The Beat Movement

2. The mood of the “Beat Generation’ is best reflected in which Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

The Carleton University Art Gallery’s current exhibition We Are Continually Exposed to the Flashbulb of Death: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg (1953-1996), is a linear timeline of the lives, romances, and works of the American Beat generation. The exhibition, curated by Barbara Fischer and John Shoesmith, is a survey of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs, which capture the freedom, artistic creations, and the open sexuality of this group. The organization of the exhibit, along with the added captions below each photograph, create a narrative of a past generation, both capturing and reflecting on an era.

Qualities of the post-World War II Beat culture include obscene and defiant behaviors in addition to an environment paved with drugs and poverty. One of the stories that best portrays the central elements of the Beat culture is the story of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in On the Road by Jack Kerouac. In fact, Jack Kerouac is the writer who was the first to coin the term “Beat Generation.” In the story, Sal Paradise meets a highly experimental and charismatic man dubbed Dean Moriarty. The story follows them as they travel from corner to corner of the country searching for meaning, all while facing adversities such as confusion, depression, drugs, alcohol, and overall abandonment. Since these qualities are a

The Beat Generation phenomenon itself has had a huge influence on Western Culture more broadly. In many ways, The Beat Generation can be seen as the first modern "subculture". During the very conformist post-World War II era they were one of the forces engaged in a questioning of traditional values which produced a break with the mainstream culture that to this day people react to or against. There's no question that Beats produced a great deal of interest in lifestyle experimentation (notably in regards to sex and drugs); and they had a large intellectual effect in encouraging the questioning of authority (a force behind the anti-war movement); and many of them were very active in popularizing interest in Zen Buddhism in the West. During the 1960s other cultural movements absorbed "Beat" ideas and attitudes, and those who practiced something similar to the "Beat" lifestyle were

” Williams’ theory therefore suggests that the terms must necessarily co-exist in order to define each other. The “pervasiveness of consent ” therefore characterises the fifties, against which these Beat texts can be contrasted. Theodore Roszak’s 1969 article ‘The Making of a Counterculture,’ helps define beat ideology as “heightened self-expression and often a rejection of political and authoritative institutions… a negative spirit of the times coupled with a specific lifestyle .” Both On the Road and Howl and their author’s lifestyles of their writers reflect this criterion, in idiomatic and contextual terms, lending to the notion that they are, by the overall nature of their existence, countercultural texts. Roszak’s adolescent counterculture often seems the embodiment of Dean and Sal’s ‘beatitude’ in On the Road “when they pulse to music…value what is raunchy… flare against authority, seek new experience, ” but it is similarly descriptive of the naked, sometime vulgar language Ginsberg employs in Howl “who bit detectives in the neck… let themselves be fucked in the ass.” (13) The Beats admire the vibrancy naturally present among youth, and although this is a style for which their writing has been criticised, it is a move away from the traditionally

The beat generation was a movement that sought to oppose American society values, and any sort of control. They explored Eastern religions, was somewhat postmodernism, rejected the materialistic culture, spoke about drugs, our conscious mind, and fought for sexual liberation and exploration with their unapologetically offensive language. While reading the novel Jitterbug Perfume written by Tom Robbin, one can witness how the novel exhibits aspects of the beat literature, and thus concluding that the beat generation served as inspiration to Tom Robbin.

Right after the fun relaxing 1960’s and excitement of the american dream it all came crashing down in the 1970’s. Political distrust and economic unrest took its toll on the citizens of the United States and so they found refuge in the arts. With the Nixon watergate scandal, withdrawal from vietnam, inflation, the oil crisis, and increasing ‘slum’ areas the american dream began to fall apart, many people awoke to the idea that the United States was not as great as it supposedly was. Many activist groups sought change and people, especially the youth, took comfort in new art forms and ways of expression including disco, postmodern art and punk and grunge styles.

The turbulent societal changes of the mid-20th Century have been documented in countless forms of literature, film and art. On the Road by Jack Kerouac was written and published at the outset of the counter-culture movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This novel provides a first-hand account of the beginnings of the Beat movement and acts as a harbinger for the major societal changes that would occur in the United States throughout the next two decades. On the contrary, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a Hunter S. Thompson novel written in 1971 provides a commentary on American society at the end of the counter-culture movement. Thompson reflects on the whirlwind of political and social activism he experienced and how American society had

The Beat Movement, beginning in the 1950’s, consisted of a group of American writers that went against the social norms of that generation. During that time in America, society bent themselves out

Beat Culture Began With a Howl Admire him. Despise him. Buy him. Ban him. Get angry with him.

Three key events that can be related to the dramatic change in views towards societal mores is the ‘Beat Movement’, the Nuclear Arms race and increased college enrolment. Firstly, the ‘Beat Movement’ was a movement during the 1950s that was initial conspired by writers and artist of the time and criticized American society’s values of “conformity over independence and financial gain over spiritual and social advancement,” (). Alongside these voiced opinions against society a new recurring uneasiness towards the future was being shared amongst the youth as American Government raced against Russia in the Nuclear Arms Race. Finally, a newly favoured sense of freedom and independence occurred as an increase in college enrolment created an environment in which the baby boomers shared similar fears and feelings towards society and its future. These three key events alongside advance in media and events such as the Tet Offense (Vietnam War) and release of the Pentagon papers allowed for people to begin question the government especially “by the end of the decade… [as] Americans… lost much of their innocence and optimism…. The escalating Vietnam War, which was taking the lives of thousands of American soldiers and countless Vietnamese every

The Beat Generation is a literary movement during the 1950s that consisted of male authors including the widely known Allen Ginsberg, who explored American culture in their poems. The Beat Generation could be described as misogynistic and patriarchal due to their exclusion of women and concerns confined to only male outcasts. In Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 “Howl”, he brings his audience’s attention to male outcasts in society. In her 2015 “Howl”, a critical response to Ginsberg’s “Howl”, Amy Newman explores the oppression outcasted women endure in a male-dominated culture through the allusions of an admired female poet, Ginsberg’s original stanza form, and utilizing diction to convey a woman's perspective antithetically to Allen Ginsberg's original.

The “beat movement” is a literary period born out of World War II. This movement in American Literature has become an important period in the history of literature and society in America. Characterized by personal alienation and contempt for convention, the movement celebrated stylistic freedom and spontaneity. The Beat writers created a new vision of modern life and altered the nature of awareness in America.

During the 1920’s sometimes referred to as the "Jazz Age", America was taking its last final steps from the traditional period to new era of modernization. It was a time in which American popular culture reshaped itself in response to the urban, industrial, consumer- oriented society America was becoming (Brinkley 641). In this reshape two sides stood in defense of their beliefs, the traditionalist who wanted America to stay the same or go back to the way it was. Rebelling against the new customs and morals of the urban middle class, they sought to defend older values. However, the new modernist looked forward to change; embracing the future and its fore coming traditions and ethics.

The Beat Generation of poets was created by a group of poets in the 1950s that were part of a new culture in literature. They chose to use their experiences in their writings which were widely criticized as well as loved by many readers. Two of the most influential Beat Poets of that Generation of writers were Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The Beat Generation poetry was the first poets to write about non-conventional subjects as well as using different forms of expression in their works. This generation of poets greatly influenced poets such as Anne Sexton, who wrote about personal experiences as well. The Beat Generation’s style of poetry have influenced many generations of poets after them.