The Beat Generation: Who Coined it and How it Came to Be

In the late 1940's and early 1950's, unbeknownst to the world, or themselves, a group of young friends laid the groundwork for the impending revolution. America would soon come to know these inspired individuals as the Beat Generation writers.

In 1944, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, the three quintessential "Beats," met at Columbia University in New York City. They quickly discovered that they shared similar interests and ideas. These three young men were seemingly cemented by unrelenting intellectual discussions. They began using marijuana and Benzedrine to inspire a new vision of art. Over time, they became acquainted with many other likeminded young people whom they absorbed into their clique.

They were all dissatisfied with the status quo. With the stench of World War II and the atomic bomb still thick in the air, the times were plagued by the Cold War, anti-Communist witch hunts, and blistering conformity. Individualism seemed virtually extinct with Levittown's array of identical houses a monument to its demise. Because of the scarcity of goods during the war, it seemed everyone was trying their best to purchase as many material goods as possible, and the suburban family was heralded. Conformity was rampant. The Beat writers sought something more than the existence society prescribed and some higher meaning in life.

The Beat writers dared to be different, to step outside the boundaries of stratified, robotic American life. Their writing was a fiery call to arms that resonated with youth nationwide that ached to escape the shackles of the conformist world. The Beats rejected the social dogma their elders cherished and scoffed at meticulous rigidity. Their poetry and prose candidly imparted their deviant lifestyles-sex, drugs, fast cars, and odd people and places were all recurrent themes in their quest to fully experience life and all that it could offer them.

The Beats were one of the first groups to use drugs casually in America. They used things like marijuana, Benzedrine, heroine, and amphetamines. Other Beats experimented with sexuality, like Allen Ginsberg who struggled with his own homosexuality. Being openly gay was just not acceptable in the 1950s.

As could be expected, the Beats' eccentricity translated to controversy within the social establishment. The public, overcome with shock and outrage by such outlandish behavior and ideas, overlooked the messages conveyed in their poetry and prose. Their works were generally disregarded by the literary community of the 40's and 50's. Even so, the Beats gained notoriety when some of their works were banned on charges of obscenity. In 1957, U.S. customs officials seized copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems in a shipment from its British printers and subsequently arrested Beat Poet, bookstore owner, and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti for selling the book. William S. Burroughs paramount novel Naked Lunch is recognized for having been the last book banned on obscenity charges in the United States.

Despite its ignorance of their real content, the establishment viewed Beat literature as a threat to conservative values and social order. Many reactionaries seriously feared such seditious books because they had the potential to incite a youth rebellion that could lead to total anarchy. However, it wasn't long before public apprehension gave way rather abruptly to derision. The image of the Beats as depraved, godless militants was replaced by that of the "beatniks"-harmless young bohemian men who lived as voluntary vagrants, wearing beards and hanging around coffeehouses where they recited poetry and thumped bongo drums, their dialogues pervaded by the words, "like", "wow", and "man." Mainstream outsiders, or "squares", didn't take these beatniks the least bit seriously. They were constantly ridiculed by the public and the press.

Ironically, there were many young people who mistook the media's egregiously warped portrayal of the Beats as authentic and adopted the image for themselves. The public's perverted impression of ardently individualistic Beat movement had inspired a conformist fad. The response to this varied amongst Beat writers. For example, Kerouac was deeply troubled by it for the rest of his life, while Ginsberg took it all in stride.

In the mid 60's, out of the beatnik culture evolved a new phenomenon: the hippies. The hippies, though more politically minded, embodied the spirit of the Beat Generation-the individualistic attitude, the rejection of societal norms, the pursuit heightened consciousness. The hippies embraced Beat Generation ideas with Beat literary works almost serving as manuals for living. Beat influence is apparent throughout hippie culture. Take, for example, a band iconic of the hippie era and one of the most recognizable musical groups in the world: perhaps the majority of people only recognize the Beat-in the Beatles' band name for its musical significance.

The term "Beat Generation" was coined by Jack Kerouac during a conversation with John Clellon Holmes in Holmes' apartment one night in 1948. The two were discussing the nature of generations past and present. Holmes prodded Kerouac to elaborate on a certain "new attitude" he'd cited in the young hipsters he often saw in Times Square. In Holmes 1965 essay, "The Name of the Game," he recounts:

"It's a sort of furtiveness," he said. "Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowledge there's no use flaunting on that level, the level of the public, a kind of beatness, I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know who we are-and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world. It's something like that. So I guess you might say we're a beat generation."

Allan Ginsberg later wrote that Kerouac called it a beat generation, "not meaning to name the generation, but to unname it"

The word beat, after World War II, became a common slang term used by jazz musicians and hipsters, meaning "down and out" or broke. Beat was, and still is used, colloquially to mean tired. In the late 1950's Jack Kerouac wrote several articles explaining what the beat in the beat generation truly meant, aiming mainly to end the media's constant misinterpretations of the term. To Kerouac, the word beat meant more simply "down and out." He associated beat with beatific. In 1958 he wrote that beat doesn't mean tired as much as it means beato, which is Italian for beatific. This means to be love life, be utterly sincere with everyone and practice endurance and kindness.

The term Beat Generation came to be most commonly used in reference to the Beat Generation Literary Movement. The movement began in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a small group of friends who collaborated in their work on prose, poetry, and cultural conscience. The original group included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Huncke, and Neal Cassady. This group befriended and took in several more writers in the 1950s including Carl Solomon, Philip Lamantia, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, and Philip Whalen. Throughout the 1950s, the title was attributed to many other writers who shared similar ideas. Among these writers were LeRoi Jones (Amari Baraka), Ray Bremser, Jack Micheline, and Bob Kaufman.

In addition to the literary movement, the term Beat Generation refers to a more expansive influence of poets, writers, novelist, painters and filmmakers in renewing the bohemian lifestyle in America during the same period.

Lee. Robert. E. The Beat Generation Writers. 1965.