Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg were of the opinion that only the figure of the artist can check the nation’s spiritual degeneration in the atomic age. Mailer argued in 1955 that the role of the artist is “to be as disturbing, as adventurous, as penetrating, as his energy and courage make possible” (qtd in Halliwell). Mailer’s famous essay “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster” recorded a number of young white people who liked jazz and swing music and who were discontent with the conformist culture adopted the black culture as their own. The émigré intellectual community critiqued the prevailing social and political system.
