The Beat Generation was a group of American writers in the 1950s known for rejecting social and literary conventions. Key figures included Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac. They met as students at Columbia University and were influenced by Eastern religion, alternative lifestyles, and experimentation with drugs. Ginsberg's poem "Howl" and Burroughs' novel "Naked Lunch" addressed taboo topics and helped liberalize publishing. Their works had an anti-establishment message and documented underground cultures, influencing the counterculture of the 1960s.

1. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents
1 Significant figures, events, and elements
1.1 Origin of name
1.2 Columbia University
1.3 The Times Square "Underworld"
1.4 Neal Cassady
1.5 San Francisco and the Six Gallery reading
1.6 Women of the Beat Generation
1.7 Drug use
1.8 Sexuality
2 Influences
2.1 Romanticism
2.2 Early American sources
2.3 French Surrealism
2.4 Modernism
3 Influences on Western culture
3.1 Counterculture effects
3.1.1 "Beatniks"
3.1.2 "Hippies"
3.2 Literary legacy
3.3 Rock and pop music
4 Criticism
4.1 Internal criticism
5 The Beats comment on the Beat Generation
6 Films about the Beat Generation
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
10 Further reading
10.1 Books
10.2 Archival resources
11 External links
11.1 General Beat Generation pages
11.2 Beat tourism pages
11.3 Photographs
The Beat Generation was a group of American post-World War II writers who came to
prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired.
Central elements of "Beat" culture included rejection of received standards, innovations in style,
experimentation with drugs, alternative sexualities, an interest in Eastern religion, a rejection of
materialism, and explicit portrayals of the human condition.
Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's
On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature. Both Howl and Naked Lunch
were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States. The
members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-

2. conformity and spontaneous creativity.
The original "Beat Generation" writers met in New York. Later, in the mid-1950s, the central
figures (with the exception of Burroughs) ended up together in San Francisco where they met and became
friends with figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.
In the 1960s, elements of the expanding Beat movement were incorporated into the hippie
counterculture.
Significant figures, events, and elements
Origin of name
Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948 to characterize a perceived
underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York. The name arose in a conversation with
writer John Clellon Holmes. Kerouac allows that it was street hustler Herbert Huncke 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", but Kerouac appropriated the image and altered the meaning to include the
connotations "upbeat," "beatific," and the musical association of being "on the beat".
Columbia University
The origins of the Beat Generation can be traced to Columbia University and the meeting of
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Hal Chase and others. Though the beats are usually regarded as anti-
academic, 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
Arthur Rimbaud), to counteract what they perceived as their teachers' conservative, formalistic literary
ideals.
Burroughs was introduced to the group by an old friend, David Kammerer, who was enamored of
Lucien Carr. Carr had befriended freshman Allen 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. He waited,[
citation needed]
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. 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.
The 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 Times Square) was small-time criminal and drug-addict Herbert Huncke. The Beats
were drawn to Huncke, who later started to write himself, convinced that he possessed a vital worldly
knowledge unavailable to them from their largely middle-class upbringings.
Ginsberg was arrested in 1949. The police attempted to pull Ginsberg over while he was driving
with Huncke, his car filled with stolen items 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.
Carl Solomon was arguably more eccentric than psychotic. A fan of Antonin Artaud, he indulged in self-

3. 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 Junky in 1953.