Beat Generation

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The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced the American culture and American politics in the post–World War II and Cold War eras. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by members of the Silent Generation in the mid-to-late 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959), and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are among the best-known examples of Beat literature. Both "Howl" and Naked Lunch were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States. The members of the Beat Generation...

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