there somewhere too. I had to panhandle two bits for the bus. I finally hit a Greek minister who was standing around the corner. He gave me a quarter with a nervous look away. I rushed immediately to the bus.