…and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Beat Generation was a group of American post- World War II writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired. Down and out Beatitude/Beatif ic

Post-WW2 US Militarism and the atomic bomb Consumerism & materialism Economic growth Patriarchal society

The Beat Generation: What and who were they? Grew out of a reaction to: Post war society, particularly what they viewed as rampant capitalism - destructive to the human spirit and antithetical to social equality What they viewed as the prudish-ness of their parents’ generation - unhealthy and possibly damaging The clean, almost antiseptic formalism of the early twentieth century Modernists Central elements of "Beat" culture: Rejection of received standards Innovations in style Use of illegal drugs Alternative sexualities Rejection of materialism Explicit portrayals of the human condition Individual freedom Spontaneity

The Beat Generation: Who and what were they? Beginnings: In the 1940s at Columbia University Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg New York and San Fransisco Grew to prominence in 1950s and in to the 60s A very small group with a very large impact

The Beat Generation: Their Influences JAZZ! ‘In this modern jazz, they heard something rebel and nameless that spoke for them, and their lives knew a gospel for the first time. It was more than a music; it became an attitude toward life, a way of walking, a language and a costume; and these introverted kids... now felt somewhere at last’ (Holmes, Go) They adopted the language e.g. ‘square’, ‘cat’, ‘dig’ etc They adopted the drugs They adopted the style and wrote the way jazz played, without stringent rules for structure and rhythm resulting in the ‘stream of consciousness ’: words blurted out in vigorous bursts, rarely revised and often sparsely punctuated for lines and lines. Rhythm, metre and length. A way of life: ‘From it they adopted the mythos of the brooding, tortured, solitary artist, performing with others but always alone.’ (Maynard, Venice West)

The Beat Generation: Their Influences Rimbaud – symbolism and surrealism Romantic poets – Shelley and Blake American Transcendental Movement, esp. Thoreau as symbol of protest

The Beat Generation: Their Influence ‘They fashioned a literature that was more bold, straightforward, and expressive than anything that had come before. Underground music styles like jazz were especially evocative for Beat writers, while threatening and sinister to the establishment. To many, the artistic productions of the Beats crossed the line into pornography and therefore merited censorship. Some dismissed the Beat Generation’s literature as mere provocation – a means to get attention, not serious art. Time has proven that the cultural impact of the Beat writers was far from short-lived, as the influence of their work continues to be widespread.’ (Literature Network, Rahn) Seminal texts such as ‘Howl’, ‘Naked Lunch’ and especially ‘On the Road’ still stand up today Obscenity trial brought against Ginsberg for ‘Howl’ challenged the definition of pornography in America. Ginsberg won, and the judgment more or less ensured that poetry and fiction would from then on be immune to the kind of censorship that still plagued other genres of art Paved the way for the Hippie and Counterculture movement of the 1960s and beyond

Ken Kesey and the Beat Generation A latter day Beat Drug trials Psych ward – Chief Broom Merry Pranksters The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests Intersubjectivity

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as Beat Literature? What links can you make?

Remind you of anyone? “the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” (Jack Kerouac, On The Road)