Jack Ginsberg And The Beat Generation

Levi Asher characterized the Beat Generation as one of extremes, from their childhood environment, their rejection of society and its norms, to the style in which they lived. Asher begins with an article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine by John Clellon Holmes, where he attempted to provide some explanation of why this generation was behaving the way it was, he said, “Ever since they were old enough to imagine a future, it has been in jeopardy”. Growing up between two world wars and amidst the Great Depression was motivation for the Beat Generation to live in the moment, and not to focus very far into the future. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were the two most-famous Beat Generation writers, and as their fame developed so did the movement …show more content…
Advances in technology significantly shaped the United States; it led to improved medicines that prolonged life and more efficient weapons that ended it. This generation witnessed the thoughtless discard of millions of lives in trench warfare and by the use of nuclear weapons. Beat was a term used to describe a manner of thinking or behaving; a uniform feeling among the people of the Beat Generation that represented the sensation of feeling tired. They felt beat-up by the unnatural conditions of early-nineteenth-century American society. The tension and paranoia that resulted from war and economic hardships left this generation primarily feeling drained, so they sought to reserve any energy that they had left, and use it in their pursuit of personal happiness. “The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society