Beat Writers
From fifties
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey in June of 1926 and died in New York City in April of 1997. At the age of seventeen he went to Columbia University where he met Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. Together they formed a counterculture which became known at the 'beat generation'. They frequently experimented with drugs as a way of searching for enlightenment and continuously wrote poems and prose about all their experiences. After graduating from Columbia, Ginsberg relocated to San Francisco, the west coast location for the beat culture. It was there in 1955 that Ginsberg's most famous poem "Howl" was published by City Lights Publishers. It became the subject of an obscenity trial but was judged to not be obscene. After winning that battle Ginsberg became a champion of the right of free speech and freedom of expression for all writers, especially for fellow beats. He was influential in getting Jack Kerouac's book "On the Road" published. Throughout his life Ginsberg traveled extensively and studied Zen Buddhism. He was in demand all over the country to do his poetry readings. In the sixties and early seventies Ginsberg aligned himself with the new generation of radicals,the hippies, and became an outspoken opponent of the Viet Nam War. In 1974 he helped to found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where he taught summer poetry workshops. During the academic year he was a distinguished professor at Brooklin College. Ginsberg was named a Guggenheim fellow in 1965 and was a member of the American Institute of Arts and Letters. He received countless awards for his poetry and writings and is considered the archetypal beat generation writer. He died of liver cancer at the age of seventy.
(source for some material- Ann Charters-Modern American Poetry-retrieved on-line via Google)
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs was born in 1914. He was a little different than the other Beats; he was older, dressed nicely, more wealthy, and lived often outside the United States. For years he frequently corresponded with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, the latter twelve years his junior. Oliver Harris writes in the introduction to the Letters of William S. Burroughs: 1945-1959 that “their alliance was Burroughs’ starting point as a writer”(Harris xvii).
Burroughs met Ginsberg while bartending in Greenwich Village, one of the many “marginal jobs he held in search of what he called ‘experience’” (Halberstam 297). He came to develop a sort of obsession for Ginsberg (Harris xxiv).
Burroughs’ life involved a lot of travel, addiction, and career changes. He attended Harvard twice – once earning a B.A. in English Literature, the second time dropping out after studying anthropology. In his earlier years he was a detective, farmer, exterminator and soldier. For most of his life, despite his many temporary rehabilitations, he suffered from “the Sickness,” his word for his opiate addiction (Burroughs 199). Harris writes that in the letters Burroughs wrote to Ginsberg and Kerouac, “Addiction [was] not merely a recurrent subject of Burroughs’ letters, it [was] their matrix” (xix). The $200 monthly allowance he received from his family helped to foster this. His family required him to see a psychiatrist in exchange for this money, but Burroughs hated psychiatrists, whom he saw as agents of conformity (Halberstam 299).
Burroughs had prolific writing career. His erratic “antinovel” the Naked Lunch is accepted by many as his most important and notorious book. Its explicit depictions of drug use, bodily functions, homosexual and heterosexual acts, and other subcultural references shocked America and incited heavy censoring. Michael Barry Goodman writes that it “was the last work of literature to be proscribed in this nation’s struggle between its belief in free expression and its Puritan heritage…it was censored by academia, the U.S. Post Office, the U.S. customs Service, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the city of Los Angeles” (Goodman 1).
Burroughs had one son, William S. Burroughs Jr.. Billy’s mother, Joan, died in his childhood, during an unfortunate game of William Tell in which William Sr. accidentally killed her (Dorfman). Billy became a heavy drinker, published his own writing, and detested his father (Biography). He died in 1981 from liver failure. William Burroughs died sixteen years later.
“Biography of William S. Burroughs Jr. details life of the Beat Writer’s Son.” 23 Sept. 2006. 4 June 2008. International Herald Tribune. <http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/23/arts/NA_A-E_BKS_US_Burroughs_Son.php>
Burroughs, William. Naked Lunch: the Restored Text. Edited by James Grauerholz and Barry Miles. New York: Grove Press, 2001.
Dorfman, Elsa. “Second-class Rebels.” The Women’s Review of Books. Xiv.7 April 1997
Goodman, Michael Barry. Contemporary Literary Censorship: the Case History of Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, 1981.
Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York: Ballantine, 1994.
Harris, Oliver. The Letters of Willam S. Burroughs. New York: Penguin, 1993.
Jack Kerouac 
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell Massachusetts. He came from a family of French- Canadian immigrants. His father was a newspaper reporter who owned his own printing business, although, after a flood destroyed the business, his family struggled to regain financial stability. His brother, Gerard, died at age nine, and Kerouac never fully recovered from his brother's death. He believed that Gerard followed him as a guardian angel. Kerouac was a bright, creative child who was described as having many friends. He was educated at a French-speaking Catholic school until junior high, after which he really began to learn English as a second language. As the country entered World War II, Kerouac entered the Navy. He had difficulties relating to his officers (who thought he was insane), because he never submitted to their authority. One day, he dropped his rifle and walked off the field. He was sent to a Navy hospital, where he told the doctors he was writing a novel. He later rejoined the Navy, and after a trip to England, met two friends named Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg. These two would greatly influence his later writing and philosophy. Kerouac sought enlightenment through nature and Buddhism. He took road trips from New York to San Francisco with Neal Cassady and his ex-wife, Luanne. His most famous book, On The Road, put him on the map as part of the Beat Generation. His writing is often characterized as stream of conscious, and his took notes and a notebook with him wherever he went. He had trouble forming lasting relationships, as he was married three times, and it's often suggested that he was bisexual, and involved at times with Allen Ginsberg. He struggled with alcoholism, which ultimately took his life when he died in 1969 of liver cirrhosis. Kerouac's legacy includes becoming known as a “king of beat writers”, and he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell in 2007. Allen Ginsberg also formed the “Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics” at Noropa University in his honor.
“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 and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'”
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
http://www.wordsareimportant.com/dharmabeat.htm
