Beat generation

The term beat generation was introduced by Jack Kerouac in approximately 1948 to describe his social circle to the novelist John Clellon Holmes (who published an early novel about the beat generation, titled Go, in 1952, along with a manifesto of sorts in the New York Times Magazine: "This is the beat generation"). The adjective "beat" (introduced by Herbert Huncke) had the connotations of "tired" or "down and out", but Kerouac added the paradoxical connotations of "upbeat", "beatific", and the musical association of being "on the beat".

Principal writings of the Beat Generation

• On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
• Junky by William S. Burroughs(1953)
• Howl and other Poems by Allen Ginsberg (1956)
• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (1959)
• The First Third by Neal Cassady (1970)
• Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson (1983)

Some proto-beat writings

• The Town and the City* by Jack Kerouac (1950)
• Go by John Clellon Holmes (1952)
• Who Walk in Darkness by Chandler Brossard (1952)
• Flee the Angry Strangers by George Mandel (1952)
• Halfway Down the Stairs by Charles Thompson (1957; depicts late 1940s proto-beats)

Kerouac's first novel, The Town and the City, like all of his major works, is essentially an autobiographical novel about the beat circle, but it is not usually considered a "beat novel" because he had not yet developed his own style (he was consciously imitating Thomas Wolfe). A similar argument is usually made about Holmes's Go.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~