The Beat generation of the fifties and sixties were a unique and strictly American group of writers who began a distinct movement in the world of literature. What is so unique about the Beats begins simply with the fact that they defined themselves as the Beat generation, and touted their own literary style every chance they had, promoting each other’s work, shamelessly and pretentiously. This is opposed to the normal sequence of events in literary chronology, as specific literary movements and styles are often recognized and defined retrospectively, often posthumously, rather than recognized by the author (or authors) involved. The original, core group of Beat writers were close friends with mutual respect for each of their peer’s writing, and writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and others all shared common themes within their writing, themes that united them under a common interest, purpose, and mainly; themes that defined these writers as Beats. The more popular works of the Beat generation are, for the most part, novels (Allen Ginsberg’s Howl is an exceptionally popular poetic work), and their popularity projects a specific image of what it means to be ‘Beat’ to the general public: Jack Kerouac’s On The Road follows a protagonist who embodies freedom and adventurousness, The Subterraneans displays interracial love and an affinity for jazz music, and William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch glorifies drugs. Of course, there are a great deal many more common interests and shared sentiments within these novels that binds all of these core writers together as the Beat Generation, but I feel that the poetry is far more effective in providing evidence if one is interested in answering the question of just what ...
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...e Beats are established as educated, aware, rebellious, self-destructive, and most importantly, free.
Works Cited
Ginsberg, Allen. Howl And Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1959.
Ginsberg, Allen. Journals Mid-Fifties: 1954-1958. Ed. Gordon Ball. HarperCollins, 1995. 0060167718.
Ginsberg, Allen. "Notes Written on Finally Recording 'Howl.'" Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995. Ed. Bill Morgan. NY: Harper Collins, 2000.
"Howl." Poetry Criticism. Ed. David M. Galens. Vol. 47. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 July 2010.
Merrill, Thomas F. "Howl and Other Poems." Allen Ginsberg, Revised Edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988. 50-69. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. David M. Galens. Vol. 47. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 July 2010.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.” The opening lines of Howl, by Allan Ginsberg, melodiously encapsulates the beat generation. The beats alluded to by the verbatim ,“The best minds”, are a group of idiosyncratic poets whom through the instrument of prose(driven by spontaneity and a primal lifestyle) , orchestrated a rebellion against the conservative beliefs and literary ideals of the 1950s. Howl, utilizing picturesque imagery, expounds holistically upon the instigator of the movement in culmination with personal experiences of beat members. Accordingly “Howl” evokes feelings of raw emotional intensity that reflects the mindset in which the poem was produced. The piece is structured into three stanzas, sacrificing temporal order for emphasis on emotional progression. The first sequence rambles of rampant drug forages and lewd sexual encounters, eliciting intonations of impetuous madness, one ostensibly hinging upon on a interminable need for satiation of hedonistic desires. Concordantly the following stanza elucidates upon the cause of the aforementioned impulsive madness (i.e corruption of the materialistic society motivated by capitalism), conveying an air of hostility coalesced with quizzical exasperation. Yet, the prose concludes by turning away from the previous negative sentiments. Furthermore, Ginsberg embraces the once condemned madness in a voice of jubilation, rhapsodizing about a clinically insane friend while ascertaining the beats are with him concerning this state of der...
The world was in 1950 at a point of multiple crossroads. After two World Wars an exemplary series of bad events followed, like the Cold War and the atomic menace. But it was also the beginning of some prosperity. People started again to gather material values. Nevertheless, the slow awakening from the fog of war was a process too complex to be generally accepted. In an apparently healing world there were still too many fears and too many left behind. On this ground of alienation, isolation and despair Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” emerged together with the Beat movement. John Tytell observed that the “Beat begins with a sense of natural displacement and disaffiliation, a distrust of efficient truth, and an awareness that things are often not what
Tytell, John. Naked Angels: the Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
The year is1965, 8 years into the Vietnam war and 2 years in the shadow of a presidential assassination, marked the inception of an artistic vision, cut to Vinyl. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 revisited is a testament to the state of America in the 1960s, using poetic devices, and engaging rock and roll music to capture the imagination of a breadth of people, unwittingly, it would seem, brought change to the minds of Americans. Opening their eyes to what was happening and inflicting a sense of new found justice in their hearts, Living vicariously through Bob Dylan’s intense imagery, due to the events unfolding in that period, People latched on to Dylan’s lyrics and imposed their own expression and feeling onto his songs.
While the Beats experimented with drugs, they were more mild in their departure from the mainstream culture than the counterculture of the hippies and acid-heads . Tom Wolfe observed that, ““Kerouac was the old star. Kesey was the wild new comet form the West heading Christ knows where”” (Lytle, 4). Even though Kerouac was a major part of the Beat movement and experimented with drugs, he was not cut out for the world of LSD. When considering On the Road, Sal Paradise, does in the end return home to his mother just as Kerouac did when Neal Cassady tried to get him to join Kesey. In Howl, Allen Ginsberg laments over the deprivation of his generation. He addresses one of the roots of the problem, “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!” (Part II, l.5). He blames the mechanization of the mind, prefer a more steeped in nature approach, drugs as bringing us closer to our own nature The ideas of the Beats echo in the ideas of the counter: a rejection of materialism, an embrace of experimentation with drugs, sexuality, and forms of expression, especially music. The change from the Beats to the Hippies was not so much a ra...
Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,” This opening line of Allen Ginsberg’s 1955 poem Howl truly depicts what the Beat generation was really like. He writes that his ‘generation was destroyed by madness’ meaning that the people of his generation became the victims of drug abuse, alcohol addiction, and violence. The Beat generation, or beatniks for short, consisted of some of Americas most celebrated writers including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassidy, and of course its leader, Jack Kerouac. The beats were a unique group of writers who strongly opposed social norm. They were very independent people who were known for breaking the law whenever they needed to. They were also drifters who spent most of their lives on the road, a motif which especially fascinated Jack Kerouac.
Toni Morrison’s Jazz is an eclectic reading based on elements of African American culture that produce, surround, and are an integral part of literary text. As we know, African American culture is distinguishable from other American cultures by its emphasis on music. This attention to music has produced two original forms, blues and jazz, and has developed distinctive traditions of others like gospel. Jazz is based mainly on one of these forms, namely –as the title infer- on jazz. This form pervades the whole book and provides not only subject and theme but also literary technique for the novel. Consequently, Jazz is not only the novel about the jazz era but also a novel that develops jazz “strategies” and creates a “jazz” of its own.
One theme that is prevalent throughout much of the literature we have covered so far is that it is very critical of the conformist values of late 1950s society. In an era of Levittowns and supermarkets and the omnipresent television, there was a call to leave the conformist suburban culture in search of something higher. Two major proponents of the individual as opposed to society were Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, two of the central figures in the Beat movement. Through their work one can gain a perspective on the anti-conformity spirit that was brewing under the surface in the Beat culture.
Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey on June 2nd, 1926. He experienced a very troubled childhood. His mother, Naomi, suffered from multiple mental illnesses and was institutionalized several times. These problems left Ginsberg feeling emotionally distraught and confused. This is reflected in Ginsberg's later poems since the mother helped to determine his overall character and outlook in very important ways. In his adolescence, he began to feel an increased awareness of his homosexuality which he kept very private until his twenties. Ginsberg was first introduced to poetry by his father who was a high school teacher and a poet. However, it was not until Ginsberg’s affiliation with William Carlos Williams that he began to attain a severe interest in poetry. Williams became something of a mentor to the young Ginsberg. Ginsberg’s literary choice was further influenced by Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren, whom which he had made acquaintances with through classes at Columbia University. Columbia is actually where he established powerful friendships with writers William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac. “This group, along with several West Coast writers that included Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others, would form the core of the Beat movement” (The Beat Generation vol 2: 363). To be understood, the Beat movement, also called the Beat Generation, was an American social and literary movement that originated in the 1950s. The members of this movement, including Ginsberg, were self-proclaimed as "beat", which was originally meant to describe them as weary, downtrodden individuals. This meaning later took on a more musical sense t...
In the 1950s, authors tended to follow common themes, these themes were summed up in an art called postmodernism. Postmodernism took place after the Cold War, themes changed drastically, and boundaries were broken down. Postmodern authors defined themselves by “avoiding traditional closure of themes or situations” (Postmodernism). Postmodernism tends to play with the mind, and give a new meaning to things, “Postmodern art often makes it a point of demonstrating in an obvious way the instability of meaning (Clayton)”. What makes postmodernism most unique is its unpredictable nature and “think o...
During the 1950s when the world was still recuperating from post war despondency, and Britain was in the process of reversing the negative economic impact of the Second World War, there were four men laying the foundation for what would come to be known as the Beatles. The Beatles were a rock and roll band that gained massive success in the early 1960s, which materialised as “Beatlemania”. This essay gives a brief overview of who the Beatles were, what their musical genre and influences was, and a description of their lyrical subject matter. Furthermore, this essay strives to evaluate the various reasons to the enormous success of the Beatles in terms of the social, political and cultural environment, specifically attributing their success to the economic climate of the time.
Madness is a disease. It’s a disease that can exponentially consume the host and make them lose their minds overnight. Allen Ginsberg, a famous beat poet, was a victim to madness. Under his circumstances, it was a disease that was incurable. Ginsberg, along with the other famous beat poets of his time in the 1950s’, had a remedy to his madness which was what he did best, create poems. In his famous poem, Howl, he vividly and emotionally paints a picture of a horrifying time in his life in which he was consumed and destroyed by madness. In HOWL, it is clear that the three parts of Ginsberg’s poem echoes the theme of madness with the use of form, tone, and language which in turn shows us of how our society really is
In popular entertainment, if not in literature, yesterday's avant garde is often tomorrow's mainstream, so the term can function as a label simply identifying the next trend. As the American poet John Ashbery pointed out in an influential 1968 essay on the nature of the avant garde, where once an innovative artist had to wait a whole career to see their work absorbed into m...
To say that the Beat generation has affected modern culture seems at first to be no great revelation; it is inevitable that any period of history will affect the time that follows. The Beat generation is especially significant, though, because of its long lasting impact on American culture. Many aspects of modern American culture can be directly attributed to the Beat writers, primarily Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac. (Asher) Their influence has changed the American perception of obscenity, has had profound effects on American music and literature, and has modified the public’s views on such topics as sex and drug use.