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Beat Generation
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The Beat Generation was the first generation in American history to be subjected to peacetime military conscription. It was ... the first generation of young adults who had to confront the stark reality that two powerful nation-states, which might wind up fighting each other, possessed nuclear weapons in sufficient quantity to possibly destroy the world. The Beat fringe expressed their displeasure and alienation from mainstream, statist society by seeking enlightenment, and escape, through sex, drugs, modern jazz, and forays into Eastern mysticism.
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The members of the Beat Generation were new bohemian libertines, who often engaged in and celebrated spontaneous creativity. The adjective beat had the connotations of "tired" or "down and out," but as used by Kerouac it included the paradoxical connotations of "upbeat", "beatific", and the musical association of being "on the beat." The Beat writers emphasized a visceral engagement in gritty worldly experiences combined with a criticism of the hollowness of mainstream American life and a yearning for deeper spiritual understanding (many of them developed a strong interest in Buddhism).
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The Beat Generation emerged in America in 1950s, which turned out to be a suffocating age. The intensively industrialized civilization brought about economic affluence but led to the mental bareness. Individuality and freedom had been deprived of mercilessly .The beat movement not only announced the spring of a new literary conception but ... predicted an overall liberation of mind. And much more importance was attached to the choice of their life made in the hard times. Nearly all the members were gays, and had the experience of drug smoking. They embraced the extreme individualism, and took the morbid craze as an effective means to break through the bound of conventional moral and legal system.
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The Beat Generation sneaked up on America. The first notice of the group was given in John Clellon Holmes' novel Go published in 1952. Paperback rights were soon sold and the New York Times Commissioned an article from Holmes titled This is the Beat Generation. This article generated a surprising 400 letters to the paper.
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The term Beat Generation was first used by Kerouac in the late 1940s. The word beat had various connotations for the writers, including despair over the beaten state of the individual in mass society and belief in the beatitude, or blessedness, of the natural world and in the restorative powers of the beat of jazz music and poetry. Beat writing generally called for a renunciation of material goods and acquisitiveness in favor of a rediscovery of the erotic, artistic, and spiritual self through the use of drugs, casual sex, music, and the mysticism of Zen Buddhism. The term beatnik was coined in the late 1950s to refer, often disparagingly, to people who embraced the ideas and attitudes of the Beat writers.
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The legacy that the beat generation gave to the world is not just found in books. On the Road is still one of the most popular books of all time, but it is the free thinking, always questioning credo that the beats will be remembered for. If one person is still questioning an unfair rule or daring to create an original thought, that is where the spirit of the beat generation lives on.
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Beat Generation