The Pioneers of the intellectual Hippies - The Beat Generation
The "Beat" first emerged as an American literature direction after the end of the Second World War. Only a few other literary movements came with such as sustainable impact on Postmodernism. Authors such as Jack Keruac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs coined this time. We present this exciting decade, which was a trailblazer for the hippies of the 1960s.
Some say that Beat represents a battered, tired generation. Jack Kerouac, the most dazzling personality of the Beat generation, gave the name a religious meaning: "beatific" (blessed). Ultimately, the Beat generation was a pop rebellion against the morose bourgeois society of the post-war period. The Beatniks parted. They wore shabby clothes and exhibited strange manners. They drew their own vocabulary from the hip jazz musicians, as well as some notions of jag ones. All this led to a rebellion against the American society characterized by materialism.
Jack Kerouac wrote the main production of the Beat generation „On the Roads“. It is still sold a thousand times nowadays and enjoys great popularity. It depicts life in poverty and hitchhiking through America. These journeys were always a search for meaning and an attempt in view of self-discovery. The hitchhiker's existence as a life experience, so to say.
As the first modern literary subculture, the Beat generation shaped the literature and the culture sustainably. This also led to musical improvisations from jazz at a faster pace. Here one had one's finger on the pulse of the time. They also experimented a lot with styles and languages. Allan Ginsberg wrote the poem "Howl" to which obscenity was accused. The novel "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs also came to court. In the end, the two works contributed to the liberation of the United States by means of acquittal of freed ways of publishing.
In San Francisco, there is still a bookstore where you can still feel a bit of the unconventional and chaotic time. The City Lights Bookstore by Lawrence Ferlinghetti was one of those who published the provocative texts of the Beat generation 60 years ago. A visit to the nostalgic-looking bookshop is worthwhile.
