…and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Beat Generation was a group of

American post-World War II writers who

came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as

the cultural phenomena that they both documented and

inspired.

Down and out

Beatitude/Beatific

Post-WW2 US

Militarism and the atomic bomb

Consumerism & materialism

Economic growth

Patriarchal society

The Beat Generation: What and who were they? Grew out of a reaction to:

Post war society, particularly what they viewed as rampant capitalism - destructive to the human spirit and antithetical to social equality

What they viewed as the prudish-ness of their parents’ generation - unhealthy and possibly damaging

The clean, almost antiseptic formalism of the early twentieth century Modernists

Central elements of "Beat" culture:

Rejection of received standards

Innovations in style

Use of illegal drugs

Alternative sexualities

Rejection of materialism

Explicit portrayals of the human condition

Individual freedom

Spontaneity

The Beat Generation: Who and what were they?

Beginnings:

In the 1940s at Columbia University

Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg

New York and San Fransisco

Grew to prominence in 1950s and in to the 60s

A very small group with a very large impact

The Beat Generation: Their Influences

JAZZ!

‘In this modern jazz, they heard something rebel and nameless that spoke for them, and their lives knew a gospel for the first time. It was more than a music; it became an attitude toward life, a way of walking, a language and a costume; and these introverted kids... now felt somewhere at last’ (Holmes, Go)

• They adopted the language e.g. ‘square’, ‘cat’, ‘dig’ etc

• They adopted the drugs

• They adopted the style and wrote the way jazz played, without stringent rules for structure and rhythm resulting in the ‘stream of consciousness’: words blurted out in vigorous bursts, rarely revised and often sparsely punctuated for lines and lines. Rhythm, metre and length.

A way of life:

‘From it they adopted the mythos of the brooding, tortured, solitary artist, performing with others but always alone.’ (Maynard, Venice West)

The Beat Generation: Their Influences

Rimbaud – symbolism and surrealism

Romantic poets – Shelley and Blake

American Transcendental Movement, esp. Thoreau as symbol of protest

The Beat Generation: Their Influence

‘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.’ (Literature Network, Rahn)

• Seminal texts such as ‘Howl’, ‘Naked Lunch’ and especially ‘On the Road’ still stand up today

• Obscenity trial brought against Ginsberg for ‘Howl’ challenged the definition of pornography in America. Ginsberg won, and the judgment more or less ensured that poetry and fiction would from then on be immune to the kind of censorship that still plagued other genres of art

• Paved the way for the Hippie and Counterculture movement of the 1960s and beyond

Ken Kesey and the Beat Generation

A latter day Beat

Drug trials

Psych ward – Chief Broom

Merry Pranksters

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests

Intersubjectivity

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as Beat

Literature?

What links can you make?

Remind you of anyone?

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

(Jack Kerouac, On The Road)