The postwar years in the United States marked a generational clash that defined the second half of the 20th century. That generational clash brought with it the birth of a new youth culture that was not only defined by its aesthetics or its music, but by a way of thinking that questioned its elders and a lifestyle that broke with traditional society. The beat generation it was a group of writers from the 1950s who wrote and lived through this period. And, about them, we talk in this article.
Beat: the origin of the term
The members of the Beat Generation were characterized by their rejection of traditional American values, drug use, the exercise of a high degree of sexual freedom for their time and, in addition, by a certain interest in Eastern philosophy. The historian already described this phenomenon. Theodore Rossak in his book The birth of a counterculture (1969):
“Young people have planted themselves there in such an impressive way because they act against an environment of almost pathological passivity on the part of the adult generation. Only if we reduced our conception of citizenship to zero would we be able to understand its amazing inhibition as a natural thing. The adults of the time of the Second World War, trapped as they were in the frozen posture of stunned docility» (ROSZAK, 1970: 36).
The origin of the word is not clear beat with which this movement was identified. Lto word beat originally derived from circus and carnival slang, reflecting the narrow circumstances that were lived in the nomadic carnivals. In the drug world, meant “stolen” or “deceived” (Tytell, 2013: 9). The writer and poet Herbert Huncke chose this last definition in 1945 and used it in a derogatory way referring to the members of the movement Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg Y William S Burroughs.
Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs are authors, respectively, of on the road (In the path1957), Howl (1956) and the naked lunch (1959) three of the most outstanding works of this literary generation. They were not the only ones, however, although together with Lucien Carr they formed the initial group. Later, more authors such as Neal Cassady, Herbert Huncke or Carl Solomon, among others, joined.
The name of the group, however, settled later. In a 1967 interview for Radio Canada, Kerouac himself claimed to be the founder and originator of the name: “Well…I heard some older men say it. To some old blacks. ‘beat’ And suddenly I thought ‘ah, beat, BE-AT. Beatitude. ‘Beato’ in Italian, ‘beatifique’ in French». This spiritual turn in the name of the group was related to its proximity to the Eastern thought that was mentioned at the beginning.
The columnist of San Francisco ChronicleHerb Caen, coined the term beatnik in 1957 after the launch of the Sputnik Russian, stating that the satellite and the new Bohemian type were “equally far apart” (Caen, 1958). It was an attempt to discredit the group through parody, because beyond the distance evoked by the term, it intended to suggest a certain bond between the Beat communism. And, in this context of the Cold War, communism was hopelessly against the American in the collective imagination.
In the same previous interview, the author confesses that he finds it a degrading term.
Regardless of its generational name and when it was coined, for the magazine Life, were the “only rebellion around” (O’Neil, 1959) and revolutionized the social landscape. They revolutionized him, in addition to his literature, by hitchhiking, listening jazz in African-American venues to the rhythm of bebop as a soundtrack and rejecting the censorship, revisionism or conformism of his peers. With Whitman either Rimbaud as precursors, their freestyle —mixing prose or verse— and autobiographical was called “spontaneous bop prosody” and they ended up becoming celebrities (Halsey-Foster, 1992).
Between New York and San Francisco: on the road
In the post-war period and, above all, during the fifties, the city of New York it became a bohemian epicenter. The neighborhood of Greenwich Village it housed artists of all kinds, from writers, poets or painters. The avant-garde was at that time on the east coast of the country and that is precisely where this generation was born. In fact, at a time when the generation Beat swarmed in Greenwich, this also became the propitious setting for, years later, the struggle of the LGTB community to hatch in the events of the Stonewall Inn, origin of the Pride celebration. In fact, Allen Ginsberg was one of the protagonists of the Stonewall riots, which he also narrated.
However, little by little the counterculture begins to settle in the city of San Francisco. Since the end of the 19th century, the city had become “the country’s first bohemian enclave.” Artists, painters, novelists, actors… were found there (Gaillard, 2016: 41). From that moment on, it was considered one of the most liberal cities in the country and therefore ideal for the American counterculture lifestyle.
We can see this in the novel for which Jack Kerouac rose to fame with its publication in 1957, on the road. The novel, originally written in 1951 but not published until six years later, chronicles the adventures of Kerouac and his colleagues. beat. Beginning with their first steps as writers in New York City, a young Kerouac recalls his adventures with Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs. Throughout the novel, through road trips and occasional incidents with the police, women or drugs, they end up in San Francisco. The story continually jumps from one city to another, with the epicenter of the argument on the highway that separates the two ends of the country.
The play is considered the definitive work of the Beat Generation, depicting the group’s road trips in a romantic and bohemian way. In turn, it is one of the most influential books of the 20th century and a classic of American literature. Kerouac himself claims to have written it in just three weeks and typed it on a roll without margins or paragraphs. In fact, the book does not have chapters, but it is a whole long novel written continuously. It is said that to finish the novel in such a short time he needed coffee and drugs throughout the process. But the novel that was published in 1957 is quite different from the original scroll as it had to change the names of the real characters to fictional ones and some parts were censored for publication. In total, the story chronicles seven years of travel.
The howl of a generation
It wasn’t just Kerouac. Many other authors were great representatives of this generation. His intimate friend Allen Ginsbergrose to fame with his poem Howl (1956), denouncing the forces of capitalism and what the youth of his day had become or, as he called it, the great minds of his generation. In it, he mixes short sentences with long ones, prose and rhyme. It was considered scandalous due to its crudeness and was even banned after its publication. He wrote without restrictions and the first lines of it go like this:
“I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed / by madness, starving hysterics starving / crawling through the streets, black at dawn / looking for a furious dose.
Ginsberg was born in New Jersey and began his studies at Columbia University in New York, but was expelled in the first year. It was there that he met Kerouac and Burroughs. Jewish and with communist parents, from a very young age he was concerned about the political situation in his country and this was reflected in his poems and in his activism during the 1960s. in his poem America (1956) vindicates many of these issues: “America, I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I don’t regret it / I smoke pot whenever I can.”
He was homosexual and, both in on the road As in many of his poems or books by his peers, his relationship with another member of the generation, Neal Cassady, with whom he sent love letters, stands out. At that time in the United States, homosexuality was prohibited. It should be noted that when the beats they spoke of homosexuality, they referred exclusively to the masculine. These standards broke stereotypes and became popular among young people, since Cassady was also bisexual. It was the beginning of the idea of sexual liberation that proliferated in the sixties and seventies.
For many of these issues, which ultimately defined his life, Allen Ginsberg became a true activist during the 1960s. Both he and Neal Cassady became bridges between the Beat Generation and the Hippie movement. Ginsberg also defended the use of drugs such as marijuana or LSD and the gay movement. He became a key figure in many of the countercultural issues of the mid-20th century.
Towards the hippie movement: from Ginsberg to Cassady
The aesthetics of the generation Beat It was penetrating from the counterculture to the mass culture. Some of the Beat’s literary works became cult works. In addition, his conception of spirituality ended up leading to other issues that were also very representative of the literary group, such as sexual liberation. The high representation of the LGBT community among the generation beat It made it, culturally, serve as a catalyst for many other issues: feminism, the anti-racist struggle, the hippie emergence and the struggle of the LGTB movement itself.
But, in addition to that, they were important in the world of culture. They left their mark on musicians like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison or Patti Smith, also closely related to the hippie. However, the emergence of hippy and the generation beat they had a lot to do.
The hippie movement began to become popular in the 1960s, specifically in the San Francisco area. the neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury became the nerve center of this growing hippie community. San Francisco, as we have mentioned, was an ideal city for artists due to its great freedom.
Neal Cassady moved to frisco along with his wife at the time, Carolyn, and Kerouac visited the couple on numerous occasions. However, this vibrant city soon affected Cassady, from being a staunch member of what was the Beat Generation of the fifties to one of the most important members and conductor of the merry pranksters in the hippie movement. The Merry Pranksters were a group led by the writer Ken Kesey. After Kesey’s experimentation with the psychedelic world of marijuana and especially LSD, he became a true spiritual guru. In his house in La Honda, California, he was dedicated to welcoming a large number of hippies, directing their spiritual journeys and transforming his way of life into a communal one.
The Cheerful…