THE BEAT GENERATION

WHO THEY WERE AND WHY THEY INLFUENCED KEN KESEY

Beat generation refers to the men and women poets, writers, thinkers, and philosophers who
emerged on the hip scene in the 1940s and ballooned into the New York and San Francisco
Renaissance and beyond (including post-modernism. This is what the beats did; they went
against mainstream, traditional writing, but not because they were rebellious. They simply
developed a new way of writing, a “New Vision” (their own early label) while in search of
expressing something basic in their nature that seemed to involve seeking more than the
“normal” life. They wanted to break with traditions like marriage, ordinary jobs, and other
“normal” societal expectations. Ironically, many beats did marry (and divorce), did hold jobs
(although usually temporarily - for money to get them to the next place-, and did adhere to the
faiths and philosophies they had been raised with–although they also were spiritual traveler into
Buddhism and visionary experiences.

The original beats emerged in the 40s, and were a small group of friends, consisting of Allen
Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Joan Vollmer Adams, William Burroughs, Edie Parker, Herbert Huncke,
John Clellon Holmes, and a few others. Initially, this group began to fade out. After the war, the
“beat generation” took on a more distinct meaning as these beats, including Jack Kerouac, began
defining themselves, and publishing their writings. It was Kerouac who coined the term “beat
generation,” and Holmes who eventually wrote “This is the Beat Generation,” which may have
helped put the label into some kind of definition. Kerouac, after his success with On the Road,
often spoke to the press about the beat generation, trying to set things straight, to give meaning
and reason for it that the public would understand. But the public didn’t really understand right
away, nor were they too receptive to the beats.

In 1955, Ginsberg went to San Francisco to meet Rexroth and the other poets, and wrote “Howl,”
a long poem that was considered controversial by many. On October 7, 1955, Ginsberg read
“Howl” at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was at the Six Gallery
that night loved what he heard in Ginsberg’s “Howl” and offered to publish it at City Lights, his
own publishing company. In turn, Ferlinghetti was charged for selling an obscene book. He
fought back and later won. The reading at the Six Gallery is often seen as a milestone for the
beats, and some say it is the night the beat generation began.

Who the beats were and what they did is largely documented in their own writings. Eventually,
more movements were formed, such as the “hippies,” which had their roots in the beats. Some of
the beats, such as Ginsberg and Cassady, evolved right along with the times and were well-
known for participating in Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Ginsberg, Cassady, Corso, Whalen,
Burroughs, Kerouac, and others have died throughout these past few decades. Many beats fell
into alcoholism or drug addiction, which affected their ability to write and stay focused on their
earlier searching through the road of life for meaning and at times “paradise.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was San Francisco’s first poet laureate, in 1997. Michael McClure stays
active, and is currently working with the keyboardist of the Doors, Ray Manzarek, on spoken
word CDs and music. Gary Snyder lives is an English professor at UC Davis (CA) and is an
“ecowarrier,” enjoying a life as an activist for the environment and a key to his family’s and
community’s well-being. Joanne Kyger is getting more attention as a renowned poet with a
meticulous voice and a history of experience to reflect upon.

The beat generation was a phenomenon that is regarded as a great and moving cluster of
individuals who changed culture, literature, and history in their flight. Beat classes are becoming
more popular in universities, online forums are devoted to discussions of the beats, beat-related
books and products have their highest sales ever, and so on. The beats, once alive, are still alive.
The beat generation, a wide array of various individuals, is much more expansive than the big
trio of Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg. Because the majority of beats are still alive, still
publishing, and influential in the writings of many younger people, it’s difficult to propose that
the beat generation ever stopped. Its media eyeball has been greatly distorted, and because of
this, we either must remove the media myths or create our own.
William Burroughs
Thursday, April 9th, 2009

“Watch what everyone is doing, and don’t do it.”

Born: February 5, 1914, St. Louis, Missouri

Died: August 2, 1997, Lawrence, Kansas

If you ever listen to William S. Burroughs’ readings of Dr. Benway or Twilight’s Last
Gleamings, you’ll realize his sardonic humor that strikes an immediate cynical chord with the
audience. You’ll laugh, because Burroughs is funny. I guess he’s a bit weird, too, but not so alien
or out there that it’s impossible to relate to his mindset. He edges on the planet, with a couple
feet here and there, but for all that’s been written about him, I think that he’s rather infectiously
part of folks’ thoughts–whether or not we care to admit it.

Unlike some of the other beats, who were born into various forms of struggle and poverty,
Burroughs was born into comfort. His grandfather had invented the adding machine, and his
uncle Ivy Lee actually was Hitler’s publicist and an image-builder to John D. Rockefeller Jr.,
after the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. Burroughs thoughts of the Nazi regime were that, according
to Word Virus (Grove Press), “When gangsters write the laws, as Burroughs was sure they did,
not only in the Third Reich but in most of the post-WWII West, ethics become fugitives, sanity
is branded madness, and the artist’s only option is total resistance.”

He was a thin, wrangly child–an outcast among “normal” children. Though very intelligent, he
was an early rebel against the status-quo. He was branded as a “problem child” in school and was
interested in drugs, homosexuality, trickery, and non-convention. After St. Louis, the family
lived in New Mexico, and Burroughs attended Los Alamos Ranch (he dropped out, but attended
Harvard later).

Three years after his graduation from Harvard, he went to Chicago and held a job as an
exterminator (see The Naked Lunch). Here, he hung out with dealers and let his imagination
grow. In 1943, he moved to New York, where his friend Lucien Carr was attending Columbia
University. This is where Burroughs also met Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Edie Parker, and
his future common-law wife, Joan Vollmer. Documented essays and biographies of the beats tell
that these times in NYC in the early 1940s comprised the “real” beginning of the beat generation.
The West Coast variety was alive too, with political poetry and underground presses–but this
initial gang, also including Herbert Huncke, who Burroughs met in New York City, had not yet
gotten to know the poets in San Francisco. It was out of the
Kerouac/Burroughs/Ginsberg/Vollmer/Parker/Carr/Huncke clan that the words such as beatific,
seeking, and furtive came about.

Burroughs was older than the rest, and mentored the others’ writing styles. They were all seekers
of a new philosophy, and inspired by Rimbaud’s poetry (particularly “Seasons in Hell”)
attempted to put their literary and spiritual quests into a label or definition. They came up with a
“New Vision.” According to the Portable Beat Reader, Burroughs “discouraged their more
extravagant antics, like their candlelit exercises writing poetry with their own blood, and urged
them to read one of his favorite books, Oswald Spengler’s Decline and Fall of the West, in an
effort to help them develop a more substantial historical context for their New Vision.”

Burroughs, though discouraging seemingly “more extravagant antics,” of his younger peers, was
on a darker trail. He became addicted to heroin, and did what most junkies will do: sell prized
possessions for more dope. He sold his typewriter in 1954, and wrote longhand. His addiction to
heroin lasted 15 years.

In 1951, he was living in Mexico with Joan Vollmer. There was a party. I’ve heard variations of
the story (he was attempting to shoot a glass of champagne, no, of water, etc.) off Joan’s head.
This was his “William Tell” act. He missed, and Joan died. This one act, though Burroughs got
off easily with the aid of a lawyer, dug at him his whole life. They had great familiarity, and their
minds clicked, and they loved each other; he was heartbroken about this event. Perhaps not
heartbroken in the typical sense, for there’s not much typical to Burroughs–but he was not an
alien, and Joan’s death affected him greatly. His writing was influenced by her thereafter, and he
grieved her loss like anyone would grieve the loss of a loved one.

Thirty-three years after this event, Burroughs finally wrote about it in his introduction to Queer:
“[the death] brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a
lifelong struggle, in which I have no choice except to write my way out.”

Burroughs left the country after Joan’s death, and until 1973, lived as an expatriate. During this
time, he traveled extensively, wrote, and collaborated with Brion Gysin in the cut-up
methodology. After returning to the United States, he met James Grauerholz, who would become
Burroughs’ biographer–and who helped Burroughs create some of his extravagant characters,
such as Dr. Benway. Later in Burroughs life, he infected punk music and musicians such as Patti
Smith, acted in movies (such as The Drugstore Cowboy), went on the television show Saturday
Night Live, and went down the path that other beats went: into further subcultures, further paths,
and further media.

Burroughs was a genius, really, who developed his own perspective of the world at a very young
age, and who continued his sneer against conformity up until his dying day, when he smoked the
“sacred herb” (August, 1997).
Allow me to stop here and put Burroughs into the “beat category,” which is an awful label in one
way–but which exists nonetheless. The beats, as we call them now, did form a bond that was
more closely tied to a central conciousness than to similarity in writing styles. Burroughs was
nothing like Gary Snyder, for example. Burroughs seemed dark, comparably, and was coming
from the East Coast circle of beats of peers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and
Herbert Huncke. He was an alien. Snyder, from the West Coast poetry scene, was lighter,
completely immersed in nature and culture. Their approaches were different. But one thing in
common with these types of beat personalities is that the way, or dao, was off the beaten path.
To be beat, simply, to me seems to be off the path–writers who go off into their own style of
wilderness to see what is out there and to come back to express what they found.

Neal Cassady
Thursday, April 9th, 2009

“I am sitting in a bar on Market St. I’m drunk, well, not quite, but I soon will be. I am here for 2
reasons; I must wait 5 hours for the bus to Denver & lastly but, most importantly, I’m here
(drinking) because, of course, because of a woman & what a woman! To be chronological about
it…”

Born: 1926, Salt Lake City, Utah

Died: 1968, San Miguel de Allande, Mexico

Photo credit: Larry Keenan

Neal Cassady was the famous Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s On the Road. Kerouac described Neal
Cassady and friend Allen Ginsberg (Dean Moriarty and Carlo Marx) in the novel. “But then they
danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life
after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are
mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, but burn,
burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the
middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

Kerouac was incredibly impressed by Neal Cassady throughout the years, even though they lost
touch for the most part in the mid-sixties, after Kerouac began drinking more and after Cassady’s
troubles seemed to have multiplied. Yet, as younger men, they were fascinated with each other
and in touch more often. Many of Kerouac’s books, especially On the Road and Visions of Cody
were inspired by Cassady, who took to the road like a madman and wrote wordslinging, fresh
spontaneous letters.

Cassady was the Wolfeian adventure hero from Kerouac’s youth, come to life. Neal’s and Jack’s
“brotherhood” seemed to be a resurrected symbol of Kerouac’s lost brotherhood with his Gerard,
who had died when Kerouac was only nine. Also, Kerouac was sympathetic to Cassady’s dreams
to find his father, who had been a drunk in Denver, in and out of jail (much like Dean’s own
experiences). From The Americans, in which there is also a passage from Kerouac’s Visions of
Cody, it’s all about Dean going home, which is metaphorical, since Dean’s “home” seemed to be
the road, and the search for the expanse of paradise from the road.

Cassady settled down (for the most part) with his wife Carolyn and their three children, near San
Francisco, and worked many jobs, including one as a brakeman. Though his visions were to be a
family man and support his wife and children, that wasn’t often the case.

Kerouac often stayed with the Cassadys during his road travels, and became very close to the
entire family. He adored Carolyn and the three children. Neal and family are mentioned in
several books, including the above two mentioned, Big Sur, and Desolation Angels.

In his later years, Cassady joined Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, along with Allen Ginsberg, and
also suffered an arrest and conviction relating to marijuana possession, which was the final straw
with his marriage to Carolyn. Toward the end of his life, he still visited Carolyn and his
children–yet was going downhill, even mentally. Carolyn’s book describes a scene wherein Neal
came home and took a shower, and became very delusional. Neal died after falling asleep on
some railroad tracks in Mexico. Many books were written about Cassady, but his only novel,
The Fist Third, went unfinished and unpublished until after he died.
Allen Ginsberg
Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Go fuck yourself with the atom bomb…

-America

Born: June 3, 1926, Newark, New Jersey

Died: April 5, 1997, New York City, New York

Photo credit: Larry Keenan

Allen’s upbringing in Paterson, New Jersey was in a strict Jewish family. He had an older
brother named Eugene . However, Allen’s mother Naomi had a profound impact on Allen, and
he fashioned much of his poetry after her. A schizophrenic, Naomi had at times been able to
manage her disease and remain politically and normally active. By the time Allen was very
young, a toddler still, his mother had a significant relapse and spent the rest of her life in and out
of sanatoriums. Times that she returned home, Allen witnessed her odd paranoid delusions, her
raves and rants, her walking about the house naked. Allen sometimes skipped school to take care
of her. To witness this madness early on in his life, and to deal with it, brought on a distorted
sense of his own being: Allen was afraid that he himself would go nuts, he missed his mother’s
sanity and previous loving warmth, and he became needy and misunderstanding of how someone
could change so much–as well, he could not fill in the hole of the loss of her. However, such
early toughness had a reversed positive effect on Allen. In turn, he cared deeply for others who
were in trouble, and he found a great cushion in writing–one that helped him deal with the hard
turns of life he’d experienced. I, and many writers, can relate to this one facet of words: they can
bring out the inner demons, express things so privately that may not have another outlet, and be
therapeutical. Though this last sentence is true to an extent, not many can turn “diary entries”
into poems. There’s also a craft involved in poetry, which Allen knew about.

As a teenager he began to plan for college, and decided on Columbia University in New York.–
He originally planned to become a lawyer, but turned to studying literature after being influenced
by a couple of men in the English Department who had become mentors to him. In New York (is
this an odd twist of fate that ultimately changed American history, or what?), he became close to
a circle of writers, which included William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Lucien Carr. This one
facet of a chance point in time, in which three great writers, the trilogy of Burroughs-Kerouac-
Ginsberg, is nearly coincidental, it seems. In Ann Charters’ book, The Portable Beat Reader, she
discusses “generations” of writers and says that they are more inclined to form a “movement” by
commonality in temporal, not spatial or geographical, ties. That these three great future writers
initially met through a circle of peers at one university–and all men just happening there for
different reasons–may not be so mystically fate-ish, but it does seem to be a fortunate act of
perfect timing.

As is said often, you can never ignore the social context when it comes to understanding why
certain people are magnets for each other. They sometimes share common views on what the
world is about, or has been about, or will be about, or–more importantly, in this case–what the
world should and could be about. In 1945, the United States was at the end of World War II, and
so the good life of American prosperity was in the cards. But, everything didn’t jump to a
nirvana state; there were also fears of Communists and nuclear war, and a far way to go with
issues such as civil rights. Popping up through the seams of the seemingly rich new fabric of
America were the phenomena that ignited the beat generation, or at least suffused with it: new
jazz, such as Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk; junkies like Herbert Huncke beating around
Times Square; and drugs like Benzedrine and pot becoming more popular. Too, again, back to
the threads common among Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs: they had mad talks up all night
on Benzedrine; passionate discussions of their literary influences such as Dostoevsky, Rimbaud,
and Whitman; thoughts of how the new bebop sounds could be infused with the written
language. Later in the mid-fifties, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and others were also becoming hip to
haiku and use the of ellipse (or ellipsis) in poetry. Some of Allen’s “ellipsis influences” were
Paul Cezanne, William Blake, and Buddhist studies. But, mainly, in those early days was a
fervent, feverish seeking–excited by “discoveries”–and the recognition of the beatitude of their
times: beat up, beat out, divine.

During these times, there were other individuals who became part of their circle: Herbert
Huncke, Neal Cassady (who’d come to visit New York City, with his wife Luanne), and others.
Allen began seeing a therapist after suffering a mental breakdown and also worked at an ad
agency. For a while, he drifted around, and his therapist advised him to do what he wanted to do:
write poetry.

This led Allen out to San Francisco, meeting up again with Neal (who by this time was married
to Carolyn), and hanging out with some of the North Beach poets, such as Kenneth Rexroth and
Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Kerouac also came into the picture now and then, doing his own “Road”
stints.
Allen’s creative juices were fueled by the poets and friends he was hanging out with now. In
August of 1955, he attempted a spontaneous, or free, verse as he’d seen in Kerouac’s writings,
and began to type “Howl,” finding, once again, some kind of comfort in words that helped him
express his sadness and tough reality view of the downtrodden in America–the type of person he
must have thought he was as well. Just a couple months later, Allen and Kenneth Rexroth
organized the infamous “Six Gallery” reading at City Lights, at which Michael McClure, Gary
Snyder, Philip Lamantia, and Kenneth Rexroth would also read. Allen was urged to read
“Howl,” which he’d written back in August.
Allen’s “Howl” went down into history, beginning that night. It cried for the outcasts, it sang to
America, and it was so powerful that it became an enemy in the eyes of those who could not
accept or understand its meaning and honesty (such as words and ideas considered obscene). In
1956, Ferlinghetti published “Howl and Other Poems” in his Pocket Poet Series, and it was
confiscated by authorities, culminating in the arrest of Ferlinghetti and his City Lights partner
Shig Murao. Ralph McIntosh, the prosecuting attorney, had been set on removing obscenity
(nudity and other such “filth” from the city), and “Howl” fit in to his cause. However, the
American Civil Liberties Union bailed out Ferlinghetti, and other individuals such as Kenneth
Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, and author Walter Van Tilburg Clark supported the poem. The judge,
Clayton W. Horn, ruled that “Howl” had social importance and could not be ruled as obscene.
The book returned to bookstores, and although it wasn’t widely read back then–outside those
who’d supported it (or didn’t, but were curious), “Howl” has taken a place in our history–and
also propelled Allen’s further publishing.

Allen also was supporting his peers’ writing efforts (he helped Kerouac publish On the Road and
Burroughs publish Junky and Naked Lunch). He wrote “Sunflower Sutra” and “America”–other
“defiant” poems that were shunned by those who were in an outrage about the beats. He also
wrote “Kaddish” (see my review of Tony Trigilio’s critical analysis of Kaddish in his article
“Strange Prophecies Anew”).

In 1947, Allen had signed a release for his mother to have a lobotomy–a decision that may have
been the toughest in his life, and one that he struggled with long after. He’d sent his mother his
poem “Howl,” in 1956, and she died not long after–so although she was still supporting his
poetic efforts, Allen did not get to see her and have a long-lost reunion with her as he’d often
imagined. I think that Naomi’s death altered Allen to a big degree, and “Kaddish,” a tribute to his
mother, was a shift of passion toward her–not that it’d been lacking before, but that it came out
full force in his poetry.

As Tony Trigilio pointed out in his article “Strange Prophecies Anew,” Naomi’s voice was
muted in “Howl,” but in “Kaddish,” she was a central authority. The Kaddish, a Jewish prayer
traditionally chanted for 30 days by a loved one of the deceased–or for 11 months if the deceased
is a parent–is not a mourn for the dead but a praise of God’s glory. Allen had wanted to recite the
Kaddish at his mother’s graveside, but was not allowed to. His poem was not the “traditional”
Kaddish, but a poetic one that was seen as a revised prayer, not a conventional one. Allen’s
poem, to me, is one of the most honorable things he ever wrote, and I think of him as a true
“Kaddishel”–a son who continued to honor his mother after death, in the expression he had come
to know best: poetry.
Allen continued to write poetry as he naturally and easily transitioned into “movements” that
came after the beat generation.

His good friend Neal Cassady died in 1968, on some railroad tracks in Mexico. Jack Kerouac
died a year later. Kerouac had publicly uttered anti-Semitic crushing words about Allen Ginsberg
during a time late in Kerouac’s life when his alcoholic demise and his mother’s racial ideals
influenced him more than his ties to his friends. That Ginsberg forgave these slurs, knowing their
origins, is one hot point for Allen, I think. Allen also helped create the Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poets at Naropa Institute.

Ginsberg’s transition into the sixties, and his poetry up until then and after then, made a big
impact of cultural “heroes” who were popping into the scene. Bob Dylan, for instance, used
much of the beat essence to form his own artistic expression. John Lennon had read many beat
writings as a student in Liverpool, and he changed the name from “Beetles” to “Beatles” to
reflect the influence of the beats. The “hippie” generation following the beats may have been
foreseen and somewhat defined by the beats. According to the Rolling Stone Book of the Beats,
“hippie” was a term coined by the beats, and the term “flower-power” was coined by Allen
Ginsberg.

Allen continued his political activism into the sixties and beyond, denouncing the Vietnam War,
helping to organize Chicago’s Festival of Life (with the Black Panthers, Jerry Rubin, Abbie
Hoffman, and others), and working with Timothy Leary to publicly support the use of LSD in the
context of the “egalitarian ideal,” the expanse of one’s mind in order to enhance expression and
thought.

Allen died in April, 1997 of complications surrounding liver cancer. Although Allen had been
sick, only a week before his death he found that his cancer had taken a turn for the worse–as in
he didn’t have long to live at all. During that last week of his life, he wrote a series of poems
about his life. One of these, “Death and Fame,” is part of a volume of poetry by the same name,
which has recently been reviewed on this site by Adrien Begrand.

The class and grace and predictable warmth (and even humor) with which Allen faced his last
few days was full of cherished sentiment and good friends. He was surrounded by those whom
he’d loved, and who loved him. He also talked with William Burroughs (who sadly died short of
just four months later, on August 2.