By and about the beat writers

According to the article in Wikipedia under the title “Beat Generation”:

“The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch (1959), and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) are among the best-known examples of Beat literature. Both Howl and Naked Lunch were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States. The members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

The core group of Beat Generation authors — Herbert Huncke, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and Kerouac — met in 1944 in and around the Columbia University campus in New York City. Later, in the mid-1950s, the central figures, with the exception of Burroughs and Carr, ended up together in San Francisco, where they met and became friends of figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.

In the 1960s, elements of the expanding Beat movement were incorporated into the hippie and larger counterculture movements. Neal Cassady, as the driver for Ken Kesey’s bus Further, was the primary bridge between these two generations. Ginsberg’s work also became an integral element of the early 1960s hippie culture.”

Most of the beat generation’s literature was written in the form of novels, but the events described in the books are known to mirror closely the real lives of their writers but giving the characters fictitious names. While Allen Ginsberg’s collection of poems Howl preceded Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, this novel could be considered the beginning of the beat literature, and it was the first book of beat literature that I read as a teenager. This book in particular, and the beat writers in general, were a significant influence on me then and remain so. This is why I include a discussion of this subject here, even though I do not discuss literature in my book, because literature falls outside the subject areas of my book and the way my book is organized.

Before listing some works below to familiarize the reader with this subject, I should mention why the ideas of the beat generation writers interested me. Like R. Crumb’s cartoons where he depicts himself as nervous when among such characters, I felt the same way. I was not then and am not now interested in emulating their lifestyle, however, I admire them for other reasons, especially their honesty. Another reason is that although they were not the only ones to explore personal freedom, one could say the entire generation that followed in their footsteps in the 1960s did that, the beat writers are distinguishable from their successors by the fact that they not only documented their lives by writing about them, but that it was possible for the reader to learn from them.

Another theme that they explored was the legitimacy of authority. This subject is discussed by political philosophers, but there is a substantial difference between academic discussions and how such questions play out in real life. In my view, the beat generation raised such perennial questions of political philosophy as by what right does one group, e.g. politicians, law enforcement, etc., claim authority over another group, and what obligation do people have to obey authority they don’t respect? Note that the question of respect is not personal against those who have to carry it out. A related question is why can’t people live the lifestyle they want? What if laws prevent them from doing so even if the lifestyle is not causing harm. These are vital questions. Most people probably don’t give these questions much thought, and just go about their daily lives, but other people are more affected by these questions and must make decisions about them. This I did and continue to do.

I also want to mention that the beat writers are actually two generations prior to me. Successors of the beat writers, the ones who were responsible for the 1960s counterculture, were one generation prior to me. While I sympathized with and was influenced by that counterculture, I feel more affinity with the beat writers, perhaps that is because they were primarily writers and because they came first. There is much that I have not read by the beat writers. I do not have the time to read more for the foreseeable future, so I can only suggest a few sources below.

Finally, I want to note that it is probably common among conservatives to believe that beat, counterculture, bohemian artists, writers, etc. in general are a disruptive influence, and to blame them for behavior and events about which conservatives don’t approve. The beats were not leaders. They lacked power. I believe the facts do not bear out the disapproval since little of substance has changed in the 70 or so years since. In the last section of this website, I will return to the subject of whether people are any happier with their lives today. I believe the influence of all artists is ultimately limited. The best way to learn the truth about the beat writers and artists is to look at what they said and did. A good place to start, of course, is with the book On the Road, as I did, but see also the following:

Bibliography

Philosophy of the Beats, edited by Sharin Elkholy (University Press of Kentucky, 2012)

The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels and Hipsters, 1944-1960, by Steven Watson (Pantheon, 1995)

The Real Bohemia: a Sociological and Psychological Study of the “Beats”, by Rigney and Smith (Basic Books, 1961)

The following films are just a selection from among what must be a large number of films that have been made on the subject. I pick these because I have seen them.

The Beat Generation: an American Dream (documentary)

What Happened to Kerouac? (documentary)

Lowell Blues: the words of Jack Kerouac (documentary)

Note: besides adding to all the categories on this website in the future, each category is subject to revision if I find something I need to add or change.