Paving The Path To Counter-Culture

Paving the Path to Counter-Culture

The 1950s saw a period of extensive contentment within postwar America. A majority of the population adapted to the modern suburban lifestyle that emerged within this time period. They bought houses, started families, got steady jobs, and watched the television while complacently submitting to the government. Although fairly monotonous, this sort of lifestyle was safe and secure - many Americans were ready to sacrifice individuality for a sense of comfort. There was a minority, however, that did not quite accept this conservative conformity that had swept across the nation; some of these people took the shape of artists and writers. During the 1950s, what became known as the "Beat Generation" inspired the challenging of and rebelling against conventional America.

The Beat Generation was a form of counter-culture inspired by discontent

with the current state of life in America. This minority consisted of average people looking for something more in their lives than the common American Dream of suburbia and satisfaction, and was centralized primarily in Greenwich Village, New York. "Beats" or "Beatniks", as they were called, became words that took on a near literal meaning. In Allen Ginsberg's Deliberate Prose, it is stated that "...the original street usage meant exhausted, at the bottom of the world, looking up or out, sleeplessness, wide-eyed, perceptive" (Ginsberg 237), or beat. It was the Beat philosophy to question and criticize life than merely be content with it. Allen Ginsberg once again expresses beautifully what it meant to be part of the 1950s counter-culture by saying "It's weird enough to be in this human form so temporarily, without huge gangs of people, whole societies, trying to pretend that their temporary bread and breasts are the be-all and end-all of the soul's fate, and enforcing this ridiculous opinion with big rules of thought and conduct, bureaucracies to control the soul, FBI's, televisions, wars, politics, boring religions" (135). He emphasized the general feelings of displeasure towards society that the Beat Generation shared.

The philosophies of the Beat Generation extended further than discontent

with American society. Many individuals taking part of 1950s counter-culture explored non-Christian based religions such as Buddhism. They rebelled against a negative perception towards marijuana and often used it recreationally. It was a common Beat claim that "Systematic propaganda linking marijuana with violence, killing, shame and tragedy 'including murder and rape' was passed through media networks" (Parkinson 164), and was nothing more than a hoax. People of the Beat Generation also took on a stance of "free love" - that is to say, homosexuality and having multiple partners were things that were embraced by this minority.

The American response to the Beats was not a positive one. They were criticized as being lazy and reckless, and just average people trying to be the inverse of the American Dream. The perception was that these individuals had no justification for condemning American society. David Halberstam writes in The Fifties that "The initial response from straight society was to try to send them [the Beats] to psychiatrists: they believed that the healthier you were, the more the straight world, which they considered inherently sick, wanted to see you as sick" (299). They were misunderstood, and the plight of the Beat Generation was not embraced until many years later.

The Beat movement itself encompassed many different types of people. These types included intellectuals, "junkies", social activists, artists, and writers. It is the last group - the writers - that gave the Beat Generation a certain sense of longevity. The most notable of these individuals were William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. Barry Miles says in his biography on Kerouac that the writers "were a group of intelligent individuals rooted in the middle-class, hungering to bring change to the world" (23). They wanted America to see the world differently, and thought they could achieve that through writing.

Although not as widely acknowledged as Kerouac and Ginsberg, William Burroughs was an important writer of the time. As stated in Beat Down to Your Soul, "He started out in the 1940s as a founding member of the 'Beat Generation,' the electric revolution in art and manners that kicked off the counter-culture..." (Charters 132), but his writing extended beyond the Beat label. Burroughs was born in Missouri to a rather wealthy family; it was his desire to not follow in the footsteps of his family and become heir of the Burroughs Corporation. After getting through school, he went to Harvard where he unhappily experimented with both his sexuality and drugs before graduating. He later moved to New York, and there he met and befriended both Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. William Burroughs also involved himself with a woman called Joan Vollmer Adams, although the relationship never really flourished - in fact, according to Beat Writers at Work, Burroughs regarded females "...in general as a grotesque mistake of nature" (Plimpton 152) that oppressed the ideas of men. This was mostly due to an inclination towards his own gender.

Burroughs was best known for writings detailing a personal (and eventually fatal) involvement with drugs. His cult classic, Naked Lunch, is one his most infamous literary pieces. In Thomas Parkinson's A Casebook on the Beats, the novel is described as a "collage of disturbing, bizarre, and often obscene images" that was intended to create "a narrative that defied contemporary literary forms, a novel that the reader could start at any point in the book" (256). Moreover, the book criticized the American Dream. Burroughs compared it to harsh realities of city life, putting emphasis on drugs and crime. Unfortunately, many people did not take kindly to Burroughs' literary masterpiece. "After it was published in the United States, Naked Lunch was prosecuted as obscene by the state of Massachusetts, followed by other states," (146) author Ann Charters wrote. Only after protest was Burroughs' novel no longer considered "obscene".

Another important writer of the Beat Generation was Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti, a New York native, wrote "poetry that often reflected his views about politics and social issues of the time; he challenged the current thoughts about an artist's role in the world" (Ginsberg 468). By