To call the Beat writers, this relatively small group of struggling writers, students, hustlers, and drug addicts a "generation" was to make the claim that they were representative and important—the beginnings of a new trend, to the Lost Generation. The members of the beat generation were new bohemian libertines, who engaged in a spontaneous, sometimes messy, creativity. The beat writers produced a body of written work controversial for its non-conformity and for its non-conforming style. The Beat Generation itself has had a huge influence on Western Culture overall, larger than just the effects of some writers and artists on other writers and artists. During the very conformist post-World War II era they were one of the forces engaged in questioning traditional values which produced a break with the mainstream culture that to this day people react against it. There's no question that Beats produced a great deal of interest in lifestyle experimentation ( in regards to sex and drugs); and they had a large intellectual effect in questioning authority.
The essence of the phrase "beat generation" may be found in On the Road with the celebrated phrase: "Everything belongs to me because I am poor."
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The beat generation was a lifestyle that would be great if it was brought back. These artists were taken as complete jokes but they are creative and their way of thinking and writing was what cannnot be reproduced.
ReplyDeletethanks ash!
ReplyDeleteI think they were a pack of posturing degenerates who did more harm than good. My father was somewhat influenced by them and it didn't help his sanity which, with the help of neurological damage from a childhood bout of scarlet fever and the stresses from my biological so called mother a psychopath, went over the edge into a psych ward two or three times. If he hadn't been interested in that nonsense, he might have avoided the bitch, since he thought she resembled Virginia Hill, and he was probably an admirer of Bugsy Siegel. Siegel wasn't a beat, but it was beat consistent to admire a gangster. (I take after him a lot so would probably have been pretty much the same but better with a different mother.)
ReplyDeleteThe beat impact on society of questioning traditional values just added to the crime wave, to legitimizing the love 'em and leave 'em attitude of sexual exploitation, and of course all kinds of decadence. The influence of this culture and surrealism which is back of it, is evident in some super wealthy people who run the world's economy and not for the better, who may pretend to be Christians Jews or whatever but in fact are often closet satanists or at least functioning atheists. There seemed to be a bisexuality among some beats also. The radical self centeredness is no good for any society. And a lot of the art was garbage.