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Defining the Beat Generation:

John Clellon Holmes, “This is the Beat Generation”

What does Holmes describe as the “face” of the Beat Generation?

Holmes uses the analogy of an 18 year-old girl picked up for smoking marijuana. He describes her picture in the newspaper, “In the pale, attentitive face, with its soft eyes and intelligent mouth, there was no hint of corruption” (Charters, 223). The girl is merely a girl who smokes pot, she is only a product of her generation seeking some kind of truth, in this case, via marijuana. She is only dubbed a criminal through American standards.

I think Holmes relates the imagery of the girls face to the face of the Beat Generation in an attempt to define that while their activities were criminalized by constructs of law and society, they were innocent kids simply exploring and experiencing life.

Holmes writes this about the origins of “beat”: “It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately of soul: a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness” (Charters, 223). What does this mean?

I think Holmes means the way in which Beats thought was in a manner of reducing outside influences on the mind like, American mainstream culture or what you’re suppose to do. “bedrock consciousness” brings your mind to an organic, original state, so that your own ideas can flourish, be created, or challenged.

Holmes spends a great deal of time distancing the Beat Generation from The Lost Generation. What are the differences between the two? How are they the same?

Both the Lost Generation and Beat Generation are post-war generations the seemed to rebel standards. Both generations partied, smoked drugs, drank too much, had sex, and basically pushed the boundaries of living life to the extreme for their times. However, their fundamental reasoning for doing so is very different. The Lost Generation is exactly that, lost. To the flappers and bootleggers nothing meant anything anymore. They were “romantically disillusioned” with life and had lost faith in a spiritual meaning. The Beat Generation as Holmes says, “the wild boys of today are not lost” (Charters, 224). This generation was curious and in need of faith and meaning. They were in search of how to live not why to live.

Wayne Lawson, “The Beats”

Lawson seems to belittle the Beat movement to “a revolt against the Squares” Do you agree with this?

I don’t think it is so much a “revolt against the Squares”, it is more of a revolt against American values of the time. They are against the grain kind of folk seeking meaning in the world around them.

What is a Beat according to Lawson? In other words how does he describe them? What do they wear? Where do they live?

Lawson describes the Beat as a “shabby young individual—they deliberately break every rule and ridicule every aspiration of the normal ‘good’ citizen”. He also describes the physical appearance of the Beat: “likely to wear dungarees, sandals, and a black turtle-neck sweater”.

The Beat lives in communities surrounded by other Beats. They are “free-and-easy”. Typical locations are, North Beach of San Francisco, L.A., and Greenwich Village.

Inside their homes is a residence of that of a minimalistic individual. “A bare mattress, crates that serve as tables and bookcases, a hot plate and a few pans, a phonograph and loud-speaker and a typewriter. Lighting is provided by bare bulbs, or candles stuck in wine bottles”.

In Lawson's article he makes a claim that Beat authors were "men who have lost their erasers". What do you think this means?

Without an eraser one cannot make changes or corrections. I think the Beats did this deliberately to seek some kind of truth. Life doesn’t have an eraser to correct mistakes or go back and change the way an event happened, so the Beat reflects this in his writing.