What did the Beat Generation want?

Where there is culture, there is counterculture. And so, to understand what the members of the Beat Generation wanted, it is first important to know what they were opposing. The movement that immediately preceded the Beats was modernism, and while the Beat Generation emerged from specific motives other than mere resistance, the two could not be more different.

The Beat Generation: Who Were They?

Modernists like Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce sought to break with old norms by creating new ones. They sought ways to push the boundaries of the literary medium in which they lived, while adhering to its strict requirements. Simply put, the novel remained a novel and the play remained a play; but new methods of storytelling were introduced. The stream-of-consciousness method is a good example, as in the case of While I’m dyinga novel in the traditional sense, but with an experimental approach. The Beats, who drew inspiration from other sources such as jazz music and psychedelia, went a step further and moved further away from literary norms.

When the Beats emerged, they wanted to rebel against existing literary foundations, societal norms, and, most importantly, concepts of morality. The origins of the Beat Generation can be traced to the 1940s, specifically to Columbia University in New York, where Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs first met.

Despite their shared disdain for academia, the Beats initially exchanged ideas in opposition to their professors of literature and philosophy. These three writers, along with many others, shared a vision that encompassed everything from literature and philosophy to experiments with spirituality. While their aesthetics and themes were fixed, their work consistently refused to be defined by them. Their work was inspired by the lives they had led, and encompassed lives often larger than their own.

Literature deconstructed and reconstructed

Every literary movement has a handful of landmark works, and in the case of the Beat Generation, we have three. A simple analysis of these works can show what set the Beats apart from others.

Crying by Allen Ginsberg begins with a declaration: “I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” It has since become one of the most famous sentences in the history of the art form that is poetry. Ginsberg’s opening line is followed by a torrent of obscenities, graphic sex references, and other words guaranteed to upset the masses. Crying ignores the foundations or rules of poetry and instead prioritizes raw and unfiltered expression.

William S. Burroughs’ Naked lunch is somewhat similar. While one is a piece of poetry and the other is a piece of prose, they have more similarities than differences. Both works were the subject of obscenity trials, both gained notoriety for their graphic depictions of homosexuality and drug experimentation, but most importantly, both became staples of the Beat Generation.

Naked lunch is often described as the literary manifestation of a drug-infused trip. This stream-of-consciousness allows Burroughs to delve deeply into the byproducts of his experiments with hallucinogens, and the result is a provocative work that captures the unique life of this controversial author. The story centers on a drug addict who travels from New York to Tangier, living between reality and the hellish creations of his drug experiments. Naked lunch is particularly difficult to read and follow, as it embodies the Beats’ general disregard for literary norms, in an exaggerated manner.

The most accessible work – and coincidentally also the most iconic work of the Beats – is that of Jack Kerouac En route. The Beats advocated free sexuality and drug experimentation. They also wanted to explore one’s soul and purpose. Some Beats did this through spiritual practices, while others traveled. En route is Kerouac’s diary that follows his travels through America and Mexico in a state of vagabondage. It was written in a very short period of three weeks, but as Kerouac himself said, “It took three weeks to write, but I was on the road for years.”

The influence of the beats on the counterculture

The Beats revolutionized literature and tore apart societal norms, but most importantly, they were precursors to the great counterculture movements of the 20th century. Kerouac and his friends emerged at a crucial moment in American history. Fresh from a world war fought abroad and recovering from the Great Depression, America in the mid-1940s was witnessing an unprecedented economic boom. Beneath the picturesque American dream lay a darker reality, one of obsessive consumerism and pious materialism.

The Beats rejected these values, claiming that they were mortal to the soul and values ​​of man, and saw them as a threat to individuality. The Beats lived humbly and found wealth in other endeavors in life. Kerouac summed this up by writing, “Everything belongs to me because I am poor.”

The Beatniks, the followers and fans of the Beats, adopted these values ​​and sought solace in literature and art. In the 1960s, the hippies emerged and continued their quest to reject materialistic America.

This countercultural spirit, based on a conscious rejection of the values ​​of materialistic America, and the cause of change and the civil rights movement, can be traced back to the Beats. The involvement of the members in political life varied, but it was ultimately their influence that created a stir, not their efforts themselves. For example, while Ginsberg was very actively involved in political life, Burroughs led a more private life and let his political messages be carried through his writing.

The Beats’ fight against censorship

It’s funny to think that less than a century ago, a work of literature could be censored and cause such outrage in the United States. From their university years, Beat writers made it clear that they opposed censorship in any form. For them, art was something that had to function without boundaries.

In the second half of the 1950s, when the Beats’ three major works were published, their direct clashes with the issue of censorship began. Immediately after the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Crying In 1956, publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested and tried for obscenity. The battle for Crying on stage was finally successful with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. William S. Burroughs’ Naked lunch suffered a similar fate due to their expressions of alcoholism, sexuality, drug use and violence – and again the Beats won. It is because of their relentless fight against the censorship machine that we can enjoy freedom of expression in literature.

Sexual Liberation and Gender Norms

The Beats first emerged in America in the 1950s, and while it was less than a century ago, one cannot underestimate how conservative the society was. Sure, it was progressive by the standards of the time and compared to most other countries, but by modern standards it was anything but progressive. Now imagine a group of young writers talking openly about homosexuality, claiming it as an identity, and preaching sexual liberation.

The confrontation between the two can be nothing but a violent clash. Media coverage of the Beat Generation often succumbed to shock tactics: stories of deprived sexual acts, orgies and exploitation were unfortunately assigned to these authors to embrace their sexuality. The Beats preached the liberation of women, even if this aspect of their story is often obscured. This is probably because only three names are most often associated with the movement, with the rest, regardless of their gender, fading into the shadows.

Still, the Beat Generation had many great female writers and their impact on modern culture cannot be underestimated. Diane DiPrima, Ruth Weiss, and Joanne Kyger are just a few names who published great works that are still part of the Beat canon.

The novel by Diane DiPrima Dinners and nightmares deserves special recognition for the way it portrays 1950s America. It effectively critiques conservatism and directly challenges the idea that women should have limited freedom of expression. The impact of Beat female writers has been felt since the 1960s. Female rock musicians such as Janis Joplin, Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell, who were between music and poetry, were direct products of their Beat forebears.

The Beat Generation’s Search for Spirituality

Transcendentalism was one of the biggest influences on the Beat Generation, and it was American Henry David Thoreau who first set them on this path. In his iconic work Walden, Thoreau explored the idea of ​​living in complete solitude, relying on the fruits of one’s manual labor and earthly resources. This philosophy of spiritual enlightenment through material neglect has been thoroughly debated ever since.

The German philosopher Oswald Spengler gave it a new character: the guy. Borrowed from Arabic culture, where the term means a field worker or someone who works in agriculture, and is generally seen as equivalent to humble and hardworking. The Arabic word for field worker shows Sprengler that those who are somber are closest to spiritual discovery. When the Beats adopted this philosophy, guy were given different names: destruction angels for Ginsberg and Underground for Kerouac. The search for spirituality eventually led the Beats to Eastern schools of thought, namely Buddhism.