On the Road

DIM

2008 Oct 10

The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked. -- Amiri Baraka

But yet, but yet, woe, woe unto those who think that the Beat Generation means crime, delinquency, immorality, amorality ... woe unto those who attack it on the grounds that they simply don’t understand history and the yearning of human souls ... woe in fact unto those who those who make evil movies about the Beat Generation where innocent housewives are raped by beatniks! ... woe unto those who spit on the Beat Generation, the wind’ll blow it back. -- Jack Kerouac

Three writers does not a generation make. -- Gregory Corso

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

The Beat Generation is a term used to describe both a group of American writers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the cultural phenomena that they wrote about and inspired (later sometimes called "beatniks"): a rejection of mainstream American values, experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirtuality.

The Beat Generation

The major works of Beat writing are Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957). Both Howl and Naked Lunch were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize what could be published in the United States. On the Road transformed Kerouac's friend Neal Cassady into a youth-culture hero. The members of the Beat Generation quickly developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

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The original "Beat Generation" writers met in New York. Later, the central figures (with the exception of Burroughs) ended up together in San Francisco in the mid-1950s where they met and became friends with figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance. During the 1960s, the rapidly expanding Beat culture underwent a transformation: the Beat Generation gave way to The Sixties Counterculture, which was accompanied by a shift in public terminology from "beatnik" to "hippie".

Here the documentary "The Beat Generation"
The Beat Generation (Part 1)

The Beat Generation (Part 2)

The press often used the term "Beat Generation" in reference to a small group of writers, the friends of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs and sometimes Corso. A slightly wider definition would expand it to include other members of the "New York Beats", but still regard the San Francisco Renaissance and the Black Mountain poets as separate movements.
Corso, Ginsberg, and Burroughs – The "inner circle" of the Beats

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Defined more broadly, the "Beat" category would include all of these sub-groups, and many other writers who reached prominence in the late 1950s, early 1960s, who shared many of the same themes, ideas, and intentions (dedication to spontaneity, open-form composition, subjectivity, and so on); even though some of these might have little social connection with the core group, and many might deny that they were ever a part of the "Beat Generation".

The main figures and early writers of the Beats were Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Peter Orlovsky, and John Clellon Holmes. Certain poets the core Beats encountered in San Francisco were associated with the San Francisco Renaissance such as Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Harold Norse, Kirby Doyle, Michael McClure. The poets associated with the Black Mountain College were also associated with the Beat Generation, such as Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan (though Duncan was one of the most vocal early critics of the "Beat Generation" label). As well, there were the New York School poets such as Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch; surrealist poets Philip Lamantia and Ted Joans; and, poets who are occasionally called the "second wave" of the Beat Generation such as LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Diane DiPrima, Anne Waldman.

Other people associated with the Beats include Bob Kaufman, Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Hubert Selby, Jr., John Wieners, Jack Micheline, A. D. Winans, Ray Bremser and Bonnie Bremser/Brenda Frazer, Ed Dorn, Jack Spicer, David Meltzer, Richard Brautigan, Lenore Kandel. Many previously underappreciated female writers were part of the Beat scene, such as Joanne Kyger, Kaye McDonough, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling, Janine Pommy Vega, Elise Cowen. A few younger writers who were acquaintances of the aforementioned writers (such as Bob Dylan, Ken Kesey, Jim Carroll, Ron Padgett) are occasionally included in this list. Charles Bukowski has a tenuous place on this list since his association is slight. Several older writers were very closely associated with members of the "Beat Generation", though their reputations were solidified so much earlier that it is difficult to call them part of the same "generation." They include Kenneth Rexroth, the principal figure involved in the San Francisco Renaissance, and Charles Olson, the mentor to the Black Mountain poets and author of the highly influential essay "Projective Verse". Also, so many of these writers either studied personally with William Carlos Williams or looked up to Williams as an idol, that Beat writers are often seen as being the children of Williams.

Just some found footage:
Kerouac, Ginsberg & friends in New York

Jack Kerouac Reads from "On The Road"

Jack Kerouac - (read by Johnny Depp)

Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones): Evolution of a Revolutionary Poet

People:

Keith Barnes (1934-1969) (Official Page)

Richard Brautigan

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)

Jim Carroll

Neal Cassady (1926-1968)

Gregory Corso (1930-2001)

Diane Di Prima (1934-)

Diane Di Prima (1934-) (Official Page)

William Everson (1912-1994)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-)

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

Michael Horovitz (Official Page)

Herbert Huncke (1915-1996)

Lisa Jarnot (1967-)

Bob Kaufman (1925-1986)

Larry Keenan - Photographer of the Beats

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Philip Lamantia (1927-)

James Laughlin (1914-1997)

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

Michael McClure (1932-)

Michael McClure (1932-) (Official Page)

Peter Orlovsky

Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

Harry Redl - Photographer (Official Page)

Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)

Gary Snyder (1930-)

Carl Solomon (1928-)

Anne Waldman (1945-)

Philip Whalen (1923-2002)

A Cultural Chronology of Early Beat Generation

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1958 |
1959 |
1960 |

1944

World War II is going on throughout Europe and Phillippines; D-Day
landing of U.S. and allied troops at Normandy; United Nations is established; D.H. Lawrence's
Lady Chatterly's Lover found obscene in U.S.

Broadway: Harvey, I Remember Mama

Films: Double Indemnity, Gaslight

Music: Swing is in vogue - Benny
Goodman, Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey

Art: Edward Hopper, Clyfford Still

Fiction: John Hershey's A Bell for Adano

Poetry: Pulitzer to Karl Shapiro's V-

Letter
and Other Poems

Kenneth Rexroth engineers Berkeley Renaissance with William Everson, Philip
Lamantia, Robert Duncan... Circle magazine around West Coast Anarchist
and Libertarian Circles around Berkeley.

European Surrealists in New York City during the war meet with American artists
and writers.

First meeting of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Herbert
Huncke in New York City, around Columbia University and Times Square. Kerouac
marries Edie Parker while held in jail as a material witness in friend
Lucien Carr's murder trial (marriage lasts a few months). Kerouac and Burroughs
write novel together "And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks."

1945

Harry
Truman takes over presidency after death of Franklin D. Roosevelt; end of WW II-
first
atom bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (189,000 casualties), then Nagasaki.

Broadway: Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and He Touched
Me

Films: The Lost Weekend, Mildred Pierce, The Body Snatcher

Music: Be-Bop jazz evolves with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

Art: Abstract Expressionist art is thriving throughout the Beat Era with such
artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey, William de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Robert
Motherwell, Franz Kline, Jasper Johns, many of whom gathered in the Greenwich
Village scene with writers.

At Columbia University, Allen Ginsberg is expelled for harboring Jack
Kerouac in his room and for writing offensive protest words on his dormitory-room
window.

1946

First U.N. General Assembly Meeting in London; national strikes in coal, railroad,
General Electric industries. Post-War Baby Boom (birth rate in U.S. increases by 20%);

Dr. Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care is
published; advent of television use of commercial jet airlines; popularization
of Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism. German Nazi's are sentenced to death at
Nuremburg trials.

Broadway: O'Neil's The Iceman Cometh, Hellman's Another Part of the
Forest, and Born Yesterday

Films: The Best Years of Our Lives treating dissatisfied war veterans
wins Academy Award as best picture. Bogart in The Big Sleep

Fiction: Carson McCullers' A Member of the Wedding, Camus' The
Stranger, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men

Poetry: Pulitzer to Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle

William S. Burroughs and common-law wife Joan Vollmer move to
Texas with their daughter; Neal Cassady meets Kerouac and Ginsberg in
New York City; Kerouac begins writing The Town and the City
after the death of his father.

1947

House : Un-American
Activities Committee begins hearings on Hollywood communists; college
enrollment reaches all time high of 67.1 million.

Broadway: Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire

Film: Gentleman's Agreement Miracle on 34th Street

Music: Top jazz performances by Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington Band, Nat King
Cole, Frank Sinatra

Fiction: Schulberg's The Harder They Fall, Michener's Tales of the
South Pacific

Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to W.H. Auden's Age of Anxiety.

Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Cassady live in Denver for summer; Cassady
meets future wife Carolyn Robinson; Ginsberg and Cassady visit Burroughs in
Texas.

1948

Truman
is elected president; Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated by Hindu extremists in
India; 12 Communist leaders are indicted for Smith Act Violation; publication
of Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.

Broadway: Mr. Roberts, Anne of the Thousand Days

Films: The Red Shoes, Key Largo, Sorry, Wrong Number

"Candid Camera," "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts," "Milton Berle
Show," "Studio One,"

"Philco Television Playhouse"

Music: Stan Kenton appears at Hollywood Bowl

Art: Andrew Wyeth, Ben Shahn, Arshile Gorky

Fiction-The Plague by Albert Camus, The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer.

John Clellon Holmes meets Kerouac and Ginsberg in New York City around
Columbia University where Ginsberg has re-enrolled
and graduates. Ginsberg begins his series of William Blake visions. Kerouac and
Cassady take first on the road trip together.

1949

North
Atlantic Pact is signed, NATO is created; Apartheid begins in South Africa;
500,000 steelworkers strike; minimum wage rises from 40 cents to 75 cents an
hour; fear of Cold War with Communist China and Russia grows.

Broadway: Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Films: Pinky, Home of the Brave, Sands of Iwo Jima

Television: "The Goldbergs," "Captain Video and the Video Rangers" "Mama"

Music: "Cool Jazz" of Mile Davis, Jerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck; Billie Eckstine
is popular singer

Fiction: Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, George Orwell's
1984

Ginsberg is arrested in NYC for harboring stolen goods from Huncke and
sent to New York State Psychiatric Institute for 8 months where he meets Carl
Solomon, fellow patient and hero of "Howl" poem. Ginsberg visits William Carlos
Williams. Burroughs in Mexico City.

1950

Korean
Police Action involvement, UN forces to be lead by General MacArthur; Senator
Joeseph McCarthy charges Communist infiltration of State Department.

Broadway: Come Back, Little Sheba, The Cocktail Party

Films: All about Eve, The Asphalt Jungle Sunset Boulevard

Television: "You Bet Your Life"(Groucho Marx), "Your Hit Parade"

Music: Big Bands giving way to smaller groups-George Shearing, Count Basie.

Fiction: Faulkner's Collected Stories, Bradbury's The Martian
Chronicles

Poetry: Pulitzer to Carl Sandburg's Complete Poems; books by Howard
Nemerov, Delmore Schwartz, William Carlos Williams' Collecter Later
Poems

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, then Kenneth Patchen move to San Francisco; Gary
Snyder, Lew Welch, and Philip Whalen at Reed College in Portland, Oregon;
Rexroth conducting weekly soiree in San Francisco home; KPFA, Pacifica
Foundation, first public radio, in Berkeley; Burroughs is writing novel
Junkie. Kerouac's The Town & the City (Harcourt, Brace) treats
life in working class Lowell, Mass. and New York City. He marries Joan Haverty
for six months; travels to Denver then to Mexico to visit with Cassady to visit
Burroughs.

1951

Korean
War involvement; draft age lowered to 18; U.S. conducting tests of A-Bomb;
suspected Russian spies the Rosenbergs are found guilty of treason and
sentenced to death.

Broadway: The Rose Tattoo, The Moon Is Blue

Films: An American in Paris, A Place in the Sun

Television: "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca; Kefauver
crime hearings.

Music: Jazz figures: Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Maynard Ferguson

Fiction: J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.

Poetry: Pulitzer to Marianne Moore's Collected Poems; books by Adrienne
Rich, Randall Jarrell, Theodore Roethke

Ginsberg and Kerouac meet Gregory Corso in New York City; Kerouac writes
initial draft of On the Road in three weeks, becomes interested in
Buddhism; Burroughs accidentally shoots and kills his wife, Joan.

1952

Truman
orders seizure of U.S. Steel mills to avert strike (later ruled as
unconstitutional); Eisenhower elected president of U.S. with Richard Nixon as
V.P.; subversives are barred from teaching school in U.S.; England has A-Bomb
and new Queen, Elizabeth II.

Broadway: The Seven Year Itch

Films: High Noon, Viva Zapata!, Come Back, Little Sheba;first
Cinemascope and Cinerama films

Television: "The Jackie Gleason Show," "Ernie Kovacs Show"

Music: Louis Armstrong tours Europe with his All Stars

Fiction: Pulitzer to Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Ralph
Ellison's Invisible Man, Steinbeck's East of Eden

Poetry: Pulitzer to Archibald MacLeish's Collected Poems
1917-1952;
Dylan Thomas doing U.S. reading tour - NYC, San Francisco, etc.

Kerouac completes Visions of Cody, lives with Neal and Carolyn
Cassady in San Francisco, writes Dr. Sax while living with Burroughs in
Mexico, visited by Cassady.

Go first Beat Generation novel by John Clellon Holmes who writes
"This Is the Beat Generation" for New York Times; germination of New
York Poets group-Frank
O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest.

1953

Death of Stalin; Health, Education, and Welfare Department is created; Rosenbergs
are executed as spies; Charlie Chaplin leaves U.S. complaining of persecution
by "vicious propaganda"; Screen Actors Guild adopts by-law banning Communists.

Broadway: The Crucible, Picnic, Camino Real

Films: From Here to Eternity, The Big Heat

Music: Vocalists-Ella
Fitzgerald, Nat "King" Cole, Four Freshmen

Fiction: James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Saul Bellows'
The Adventures of Augie March

Poetry: Pulitzer to Theodore Roethke for The Waking; books by Richard
Eberhart, May Sarton

Gary Snyder working at Sourdough Mountain meets Kenneth Rexroth, then
enters Berkeley as a graduate student; City Lights Bookstore founded by
Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin, begins publishing City Lights
Magazine;Burroughs' novel Junkie is published by Ace Books; Kerouac
writes Maggie Cassidy and The Subterraneans in NYC where he
reunites with Burroughs and Ginsberg who are editing their correspondence as

The Yage Letters.

1954

Joseph McCarthy probe of the Army for Communists begins, finally results in disputes,
Edward R. Morrow's expose of McCarthy on"See It Now," and Senate condemnation
of McCarthy methods; Supreme Court rules racial segregation in public schools
unconstitutional

Broadway: The Bad Seed, Witness for the Prosecution,

Films: On the Waterfront, The Caine Mutiny, The Wild One

Fiction: Golding's Lord of the Flies

Television: Army-McCarthy hearings, "Davey Crockett" episodes on "Disneyland" program; "I Love Lucy"

Allen Ginsberg arrives in San Francisco, working in market research,
meets Peter Orlovsky; North Beach bohemian scene at cafe's, bars, jazz clubs-

-
includes
writers Jack Spicer, Richard Brautigan, Bob Kaufman, John Weiners, Bay Area
Poets Coalition; Weldon Kees and Dick Martin organize first SF Poets Follies;
Black Mountain College fosters projective verse through poets Charles Olson,
Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Paul Blackburn, et al.

1955

Nikita
Krushchev becomes Soviet Party Secretary; Congress authorizes U.S. president to
use force to defend Formosa; Richard J. Daley elected mayor of Chicago; Martin
Luther King Jr. leads Civil Rights Movement; rebel actor James Dean (24) dies
in auto crash

Broadway: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Bus Stop, The Diary of Anne Frank, A View
from the Bridge

Films: Rebel without a Cause, The Blackboard Jungle, Marty, The Rose
Tattoo

Televison: first presidential press conference is broadcast; "64,000
Question"

Art: "Pop Art" of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, et al-Morris Graves,
Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers

Fiction: McCarthy's A Charmed Life, Mailer's The Deer Park

Poetry: Pulitzer to Elizabeth Bishop's Poems: North and South-

A Cold Spring

Ginsberg organizes Six Gallery Reading in San Francisco garage-

gallery,
featuring: Rexroth as MC, poets: Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Philip
Whalen, Gary Snyder and Ginsberg's own reading of Howl, Kerouac cheering them on (Oct.
13); McClure completes studies at San Francisco State College; Ferlinghetti
launches City Lights Books with Pocket Poets Series: #1, his own Pictures
of a Gone World, #2 Rexroth's 30 Spanish Poems, Patchen's Poems
of Humor and Protest; Kerouac writes Mexico City Blues, befriends
Gary Snyder at Berkeley, who is translating Chinese poetry of Zen poet Han-

Shan;
he and Kerouac go mountain climbing, discuss Buddhism; Kerouac returns briefly
to North Carolina, writes "Jazz of the Beat Generation" for New World
Writing; Corso's The Vestal Lady on Brattle is published with
support of friends at Harvard.