Beatnik – Gentle Rebels And The Rhythm Of The 1950s

In this episode, we explore the roots of the Beatnik label, the literary heavyweights like Kerouac and Ginsberg, and how a fringe subculture turned into a fashion stereotype with turtlenecks and attitude. Great for bedtime…unless spontaneous jazz snaps keep you up.

Drift off with the sounds of dissent, stream-of-consciousness prose, and the low hum of post-war disillusionment. Perfect for fans of sleep, beat poetry, and not making eye contact.

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,

Where I bore you to sleep one fact at a time.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster.

Thanks to Kari Tuna for sponsoring tonight's episode about beatniks.

Let's get started.

Beatniks were members of a social movement in the mid-20th century who subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle.

They rejected the conformity and consumerism of mainstream American culture and expressed themselves through various forms of art such as literature,

Poetry,

Music,

And painting.

The term beatnik was coined by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Cain in 1958 as a derogatory label for the followers of the beat generation,

A group of influential writers and artists who emerged during the era of the silent generation's maturing,

From as early as 1946 to as late as 1963.

But the subculture was at its most prevalent in the 1950s.

This lifestyle of anti-consumerism may have been influenced by their generation living in extreme poverty and the Great Depression during their formative years,

Seeing slightly older people serve in World War II,

And being influenced by the rise of left-wing politics and the spread of communism.

The name was inspired by the Russian suffix "-nik",

Which was used to denote members of various political or social groups.

The term beat originally was used by Jack Kerouac in 1948 to describe his social circle of friends and fellow writers,

Such as Allen Ginsburg,

William S.

Burroughs,

And Neal Cassidy.

Kerouac said that beat had multiple meanings,

Such as beaten down,

Beatific,

Beat up,

And beat out.

He also associated it with the musical term beat,

Which referred to the rhythmic patterns of jazz,

A genre that influenced many beatniks.

Beatniks often were stereotyped as wearing black clothing,

Berets,

Sunglasses,

And goatees,

And speaking in hip slang that incorporated words like cool,

Dig,

Groovy,

And square.

They frequented coffee houses,

Bookstores,

Bars,

And clubs,

Where they listened to jazz,

Read poetry,

Discussed philosophy,

And engaged in political activism.

Some of the most famous beatnik venues were the Sixth Gallery in San Francisco,

Where Ginsburg first read his poem Howl in 1955,

The Gaslight Cafe in New York City,

Where many poets performed,

And the City Lights Bookstore,

Also in San Francisco,

Where Kerouac's novel On the Road was published in 1957.

Beatniks also traveled across the country and abroad,

Seeking new experiences and inspiration.

Some of their destinations included Mexico,

Morocco,

India,

Japan,

And France.

Beatniks had a significant impact on American culture and society as they challenged the norms and values of their time.

They influenced many aspects of art,

Literature,

Music,

Film,

Fashion,

And language.

Some of the more notable figures who were influenced by or associated with beatniks include Bob Dylan,

The Beatles,

Andy Warhol,

Ken Kesey,

And Timothy Leary.

Beatniks have been portrayed or parodied in many works of fiction,

Such as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,

A Charlie Brown Christmas,

The Munsters,

The Flintstones,

The Simpsons,

And SpongeBob SquarePants.

In 1948,

Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase Beat Generation,

Generalizing from his social circle to characterize the underground,

Anti-conformist youth gathering in New York City at that time.

The name came up in conversation with John Cleland Holmes,

Who published an early Beat Generation novel titled Go!

1952,

Along with the manifesto This is the Beat Generation in the New York Times Magazine.

In 1954,

Nolan Miller published his third novel,

Why I Am So Beat,

Putnam,

Detailing the weekend parties of four students.

Beat was slang for beaten down or downtrodden.

However,

To Kerouac and Ginsburg,

It also had a spiritual connotation as in beatitude.

Other adjectives discussed by Holmes and Kerouac were found and furtive.

Kerouac felt he had identified and was the embodiment of a new trend analogous to the influential Lost Generation.

In Aftermath,

The Philosophy of the Beat Generation,

Kerouac criticized what he saw as a distortion of his visionary spiritual ideas.

The Beat Generation,

That was a vision that we had,

John Cleland Holmes and I,

And Ellen Ginsberg in an even wilder way,

In the late 40s,

Of a generation of crazy,

Illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America,

Serious,

Bumming and hitchhiking everywhere,

Ragged,

Beatific,

Beautiful in an ugly,

Graceful new way,

A vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word beat spoken on street corners on the Times Square and in the village and other cities in the downtown city night of post-war America,

Beat meaning down and out,

But full of intense conviction.

We'd even heard old 1910 daddy hipsters of the streets speak the word that way,

With a melancholy sneer.

It never meant juvenile delinquents,

It meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary bartlebees staring out the dead wall window of our civilization.

Kerouac explained what he meant by beat at a Brandy's Forum,

His Eric Beat Generation,

On November 8th,

1958,

At New York's Hunter College Playhouse.

The seminar's panelists were Kerouac,

James A.

Weschler,

Princeton anthropologist Ashley Montague,

And author Kinsley Amos.

Weschler,

Montague,

And Amos wore suits,

While Kerouac was clad in black jeans,

Ankle boots,

And a checkered shirt.

Reading from a prepared text,

Kerouac reflected on his beat beginnings.

It is because I am beat,

That is,

I believe in beatitude,

And that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to it,

Who knows,

But that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion,

Actually,

The veritable holy honey beneath all this show of personality and cruelty.

Kerouac's statement was later published as The Origins of the Beat Generation.

In that article,

Kerouac noted how his original beatific philosophy had been ignored amid maneuvers by several pundits,

Among them San Francisco newspaper columnist Herb Cain,

To alter Kerouac's concept with jokes and jargon.

I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with beat,

The vision of the word beat as being to mean beatific.

People began to call themselves beatniks,

Beats,

Jazzniks,

Bopniks,

Buggies,

And finally I was called the avatar of all of this.

In light of what he considered beat to mean and what beatnik had come to mean,

Kerouac said to a reporter,

I'm not a beatnik,

I'm a catholic,

Showing the reporter a painting of Pope Paul VI,

And saying,

You know who painted that?

Me.

In her memoir,

Minor Characters,

Joyce Johnson described how the stereotype was absorbed into American culture.

Beat generation sold books,

Sold black turtleneck sweaters and bongos,

Berets and dark glasses,

Sold a way of life that seemed like dangerous fun,

Thus to be either condemned or imitated.

Kerouac biographer Ann Charters noted that the term beat was appropriated to become a Madison Avenue marketing tool.

The term caught on because it could mean anything.

It could even be exploited in the affluent wake of the decade's extraordinary technological inventions.

Almost immediately,

For example,

Advertisements by hip record companies in New York used the idea of the beat generation to sell their new long-playing vinyl records.

Lee Strife,

An acquaintance of many members of the movement who went on to become one of its chroniclers,

Believed that the news media settled the movement for the long term with a set of false images.

Reporters are not generally well-versed in artistic movements,

Or the history of literature or art,

And most are certain that their readers or viewers are of limited intellectual ability and must have things explained simply in any case.

Thus,

The reporters in the media tried to relate something that was new to already pre-existing frameworks and images that were only vaguely appropriate in their efforts to explain and simplify.

With a variety of oversimplified and conventional formulas at their disposal,

They fell back on their nearest stereotypical approximation of what the phenomenon resembled,

As they saw it.

And even worse,

They did not see it clearly and completely at that.

They got a quotation here and a photograph there,

And it was their job to wrap it up in a comprehensible package,

And if it seemed to violate the prevalent mandatory conformist doctrine,

They would also be obliged to give it a negative spin as well.

And in this,

They were aided and abetted by the poetic establishment of the day.

Thus,

What came out in the media,

From newspapers,

Magazines,

TV,

And the movies,

Was a product of the stereotypes of the 30s and 40s,

Though garbled,

Of a cross between a 1920s Greenwich Village bohemian artist and a bop musician,

Whose visual image was completed by mixing in Dolly-esque paintings,

A beret,

A Van Dyke beard,

A turtleneck sweater,

A pair of sandals,

And a set of bongo drums.

A few authentic elements were added to the collective image,

Poets reading their poems for example,

But even this was made unintelligible by making all of the poets speak in some kind of phony bop idiom.

The consequence is that even though we may know now that these images do not accurately reflect the reality of the Beat Movement,

We still subconsciously look for them when we look back to the 50s.

We have not even yet completely escaped the visual imagery that has been so insistently forced upon us.

The origin of the word beatnik is traditionally ascribed to Herb Kane from his column in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2,

1958.

An earlier source from 1954,

Or possibly 1957 after the launch of Sputnik,

Has ascribed to Essel Etyud Gedshoff,

The well-known owner of a San Francisco art gallery.

Objecting to the term,

Allen Ginsberg wrote to the New York Times to deplore the foul word beatnik,

Commenting,

If beatniks and not illuminated beat poets overrun this country,

They will have been created not by Kerouac,

But by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash man.

In the vernacular of the period,

Beat referred to beat culture,

Attitude,

And literature,

While beatnik referred to a stereotype found in cartoon drawings,

And in some cases at worst,

Twisted sometimes violent media characters.

In 1995,

Film scholar Ray Carney wrote about the authentic beat attitude as differentiated from stereotypical media portrayals of the beatnik.

Much of beat culture represented a negative stance rather than a positive one.

It was animated more by a vague feeling of cultural and emotional displacement,

Dissatisfaction,

And yearning,

Than by a specific purpose or program.

It was many different,

Conflicting,

Shifting states of mind.

Since 1958,

The terms beat generation and beat have been used to describe the anti-materialistic literary movement that began with Kerouac in the 1940s and continued into the 1960s.

The beat philosophy of anti-materialism and soul-searching influenced 1960s musicians such as Bob Dylan,

The early Pink Floyd,

And the Beatles.

However,

The soundtrack of the beat movement was the modern jazz pioneered by saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie,

Which the media dubbed bebop.

Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg spent much of their time in New York jazz clubs such as the Royal Roost,

Minton's Playhouse,

Birdland,

And the Open Door,

Shooting the breeze and digging the music.

Charlie Parker,

Dizzy Gillespie,

And Miles Davis rapidly became what Ginsberg dubbed secret heroes to this group of aesthetes.

The beat authors borrowed much from the jazz hipster slang of the 1940s,

Preparing their works with words such as square,

Cats,

Cool,

And dig.

At the time the term beatnik was coined,

A trend existed among young college students to adopt the stereotype.

Men emulated the trademark look of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie by wearing goatees,

Horn-rimmed glasses and berets,

And playing bongos.

Fashions for women included black leotards and long,

Straight,

Unadorned hair,

And a rebellion against the middle-class culture of beauty salons.

By 1960,

A small beatnik group in Newquay,

Cornwall,

England,

Including a young Whiz Jones,

Had attracted the attention and abhorrence of their neighbors for growing their hair beyond shoulder length,

Resulting in a television interview with Alan Wicker on BBC television's Tonight series.

The beat philosophy was generally counter-cultural and anti-materialistic,

And stressed the importance of bettering one's inner self over material possessions.

Some beat writers,

Such as Gary Snyder,

Began to delve into Eastern religions,

Such as Buddhism and Taoism.

Politics tended to be liberal,

Left-wing,

And anti-war,

With support for causes such as desegregation,

Although many of the figures associated with the original beat movement,

Particularly Kerouac,

Embraced libertarian and conservative ideas.

An openness to African-American culture and arts was apparent in literature and music,

Notably jazz.

While Kane and other writers implied a connection with communism,

No obvious or direct connection occurred between beat philosophy as expressed by the literary movements' leading authors,

And that the communist movement,

Other than the antipathy but philosophies,

Sheered towards capitalism.

Those with only a superficial familiarity with the beat movement often saw this similarity and assumed the two movements had more in common.

The beat movement introduced Asian religions to Western society.

These religions provided the beat generation with new views of the world,

And corresponded with its desire to rebel against conservative middle-class values of the 1950s,

Old post-1930s radicalism,

Mainstream culture,

And institutional religions in America.

By 1958,

Many beat writers published writings on Buddhism.

This was the year Jack Kerouac published his novel,

The Dharma Bums,

Whose central character,

Whom Kerouac based on himself,

Sought Buddhist context for events in his life.

Alan Ginsberg's spiritual journey to India in 1963 also influenced the beat movement.

After studying religious texts alongside monks,

Ginsberg deduced that what links the function of poetry to Asian religions was their mutual goal of achieving ultimate truth.

His discovery of Hindu mantra chants,

A form of oral delivery,

Subsequently influenced beat poetry.

Beat pioneers who followed a Buddhism-influenced spiritual path felt that Asian religions offered a profound understanding of human nature and insights into the being,

Existence,

And reality of mankind.

Many of the beat advocates believed that the core concepts of Asian religious philosophies had the means of elevating American society's consciousness,

And these concepts informed their main ideologies.

Notable beat writers such as Kerouac,

Ginsberg,

And Gary Snyder were drawn to Buddhism to the extent that they each,

At different periods in their lives,

Followed a spiritual path in their quest to provide answers to universal questions and concepts.

As a result,

The beat philosophy stressed the bettering of the inner self and the rejection of materialism,

And postulated that East Asian religions could fill a religious and spiritual void in the lives of many Americans.

Many scholars speculate that beat writers wrote about Eastern religions to encourage young people to practice spiritual and sociopolitical action.

Progressive concepts from these religions,

Particularly those regarding personal freedom,

Influenced youth culture to challenge capitalist domination,

Break their generation's dogmas,

And reject traditional gender and racial rules.

Beatnik art is the direction of contemporary art that originated in the United States as part of the beat movement in the 1960s.

The movement itself,

Unlike the so-called last generation,

Did not set itself the task of changing society,

But tried to distance itself from it,

While at the same time trying to create its own counterculture.

The scope of the activity was concentrated in the cultural circles of New York City,

Los Angeles,

San Francisco,

And North Carolina.

Prominent representatives of the trend were artists Wallace Berman,

Jay DeFeo,

Jess Collins,

Robert Frank,

Cleese Oldenburg,

And Larry Rivers.

The culture of the beat generation has become a kind of intersection for representatives of the creative intellect of the United States associated with visual and performing art,

Which are usually attributed to other areas and trends of artistic expression,

Such as assemblage,

Happening,

Funk art,

And neodatism.

They made efforts to destroy the wall between art and real life so that art would become a experience in cafes or jazz clubs and not remain the prerogative of galleries and museums.

Many works of artists of the movement were created on the verge of various types of art.

Artists wrote poetry and poets painted.

Something like this can describe the processes taking place within the framework of the movement.

Performances were a key element in the art of beats,

Whether it was the theatrical event of 1952 at Black Mountain College or Jack Kerouac typing in 1951 the novel On the Road on a typewriter in a single session on a single roll of 31 meter long paper.

Representatives of the movement were united by hostility to traditional culture with its conformism and brightly degenerate commercial component.

They also did not like the approach of traditional culture to hushing up the dark side of American life,

Violence,

Corruption,

Social inequality,

Racism.

They tried through art to create a new way of life based on the ideas of rebellion and freedom.

Critics highlight the artist Wallace Berman as the main representative of the movement,

And his work concentrated many of the characteristic features of hipsters,

Especially in his collages made on photocopied photographs,

Which are a mixture of elements of pop art and mysticism.

Among other artists and works,

One can single out the work The Rose by the artist Jay DeFeo,

The work on which was carried out for seven years,

A huge painting assembly weighing about a ton with a width of up to 20 centimeters.

Possibly the first film portrayal of the Beat Society was in the 1950 noir film D.

O.

A.

,

Directed by Rudolf Maté.

In the film,

The main character goes to a loud San Francisco bar where one woman shouts to the musicians,

Cool,

Cool,

Really cool.

One of the characters says,

Man,

Am I really hip?

And another replies,

You're from nowhere,

Nowhere.

Lone dancers are seen moving to the beat.

Some are dressed with accessories and have hairstyles that one would expect to see in much later films.

Typical 1940s attire is mixed with beatnik clothing styles,

Particularly in one male who has a beatnik hat,

Long hair,

And a mustache and goatee,

But is still wearing a dress suit.

The bartender refers to a patron as jive-crazy and talks of the music driving its followers crazy.

He then tells one man to calm down,

Jack,

And the man replies,

Oh,

Don't bother me,

Man,

I'm being enlightened.

The scene also demonstrates the connection to and influence of 1940s genres of African American music,

Such as bebop,

On the emergence of beat culture.

The 1953 Dalton Trumbo film Roman Holidays,

Starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck,

Features a supporting character played by Eddie Albert,

Who is a stereotypical beatnik,

Appearing five years before the term was coined.

He has an Eastern European surname,

Radovich,

And is a promiscuous photographer who wears baggy clothes,

A striped t-shirt,

And a beard,

Which is mentioned four times in the screenplay.

The character Maynard G.

Krebs,

Played on TV by Bob Denver in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,

1959-63,

Solidified the stereotype of the indolent non-conformist beatnik,

Which contrasted with the aggressively rebellious beat-related images presented by popular film actors of the early and mid-1950s,

Notably Marlon Brando and James Dean.

The Beat Generation,

1959,

Associated the movement with crime and violence,

As did The Beatniks,

1960.

An episode of The Addams Family titled The Addams Family Meets a Beatnik,

Broadcast January 1st,

1965,

Features a young biker beatnik who injures himself in an accident and ends up staying with the Addams Family.

Harry Connick Jr.

Portrays Dean,

A beatnik,

In Brad Bird's film The Iron Giant,

1999.

Alan Bisbord's survey,

Beatniks,

A Guide to an American Subculture,

Was published by Greenwood Press in 2009 as part of the series Greenwood Press Guides to Subcultures and Countercultures.

The book includes a timeline,

A glossary,

And biographical sketches.

Others in the Greenwood series,

Punks,

Hippies,

Goths,

And flappers.

Tales of Beatnik Glory,

Volumes 1 and 2,

By Ed Sanders,

Is,

As its name suggests,

A collection of short stories and a definitive introduction to the beatnik scene as lived by participants.

The author who went on to found the thugs lived in the beatnik epicenter of Greenwich Village in the Lower East Side in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Among the humor books,

Beat Beat Beat was a 1959 Signet paperback of cartoons by Phi Beta Kappa Princeton graduate William F.

Brown,

Who looked down on the movement from his position in the TV department of the Batten,

Barton,

And Durston and Osborne advertising agency.

Suzuki Bean,

1961,

By Sandra Skippedon,

With Louis Fitzhugh illustrations,

Was a bleaker street beatnik spoof of Kay Thompson's Eloise series,

1956 to 1959.

In the 1960s comic book,

The Justice League of America's sidekick,

Snapper Carr,

Was portrayed as a stereotypical beatnik,

Down to his lingo and clothes.

The DC Comics character Johnny Double is portrayed as a beatnik.

In San Francisco,

Jerry and Estelle Cimino operate their Beat Museum,

Which began in 2003 in Monterey,

California,

And moved to San Francisco in 2006.

Ed Big Daddy Ross used fiberglass to build his Beatnik Bandit in 1960.

Today this car is in the National Automobile Museum in Reno,

Nevada.

Reviews

Almost to interesting to go to sleep........ almost. Well done that man.

Interesting! Although I never heard the end which is the goal! 😂😂😂

Fun topic Ben! (I didn’t stay awake for the music of the 50’s… but I can listen again!) Thanks!!