The Beat movement was an American social and literary movement, originating in the 1950s, and centred in the bohemian artist communities of
San Francisco’s North Beach, Los Angeles’ Venice West, and New
York City’s Greenwich
Village. Its adherents, self-styled as “beat” (originally meaning
“weary” (= tired), but later also connoting a musical sense, a “beatific”
spirituality, and other meanings) and derisively called “beatniks,” expressed
their alienation from conventional, or “square,” society by adopting a style of
dress, manners, and “hip” vocabulary borrowed from jazz musicians. They
advocated personal release, purification, and illumination through the
heightened sensory awareness that might be induced by drugs, jazz, sex, or the disciplines of Zen
Buddhism. The Beats and their advocates found the joylessness and
purposelessness of modern society sufficient justification for both withdrawal
and protest. Read here.
