What do Jack Kerouac, the Dalai Lama, Godzilla and Gumby have in common? Well for one - they all are Buddhists! Secondly they all rose to prominence in the 1950's. Most importantly - all are Beat!
The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clennon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late Forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, curious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beutiful in an ugly graceful new way - a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word "beat" spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America - beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction... (Jack Kerouac 1957).
If you want to find out something about the Beat Generation, it is recommended that you check out Literary Kicks by Levi Asher. Other related Beat pages include:Introduction to the Portable Beat Reader ,People featured: Jack KerouacHow Beat Happened, Kerouac Speaks, City Lights Catalogue ...
Douglas M. Dusseau; Email: ddusseau@in.net Revised November 20,1995
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