Who Were the Beatniks and How Did They Impact American Society, Culture, and Literature?

Who were the Beatniks and how did they impact

American society, culture, and literature?

The Beat Movement was a group of writers and artists who were active primarily from the late 1940's thru the 1950's; they spawned the term Beatnik, and to a great many in middle class America, they personified all that was wrong with the growing country. In this paper, we will explore and discuss the Beat Movement, the Beatniks, their work and its impact on American society, culture and literature. The Beat movement rose during a time of unusual suppression of freedoms in America, with the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War the East and West were at each other's throats, and suspicion was rampant in America. Pressure to name, names was increasing and people were being imprisoned for not naming members of the Communist party in the United States. It could be said that many of our freedoms hung tenuously in the balance at this time. Also during this time, many authors started calling for a new style of literature in America. William Carlos Williams and Norman Mailer called for a break away from the old flannel suited army of the past and exploration of new styles, while at the same time writers like W.H. Auden called for caution and stated "It was not the time for revolutionary artists or significant novelty in artistic style" (Raskin, 2004). The Beatniks were an Avant-Garde movement that wished to change the social morays and literary style of America to bring about a more compassionate and feeling society through their literature. Some attribute the actual rise of the Beat Movement to letters and articles written by Tennessee Williams in 1948 where he called for an end to the "Babylonian plutocracy" and in which he also stated that "I anticipate a day when young people will discard 'conservative business suits, let their hair grow long... make wild gestures, fight, shout and fall downstairs! That day would be brave and honest" (Raskin, 2004). Williams was becoming frustrated with the repressiveness of the American publishing machine of the time and thus yearned for a change and the stronger, the better. We will be discussing three important members of the Beat Movement in this paper; Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg; as I said all of these men were important figures in the Beat Movement, not only as writers, but as friends, characters and influences for each other's work. Kerouac with his "Road" book is one of the most easily recognizable of the Beat Movement, for many years a college bookshelf was not thought complete with a copy of "On the Road". Cassady in the Beat Movement was the trickster or for lack of a better term, he appeared to act as a sort of muse for both Kerouac and Ginsberg at varying times, his writing was prolific but not widely recognized in his lifetime, yet he set the stage and gave the background and grit for many of Kerouac and Ginsberg's stories and poems. Ginsberg was the poet of the group, he broke out with his poem "Howl" and became the "Grand Old Man" of the Beats, living to the age of seventy, which was quite an accomplishment for a group of artists that flared bright and for the most part burned out at relatively young ages. As we discuss their work, we will discover some of the reason for the apprehension that middle class America and even some fellow writers felt for this new wave of writers and their style of writing and perhaps some of their lifestyles. We will also see why a generation of young people embraced their message and changed the face of society and literature in the process.

Jack Kerouac in Beat Literature was the standard bearer for the rest to follow, and his work is probably the most widely recognized by mainstream America, so his impact on our literature and culture has been rather large. However, the impact and influence that Kerouac made with his seminal book "On the Road" was not entirely, what he had intended to make on his audience. Kerouac's original and rather simple intent was for his book was to teach people how to become an adult (Leland, 2007). I suppose it should be noted that this message is one that Kerouac failed to realize in his own life, as headed towards an early grave he avoided his own familial responsibilities towards his daughter as he dove into the bottle. But that being said, Kerouac identified himself with the Sal Paradise character in his book, while the majority of his audience took to the Dean Moriarty character, which was actually fashioned after Neal Cassady, as the Kerouac mold and this lead to a great deal of confusion amongst Kerouac's readers and caused Kerouac himself a great deal of frustration throughout the rest of his life (Leland, 2007). The message therefore, that many of his readers took away from the book was a message of rebellion and good times, and a lifestyle of moving from one mess to another, living free, so to speak. This however, was not Kerouac's message; his message was that that of Sal Paradise, the brooding and gloomy character of the story, the man who spent his time trying to figure out how to do the right thing, how to become an adult, in so many words. The literary and cultural impact of Kerouac's writing was the gift of Sal Paradise, in Sal he gave us the example of the solid guy, the good man, while not a square; he was still an adult, a part of his own generation's, but not a part of the grey flannel army that was covering the landscape. Even at the end of "On the Road," we can see that Sal is the one who has become an adult as he rides away in the back of a Cadillac to go to a show, while Dean stands on the corner in a "ragged moth-eaten coat" (Leland, 2007). Sal in the story, has found happiness; whereas Dean is right back in the same place that he started from, no change; he is still the same boy that started out on the trip west with Sal, he did not find the path to becoming an adult most likely because he was not really looking for it to begin with; but who is really to say on that matter but the man himself.

Neal Cassady impacted Beat Literature as both a character and as a writer, but his impact on American literature and culture is; however more subtle than the other authors of the Beat Movement that we will be discussing here. Cassady was, in romantic terminology, a "Muse" for both Kerouac and Ginsberg, they both consistently used Cassady in their work and their lives. Starting with Ginsberg calling out to him in his epic poem "Howl" as N.C. and later, Kerouac's use of him as the model for Dean Moriarty in "On the Road", Cassady was in fact even the origin of Kerouac's books famous name, it was a term he had coined for "being

...