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Who were the Beat Generation? -

The Beat Generation were a group of visionary writers and poets that blossomed first in New York City and consisted of a tight-knit group of outcasts, college dropouts, drug addicts, and all combinations of the sort, united by a detestation of mainstream American culture, the despondency of everyday life, and an underlying sense of dread and anxiety caused by living in what many referred to as the “post-bomb world” that emerged following the catastrophic events that put an end to the Second World War.

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United in variety -

Within these uniting characteristics, the styles of the Beat writers varied immensely, with early seminal works being chaotic and messy, and later pieces being more thoughtful and contemplative once some core members of the group started to be influenced by the principles of Zen Buddhism.

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Spontaneous prose -

Much of the early writing that came out of the group was spontaneous, erratic, and very lightly edited, if at all. A mantra penned to Allen Ginsberg read “First thought, best thought,” and with this in mind, the poets would spew pure, almost carnal streams of words onto paper, sometimes writing hundreds of pages within the course of just a few sleepless days.

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The legacy of the Beats -

The term “Beat” was coined by one of the generation’s central figures, Jack Kerouac, and incorporates all meanings of the word, including a feeling of being beat down by society, and the foundational “beat” of music, especially jazz, which was a huge influence on the style of many of the writers. The literary movement spread from New York to Paris, from San Francisco to Tangiers, and inspired a massive wave of artistic and counter-culture movements across the globe for decades after their height. Now, let’s look at some of the most influential and revolutionary members of the Beat Generation.

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Jack Kerouac -

Jack Kerouac is today perhaps the most famous writer to come out of the Beat Generation, and although he is one of the pivotal members of the group, he usually thought of himself as an outsider looking in. Kerouac would most likely prefer to be thought of as the documentarian of the Beat Generation. Throughout his novels, all of which are semi-biographical and autobiographical, he tells the stories of his own life and the lives of his contemporaries.

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Jack Kerouac -

Major events in the history of the Beats, such as the Gallery Six reading that introduced the iconic Allen Ginsberg poem ‘Howl’ to the world, are described throughout his work. His most iconic novel, ‘On the Road,’ was written in a near-continuous three-week session on a massive, 120-foot (36.5-m) piece of taped-together typewriter paper that Kerouac referred to as “the scroll.”

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William S. Burroughs -

Another of the first and most famous writers to gather in the generation’s early New York years was William S. Burroughs. A prolific writer, Burroughs wrote and published more than a dozen long pieces and many, many more short stories and essays during his long and turbulent lifetime.

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William S. Burroughs -

Burroughs revolutionized the literary world with his fearless and sometimes frightening accounts of his personal tragedies and ailments, describing in gruesome detail the horrors of heroin addiction and poverty in novels such as ‘Naked Lunch.’ He was also a pioneering figure for queer writers, and never shied away from writing about his experiences as a gay man, in direct defiance of government censors and obscenity laws that were in place during the 1950s and '60s.

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti -

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919, but is most heavily associated with San Francisco, where he played a pivotal role as both member and patron of the Beat movement on the West Coast. As the proprietor of the bookshop and publishing house City Lights Books, he published many works from Beat writers, including the massively influential and controversial Allen Ginsberg poem ‘Howl.’

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti -

Ferlinghetti was an incredibly accomplished poet himself, and was named San Francisco’s first poet laureate in 1998. Among his most notable collections of poetry is ‘A Coney Island of the Mind,’ which includes many profound meditations on the human condition and the tragedies of modern America.

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Allen Ginsberg -

The greatest poet to come out of the Beat Generation is widely considered to be Allen Ginsberg, a native of Paterson, New Jersey, who moved to New York to attend Columbia University, where he became friends with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, and subsequently gave birth to the Beat Generation. Ginsberg wrote many notable poems in his time, including the long, grieving ode to his troubled mother, ‘Kaddish,’ but is certainly best known for his seminal long-form poem ‘Howl.’

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Allen Ginsberg -

Read in full at the Gallery Six reading in San Francisco in 1955, the poem took the nation by storm. Critic Paul Zweig wrote that the poem “almost singlehandedly dislocated the traditionalist poetry of the 1950s.” The Beats would experience nonstop international attention after the poem’s publication in 1956.

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The obscenity trials -

Shortly after the ‘Howl’ collection was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights publishing house, the San Francisco Police Department declared the collection, and specifically its titular poem, illegal on the grounds of obscenity, citing its detailed and vivid descriptions of drug use and homosexuality. After being caught continuing sales of the collection under wraps, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and a store clerk were arrested and put to trial.

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The obscenity trials -

A group of prominent authors, poets, and patrons of the arts were present at the long-running trial, and testified to the poem’s legitimacy and importance, eventually convincing the presiding judge to throw the case out. This landmark trial opened the door for countless other pieces of poetry and literature to be safely published and distributed.

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Neal Cassady -

Although he was uninterested in having any of his casually written work published and never considered himself a writer, Neal Cassady was one of the most influential figures of the Beat Generation through sheer force of personality. He was Jack Kerouac’s muse, and appears in many of Kerouac’s novels. Under the name Dean Moriarty, he’s the central protagonist of Kerouac’s opus ‘On the Road.’

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Neal Cassady -

Kerouac was mesmerized by Cassady’s turbulent lifestyle, which seemed to be profoundly unconcerned with the rules of the world. Cassady had been raised in poverty and was a petty criminal for most of his life, being arrested for car theft at the age of 14. Theft and jail time became regular habits of Cassady’s, along with excessive drug use and promiscuous escapades. Despite his delinquency, nearly everyone who spent time with Cassady would attest to his inherent and tragically untouched genius.

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Carolyn Cassady -

Carolyn Cassady met her future husband, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac while they were passing through Denver, Colorado, in 1947. Carolyn would strike up an intense love affair with Neal that would eventually lead to marriage, and she would be a lifelong close friend and confidant to Kerouac and Ginsberg.

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Carolyn Cassady -

During the 1950s and '60s, Carolyn Cassady worked on stage productions in Denver and San Francisco and was an accomplished painter. Later in life, she blessed the world with her autobiography 'Off the Road,' an intimate account of her time in the Beat Generation and a valuable look into some of the events that didn't make it into the books or poems of the time.

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Michael McClure -

A prominent poet of the San Francisco Beat movement, Michael McClure was a close friend of Allen Ginsberg’s, and is credited for convincing Ginsberg to participate in the Gallery Six reading, organized by McClure himself, which would change the poet’s life.

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Michael McClure -

McClure’s own poetry was typical of the Beat movement of the West Coast, written spontaneously and with great energy and excitement. McClure, along with other 'fringe' Beats like Gary Snyder, was deeply involved in Zen Buddhism, and this preoccupation came out in the lines of his poetry as well.

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Ken Kesey -

Ken Kesey was a novelist associated with the Beat Generation in many ways, including a very close friendship with Neal Cassady, but he eventually transcended the Beat movement and started a counter-culture all his own, acting effectively as the link between the Beats of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.

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Ken Kesey -

His first and most famous novel, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ was an instant success, inspired by his time working as a night guard in a veteran’s hospital. He would later go on to pioneer advocacy for the use of psychedelic drugs and lead a pseudo-cult known as the Merry Pranksters, whose focus was experimentation with mind-altering substances.

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Amiri Baraka -

A native of Newark, New Jersey, and born as Everett Jones, Amiri Baraka was one of the most political voices of the early New York beat movement. During his time in Columbia University, Baraka befriended Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and became a major influence within their group.

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Amiri Baraka -

As time went on, however, activism became Baraka’s priority, and he distanced himself from the aimless and politically unprincipled degeneracy of the Beats. Baraka continued to write poetry that reflected his beliefs in African liberation and Marxism.

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Gregory Corso -

Gregory Corso led a troubled childhood, spending his early years in and out of foster homes, orphanages, and jail cells, where he spent his time reading all the classics of poetry and literature. In his early twenties, he moved to New York City, and was befriended by Allen Ginsberg and the rest of the early Beats.

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Gregory Corso -

Ginsberg and company introduced Corso to the new veins of poetry, the possibilities of experimentalism, and the benefits of doing away with long-standing poetic conventions. Inspired and awakened by this new and revolutionary way of writing, Corso went on to establish himself as one of the finest poets of the Beat Generation not only in New York but also in San Francisco, and in Paris, where he wrote his long-form masterpiece ‘Gasoline.’

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Anne Waldman -

Anne Waldman was one of the last to be considered part of the Beat Generation, as she was only born in 1945, and was 10 years old at the landmark Gallery Six reading. Regardless, she was a loud and respected voice at the end of an era, and would go on to pioneer the Outrider poetry movement, in many ways a spiritual successor to the Beat Generation.

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Anne Waldman -

Waldman’s poetry is heavily influenced by her intimate relationship with the jazz of 1960s New York, and her friendships with the likes of Thelonious Monk. In 1974, Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Colorado with close friend and mentor Allen Ginsberg, five years after Kerouac’s tragic passing.

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Frank O’Hara -

While not a core member of the Beat Generation, Frank O’Hara was a contemporary of the first New York Beat poets and a close friend to Allen Ginsberg. O’Hara is more associated with the New York School of poetry, whose members were less radical and more in line with the social norms of the 1950s.

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Frank O’Hara -

It can be said, however, that O’Hara acted as a bridge between the counter-culture of the Beats and the mainstream circles of American poetry. Ginsberg and O’Hara spent extensive amounts of time together, discussing life, literature, and poetry. They appear occasionally in each other’s work, and the influence that one had on the other is apparent.

Sources: (Found San Francisco) (Poetry Foundation) (Biography)

See also: Who were the Lost Generation writers?

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