Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a group of authors whose literature explored and influenced American culture in the post-World War II era.
The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. Central elements of Beat culture are rejection of standard narrative values, the spiritual quest, exploration of American and Eastern religions, rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs's 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 developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.
The core group of Beat Generation authors – Herbert Huncke, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and Jack Kerouac – met in 1944 in and around the Columbia University campus in New York City. Later, in the mid-1950s, the central figures (with the exception of Burroughs and Carr) ended up together in San Francisco where they met and became friends of figures associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.
Beat Generation (play)
Beat Generation is a play written by Jack Kerouac upon returning home to Florida after his seminal work On the Road had been published in 1957. Gerald Nicosia, a Kerouac biographer and family friend has said that theatre producer Leo Gavin suggested that Kerouac should write a play; the outcome being Beat Generation.
After being written it was rejected by theatre companies and was shelved in warehouse storage until being re-discovered in a New Jersey warehouse in 2005.
A part of Beat Generation went on to provide the script for the 1959 film Pull My Daisy, which starred Allen Ginsberg and was named after the poem "Pull My Daisy" by Kerouac, Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. Kerouac provided improvised narration to the film.
Since then excerpts have appeared in Best Life Magazine (July 2005), and the play has been published by OneWorld Classics. Beat Generation will receive its world premiere as part of the 2012 Jack Kerouac Literary Festival from October 10-14 in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, MA. The play will be presented in a staged reading format by Merrimack Repertory Theatre and the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
