Beat Generation: Influences and influence

See also the companion article Beat Generation: Elements The Beat Generation is a group of American post-WWII 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 experimentation with drugs and alternative forms of sexuality, an interest in Eastern religion (WP), a rejection of materialism, and the idealizing of exuberant, unexpurgated means of expression and being.

Allen Ginsberg's (WP) Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs' (WP) Naked Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's (WP) On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature. Both Howl and Naked Lunch were the defenders in obscenity prosecutions whose defeat 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-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

The original "Beat Generation" writers met in New York. Later, the central figures (with the exception of Burroughs) ended up together in San Francisco in the mid-1950s 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 (WP) counterculture.

 

Romanticism
Gregory Corso worshiped Percy Bysshe Shelley as a hero and was buried at the foot of Shelley's Grave in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. Ginsberg mentions Shelley's Adonais at the beginning of 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.

Ginsberg's most important Romantic influence was William Blake. Blake was the subject of Ginsberg's self-defining auditory hallucination and revelation in 1948. Ginsberg would study Blake all his life. The first time Michael McClure met Ginsberg, they talked about Blake: McClure saw him as a revolutionary; Ginsberg saw him as a prophet. John Keats was also cited as an influence.

Early American sources
 

Important American inspirations for the Beats included 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 Cailfornia"). Edgar Allan Poe is occasionally acknowledged, and Ginsberg claimed Emily Dickinson was an influence on Beat poetry. The novel You Can't Win by Jack Black had a strong influence on Burroughs.

French Surrealism
Surrealism (WP) was still in many ways a vital movement in the 1950s. Carl Solomon introduced the work of Antonin Artaud to Ginsberg, and the poetry of André Breton had direct influence on the 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.

Philip Lamantia introduced surrealist poetry to the original Beats. 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 Marcel Duchamp Ginsberg kissed his shoe and Corso cut off his tie. Other shared Beat interests were Guillaume Apollinaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire.

Modernism
Though the Beat aesthetic posited itself against T. S. Eliot's creed of strict objectivity and literary modernism's new classicism, certain modernist poets were major influences on the Beats, including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and H.D.. Pound was specifically important to Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg.

William Carlos Williams was an influence on many of the Beats, with his encouragement to speak with an American voice instead of imitating the European poetic voice and European forms. When Williams came to Reed College to give a lecture, then students Snyder, Whalen, and Welch were deeply impressed. Williams was a personal mentor to Allen Ginsberg, both being from Patterson, New Jersey.

Williams published several of Ginsberg's letters to him in his epic poem Paterson and wrote an introduction to two of Ginsberg's books. And many of the Beats (Ginsberg specifically) helped promote Williams' writing. Ferlinghetti's City Lights published a volume of his poetry.

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

Influences on Western culture
While many authors claim to be directly influenced by the Beats, the Beat Generation phenomenon itself has had a pervasive influence on Western culture more broadly.

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


 * 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, 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 on 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 as against 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"
The term "Beatnik" was coined by Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle on 2 April 1958, a portmanteau on 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". 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 bongos, while free-spirited women wearing black leotards dance.

An early example of the "beatnik stereotype" occurred in Vesuvio's (a bar in North Beach) 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 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. 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. "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. (1959–63)

While some of the original Beats embraced the beatniks, or at least found the parodies humorous (Ginsberg, for example, appreciated the parody in Pogo ) others criticized the beatniks as inauthentic posers. 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.

"Hippies"
During the 1950s, aspects of the Beat movement metamorphosed into The Sixties Counterculture, accompanied by a shift in terminology from "(WP) to "hippie" (WP). 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 60s protest movements as an excuse to be "spiteful"

There were stylistic differences between beatniks and hippies – somber colors, dark shades, and goatees gave way to colorful psychedelic clothing and long hair. The beats were known for "playing it cool" (keeping a low profile) but the hippies became known for "being cool" (displaying their individuality).

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.

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) and Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues).

William Burroughs is considered a forefather of postmodern literature; he also inspired the cyberpunk genre.

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

Since 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.

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 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 (poet), Andy Clausen, David Cope, Eileen Myles, Eliot Katz, Paul Beatty, Sapphire (author), Lesl&eacute;a Newman, Jim Cohn, 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, and Lennon was a fan of Jack Kerouac. Ginsberg later met and became friends with members of the Beatles. Paul McCartney played guitar on Ginsberg's album Ballad of the Skeletons.

Ginsberg was close friends with Bob Dylan 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". Michael McClure was also friends with members of The Doors, at one point touring with keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

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

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. He later collaborated with Burroughs on the theatrical work The Black Rider.

There was a resurgence of interest in the beats among bands in the 1980s. Ginsberg worked with the Clash. Burroughs worked with Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Kurt Cobain, and Ministry, amongst others. Bono of U2 cites Burroughs as a major influence, and Burroughs appeared briefly in a U2 video in 1997. Laurie Anderson featured Burroughs on her 1984 album Mister Heartbreak and in her 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave. King Crimson produced the album Beat inspired by the Beat Generation.

"Mods"
 

Influences
Sociologist Simon Frith asserts that the mod subculture had its roots in the 1950s beatnik coffee bar culture, which catered to art school students in the radical bohemian scene in London. Steve Sparks, who claims to be one of the original mods, agrees that before mod became commercialised, it was essentially an extension of the beatnik culture: "It comes from ‘modernist’, it was to do with modern jazz and to do with Sartre" and existentialism. Sparks argues that "Mod has been much misunderstood... as this working-class, scooter-riding precursor of skinheads."

Two other scholars give a slightly different take: Dick Hebdige claims that the progenitors of the mod subculture "appear to have been a group of working-class dandies, possibly descended from the devotees of the Italianite [fashion] style." Mary Anne Long disagrees, stating that "first hand accounts and contemporary theorists point to the Jewish upper-working or middle-class of London’s East End and suburbs."

WWII wartime legislation had kept (and still does), Public houses closed by 11 pm; coffee bars were attractive to British youths, because, they were open until the early hours of the morning. Coffee bars had jukeboxes, which in some cases reserved some of the space in the machines for the students' own records. In the late 1950s, coffee bars were associated with jazz and blues, but in the early 1960s, they began playing more R&B music. Frith notes that although coffee bars were originally aimed at middle-class art school students, they began to facilitate an intermixing of youths from different backgrounds and classes. At these venues, which Frith calls the "first sign of the youth movement", youths would meet collectors of R&B and blues records, who introduced them to new types of African-American music, which the teens were attracted to for its rawness and authenticity. They also watched French and Italian art films and read Italian magazines to look for style ideas. According to Hebdige, the mod subculture gradually accumulated the identifying symbols that later came to be associated with the scene, such as scooters, amphetamine pills, and music.

Criticism
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. 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, specifically addressing the charge that the Beats destroyed "the distinction between life and literature." "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&mdash;Proust, Wolfe, Faulkner, Joyce."

Internal criticism
In a 1974 interview, Gary Snyder comments on the subject of "casualties" of the Beat Generation:

"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."

The Beats comment on the Beat Generation

 * "The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked."
 * - Amiri Baraka


 * "John Clellon Holmes... and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said 'You know John, this is really a beat generation'; and he leapt up and said, 'That's it, that's right!'"
 * - Jack Kerouac


 * "But yet, but yet, woe, woe unto those who think that the Beat Generation means crime, delinquency, immorality, amorality ... woe unto those who attack it on the grounds that they simply don’t understand history and the yearning of human souls ... woe in fact unto those who make evil movies about the Beat Generation where innocent housewives are raped by beatniks! ... woe unto those who spit on the Beat Generation, the wind’ll blow it back."
 * - Jack Kerouac


 * Three writers do not a generation make.
 * - Gregory Corso (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

Films about the Beat Generation

 * Jack Kerouac (wrote), Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie (directed) Pull My Daisy (1958)
 * Richard Lerner and Lewis MacAdams (directed) Whatever Happened To Kerouac? (1986) Documentary.
 * Chuck Workman (wrote and directed) The Source (1999)
 * Gary Walkow (wrote and directed) Beat (2000)
 * Allen Ginsberg Live in London (1995)
 * Howl (2010)

General Beat Generation pages

 * Biographies of Beat Generation writers, artists, & poets
 * Beat Generation and Bohemian Culture – the movement at digihitch
 * Kerouac Alley – Beat Generation directory
 * Beat Generation biographies and historical information
 * How Beat Happened by Steve Silberman (the Beat Generation in San Francisco)
 * Invisible Empires of Beatitude
 * Invisible Empires of Beatitude

Beat tourism pages

 * Denver Beat Photo Tour
 * Beats In Kansas: The Beat Generation in the Heartland
 * From Beatnik to Anarchist, in the town where William S. Burroughs died
 * Lowell Celebrates Kerouac!

Photographs

 * Beat Generation photographs (starting in 1965) by Larry Keenan
 * Photos, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Patti Smith
 * 421 W 118th Street Building where Joan Vollmer Adams & Edie Parker lived
 * 419 W 115th Street – "The Cragsmoor" another building where Joan Vollmer Adams lived.
 * Photos, Neal Cassady Sr. Gravesite
 * Photos, Jack Kerouac's Last House, St. Petersburg, FL
 * Photos of the Kerouac Gas Station in Longmont, CO
 * A Photographic Essay of Beat Generation Landmarks in New York City
 * Beat Memories - slideshow by The New York Times