The Beat Generation was a cultural movement that embraced originality and individuality, changing literature, music, sex, and religion. Jack Kerouac coined the phrase “beat” and wrote On the Road, inspiring others to break the mold. The movement influenced all arts and questioned society’s rules after WWII. The legacy is not just in books but in the free-thinking and ever-challenging credo that still inspires people today.
The beat generation was one of the biggest cultural movements of the 20th century. What began as a literary phenomenon soon turned into an attitude that changed the lives of thousands of people around the world. It embraced originality and individuality in the way people thought and acted, throwing out the old rules of literature, music, sex and religion. The effects are still being felt around the world today.
Most people consider writer Jack Kerouac to be the king of the beats. It was Kerouac who coined the phrase beat, proclaiming that his generation was a Beat Generation. There are some notions available as to what inspired Kerouac to use this particular phrase, but beat refers at least in part to beatific and beautiful. Kerouac and poet Allen Ginsberg, along with writer William Burroughs, formed the nucleus of the movement: a group of people who broke the mold and changed writing forever.
Kerouac and his team scoured Times Square in New York, looking for new experiences. They were looking for drugs, sex, alcohol, crazy people and crazy situations. Kerouac was the author of the bible of the generation, On the Road, published in 1957, the story of two free spirits who seek adventure as they traverse and interrogate the heartland of America. It was his spontaneous prose that turned the book into a breathless roller coaster ride that still inspires people.
The ethos of the movement has influenced all the arts. It seemed that, at that moment, young people were freeing themselves from the old bonds. Marlon Brando and James Dean were smashing movie screens. Jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie played their music without barriers. Lenny Bruce questioned racism and sexuality through his comedies. Artists like Jackson Pollock exploded onto the canvas and tore the Old Masters apart.
The beat generation was really a response to the Second World War, which had just ended. Questions arose about the old way of life and the social rules that people were supposed to adhere to. Many of the questions asked by the beats have been met with court cases and attempts to have their material banned. Ginsberg and Burrough’s literature was subject to bans, and one of Ginsberg’s most famous poems, Howl, still cannot be broadcast on American radio during the day.
The movement was not concerned with questioning society, authority and its rules just for the sake of it. As Dylan sang, times are changing and people were clamoring for something new. There was a new sense of freedom after the war and the beat generation led the way in exploring it.
By the late 1960s, the movement had all but imploded. Sticky beatnik beards were being sold in stores and hippies had arrived to take on the role of change. Kerouac died in 1969 after disassociating himself from the Beats. Ginsberg, Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso and many other writers and protagonists, men and women, of the time are gone.
The legacy that the beat generation has given to the world is not only found in books. On the Road is still one of the most popular books of all time, but it’s the free-thinking, ever-challenging credo that beats will be remembered for. If a person is still questioning an unfair rule or daring to create an original thought, that’s where the spirit of the generation lives.
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