Therefore, it should come as no surprise that U.S.
The main goal of McCarthyism-a campaign to drive out communist sympathizers led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the mid-1950’s-was to enlist Americans in the struggle against communism, and its hostility was not limited to communism and its sympathizers but extended to all individualists and those who deviated from the white Protestant norm. On the contrary, the Cold War and its threat of nuclear annihilation loomed over the nation, part of the expansion of American capitalist influence in the world with the help of an ever-more-powerful military-industrial complex. Like many artists and intellectuals of their time, the early Beat poets were disillusioned because the end of Word War II had not led to a spiritual and cultural reawakening. The name “Beat generation” was designed not only to signify the downtrodden, renegade position the young men were proud to hold in an increasingly conformist, status-conscious, and materialistic society but also to hint at their affinity to the lost generation, a similarly disaffected group of American writers in the period after World War I. Closely associated with this pioneering group were Lucien Carr (1925-2005), who introduced Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs to one another, and John Clellon Holmes (1926-1998), whose novel Go (1952) is the first semifactual chronicle of the early life of the Beats. A little later, Gregory Corso (1930-2001) joined them. The meaning and origin of the word “beat” are subject to some debate, and explanations range from “downtrodden” and “weary of the world” to “beatific” and “angelic.” However, there is general agreement that Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) first used the term in 1948 to characterize himself and a small group of friends: Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), William Burroughs (1914-1997), Neal Cassady (1926-1968), and Herbert Huncke (1915-1996), with Cassady and Huncke serving mainly as early literary models and muses for their writer friends. Erskine Salisbury University Jack Ewing Boise, IdahoīEAT POETS The label “beat” designates a group of writers and their friends and affiliates who met at Columbia University in New York and gained fame and notoriety in the period between 19 as the Beat generation. Sheila Golburgh Johnson Santa Barbara, Californiaĭonald E. Martha Modena VertreaceDoody Kennedy-King College Johnson Central Missouri State University Lesley Jenike Columbus College of Art and Design
Richard Collins Xavier University of Louisiana Lynn Munro Belton, Missouri David Peck Laguna Beach, Californiaĭavid A. Leon Lewis Appalachian State University C. Sarah Hilbert Pasadena, California Tracy Irons-Georges Glendale, California Maura Ives Texas A&M University Lawlor University of WisconsinStevens Pointĭavid Bromige Sonoma State University Susan Butterworth Salem State College Ann M. Foster University of Michigan-Flintįranz G. ĬONTRIBUTORS John Alspaugh Richmond, Virginia
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