A Beat ghost walks across American landscape in search of himself

Or
A Beat Generation of Post-WWII era and the New Vision

Kerouac On the Road

Last night I walked clear down to Times Square and just as I arrived I suddenly realized I was
a ghost it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk.
In the words of the Beat writer Jack Kerouac who gives life to words and reinvents a different
form of sentence structure to fit the way the ideas flow in his mind, the way a stream flows and
flows and flows, creating its way and tackling stones and bushes and branches, the way the wind
breezes and shakes the leaves off of the trees which fall on the ground and turn into more
beautiful words; he collects them, one man marching through the whole of Unites States of
America, with a trumpet in his hands, playing bebop as the musical notes from his instrument
and discovering, yes discovering new combinations of notes, words and experiences. One man
going through life with his heart in his hands and, eyes and soul looking for a new vision, a new
experience, a new world.
This was my reaction upon reading Jack Kerouacs On the Road. What Kerouac writes, he feels.
To introduce you to the Roman a clef (a blend of fiction and non-fiction) magnum opus called
On the Road, the book by Kerouac was published in 1957. It covers his travel adventures across
the USA and his close friendship with Neal Cassady, portrayed as Dean Moriarty in the novel.
One of the most well-known books in Beat literature, On the Road enlightens you, throws you in
the streets, in skid rows, in the big bad world out there, on the road to a destination unknown,
where you get lost, get found, stumble, scratch, scrap, struggle, crawl, survive and find yourself.
It is an enlightening journey, full of madness, love, passion, kicks (as Kerouac and Cassady
would say; meaning thrills, fun and experiences), adventure and struggle and trouble and life at
its purest and most wonderful yet sorrowful and melancholic, but still thriving, exciting, ecstatic
where madmen drink, love, live and enjoy life as we dont do anymore; where people dance and
laugh like there is no tomorrow and dont have a care in the world but whose hearts burn, burn,
burn with love and sadness and the wild joys of life. People who are unpredictable and
uncontrollable, who cannot be contained in one body and one world and one life. Their heart and
their soul so wild they require hundred lives and yet the energy of all hundred lives is and has to
be contained in one extraordinary, mad life and one rotten, crawling, skidding, worn out body.
We are the truth-seekers, lovers, madmen unbound by any or all limitations of the man-made
constructs of society, free from all the laws in the world, free from all fears fed into a childs
hearts; to make him sleep, control him, chain him; we are not chained. We are free men walking
into the streets, into the wild, on the mountains, in the oceans and flying with the wings of our
hearts. We are sick and tired of being sick and tired of this society. We live on the fence of the
society, by choice. We cross the boundaries, we crush the laws and we make our own. We live

with passion. Without passion, life is impossible, inexplicable, unlivable. We are the beat boys of
the beat society in this beat world. We are the Beat Generation.

The Birth of the Beat Generation

In the small rooms of decaying apartments where smoke infused the air, the paint melted off the
walls, beds smelt of semen and alcohol, and the only sound heard was the click-click-click of a
typewriter, the Beat Generation was born.
A gang of guys changed the world of literature in post-WWII era. But as James Franco
(portraying Allen Ginsberg in the 2010 film Howl) says, they was no Beat Generation, just a
bunch of guys trying to get published. In truth, Kerouac coined the term Beat Generation. An
article published in The New York Times Magazine by another Beat writer John Clellon Holmes
This is the Beat Generation put a definition on their label. It came from a conversation
between Kerouac and Holmes in 1948, while discussing the generations, like Lost Generation
of the 20s, Kerouac said, Man, this is really a beat generation not as a way of labeling it, but
un-labeling it.
Though the meaning of the term Beat may have differed, considering who you ask. For jazz
musicians, it meant dead beat or beat up; For Herbert Huncke, it meant exhausted, sleepless,
wide-eyed, rejected by society, and on your own. The idea was conceived by Kerouac hearing
old African-Americans saying beat meaning crushed, poor and beaten. He also associated it
with beatific and beatitude meaning happiness or holy bliss. It also signified being on the
beat in Jazz music.
Who were those mysterious guys who were so aptly labelled the Beat writers? They were the
rebels who rejected the social norms of the society to develop a more unconventional way of life.
They lived life as an expression. A bunch of guys, the most well-known of them being Kerouac,
Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady. Others included Herbert Huncke, Lucian
Carr, David Kammerer and Carolyn Cassady (Neals wife).
Spending their lives on the road, getting involved in drugs, alcohol and sex, in search of their
souls, the Beat writers came up with, what they called, a New Vision. This new vision and the
works produced following it, were first considered obscene as evident from the numerous
lawsuits filed against the publishers, the most well-known among them being against Lawrence
Ferlinghetti. Ginsberg went on to join the San Francisco Renaissance in 1955, where he read
Howl to an audience which included Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He decided to publish the famous
poem under his new publishing company, City Lights and was sued for publishing obscene
material. Ferlinghetti won the case and it led to a path to expand the boundaries of literary
censorship in America.
They wrote about life as they saw, experienced, felt and wanted it. Beats offended the society
because they broke the norms. They challenged what was considered obscene and vulgar and
unacceptable and unnecessary. They made them uncomfortable with their freedom. The society

was not yet ready to change. Their writing style was spontaneous, free-flowing and composed to
the pace and rhythm of bebop. The long sentences, paced out with the rhythm of breath
(Ginsbergs style of poetry).
They found and preferred a different way to look at things, to feel and understand the world in a
new way, with an alternate consciousness, as if a constant state of trance, a different kind of
filter, through a dream machine.
Beatniks, rejection and popularity
The mainstream society rejected the rogue convention-defying lifestyle and literature of the
Beats. At the same time, their popularity grew among the like-minded underground groups.
Cliques like San Francisco Renaissance, Merry Pranksters (led by Ken Kesey, the author of One
Flew over the Cuckoos Nest) encouraged the use of psychedelic drugs and later formed the link
between the Beat Generation in the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.
The term beatnik, after Russia launched the first artificial satellite Sputnik in 1958, was
coined by a San Francisco Chronicle journalist, Herb Caen to condescend the Beats. While the
Sputnik burned up after three months of travel, more than fifty years later, we are still talking
about the Beats. The recent resurgence in popularity of the Beats, with films such as Howl
(2010), On the Road (2012), and Big Sur (2013), and numerous documentaries throughout the
last five decades, are evidence enough that Beat Generation influenced the world in their own
different way. They will forever be remembered as the road junkies of post-World War II era who
travelled across the United States of America in the inky American nights in search of
themselves and gifted their souls to the world with their burning, bleeding words.