Beat Generation

The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.[1][2]

For the subculture surrounding the literary movement, see Beatnik. For the play by Jack Kerouac, see Beat Generation (play).

Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959), and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.[3] Both Howl and Naked Lunch were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States.[4][5] The members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

The core group of Beat Generation authors — Herbert Huncke, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and Kerouac — met in 1944 in and around the Columbia University campus in New York City. Later, in the mid-1950s, the central figures, with the exception of Burroughs and Carr, ended up together in San Francisco, where they met and became friends of figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.

In the 1960s, elements of the expanding Beat movement were incorporated into the hippie and larger counterculture movements. Neal Cassady, as the driver for Ken Kesey's bus Furthur, was the primary bridge between these two generations. Ginsberg's work also became an integral element of early 1960s hippie culture.

Origin of name

Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948 to characterize a perceived underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York.[6] The name arose in a conversation with writer John Clellon Holmes. Kerouac allows that it was Huncke, a street hustler, who originally used the phrase "beat", in an earlier discussion with him. The adjective "beat" could colloquially mean "tired" or "beaten down" within the African-American community of the period and had developed out of the image "beat to his socks",[7][8][9] but Kerouac appropriated the image and altered the meaning to include the connotations "upbeat", "beatific", and the musical association of being "on the beat", and "the Beat to keep" from the Beat Generation poem.[10]

Significant places

Columbia University

The origins of the Beat Generation can be traced to Columbia University and the meeting of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Carr, Hal Chase and others. Kerouac attended Columbia on a football scholarship.[11] Though the beats are usually regarded as anti-academic,[12][13][14] many of their ideas were formed in response to professors like Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren. Classmates Carr and Ginsberg discussed the need for a "New Vision" (a term borrowed from W. B. Yeats), to counteract what they perceived as their teachers' conservative, formalistic literary ideals.

Times Square "underworld"

Burroughs had an interest in criminal behavior and got involved in dealing stolen goods and narcotics. He was soon addicted to opiates. Burroughs' guide to the criminal underworld (centered in particular around New York's Times Square) was Huncke, a small-time criminal and drug-addict. The Beats were drawn to Huncke, who later started to write himself, in order to share a vital worldly knowledge unavailable to them from their largely middle-class upbringings.

Ginsberg was arrested in 1949. The police attempted to stop Ginsberg while he was driving with Huncke, his car filled with stolen items that Huncke planned to fence. Ginsberg crashed the car while trying to flee and escaped on foot, but left incriminating notebooks behind. He was given the option to plead insanity to avoid a jail term, and was committed for 90 days to Bellevue Hospital, where he met Carl Solomon.[15]

Solomon was arguably more eccentric than psychotic. A fan of Antonin Artaud, he indulged in self-consciously "crazy" behavior, like throwing potato salad at a college lecturer on Dadaism. Solomon was given shock treatments at Bellevue; this became one of the main themes of Ginsberg's "Howl", which was dedicated to Solomon. Solomon later became the publishing contact who agreed to publish Burroughs' first novel, Junkie, in 1953.[16]

Greenwich Village

Beat writers and artists flocked to Greenwich Village in New York City in the late 1950s because of low rent and the "small town" element of the scene. Folksongs, readings and discussions often took place in Washington Square Park.[17] Allen Ginsberg was a big part of the scene in the Village, as was Burroughs, who lived at 69 Bedford Street.[18]

Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and other poets frequented many bars in the area, including the San Remo Cafe at 93 MacDougal Street on the northwest corner of Bleecker, Chumley's, and Minetta Tavern.[18] Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and other abstract expressionists were also frequent visitors of and collaborators with the Beats.[19] Cultural critics have written about the transition of Beat culture in the Village into the Bohemian hippie culture of the 1960s.[20]

In 1960, a presidential election year, the Beats formed a political party, the "Beat Party," and held a mock nominating convention to announce a presidential candidate: the African American street poet Big Brown, won a majority of votes on the first ballot but fell short of the eventual nomination.[21] The Associated Press reported, "Big Brown’s lead startled the convention. Big, as the husky negro is called by his friends, wasn't the favorite son of any delegation, but he had one tactic that apparently earned him votes. In a chatterbox convention, only once did he speak at length, and that was to read his poetry."[22]

See also: San Francisco Renaissance

Ginsberg had visited Neal and Carolyn Cassady in San Jose, California in 1954 and moved to San Francisco in August. He fell in love with Peter Orlovsky at the end of 1954 and began writing Howl. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, of the new City Lights Bookstore, started to publish the City Lights Pocket Poets Series in 1955.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Kenneth Rexroth's apartment became a Friday night literary salon (Ginsberg's mentor William Carlos Williams, an old friend of Rexroth, had given him an introductory letter). When asked by Wally Hedrick[23] to organize the Six Gallery reading, Ginsberg wanted Rexroth to serve as master of ceremonies, in a sense to bridge generations.

Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Ginsberg and Gary Snyder read on October 7, 1955, before 100 people (including Kerouac, up from Mexico City). Lamantia read poems of his late friend John Hoffman. At his first public reading Ginsberg performed the just finished first part of Howl. It was a success and the evening led to many more readings by the now locally famous Six Gallery poets.

It was also a marker of the beginning of the Beat movement, since the 1956 publication of Howl (City Lights Pocket Poets, no. 4) and its obscenity trial in 1957 brought it to nationwide attention.[24][25]

The Six Gallery reading informs the second chapter of Kerouac's 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, whose chief protagonist is "Japhy Ryder", a character who is actually based on Gary Snyder. Kerouac was impressed with Snyder and they were close for a number of years. In the spring of 1955 they lived together in Snyder's cabin in Mill Valley, California. Most Beats were urbanites and they found Snyder almost exotic, with his rural background and wilderness experience, as well as his education in cultural anthropology and Oriental languages. Lawrence Ferlinghetti called him "the Thoreau of the Beat Generation."

As documented in the conclusion of The Dharma Bums, Snyder moved to Japan in 1955, in large measure in order to intensively practice and study Zen Buddhism. He would spend most of the next 10 years there. Buddhism is one of the primary subjects of The Dharma Bums, and the book undoubtedly helped to popularize Buddhism in the West and remains one of Kerouac's most widely read books.[26]

Pacific Northwest

The Beats also spent time in the Northern Pacific Northwest including Washington and Oregon. Kerouac wrote about sojourns to Washington's North Cascades in The Dharma Bums and On the Road.[27]

Reed College in Portland, Oregon was also a locale for some of the Beat poets. Gary Snyder studied anthropology there, Philip Whalen attended Reed, and Allen Ginsberg held multiple readings on the campus around 1955 and 1956.[28] Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen were students in Reed's calligraphy class taught by Lloyd J. Reynolds.[29]

Significant figures
External video
Discussion of biographies of Beat poets Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, and others, October 22, 1996, C-SPAN

Burroughs was introduced to the group by David Kammerer, who was in love with Carr. Carr had befriended Ginsberg and introduced him to Kammerer and Burroughs. Carr also knew Kerouac's girlfriend Edie Parker, through whom Burroughs met Kerouac in 1944.

On August 13, 1944, Carr killed Kammerer with a Boy Scout knife in Riverside Park in what he claimed later was self-defense.[30] He waited, then dumped the body in the Hudson River, later seeking advice from Burroughs, who suggested he turn himself in. He then went to Kerouac, who helped him dispose of the weapon.[31]

Carr turned himself in the following morning and later pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Kerouac was charged as an accessory, and Burroughs as a material witness, but neither was prosecuted. Kerouac wrote about this incident twice in his own works: once in his first novel, The Town and the City, and again in one of his last, Vanity of Duluoz. He wrote a collaboration novel with Burroughs, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, concerning the murder.[31]

Gary Snyder

Poet Gary Snyder was an important member of the beat movement and is widely regarded as a member of the Beat Generation circle of writers. He was one of the poets who read at the famous Six Gallery reading, and he was written about in one of Kerouac's most popular novels, The Dharma Bums. Some critics argue that Snyder's connection with the Beats is exaggerated and that he might better be regarded as a member of the West Coast group the San Francisco Renaissance, which developed independently.

Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady was introduced to the group in 1947, providing inspiration to several of the Beat authors. He became something of a muse to Ginsberg; they had a romantic affair, and Ginsberg became Cassady's personal writing-tutor. Kerouac's road trips with Cassady in the late 1940s became the focus of his second novel, On the Road. Cassady's verbal style is one of the sources of the spontaneous, jazz-inspired rapping that later became associated with "beatniks". Cassady impressed the group with the free-flowing style of his letters, and Kerouac cited them as a key influence on his spontaneous prose style.

Participants

Women

Beat Generation women who have been published include Edie Parker; Joyce Johnson; Carolyn Cassady; Hettie Jones; Joanne Kyger; Harriet Sohmers Zwerling; Diane DiPrima; and Ruth Weiss, who also made films. Carolyn Cassady wrote her own detailed account about life with husband Neal Cassady which also included details about her affair with Jack Kerouac. She titled it Off the Road, and it was published in 1990. Poet Elise Cowen took her own life in 1963. Poet Anne Waldman was less influenced by the Beats than by Allen Ginsberg's later turn to Buddhism. Later, female poets emerged who claimed to be strongly influenced by the Beats, including Janine Pommy Vega in the 1960s, Patti Smith in the 1970s, and Hedwig Gorski in the 1980s.[32][33]

African Americans

Although African Americans were not widely represented in the Beat Generation, the presence of some black writers in this movement did contribute to the movement's progression. While many of the Beats briefly discusses issues of race and sexuality, they spoke from their own perspectives—most being white. However, black people added a counterbalance to this; their work supplied readers with alternative views of occurrences in the world. In particular, the African American Beat writers, Robert "Bob" Kaufman and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), shared through their writings as well as their daily lives active pursuit of the change they wrote about. Poet Bob Kaufman wrote about a number of his experiences. Following his time in the military, he had trouble with police officers and the criminal justice system. Like many of the Beats, Kaufman was also a fan of Jazz and incorporated it into his work to describe relationships with others. LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) married Beat writer, Hettie Cohen, who became Hettie Jones, in 1958. They worked together with Diane di Prima, to develop Yūgen magazine. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were associated with a number of Beats (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso). That is, until the assassination of the Civil Rights leader, Malcolm X. During this time, LeRoi Jones branched off from the other Beat writers, including his wife, to find his identity among the African American and Islamic communities. The change in his social setting along with awakening influenced his writing and brought about the development of many of his most notable works, like Somebody Blew Up America, in which he reflected on the attacks of 9/11 and America's reaction to this incident in relation to other occurrences in America.

Culture and influences

Sexuality

One of the key beliefs and practices of the Beat Generation was free love and sexual liberation,[34] which strayed from the Christian ideals of American culture at the time.[35] Some Beat writers were openly gay or bisexual, including two of the most prominent (Ginsberg[36] and Burroughs[37]). However, the first novel does show Cassady as frankly promiscuous. Kerouac's novels feature an interracial love affair (The Subterraneans), and group sex (The Dharma Bums). The relationships among men in Kerouac's novels are predominately homosocial.[38]

Drug use

The original members of the Beat Generation used a number of different drugs, including alcohol, marijuana, benzedrine, morphine, and later psychedelic drugs such as peyote, Ayahuasca, and LSD.[39] They often approached drugs experimentally, initially being unfamiliar with their effects. Their drug use was broadly inspired by intellectual interest, and many Beat writers thought that their drug experiences enhanced creativity, insight, or productivity.[40] The use of drugs was a key influence on many of the social events of the time that were personal to the Beat generation.[41]

Romanticism

Gregory Corso considered English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley a hero, and he was buried at the foot of Shelley's grave in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. Ginsberg mentions Shelley's poem Adonais at the beginning of his poem Kaddish, and cites it as a major influence on the composition of one of his most important poems. Michael McClure compared Ginsberg's Howl to Shelley's breakthrough poem Queen Mab.[42]

Ginsberg's main Romantic influence was William Blake,[43] and studied him throughout his life. Blake was the subject of Ginsberg's self-defining auditory hallucination and revelation in 1948.[44] Romantic poet John Keats was also cited as an influence.

Jazz

Writers of the Beat Generation were heavily influenced by Jazz artists like Billie Holiday and the stories told through Jazz music. Writers like Jack Kerouac (On the Road), Bob Kaufman ("Round About Midnight," "Jazz Chick," and "O-Jazz-O"), and Frank O'Hara ("The Day Lady Died") incorporated the emotions they felt toward Jazz. They used their pieces to discuss feelings, people, and objects they associate with Jazz music, as well as life experiences that reminded them of this style of music. Kaufman's pieces listed above "were intended to be freely improvisational when read with Jazz accompaniment" (Charters 327). He and other writers found inspiration in this genre and allowed it to help fuel the Beat movement.

Early American sources

The Beats were inspired by early American figures such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville and especially Walt Whitman, who is addressed as the subject of one of Ginsberg's most famous poems, A Supermarket in California. Edgar Allan Poe was occasionally acknowledged, and Ginsberg saw Emily Dickinson as having an influence on Beat poetry. The 1926 novel You Can't Win by outlaw author Jack Black was cited as having a strong influence on Burroughs.[45]

French surrealism

In many ways, Surrealism was still considered a vital movement in the 1950s. Carl Solomon introduced the work of French author Antonin Artaud to Ginsberg, and the poetry of André Breton had direct influence on Ginsberg's poem Kaddish. Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, John Ashbery and Ron Padgett translated French poetry. Second-generation Beat Ted Joans was named "the only Afro-American Surrealist" by Breton.[46]

Philip Lamantia introduced Surrealist poetry to the original Beats.[47] The poetry of Gregory Corso and Bob Kaufman shows the influence of Surrealist poetry with its dream-like images and its random juxtaposition of dissociated images, and this influence can also be seen in more subtle ways in Ginsberg's poetry. As the legend goes, when meeting French Surrealist Marcel Duchamp, Ginsberg kissed his shoe and Corso cut off his tie.[48] Other influential French poets for the Beats were Guillaume Apollinaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire.

Modernism

Gertrude Stein was the subject of a book-length study by Lew Welch. Admitted influences for Kerouac include Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe.[49]

Buddhism and Daoism

Gary Snyder defined wild as "whose order has grown from within and is maintained by the force of consensus and custom rather than explicit legislation". "The wild is not brute savagery, but a healthy balance, a self-regulating system.". Snyder attributed wild to Buddhism and Daoism, the interests of some Beats. "Snyder's synthesis uses Buddhist thought to encourage American social activism, relying on both the concept of impermanence and the classically American imperative toward freedom."[50]

Topics
A section devoted to the beat generation at a bookstore in Stockholm, Sweden

While many authors claim to be directly influenced by the Beats, the Beat Generation phenomenon itself has had an influence on American culture leading more broadly to the hippie movements of the 1960s.

In 1982, Ginsberg published a summary of "the essential effects" of the Beat Generation:[51]

  • Spiritual liberation, sexual "revolution" or "liberation," i.e., gay liberation, somewhat catalyzing women's liberation, black liberation, Gray Panther activism.
  • Liberation of the world from censorship.
  • Demystification and/or decriminalization of cannabis and other drugs.
  • The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll as a high art form, as evidenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and other popular musicians influenced in the later fifties and sixties by Beat generation poets' and writers' works.
  • The spread of ecological consciousness, emphasized early by Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, the notion of a "Fresh Planet."
  • Opposition to the military-industrial machine civilization, as emphasized in writings of Burroughs, Huncke, Ginsberg, and Kerouac.
  • Attention to what Kerouac called (after Spengler) a "second religiousness" developing within an advanced civilization.
  • Return to an appreciation of idiosyncrasy vs. state regimentation.
  • Respect for land and indigenous peoples and creatures, as proclaimed by Kerouac in his slogan from On the Road: "The Earth is an Indian thing."

"Beatniks"
Main article: Beatnik

The term "Beatnik" was coined by Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2, 1958, blending the name of the recent Russian satellite Sputnik and Beat Generation. This suggested that beatniks were (1) "far out of the mainstream of society" and (2) "possibly pro-Communist."[52] Caen's term stuck and became the popular label associated with a new stereotype—the man with a goatee and beret reciting nonsensical poetry and playing bongo drums while free-spirited women wearing black leotards dance.

An early example of the "beatnik stereotype" occurred in Vesuvio's (a bar in North Beach, San Francisco) which employed the artist Wally Hedrick to sit in the window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals, creating improvisational drawings and paintings. By 1958 tourists who came to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach Beat scene, prophetically anticipating similar tours of the Haight-Ashbury district ten years later.[53]

A variety of other small businesses also sprang up exploiting (and/or satirizing) the new craze. In 1959, Fred McDarrah started a "Rent-a-Beatnik" service in New York, taking out ads in The Village Voice and sending Ted Joans and friends out on calls to read poetry.[54]

"Beatniks" appeared in many cartoons, movies, and TV shows of the time, perhaps the most famous being the character Maynard G. Krebs in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959–1963).

While some of the original Beats embraced the beatniks, or at least found the parodies humorous (Ginsberg, for example, appreciated the parody in the comic strip Pogo[55]) others criticized the beatniks as inauthentic poseurs. Jack Kerouac feared that the spiritual aspect of his message had been lost and that many were using the Beat Generation as an excuse to be senselessly wild.[56]

"Hippies"
Main article: Hippie

During the 1960s, aspects of the Beat movement metamorphosed into the counterculture of the 1960s, accompanied by a shift in terminology from "beatnik" to "hippie".[57] Many of the original Beats remained active participants, notably Allen Ginsberg, who became a fixture of the anti-war movement. Notably, however, Jack Kerouac broke with Ginsberg and criticized the 1960s politically radical protest movements as an excuse to be "spiteful".[58]

There were stylistic differences between beatniks and hippies—somber colors, dark sunglasses, and goatees gave way to colorful psychedelic clothing and long hair. The Beats were known for "playing it cool" (keeping a low profile),[59]

Beyond style, there were changes in substance: The Beats tended to be essentially apolitical, but the hippies became actively engaged with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.[60]

Literary legacy

Among the emerging novelists of the 1960s and 1970s, a few were closely connected with Beat writers, most notably Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). Though they had no direct connection, other writers considered the Beats to be a major influence, including Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)[61] and Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues).

William S. Burroughs is considered a forefather of postmodern literature; he also inspired the cyberpunk genre.[62][63][64]

One-time Beat writer LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka helped initiate the Black Arts movement.[65]

As there was focus on live performance among the Beats, many Slam poets have claimed to be influenced by the Beats. Saul Williams, for example, cites Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Bob Kaufman as major influences.[66]

The Postbeat Poets are direct descendants of the Beat Generation. Their association with or tutelage under Ginsberg at The Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics[67] and later at Brooklyn College stressed the social-activist legacy of the Beats and created its own body of literature. Known authors are Anne Waldman, Antler, Andy Clausen, David Cope, Eileen Myles, Eliot Katz, Paul Beatty, Sapphire, Lesléa Newman, Jim Cohn, Thomas R. Peters, Jr. (poet and owner of beat book shop), Sharon Mesmer, Randy Roark, Josh Smith, David Evans.

Rock and pop music

The Beats had a pervasive influence on rock and roll and popular music, including the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison. The Beatles spelled their name with an "a" partly as a Beat Generation reference,[68] and John Lennon was a fan of Jack Kerouac.[69] The Beatles even put Beat writer William S. Burroughs on the cover of their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[70] Ginsberg later met and became friends of members of the Beatles, and Paul McCartney played guitar on Ginsberg's album Ballad of the Skeletons.

Ginsberg was a close friend of Bob Dylan[71] and toured with him on the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. Dylan cites Ginsberg and Kerouac as major influences.

Jim Morrison cites Kerouac as one of his biggest influences, and fellow Doors member Ray Manzarek has said "We wanted to be beatniks."[72] In his book Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors, Manzarek also writes "I suppose if Jack Kerouac had never written On the Road, The Doors would never have existed." Michael McClure was also a friend of members of The Doors, at one point touring with Manzarek.

Ginsberg was a friend of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, a group of which Neal Cassady was a member, which also included members of the Grateful Dead. In the 1970s, Burroughs was a friend of Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Patti Smith.

The musical group Steely Dan is named after a steam-powered dildo in Burroughs' Naked Lunch. British progressive rock band Soft Machine is named after Burroughs' novel The Soft Machine.

Singer-songwriter Tom Waits, a Beat fan, wrote "Jack and Neal" about Kerouac and Cassady, and recorded "On the Road" (a song written by Kerouac after finishing the novel) with Primus.[73] He later collaborated with Burroughs on the theatrical work The Black Rider.

Jazz musician/film composer Robert Kraft (not to be confused with NFL Team owner Robert Kraft) wrote and released a contemporary homage to Jack Kerouac and Beat Generation aesthetics entitled "Beat Generation" on the 1988 album Quake City.

Musician Mark Sandman, who was the bass guitarist, lead vocalist and a former member of the alternative jazz rock band Morphine, was interested in the Beat Generation and wrote a song called "Kerouac" as a tribute to Jack Kerouac and his personal philosophy and way of life.[74]

The band Aztec Two-Step recorded "The Persecution & Restoration of Dean Moriarty (On the Road)" in 1972.[75]

There was a resurgence of interest in the beats among bands in the 1980s. Ginsberg worked with the Clash and Burroughs worked with Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Kurt Cobain, and Ministry, among others. Bono of U2 cites Burroughs as a major influence,[76][77] and Burroughs appeared briefly in a U2 video in 1997.[78] Post-punk band Joy Division named a song "Interzone" after a collection of stories by Burroughs. Laurie Anderson featured Burroughs on her 1984 album Mister Heartbreak and in her 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave. The band King Crimson produced the album Beat inspired by the Beat Generation.

More recently, American artist Lana Del Rey references the Beat movement and Beat poetry in her 2014 song "Brooklyn Baby".

Criticism

The Beat Generation was met with scrutiny and assigned many stereotypes. Several magazines, including Life and Playboy, depicted members of the Beat Generation as nihilists and as unintellectual. This criticism was largely due to the ideological differences between American culture at the time and the Beat Generation, including their Buddhist-inspired beliefs.[35]

Norman Podhoretz, a student at Columbia with Kerouac and Ginsberg, later became a critic of the Beats. His 1958 Partisan Review article "The Know-Nothing Bohemians" was a vehement critique primarily of Kerouac's On the Road and The Subterraneans, as well as Ginsberg's Howl.[79] His central criticism is that the Beat embrace of spontaneity is bound up in an anti-intellectual worship of the "primitive" that can easily turn toward mindlessness and violence. Podhoretz asserted that there was a link between the Beats and criminal delinquents.

Ginsberg responded in a 1958 interview with The Village Voice,[80] specifically addressing the charge that the Beats destroyed "the distinction between life and literature". In the interview, he stated that "the bit about anti-intellectualism is a piece of vanity, we had the same education, went to the same school, you know there are 'Intellectuals' and there are intellectuals. Podhoretz is just out of touch with twentieth-century literature, he's writing for the eighteenth-century mind. We have a personal literature now—Proust, Wolfe, Faulkner, Joyce."[81]

Internal criticism

In a 1974 interview,[82] Gary Snyder comments on the subject of "casualties" of the Beat Generation:[83]

Kerouac was a casualty too. And there were many other casualties that most people have never heard of, but were genuine casualties. Just as, in the 60s, when Allen and I for a period there were almost publicly recommending people to take acid. When I look back on that now I realize there were many casualties, responsibilities to bear.

Quotes

Three writers do not a generation make.

— Gregory Corso[84] (sometimes also attributed to Gary Snyder)

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[85]

Films

See also

References
  1. The Beat Generation – Literature Periods & Movements.
  2. Charters, Ann (2001). Beat Down to Your Soul: What was the Beat Generation?. Penguin Books. ISBN 0141001518.
  3. Charters (1992) The Portable Beat Reader.
  4. Ann Charters, introduction, to Beat Down to Your Soul, Penguin Books (2001) ISBN 978-0-14100-151-7 p. xix "[...] the conclusion of the obscenity trial in San Francisco against Lawrence Ferlinghetti for publishing Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems [...] in which Judge Clayton W. Horn concluded for the defendant that 'Howl' had what he called 'redeeming social content.'", p. xxxiii "After the successful Howl trial, outspoken and subversive literary magazines sprung up like wild mushrooms throughout the United States."
  5. Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw, New York: Avon, 1988. p. 347, trade paper edition ISBN 0-380-70882-5: "The ruling on Naked Lunch in effect marked the end of literary censorship in the United States."
  6. "Beat movement (American literary and social movement) – Encyclopædia Britannica". britannica.com. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  7. "Beat to his socks, which was once the black's most total and despairing image of poverty, was transformed into a thing called the Beat Generation..." James Baldwin, "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What is it?," The New York Times, July 29, 1979.
  8. "The word 'beat' was primarily in use after World War II by jazz musicians and hustlers as a slang term meaning down and out, or poor and exhausted. The jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow combined it with other words, like 'dead beat' ..." Ann Charters, The Portable Beat reader, 1992, ISBN 0-670-83885-3, ISBN 978-0-670-83885-1.
  9. "Hebert Huncke picked up the word [beat] from his show business friends on of Near North Side of Chicago, and in the fall of 1945 he introduced the word to William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac." Steve Watson, "The Birth of the Beat Generation" (1995), p. 3, ISBN 0-375-70153-2.
  10. The exuberance is much stronger in the published On the Road, than in its manuscript (in scroll-form). Luc Sante: "In the scroll the use of the word "holy" must be 80 percent less than in the novel, and psalmodic references to the author's unique generation are down by at least two-thirds; uses of the word "beat", for that matter, clearly favor the exhausted over the beatific." New York Times Book Review, August 19, 2007.
  11. Beard, Rick, and Leslie Berlowitz. 1993. Greenwich Village: Culture and Counterculture. New Brunswick, N.J. Published for the Museum of the City of New York by Rutgers University Press. 167.
  12. "In this essay "Beat" includes those American poets considered avant-garde or anti-academic from c. 1955 – 1965.", Lee Hudson, "Poetics in Performance: The Beat Generation" collected in Studies in interpretation, Volume 2, ed Esther M. Doyle, Virginia Hastings Floyd, 1977, Rodopi, ISBN 90-6203-070-X, 9789062030705, p. 59.
  13. "... resistance is bound to occur in bringing into the academy such anti-academic writers as the Beats.", Nancy McCampbell Grace, Ronna Johnson, Breaking the rule of cool: interviewing and reading women beat writers, 2004, Univ. Press of Mississippi, ISBN 1-57806-654-9, ISBN 978-1-57806-654-4, p. x.
  14. "The Black Mountain school originated at the sometime Black Mountain College of Asheville, North Carolina, in the 1950s and gave rise to an anti-academic academy that was the center of attraction for many of the disaffiliated writers of the period, including many who were known in other contexts as the Beats or the Beat generation and the San Francisco school." Steven R. Serafin, Alfred Bendixen, The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature, 2005, Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 0-8264-1777-9, ISBN 978-0-8264-1777-0, p. 901.
  15. Morgan, Literary Outlaw (1988), pp. 163–165.
  16. Morgan, Literary Outlaw (1988), pp 205–6.
  17. McDarrah, Fred W., and Gloria S. McDarrah. 1996. Beat Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village. New York: Schirmer Books.
  18. Beard and Berlowitz. 1993. Greenwich Village. "The Beat Generation in the Village." 165–198.
  19. Beard and Berlowitz. 1993. Greenwich Village. "The Beat Generation in the Village." 170.
  20. Beard and Berlowitz. 1993. Greenwich Village. "The Beat Generation in the Village." 178.
  21. "Beat Party Nominates Anti-Presidential Choice". July 21, 1960.
  22. "Anti-Presidential Nominee Named on 5th Beat Ballot". July 21, 1960.
  23. Jonah Raskin, American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and the Making of the Beat Generation: "Wally Hedrick, a painter and veteran of the Korean War, approached Ginsberg in the summer of 1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery... At first, Ginsberg refused. But once he'd written a rough draft of Howl, he changed his 'fucking mind,' as he put it."
  24. Ginsberg, Allen. Howl. 1986 critical edition edited by Barry Miles, Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography ISBN 0-06-092611-2 (pbk.)
  25. McClure, Michael. Scratching the Beat Surface: Essays on New Vision from Blake to Kerouac. Penguin, 1994. ISBN 0-14-023252-4.
  26. Bradley J. Stiles, Emerson's contemporaries and Kerouac's crowd: a problem of self-location, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-8386-3960-7, ISBN 978-0-8386-3960-3, p. 87: "Although Kerouac did not introduce Eastern religion into American culture, his writings were instrumental in popularizing Buddhism among mainstream intellectuals."
  27. "Pacific Northwest Seasons: Ross Lake: Paddling in the Path of Beat Poets". pacificnwseasons.blogspot.com. September 22, 2008. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  28. "Reed Magazine: When the Beats Came Back (1/6)". reed.edu. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  29. "Reed Digital Collections : Search Results". cdm.reed.edu. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  30. Knight, Brenda, Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution, 978-1573241380, Conari Press, 1998.
  31. Kakutani, Michiko (November 10, 2008). "A Jack Kerouac-William S. Burroughs Collaboration: 'And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
  33. Interview 2013 by Greece Blues site Michalis Limnios BLUES @ GREECE.
  34. Morgan, Bill (2011). The Type Writer Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.
  35. Prothero, Stephen (1991). "On the Holy Road: The Beat Movement as Spiritual Protest". The Harvard Theological Review. 84 (2): 205–222. doi:10.1017/S0017816000008166.
  36. Hemmer, Kurt, ed. (2007). Encyclopedia of Beat Literature. Facts On File, Inc. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-8160-4297-5. These early books, too, are windows into the poet's efforts to find a place for his homosexual identity in the repressive pre-Stonewall United States.
  37. Hemmer, Kurt, ed. (2007). Encyclopedia of Beat Literature. Facts On File, Inc. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-8160-4297-5. And then, before the end of the decade, Burroughs had gone—leaving cold-war America to escape his criminalization as a homosexual and drug addict, to begin 25 years of expatriation.
  38. "Hetero- and Homo-Social Relationships in Jack Kerouac's On the Road". Not-So-Gentle Reader blog. July 23, 2009. Archived from the original on November 6, 2013. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  39. Lundberg, John (October 16, 2011). "The Great Drug-Induced Poems". Huffington Post. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
  40. Allen Ginsberg, The Essential Ginsberg, Penguin UK, 2015.
  41. "Substance Use". Beatdom. September 14, 2010. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
  42. McClure, Michael. Scratching the Beat Surface.
  43. "Throughout these interviews [in Spontaneous Mind] Ginsberg returns to his high praise of William Blake and Walt Whitman. Ginsberg obviously loves Blake the visionary and Whitman the democratic sensualist, and indeed Ginsberg's own literary personality can be construed as a union of these forces." Edmund White, Arts and letters (2004), p. 104, ISBN 1-57344-195-3, ISBN 978-1-57344-195-7.
  44. "Ginsberg's intense relationship to Blake can be traced to a seemingly mystical experience he had during the summer of 1948." ibid, p. 104.
  45. Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw (1988), p.36-37 of trade paper edition, "When Billy [William Burroughs] was thirteen, he came across a book that would have an enormous impact on his life and work. Written by someone calling himself Jack Black, You Can't Win was the memoirs of a professional thief and drug addict."
  46. According to William Lawlor: "André Breton, the founder of surrealism and Joans's [sic] mentor and friend, famously called Joans the 'only Afro-American surrealist' (qtd. by James Miller in _Dictionary of Literary Biography_ 16: 268)", p. 159, Beat culture: lifestyles, icons, and impact, ABC-CLIO, 2005, ISBN 1-85109-400-8, ISBN 978-1-85109-400-4. Ted Joans said, "The late André Breton the founder of surrealism said that I was the only Afro-American surrealist and welcomed me to the exclusive surrealist group in Paris", p. 102, For Malcolm: poems on the life and the death of Malcolm X, Dudley Randall and Margaret G. Burroughs, eds, Broadside Press, Detroit, 1967. There is some question about how familiar Breton was with Afro-American literature: "If it is true that the late André Breton, a founder of the surrealist movement, considered Ted Joans the only Afro-American surrealist, he apparently had not read Kaufman; at any rate, Breton had much to learn about Afro-American poetry." Bernard W. Bell, "The Debt to Black Music", Black World/Negro Digest March 1973, p. 86.
  47. Allen Ginsberg commented: "His interest in techniques of surreal composition notoriously antedates mine and surpasses my practice ... I authoritatively declare Lamantia an American original, soothsayer even as Poe, genius in the language of Whitman, native companion and teacher to myself." Allen Ginsberg, Bill Morgan, Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995, p. 442, "Philip Lamantia, Lamantia As Forerunner", HarperCollins, 2001, ISBN 9780060930813.
  48. Miles (2001) Ginsberg.
  49. "In 'Author's Introduction,' which is included in Lonesome Traveler (1960), Kerouac ... goes on to mention Jack London, William Saroyan, and Ernest Hemingway as early influences and mentions Thomas Wolfe as a subsequent influence." William Lawlor, Beat culture: lifestyles, icons, and impact, 2005, ISBN 1-85109-400-8, ISBN 978-1-85109-400-4 p. 153. "And if one considers The Legend of Dulouz, one must acknowledge the influence of Marcel Proust. Like Proust, Kerouac makes his powerful memory the source of much of his writing and again like Proust, Kerouac envisions his life's literary output as one great book." Lawlor, p. 154.
  50. Garton-Gundling, Kyle. "Beat Buddhism and American freedom". thefreelibrary.com. Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved May 11, 2019.
  51. Ginsberg, Allen A Definition of the Beat Generation, from Friction, 1 (Winter 1982), revised for Beat Culture and the New America: 1950–1965.
  52. Herb Caen (February 6, 1997). "Pocketful of Notes". San Francisco Chronicle. sfgate.com. Retrieved January 30, 2010. "...Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.'s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles' free booze. They're only Beat, y'know, when it comes to work ..."
  53. William T. Lawlor (ed.), Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons and Impact, p. 309.
  54. Arthur and Kit Knight (ed.), The Beat Vision, New York: Paragon House, 1987, p. 281.
  55. Ginsberg, Howl: Original Draft Facsimile.
  56. "Tracing his personal definition of the term Beat to the fufillments offered by beatitude, Kerouac scorned sensationalistic phrases like 'Beat mutiny' and 'Beat insurrection,' which were being repeated ad nauseam in media accounts. 'Being a Catholic,' he told conservative journalist William F. Buckley, Jr. in a late-sixties television appearance, 'I believe in order, tenderness, and piety,'" David Sterritt, Screening the Beats: media culture and the Beat sensibility, 2004, p. 25, ISBN 0-8093-2563-2, ISBN 978-0-8093-2563-4.
  57. Ed Sanders said in an interview in the film The Source (1999) (at the 1hr 17secs point) that he observed the change immediately after the 1967 Human Be-In event: "And right after the Be-In all of a sudden you were no longer a beatnik, you were a hippie." Similar remarks by Sanders: an interview with Jessa Piaia in SQUAWK Magazine, Issue #55, commented: "I've begun Tales of Beatnik Glory, Volume 3. Set in the Hippie era, it defines that delicate time when reporters no longer called us 'Beatnik,' but started to call us 'Hippie.'", http://www.angelfire.com/music/squawk/eds2.html; "There was a big article January of 1966, on page one of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, under the heading 'Beatnik Leader Wants Marijuana.' It was just before "hippie" replaced 'Beatnik.'" Ed Sanders, Larry Smith, Ingrid Swanberg, D.A. Levy & the mimeograph revolution (2007).
  58. Gore Vidal quotes Ginsberg speaking of Kerouac: "'You know around 1968, when we were all protesting the Vietnam War, Jack wrote me that the war was just an excuse for 'you Jews to be spiteful again.'" Gore Vidal, Palimpsest: A Memoir, 1995, ISBN 0-679-44038-0.
  59. For example, see the meaning of "cool" as explained in the Del Close, John Brant spoken word album How to Speak Hip from 1959.
  60. Allen Ginsberg comments on this in the film "The Source" (1999); Gary Snyder discusses the issue in a 1974 interview, collected in The Beat Vision (1987), Paragon House. ISBN 0-913729-40-X; ISBN 0-913729-41-8 (pbk), edited by Arthur Winfield Knight: "... the next key point was Castro taking over Cuba. The apolitical quality of Beat thought changed with that. It sparked quite a discussion and quite a dialogue; many people had been basic pacifists with considerable disillusion with Marxian revolutionary rhetoric. At the time of Castro's victory, it had to be rethought again. Here was a revolution that had used violence and that was apparently a good thing. Many people abandoned the pacifist position at that time or at least began to give more thought to it. In any case, many people began to look to politics again as having possibilities. From that follows, at least on some levels, the beginning of civil rights activism, which leads through our one whole chain of events: the Movement.

    We had little confidence in our power to make any long range or significant changes. That was the 50s, you see. It seemed that bleak. So that our choices seemed entirely personal existential lifetime choices that there was no guarantee that we would have any audience, or anybody would listen to us; but it was a moral decision, a moral poetic decision. Then Castro changed things, then Martin Luther King changed things ..."
  61. Pynchon, Thomas. Slow Learner. Vintage Classics, 2007. ISBN 0-09-953251-4.
  62. "Sterling also identifies [in Mirroshades (1986)] postmodernist authors Thomas Pynchon and William S. Burroughs as forerunners of cyberpunk." Keith Booker, Anne-Marie Thomas, The Science Fiction Handbook, 2009, p. 111, ISBN 1-4051-6205-8, ISBN 978-1-4051-6205-0.
  63. "... it should hardly be surprising that to discover that the work of William S Burroughs had a profound impact on both punk music and cyberpunk science fiction." Larry McCaffery, Storming the reality studio: a casebook of cyberpunk and postmodern science fiction, 1991, p. 305.
  64. "Cyberpunk writers acknowledge their literary debt to Burroughs and Pynchon, as well as to New Wave writers from the 1960s and 1970s such as J. G. Ballard and Samuel Delany.", Jenny Wolmark, Aliens and others: science fiction, feminism and postmodernism, 1994, ISBN 0-87745-447-7, ISBN 978-0-87745-447-2.
  65. "(LeRoi Jones) ... is best known as a major cultural leader, one of the African American writers who galvanized a second Black Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s ..." – page xi, "Preface", Komozi Woodard, A nation within a nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black power politics (1999, UNC Press), ISBN 0-8078-4761-5, ISBN 978-0-8078-4761-9.
  66. Williams, Saul. Said the Shotgun to the Head. MTV, 2003, p.184, ISBN 0-7434-7079-6.
  67. "During the eighties, Ginsberg used his position as director of the writing department at Naropa, introduced his classes to the wide range of literature of the Beat Generation. Many of his students became poets and educators and are grouped together under an entirely new category that has been labeled Postbeat Poets." Bill Morgan, William Morgan, The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation, 2010, p. 245, ISBN 1-4165-9242-3, ISBN 978-1-4165-9242-6.
  68. "... the name Beatles comes from 'Beat' ..." Regina Weinreich, "Books: The Birth of the Beat Generation", The Sunday New York Times Book Review, January 11, 1996; a review of Steven Watson's THE BIRTH OF THE BEAT GENERATION: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters 1944–1960.
  69. Ellis Amburn describes a telephone conversation with Jack Kerouac: "John Lennon subsequently contacted Kerouac, revealing that the band's name was derived from 'Beat.' 'He was sorry he hadn't come to see me when they played Queens,' Kerouac said, referring to the Beatles Shea Stadium concert in 1965." Amburn, Ellis, Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac, p. 342, ISBN 0-312-20677-1.
  70. Weidman, Rich (2015). The Beat Generation FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Angelheaded Hipsters. Backbeat Books.
  71. Wills, D. "Father & Son: Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan," in Wills, D. (ed.), Beatdom Vol. 1 (Mauling Press: Dundee, 2007), pp. 90–93
  72. "As Ray Manzarek recalls when Morrison was studying at UCLA: 'He certainly had a substantial investment in books. They filled an entire wall of his apartment. His reading was very eclectic. It was typical of the early- to mid-sixties hipster student. [...] And lots of Beatniks. We wanted to _be_ beatniks. But we were too young. We came a little too late, but we were worshippers of the Beat Generation. All the Beat writers filled Morrison's shelves [...]' (Manzarek 1999, 77)" Sheila Whiteley, Too much too young: popular music, age and gender (2005, Routledge)
  73. "Tom Waits – The Pursuit of the Beats". www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
  74. Greg Cahill (November 24–30, 2004). "Mark Sandman". North Bay Bohemian.
  75. "Aztec Two-Step". Discogs. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
  76. Bono comments approvingly on the Burroughs cut up method: "That's what the Burroughs cut up method is all about. You cut up the past to find the future." As quoted by John Geiger in Nothing is true – everything is permitted: the life of Brion Gysin, p. 273, attributed to John Waters, Race of the Angels: The Genesis of U2 (London, Fourth Estate, 1994), ISBN 1-85702-210-6 ISBN 978-1857022100.
  77. "... author WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, 84, whose nihilistic novels have influenced U2 front man BONO ... ", Martha Pickerill, Time, June 2, 1997.
  78. "The next video, Last Night on Earth was shot in Kansas City, with beat author William S. Burroughs making a cameo." p. 96 David Kootnikoff, U2: A Musical Biography (2010) ISBN 0-313-36523-7, ISBN 978-0-313-36523-2.
  79. Collected in The Norman Podhoretz Reader by Norman Podhoretz, Thomas L. Jeffers, Paul Johnson. Free Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4165-6830-8.
  80. In: Spontaneous Mind.
  81. Ginsberg, Allen, Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958–1996, p. 5, ISBN 0-06-093082-9.
  82. Knight, Arthur Winfield. Ed. The Beat Vision (1987), Paragon House. ISBN 0-913729-40-X; ISBN 0-913729-41-8 (pbk).
  83. Charters (2001) Beat Down to Your Soul.
  84. Lerner, Richard and Lewis MacAdams, directors "What Ever Happened to Kerouac?" (1985).
  85. Burns, Glen Great Poets Howl: A Study of Allen Ginsberg's Poetry, 1943–1955, ISBN 3-8204-7761-6.

Sources
  • Charters, Ann (ed.) (1992) The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk). The table of contents is online.
  • Charters, Ann (ed.) (2001) Beat Down to Your Soul: What Was the Beat Generation? NY: Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0-14-100151-8
  • Knight, Arthur Winfield. Ed. The Beat Vision (1987) Paragon House. ISBN 0-913729-40-X; ISBN 0-913729-41-8 (pbk)
  • Knight, Brenda. Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution. ISBN 1-57324-138-5
  • McClure, Michael. Scratching the Beat Surface: Essays on New Vision from Blake to Kerouac. Penguin, 1994. ISBN 0-14-023252-4
  • Miles, Barry (2001). Ginsberg: A Biography. London: Virgin Publishing Ltd., paperback, 628 pages, ISBN 0-7535-0486-3
  • Morgan, Ted (1983) Literary Outlaw The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs. ISBN 0-380-70882-5, first printing, trade paperback edition Avon, NY, NY
  • Phillips, Lisa. Beat Culture and the New America 1950–1965 published by the Whitney Museum of American Art in accordance with an exhibition in 1995/1996. ISBN 0-87427-098-7 softcover. ISBN 2-08-013613-5 hardcover (Flammarion)
  • Raskin, Jonah. American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and the Making of the Beat Generation. University of California Press, 2004. ISBN 0-520-24015-4
  • Starer, Jacqueline. Les écrivains de la Beat Generation éditions d'écarts Dol de Bretagne France. 1SBN 978-2-919121-02-1
  • Weidner, Chad. The Green Ghost: William Burroughs and the Ecological Mind. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016. 1SBN 978-0809334865

Further reading

Books
  • Campbell, James. This Is the Beat Generation: New York–San Francisco-Paris. LA: University of California Press, 2001. ISBN 0-520-23033-7
  • Chandarlapaty, Raj. Seeing the Beat Generation. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2019. ISBN 978-1476675756
  • Collins, Ronald & Skover, David. Mania: The Story of the Outraged & Outrageous Lives that Launched a Cultural Revolution (Top-Five Books, March 2013)
  • Cook, Bruce The Beat Generation: The tumultuous '50s movement and its impact on today. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. ISBN 0-684-12371-1.
  • Gifford, Barry and Lawrence Lee Jack's Book An Oral Biography Of Jack Kerouac, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-312-43942-3
  • Gorski, Hedwig. * Robert Creeley 1982 TV Interview with Hedwig Gorski transcript included in special Robert Creeley Issue, Journal of American Studies of Turkey (JAST), No. 27, Spring 2008.
  • Grace, Nancy Jack Kerouac and the Literary Imagination, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ISBN 1-4039-6850-0
  • Hemmer, Kurt (ed.). Encyclopedia of Beat Literature. Facts on File, 2006. ISBN 0-8160-4297-7
  • Hrebeniak, Michael. Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2006.
  • Johnson, Ronna C. and Nancy Grace. Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation. Rutgers, 2002. ISBN 0-813-53064-4
  • Knight, Brenda. Women of the Beat Generation; The Writers, Artists, and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution. General Books LLC, 2010. ISBN 1153571900 ISBN 978-1153571906
  • McDarrah, Fred W., and Gloria S. McDarrah. Beat Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village Schirmer Books (September 1996) ISBN 0-8256-7160-4
  • McNally, Dennis. Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America. NY: DeCapo, 2003. ISBN 0-306-81222-3
  • Miles, Barry. The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs & Corso in Paris, 1957–1963. NY: Grove Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8021-3817-9
  • Peabody, Richard. A Different Beat: Writing by Women of the Beat Generation. Serpent's Tail, 1997. ISBN 1852424311 / ISBN 978-1852424312
  • Sargeant, Jack. Naked Lens: Beat Cinema. NY: Soft Skull, 2009 (third edition)
  • Sanders, Ed. Tales of Beatnik Glory (second edition, 1990) ISBN 0-8065-1172-9
  • Theado, Matt (ed.). The Beats: A Literary Reference. NY: Carrol & Graff, 2002. ISBN 0-7867-1099-3
  • Watson, Steven. The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944–1960. NY: Pantheon, 1998. ISBN 0-375-70153-2

Archival resources
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