In the black and white photograph of Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady wears a pale, crumpled workshirt and what looks like a fairly new pair of Levi 501’s jeans. Jack Kerouac wears a light coloured sweatshirt and a pair of chinos (A pair of trousers made from chino cloth, typically khaki-colored). That’s it. And nor do their rather nondescript hairstyles suggest the makings of a revolution.

Of course the very fact that these two look so ‘normal’ is a tribute to their stylistic as well as literally impact. Those of us who today wear workshirts, sweatshirts and jeans (and who do not own an iron) do so in part because of a tradition of sartorial nonchalance which the Beats began.

So, who are the Beats? Dictionaries will offer you various definitions, mainly summing up to something like “members of the generation that came to maturity in the 1950s, whose rejection of the social and political systems of the West was expressed through contempt for regular work, possessions, traditional dress, etc, and espousal of anarchism, communal living, drugs, etc” (dictionary.com)

The Beat Generation phenomenon has had a strong, visible influence on the English-speaking world culture. The movement started in Columbia University where Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Hal Chase and others studied together. Classmates Carr and Ginsberg discussed the need for a "New Vision". In the years immediately after the Second World War, students in universities were beginning to question the rampant materialism of their society. The Beat Generation was a product of this questioning. They saw runaway capitalism as destructive to the human spirit and antithetical to social equality. In addition to their dissatisfaction with consumer culture, the Beats railed against the stifling prudery of their parents’ generation. The taboos against frank discussions of sexuality were seen as unhealthy and possibly damaging to the psyche. In the world of literature and art, the Beats stood in opposition to the clean, almost antiseptic formalism of the early twentieth century Modernists. They fashioned a literature that was more bold, straightforward, and expressive than anything that had come before. Underground music styles like jazz were especially evocative for Beat writers, while threatening and sinister to the establishment. To many, the artistic productions of the Beats crossed the line into pornography and therefore merited censorship. Some dismissed the Beat Generation’s literature as mere provocation – a means to get attention, not serious art. Time has proven that the cultural impact of the Beat writers was far from short-lived, as the influence of their work continues to be widespread.

The word “beat” originates from colloquial English and means “tied”, “beaten down”, “weary”. Later the meaning included other connotations such as “upbeat”, “beatific”, and musical term “on the beat”.

Although female counterparts of the Beats were intimately involved in the creation of Beat philosophy, style and literature, they are far less acknowledged in history of the Beat Generation, which may be due to the period’s sexism. Women in Beat writings are often portrayed in traditional gender roles of an ideal 1950s American housewife. Also, some Beat writers were openly gay, bisexual, or frankly promiscuous. The relationships among men in the Beat movement can be described as predominantly homosocial.

The original members of the Beat Generation used drugs (alcohol, LSD, marijuana, psychedelic drugs, morphine etc.) out of intellectual interest, for an “experiment”, and they often were initially unfamiliar with the effects of the drugs.

One of the most significant writers of the Beat Generation is Jack Kerouac. His novel On the Road (1957) is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use.

The “Beat Style” has transformed with time. The original members of the Beat generation signalled their alienness not by presenting an alternative style, but rather by a conscious indifference to style itself.

In 1958 the term “Beatnik” emerged, as a combination of the words “beat” and the name of the recent Russian satellite “Sputnik”, which suggested that the Beatniks were possibly pro-Communist. Typical Beatniks wore black garments, goatees, berets, sandals, women wore heavy black eyeliner. Their style came from Paris, from the Left Bank. Although Paris seems to be far away from New York, many musicians from the Beats were regularly travelling to Paris to perform. Some of them were introduced to Sartre and the other Existentialists. So, one could hypothesize that what is now known as the “Beat Style” is actually Paris Left Bank Style.

The image of the Beatnik has become an icon of hip rebellion. The original members of the Beat Generation hated the term “Beatnik”. Out of the Beats’ deadly earnest search for a “new vision” came a caricature figure, a fashionable clown. Coffee bars were full of beatniks, loveable, squeaky-clean suburban normalities, complete with goatees, oversized black sweaters, sandals, hip-speak and bogos. And yet the Beatniks have helped to popularise the ideas of Sartre, The Beat Generation, novels of Kerouac, and the delights of progressive jazz. They have influenced and forever changed the street-style.

Whether intentional or not, the mass-media interpretation of the Real Thing is inevitably stereotyped and distorted. Nevertheless, it is always possible to deconstruct the fiction to a true point of origin. In this way, tiny cliques are transformed into international style-tribes and the creative spark of a few becomes part of a generalized history, which shapes our lives. The Beat Revolution forced a critical appraisal of a way of life grown increasingly conformist, standardized, shallow and just plain “square”.

Beats, Beatniks & Existentialists

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