Like the French Impressionist artists of Paris, the 'Beat' writers were a small group of close friends first, and a movement later. The 'Beat Generation' in literature comprised a relatively small number of writers, of which Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs are the best known today. All three met in the environs of Columbia University in New York City in the mid-1940's, and they remained close friends, encouraging each other's individualistic writing efforts for more than ten years before publishers began to take their work seriously in the late 50's.Kerouac immortalized, philatelically The Beat Generation was a small group of adult writers, based in New York or the San Francisco Bay Area and highly connected to the publishing industry. Supposedly, the name and phone number of virtually every Beat writer was in Allen Ginsberg's address book. If Generation X is like Woodstock, the Beat Generation is like a small dark tavern at two in the morning, with a group of old jazz musicians jamming on stage and Jack Kerouac buying rounds at the bar.Timothy Leary, intellectual, LSD-experimenter and friend of the 'Beats' We think of the Beat Generation as a phenomenon of the 50's, but the term was invented by Jack Kerouac in 1948. The phrase was then introduced to the general public in 1952 when Kerouac's friend, John Clellon Holmes, wrote an article, 'This is the Beat Generation,' for the 'New York Times Magazine.' Born: March 12, 1922 Place of Birth: Lowell, Massachusetts Died: October 21, 1969 Place of Death: St. Petersburg, Florida He was driven to create stories from a young age, inspired first by the mysterious radio show 'The Shadow,' and later by the fervid novels of Thomas Wolfe, the writer he would model himself after. He was a star back on his high school team and won some miraculous victories, securing himself a scholarship to Columbia University in New York. His parents followed him there, settling in Ozone Park, Queens. Things went wrong at Columbia. Kerouac fought with the football coach, who refused to let him play. His father lost his business and sank rapidly into alcoholic helplessness, and young Jack, disillusioned and confused, dropped out of Columbia, bitterly disappointing the father who had so recently disappointed him.He tried and failed to fit in with the military (World War II had begun) and ended up sailing with the Merchant Marine. When he wasn't sailing, he was hanging around New York with a crowd his parents did not approve of: depraved young Columbia students Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, a strange but brilliant older downtown friend named William S. Burroughs, and a joyful street cowboy from Denver named Neal Cassady. Kerouac had already begun writing a novel, stylistically reminiscent of Thomas Wolfe, about the torments he was suffering as he tried to balance his wild city life with his old-world family values. His friends loved the manuscript, and Ginsberg asked his Columbia professors to help find a publisher for it. It would become Kerouac's first and most conventional novel, 'The Town and the City,' which earned him respect and some recognition as a writer, although it did not make him famous. He decided to write about his cross-country trips exactly as they had happened, without pausing to edit, fictionalize or even think. He presented the resulting manuscript to his editor on a single long roll of unbroken paper, but the editor did not share his enthusiasm and the relationship was broken. Kerouac would suffer seven years of rejection before 'On The Road' would be published. He spent the early 1950's writing one unpublished novel after another, carrying them around in a rucksack as he roamed back and forth across the country. He followed Ginsberg and Cassady to Berkeley and San Francisco, where he became close friends with the young Zen poet Gary Snyder. He found enlightenment through the Buddhist religion and tried to follow Snyder's lead in communing with nature. His excellent novel 'The Dharma Bums' describes a joyous mountain climbing trip he and Snyder went on in Yosemite in 1955, and captures the tentative, sometimes comic steps he and his friends were taking towards spiritual realization. His fellow starving writers were beginning to attract fame as the 'Beat Generation' a label Kerouac had invented years earlier during a conversation with fellow novelist John Clellon Holmes. Ginsberg and Snyder became underground celebrities in 1955 after the Six Gallery poetry reading in San Francisco. Since they and many of their friends regularly referred to Kerouac as the most talented writer among them, publishers began to express interest in the forlorn, unwanted manuscripts he carried in his rucksack wherever he went. 'On The Road' was finally published in 1957, and when it became a tremendous popular success Kerouac did not know how to react.P> Like Kurt Cobain, another counter-culture celebrity who seemed to be truly (as opposed to fashionably) miserable, Kerouac expressed his unhappiness nakedly in his art and was not taken seriously. Despite the 'beatnik' stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950's began to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960's, Jack took pleasure in standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and became friendly with William F. Buckley.He moved back to California to live with his mother in Long Island, and would not stray from his mother for the rest of his life. He would continue to publish, and remained mentally alert and aware (though always drunken). But his works after 'Big Sur' displayed a disconnected soul, a human being sadly lost in his own curmudgeonly illusions.In the mid-1960's he married again, but this time to a maternalistic and older childhood acquaintance from small-town Lowell, Stella Sampas, who he hoped would help around the house as his mother entered old age. He moved back to Lowell with Stella and his mother, and then moved again with them to St. Petersburg, Florida. His health destroyed by drinking, he died at home in 1969. He was 47 years old.Ginsberg's influence on the literary culture and countercultures of America may continue forever. In 1943, while the baby boomers were still three years from conception, Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac planted the seeds of the Beat Generation in New York City. Eleven years later, Ginsberg relocated to San Francisco and joined the Bay Area's burgeoning literary scene, producing such classic poems as "Howl" and "America." He proclaimed in the former: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving/hysterical naked." He asked in the latter: "America when will you be angelic?" During the '60s, Ginsberg participated in Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, joined fellow Beat poets Gary Snyder and Michael McClure to lead the crowd in chanting "OM" at the 1967 San Francisco Be-In, and was a key figure in the anti-war movement. In 1994, Ginsberg sold his letters, journals, photos, old tennis shoes, and snippets of his beard to Stanford University for $1 million."I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America . Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma . . . distributed monies to poor poets & nourished imaginative genius of the land Sat silent in jazz roar writing poetry with an ink pen-- wasn't afraid of God or Death after his 48th year"--Allen Ginsberg "Ego Confession" San Francisco, October 1974A Brief Biography Allen Ginsberg, b. Newark, N.J., June 3, 1926, was an American poet and leading apostle of the beat generation. His first published work, 'Howl and Other Poems' (1956), sparked the San Francisco Renaissance and defined the generation of the '50s with an authority and vision that had not occurred in the United States since T. S. Eliot captured the anxiety of the 1920s in 'The Waste Land'. Ginsberg's bardic rage against material values, however, was in a voice very different from Eliot's scholarly mourning for the loss of the spirit. In his second major work, Kaddish (1961), a poem on the anniversary of his mother's death, Ginsberg described their anguished relationship. In the 1960s, while vigorously participating in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he published several poetic works, including Reality Sandwiches (1963) and Planet News (1969). The Fall of America received the National Book Award for 1974. Collected Poems, 1947-85 (1995) contains all of his important work; White Shroud (1987) includes poems from the 1980s. Ginsberg sees himself as a part of the prophetic tradition in poetry begun by William Blake and continued by Walt Whitman. He names his contemporary influences as William Carlos Williams and his friend Jack Kerouac.The events that Ginsberg played an important part in is almost unbelievably huge. He participated in Ken Kesey's Acid Test Festivals in San Francisco, and helped Kesey break the ice between the San Francisco hippies and the antagonistic Hell's Angels. In the summer of 1965 Ginsberg made a seminal trip to London with several other Beat figures. Their reading at the Royal Albert Hall signalled the beginning of the London underground scene, based at the UFO Club, from which bands like Pink Floyd and The Soft Machine would emerge. Bob Dylan often cited Ginsberg as one of the few literary figures he could stand. Ginsberg can be seen standing in the alley in the background of Dylan's 1965 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' video, and would later play a major part in Dylan's 1977 film 'Renaldo and Clara.' Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure led the crowd in chanting 'OM' at the San Fransisco Be-In in 1967. Ginsberg, Burroughs, Jean Genet and Terry Southern were key figures at the Chicago Democratic Convention antiwar protests in 1968. One of the only radical events of the Sixties that Ginsberg was not a part of was the Stonewall gay uprising, and Ginsberg showed up at the site the next day to offer his support. He died in 1997 at the age of 83.
Kerouac immortalized, philatelically
The Beat Generation was a small group of adult writers, based in New York or the San Francisco Bay Area and highly connected to the publishing industry. Supposedly, the name and phone number of virtually every Beat writer was in Allen Ginsberg's address book. If Generation X is like Woodstock, the Beat Generation is like a small dark tavern at two in the morning, with a group of old jazz musicians jamming on stage and Jack Kerouac buying rounds at the bar.
Timothy Leary, intellectual, LSD-experimenter and friend of the 'Beats'
We think of the Beat Generation as a phenomenon of the 50's, but the term was invented by Jack Kerouac in 1948. The phrase was then introduced to the general public in 1952 when Kerouac's friend, John Clellon Holmes, wrote an article, 'This is the Beat Generation,' for the 'New York Times Magazine.'
Born: March 12, 1922 Place of Birth: Lowell, Massachusetts Died: October 21, 1969 Place of Death: St. Petersburg, Florida
He was driven to create stories from a young age, inspired first by the mysterious radio show 'The Shadow,' and later by the fervid novels of Thomas Wolfe, the writer he would model himself after.
He was a star back on his high school team and won some miraculous victories, securing himself a scholarship to Columbia University in New York. His parents followed him there, settling in Ozone Park, Queens. Things went wrong at Columbia. Kerouac fought with the football coach, who refused to let him play. His father lost his business and sank rapidly into alcoholic helplessness, and young Jack, disillusioned and confused, dropped out of Columbia, bitterly disappointing the father who had so recently disappointed him.
He tried and failed to fit in with the military (World War II had begun) and ended up sailing with the Merchant Marine. When he wasn't sailing, he was hanging around New York with a crowd his parents did not approve of: depraved young Columbia students Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, a strange but brilliant older downtown friend named William S. Burroughs, and a joyful street cowboy from Denver named Neal Cassady.
Kerouac had already begun writing a novel, stylistically reminiscent of Thomas Wolfe, about the torments he was suffering as he tried to balance his wild city life with his old-world family values. His friends loved the manuscript, and Ginsberg asked his Columbia professors to help find a publisher for it. It would become Kerouac's first and most conventional novel, 'The Town and the City,' which earned him respect and some recognition as a writer, although it did not make him famous.
He decided to write about his cross-country trips exactly as they had happened, without pausing to edit, fictionalize or even think. He presented the resulting manuscript to his editor on a single long roll of unbroken paper, but the editor did not share his enthusiasm and the relationship was broken. Kerouac would suffer seven years of rejection before 'On The Road' would be published.
He spent the early 1950's writing one unpublished novel after another, carrying them around in a rucksack as he roamed back and forth across the country. He followed Ginsberg and Cassady to Berkeley and San Francisco, where he became close friends with the young Zen poet Gary Snyder. He found enlightenment through the Buddhist religion and tried to follow Snyder's lead in communing with nature. His excellent novel 'The Dharma Bums' describes a joyous mountain climbing trip he and Snyder went on in Yosemite in 1955, and captures the tentative, sometimes comic steps he and his friends were taking towards spiritual realization. His fellow starving writers were beginning to attract fame as the 'Beat Generation' a label Kerouac had invented years earlier during a conversation with fellow novelist John Clellon Holmes. Ginsberg and Snyder became underground celebrities in 1955 after the Six Gallery poetry reading in San Francisco. Since they and many of their friends regularly referred to Kerouac as the most talented writer among them, publishers began to express interest in the forlorn, unwanted manuscripts he carried in his rucksack wherever he went. 'On The Road' was finally published in 1957, and when it became a tremendous popular success Kerouac did not know how to react.P> Like Kurt Cobain, another counter-culture celebrity who seemed to be truly (as opposed to fashionably) miserable, Kerouac expressed his unhappiness nakedly in his art and was not taken seriously. Despite the 'beatnik' stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950's began to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960's, Jack took pleasure in standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and became friendly with William F. Buckley.He moved back to California to live with his mother in Long Island, and would not stray from his mother for the rest of his life. He would continue to publish, and remained mentally alert and aware (though always drunken). But his works after 'Big Sur' displayed a disconnected soul, a human being sadly lost in his own curmudgeonly illusions.In the mid-1960's he married again, but this time to a maternalistic and older childhood acquaintance from small-town Lowell, Stella Sampas, who he hoped would help around the house as his mother entered old age. He moved back to Lowell with Stella and his mother, and then moved again with them to St. Petersburg, Florida. His health destroyed by drinking, he died at home in 1969. He was 47 years old.Ginsberg's influence on the literary culture and countercultures of America may continue forever. In 1943, while the baby boomers were still three years from conception, Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac planted the seeds of the Beat Generation in New York City. Eleven years later, Ginsberg relocated to San Francisco and joined the Bay Area's burgeoning literary scene, producing such classic poems as "Howl" and "America." He proclaimed in the former: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving/hysterical naked." He asked in the latter: "America when will you be angelic?" During the '60s, Ginsberg participated in Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, joined fellow Beat poets Gary Snyder and Michael McClure to lead the crowd in chanting "OM" at the 1967 San Francisco Be-In, and was a key figure in the anti-war movement. In 1994, Ginsberg sold his letters, journals, photos, old tennis shoes, and snippets of his beard to Stanford University for $1 million."I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America . Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma . . . distributed monies to poor poets & nourished imaginative genius of the land Sat silent in jazz roar writing poetry with an ink pen-- wasn't afraid of God or Death after his 48th year"--Allen Ginsberg "Ego Confession" San Francisco, October 1974A Brief Biography Allen Ginsberg, b. Newark, N.J., June 3, 1926, was an American poet and leading apostle of the beat generation. His first published work, 'Howl and Other Poems' (1956), sparked the San Francisco Renaissance and defined the generation of the '50s with an authority and vision that had not occurred in the United States since T. S. Eliot captured the anxiety of the 1920s in 'The Waste Land'. Ginsberg's bardic rage against material values, however, was in a voice very different from Eliot's scholarly mourning for the loss of the spirit. In his second major work, Kaddish (1961), a poem on the anniversary of his mother's death, Ginsberg described their anguished relationship. In the 1960s, while vigorously participating in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he published several poetic works, including Reality Sandwiches (1963) and Planet News (1969). The Fall of America received the National Book Award for 1974. Collected Poems, 1947-85 (1995) contains all of his important work; White Shroud (1987) includes poems from the 1980s. Ginsberg sees himself as a part of the prophetic tradition in poetry begun by William Blake and continued by Walt Whitman. He names his contemporary influences as William Carlos Williams and his friend Jack Kerouac.The events that Ginsberg played an important part in is almost unbelievably huge. He participated in Ken Kesey's Acid Test Festivals in San Francisco, and helped Kesey break the ice between the San Francisco hippies and the antagonistic Hell's Angels. In the summer of 1965 Ginsberg made a seminal trip to London with several other Beat figures. Their reading at the Royal Albert Hall signalled the beginning of the London underground scene, based at the UFO Club, from which bands like Pink Floyd and The Soft Machine would emerge. Bob Dylan often cited Ginsberg as one of the few literary figures he could stand. Ginsberg can be seen standing in the alley in the background of Dylan's 1965 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' video, and would later play a major part in Dylan's 1977 film 'Renaldo and Clara.' Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure led the crowd in chanting 'OM' at the San Fransisco Be-In in 1967. Ginsberg, Burroughs, Jean Genet and Terry Southern were key figures at the Chicago Democratic Convention antiwar protests in 1968. One of the only radical events of the Sixties that Ginsberg was not a part of was the Stonewall gay uprising, and Ginsberg showed up at the site the next day to offer his support. He died in 1997 at the age of 83.
His fellow starving writers were beginning to attract fame as the 'Beat Generation' a label Kerouac had invented years earlier during a conversation with fellow novelist John Clellon Holmes. Ginsberg and Snyder became underground celebrities in 1955 after the Six Gallery poetry reading in San Francisco. Since they and many of their friends regularly referred to Kerouac as the most talented writer among them, publishers began to express interest in the forlorn, unwanted manuscripts he carried in his rucksack wherever he went. 'On The Road' was finally published in 1957, and when it became a tremendous popular success Kerouac did not know how to react.P>
Like Kurt Cobain, another counter-culture celebrity who seemed to be truly (as opposed to fashionably) miserable, Kerouac expressed his unhappiness nakedly in his art and was not taken seriously.
Despite the 'beatnik' stereotype, Kerouac was a political conservative, especially when under the influence of his Catholic mother. As the beatniks of the 1950's began to yield their spotlight to the hippies of the 1960's, Jack took pleasure in standing against everything the hippies stood for. He supported the Vietnam War and became friendly with William F. Buckley.
He moved back to California to live with his mother in Long Island, and would not stray from his mother for the rest of his life. He would continue to publish, and remained mentally alert and aware (though always drunken). But his works after 'Big Sur' displayed a disconnected soul, a human being sadly lost in his own curmudgeonly illusions.
In the mid-1960's he married again, but this time to a maternalistic and older childhood acquaintance from small-town Lowell, Stella Sampas, who he hoped would help around the house as his mother entered old age. He moved back to Lowell with Stella and his mother, and then moved again with them to St. Petersburg, Florida. His health destroyed by drinking, he died at home in 1969. He was 47 years old.
Ginsberg's influence on the literary culture and countercultures of America may continue forever. In 1943, while the baby boomers were still three years from conception, Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac planted the seeds of the Beat Generation in New York City. Eleven years later, Ginsberg relocated to San Francisco and joined the Bay Area's burgeoning literary scene, producing such classic poems as "Howl" and "America." He proclaimed in the former: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving/hysterical naked." He asked in the latter: "America when will you be angelic?" During the '60s, Ginsberg participated in Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, joined fellow Beat poets Gary Snyder and Michael McClure to lead the crowd in chanting "OM" at the 1967 San Francisco Be-In, and was a key figure in the anti-war movement. In 1994, Ginsberg sold his letters, journals, photos, old tennis shoes, and snippets of his beard to Stanford University for $1 million.
"I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America . Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma . . . distributed monies to poor poets & nourished imaginative genius of the land Sat silent in jazz roar writing poetry with an ink pen-- wasn't afraid of God or Death after his 48th year"--Allen Ginsberg "Ego Confession" San Francisco, October 1974
A Brief Biography
Allen Ginsberg, b. Newark, N.J., June 3, 1926, was an American poet and leading apostle of the beat generation. His first published work, 'Howl and Other Poems' (1956), sparked the San Francisco Renaissance and defined the generation of the '50s with an authority and vision that had not occurred in the United States since T. S. Eliot captured the anxiety of the 1920s in 'The Waste Land'.
Ginsberg's bardic rage against material values, however, was in a voice very different from Eliot's scholarly mourning for the loss of the spirit. In his second major work, Kaddish (1961), a poem on the anniversary of his mother's death, Ginsberg described their anguished relationship.
In the 1960s, while vigorously participating in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he published several poetic works, including Reality Sandwiches (1963) and Planet News (1969). The Fall of America received the National Book Award for 1974. Collected Poems, 1947-85 (1995) contains all of his important work; White Shroud (1987) includes poems from the 1980s. Ginsberg sees himself as a part of the prophetic tradition in poetry begun by William Blake and continued by Walt Whitman. He names his contemporary influences as William Carlos Williams and his friend Jack Kerouac.
The events that Ginsberg played an important part in is almost unbelievably huge. He participated in Ken Kesey's Acid Test Festivals in San Francisco, and helped Kesey break the ice between the San Francisco hippies and the antagonistic Hell's Angels. In the summer of 1965 Ginsberg made a seminal trip to London with several other Beat figures. Their reading at the Royal Albert Hall signalled the beginning of the London underground scene, based at the UFO Club, from which bands like Pink Floyd and The Soft Machine would emerge. Bob Dylan often cited Ginsberg as one of the few literary figures he could stand.
Ginsberg can be seen standing in the alley in the background of Dylan's 1965 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' video, and would later play a major part in Dylan's 1977 film 'Renaldo and Clara.' Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure led the crowd in chanting 'OM' at the San Fransisco Be-In in 1967. Ginsberg, Burroughs, Jean Genet and Terry Southern were key figures at the Chicago Democratic Convention antiwar protests in 1968. One of the only radical events of the Sixties that Ginsberg was not a part of was the Stonewall gay uprising, and Ginsberg showed up at the site the next day to offer his support. He died in 1997 at the age of 83.
