BITE INTO THIS BEAT

I stumbled upon John Clellon Holmes’ 1952 article that appeared in the New York Times Magazine titled ‘This is the Beat Generation’ (http://www.litkicks.com/Texts/ThisIsBeatGen.html ). It could be because I was fishing for ideas that are driving our generation and where else would a noob fish, but Google. To my surprise, the “Beat” culture answered some of the most intriguing questions of all times: it fills the gap of understanding between society which was conformist and conservative and which later became increasingly promiscuous. Let’s begin…

‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness’ open Allen Ginsberg’s eulogy to an era in his poem, Howl (1955). A whole new ‘madness’ had swept a generation after T.S. Eliot had established that the early twentieth century suffered from a ‘loss of faith’. This generation was born from the lap of a moral sludge into what was called The Beat Generation. It was the Beat Generation that paved the way to the Hippie Culture that was so effervescent in the 60s and 70s.

The 1950’s saw an uprising in literature- a literary trend that was soon to become a cultural movement. Writers like Jack Karouac were central to the phenomenon. The Beat Generation capitalized on the ‘experience’ factor. A whole new raw sense of incorporating sex, drugs and alcohol- not in order to rebel- but in order to ‘experience’ something is what drove a generation amidst Capitalism. Karouac writes of America in his novel ‘On the Road’; deconstructing youth as people who wish to move out and travel, who feel a sense of independence and empowerment in questioning what is considered the norm and in effect, establishing their own brand of individuality.

Although these turn of events can be attributed to post-war (world war II) reactions which saw madness as a sane alternative to violence, and which stopped questioning human existence after a while, but rather fixated on how to enrich it- there was something more important that the generation achieved that was previously denied after the war: freedom. And so, though ‘beat’ can be read as weary and mowed down, it could also, as Karouac puts it, mean beatific.

 There was a no-holds bar approach to sexuality. Experience was accompanied by experiment- and the sexual experimentation of the age is written about in elaboration- there was an attempt to shake the order of things and as seen by all revolutions, this one met with a constant call for censorship too. Being bold, sometimes even gruesome, was part of the deal.  William S. Borroughs wrote ‘Naked Lunch’ in the 50s which is heavy-duty in obscene language. Writers deliberately inserted this to reinforce the crudity of the age.

Bob Dylan wrote ‘the order is rapidly fadin’/ and the first now will be later last’ in Times they are a-changing. Artists belonging to this crucial post-war, pre-Woodstock era help understanding the roots of liberated thought, where experiences define individuals; free thinking and the non-conformism being our most treasured inheritance. It helps contextualizing what you’re consuming, doesn’t it?

Ankita Kanwar