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The Beats and the 1950s

 

 Task Resources Evaluation 

 

Introduction

The 1950's represented, what W. H. Auden called, an "Age of Anxiety," between the victory of World War II and the specter of nuclear annihilation. The 1950s was also a time when many of the nation's younger generation began to challenge Conformity. The Beat Culture began at this time and continued with other countercultures and finally to the hippies of the 1960s.

According to John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the most important book of the Beat Generation, "described the experiences and attitudes of a restless group of young Americans .whose primary interests seemed to be fast cars, wild parties, modern jazz...and other miscellaneous kicks:

Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me (Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 1).

What differentiated the characters in On The Road from the slum bred petty criminals was Kerouac's insistence that actually they were on a quest, and that the specific object of their quest was spiritual. Kerouac wanted visions:

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 and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" ~ Jack Kerouac

The Beats weren’t looking for spirituality in church or school; following Emerson’s advice, the Beats looked for spirituality in Nature and themselves. Perhaps the quest of the Beats might be placed into a context of the vision of Ralph Waldo Emerson, when he gave an address to the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa society in which he claimed that character is higher than intellect, and experience counts more than book learning. Emerson told that august crowd to get out of school and experience life for themselves. Thoreau got it. And so did the Beats.

On the road, Kerouac and friends looked for a new American Identity, separate from those dead ideas inherited from Europe. Out in the vast landscape of the American continent, an individual, committed to self-reliance, novelty, and change, could make contact with the ultimate inspiration:

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it... and tonight the stars'll be out (Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 5)

Historian Imre Saluszinsky has explored the connection between Emerson's call for a new American Identity and the Beat Generation and today's culture. For example, Emerson taught that spirituality can best be found in Nature:

 In fact the Beat idea of the American continent as the ultimate source of all inspiration comes from Emerson, who singlehandedly convinced the young American poets and thinkers of the 19th century that they could forget Europe and history, and forge an original relation to nature. And the radical individualism of the Existentialists, with its sense of all worldly power as corrupt and corrupting: that is also there in Emerson, who writes, "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members."

Contemporary cultural icon, Bob Dylan, has been perfectly open about his early influences: "I came out of the wilderness, and just naturally fell in with the Beat scene . . . it was Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso and Ferlinghetti . . . I got in at the tail end of that and it was magic."

Saluszinsky suggests that today's counter-culture goes back to "Emerson's chief lesson --- that memory and history are death to the creative spirit, which must be committed to novelty and change --- is evident everywhere in Dylan who saw immediately that one way of changing the times is simply to assert that they already are a-changin'...This spirit of Emerson and Hawthorne --- who looked West from New England and there, in the opposite direction to Europe, found a symbol of action and renewal ...Self-reliance is not in every respect a comforting or easy truth to live by: it teaches that we must compete and struggle endlessly, if we are to escape the limiting influence of others." As Dylan suggests:

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you,
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you . . .
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Your Task  

Break into groups of six and create a self-running, multimedia presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint of images of the counter culture of the 1950s, incorporating jazz, poetry and archival photography, painting and film. Included in your presentation will be major historical events and personalities as well as images of the 1950s. Be sure to include quotes. The presentation will become part of museum exhibit on the Beat counter-culture.

Process:

You will need to identify the role of the counter-culture in American History. References to Ralph Waldo Emerson's American Scholar speech, beat poetry and prose, and quotes by artists and musicians are required. Responsibility for the projects should be divided among group members including historical research and artistic research. The final goal of the group task will be to present a graphic history of the 1950s as viewed by American artists, writers, and musicians.

Steps

  • Divide into groups of six.
  • Assign responsibility for historical research and artistic research
  • Using listed resources, prepare a timeline of historical events using graphics to enhance the timeline.
  • Prepare a PowerPoint multimedia presentation.

    Evaluation

You will be evaluated on the following concepts:
* Historical accuracy and research
* Graphic Images
* Documentation
* Variety of Artists
* Presentation

Conclusion

We hope that "Images of the Fifties" will help make the students more aware of the artistic history of the America, along with the many great artists of the period.

Suggestions for Research

Historisity: Places and Historical Events to explore

New York:

Dylan Thomas walking tour of New York

Dylan Thomas walking tour PDF

Woody Allen's Walking Tour of New York

Ted Joan's beatnik birthday party, railroad flat, St. Mark's Place, July, 25, 1959.
The White Horse, 567 Hudson Street, a writer's beer tavern
The Artist's Club, 10th Street and Fourth Avenue (Feb. 15,1959, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Leroi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) read poetry)
Washington Square Park
Café Bizzare
Gaslight Café- MacDougal Street
San Remo Café - MacDougal Street

The Funeral of the Beat Generation, held Jan. 23, 1961 in Robert Cordier's railroad flat at 85 Christopher Street. Norman Mailer spoke there.

West Coast- San Fransico -
"Gateway to Beatnikland" North Beach
City Lights bookstore, Columbus Ave.
Co-Existence Bagel Shop

 


 General Resources

The Fifties

Personalities

1940s and 1950s

Comedians

  • Woody Allen
  • Bill Cosby
  • Lenny Bruce
  • Mort Sahl

Jack Kerouac Speaks

Sound Files

 

Multimedia

 

  • The Story of the Movies The Film Foundation presents rich resources for teaching specific films in the classroom, including To Kill a Mockingbird and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Extensive guides can be printed from the site.
  • Say It Plain: A Century of Great American Speeches This rich site includes a audio files and texts of speeches by Booker T. Washington, Dick Gregory, and Stokeley Carmichael. The site includes the only known recordings of Marcus Garvey as well as Barbara Jordan's defense of the US Constitution during the impeachment hearings of President Richard Nixon.

Primary Sources

Personalities

Poetry

 

Special Personalities

 

Jazz

 

Greenwich Village and Artists

Greenwich Village

The Artist's Club, 10th Street and Fourth Avenue (Feb. 15,1959, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Leroi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) read poetry)


Washington Square Park
Café Bizzare
Gaslight Café- MacDougal Street
San Remo Café - MacDougal Street

Individual Artists

 

Online Museums


 

 

 

 

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