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Beatnik
Beatniks were members of a social movement in the mid-20th century, who subscribed to an anti- materialistic lifestyle. They rejected the conformity and consumerism of mainstream American culture and expressed themselves through various forms of art, such as literature, poetry, music, and painting. They also experimented with spirituality, drugs, sexuality, and travel. The term "beatnik" was coined by ''San Francisco Chronicle'' columnist Herb Caen in 1958, as a derogatory label for the followers of the Beat Generation, a group of influential writers and artists who emerged during the era of the Silent Generation's maturing, from as early as 1946, to as late as 1963, but the subculture was at its most prevalent in the 1950s. This lifestyle of anti-consumerism may have been influenced by their generation living in extreme poverty in the Great Depression during their formative years, seeing slightly older people serve in WWII and being influenced by the rise of left-wing poli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by members of the Silent Generation in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. Allen Ginsberg's '' Howl'' (1956), William S. Burroughs' ''Naked Lunch'' (1959), and Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' (1957) are among the best-known examples of Beat literature.Charters (1992) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Both ''Howl'' and ''Naked Lunch'' were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United State ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippies
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States and spread to different countries around the world. The word ''Etymology of hippie, hippie'' came from ''Hipster (1940s subculture), hipster'' and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town, Chicago, Old Town community. The term ''hippie'' was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier. The origins of the terms ''Hip (slang), hip'' and ''hep'' are uncertain. By the 1940s, both had become part of African-American culture, African American Glossary of jive talk, jive slang and meant "sophisticated; currently fashionable; fully up-to-date". The Beats adopted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
-nik
The English suffix -nik is of Slavic origin. It approximately corresponds to the suffix "-er" and nearly always denotes an agent noun (that is, it describes a person related to the thing, state, habit, or action described by the word to which the suffix is attached).V. V. Kabakchi, Charles Clay Doyle"Of Sputniks, Beatniks, and Nogoodniks" '' American Speech'', Vol. 65, No. 3 (1990), pp. 275-278 In the cases where a native English language coinage may occur, the "-nik"-word often bears an ironic connotation, as in the case of the terms coined for the failed rocket launch of the U.S. satellite rival to Sputnik, such as ''kaputnik, dudnik'' and ''flopnik'' among others. History The suffix existed in English for a long time. An example is '' raskolnik'', recorded by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as known since 1723. There have been two main waves of the introduction of this suffix into English language. The first was driven by Yinglish words contributed by Yiddish speakers from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian parentage, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was '' The Town and the City'' (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, '' On the Road'', in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes. Kerouac died in 1969. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published. Kerouac is recognized for his style of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterculture Of The 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon and political movement that developed in the Western world during the mid-20th century. It began in the early 1960s, and continued through the early 1970s. It is often synonymous with cultural liberalism and with the various social changes of the decade. The effects of the movement"iarchive:cubanc 000104, Where Have All the Rebels Gone?" Ep. 125 of ''Assignment America''. Buffalo, NY: WNET. 1975.Transcript availablevia American Archive of Public Broadcasting.) have been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights movement in the United States had made significant progress, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and with the intensification of the Vietnam War that same year, it became revolutionary to some. As the movement progressed, widespread social tensions also developed concerning other issues, and tended to flow along generational lines regarding Individu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On The Road
''On the Road'' is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a ''roman à clef'', with many key figures of the Beat movement represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator, Sal Paradise. The idea for the book formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks and was then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was first published by Viking Press. ''The New York Times'' hailed the book's appearance as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest, and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac, himself, named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is." In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''On the Road'' 55th on its li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Movement
The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement) is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create sustainable living. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in (not an enemy of) ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, as well as human rights. The environmental movement is an international movement, represented by a range of environmental organizations, from enterprises to grassroots and varies from country to country. Due to its large membership, varying and strong beliefs, and occasionally speculative nature, the environmental movement is not always united in its goals. At its broadest, the movement includes private citizens, professionals, Religion and environmentalism, religious devotees, politicians, scientists, nonprofit organizations, and individual advocates like former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and Rachel Carson in the 20th century. Since the 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer lifestyles on a broad range of social issues such as feminism, LGBT movements, gay rights, Drug liberalization, drug policy reforms, and gender relations. The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals. However, many have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional Left-wing politics, leftist goals. Some who self-identified as "New Left" rejected involvement with the Labour movement, labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of Class conflict, class struggle; however, others gravitated to their own takes on established forms of Marxis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City Lights Bookstore
City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin (who left two years later). Both the store and the publishers became widely known following the obscenity trial of Ferlinghetti for publishing Allen Ginsberg's influential collection ''Howl and Other Poems'' (City Lights, 1956). Nancy Peters started working there in 1971 and retired as executive director in 2007. In 2001, City Lights was made an official historic landmark. City Lights is located at 261 Columbus Avenue. While formally located in Chinatown, it self-identifies as part of immediately adjacent North Beach. History Founding and early years City Lights was the inspiration of Peter D. Martin, who relocated from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaslight Cafe
Gas lighting is the production of artificial light from combustion of a fuel gas such as methane, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, coal gas (town gas) or natural gas. The light is produced either directly by the flame, generally by using special mixes (typically propane or butane) of illuminating gas to increase brightness, or indirectly with other components such as the gas mantle or the limelight, with the gas primarily functioning to heat the mantle or the lime to incandescence. Before electricity became sufficiently widespread and economical to allow for general public use, gas lighting was prevalent for outdoor and indoor use in cities and suburbs where the infrastructure for distribution of gas was practical. At that time, the most common fuels for gas lighting were wood gas, coal gas and, in limited cases, water gas. Early gas lights were ignited manually by lamplighters, although many later designs are self-igniting. Gas lighting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howl (poem)
"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection, '' Howl and Other Poems''. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon. Ginsberg began work on "Howl" in 1954. In the Paul Blackburn Audio Collection at the University of California, San Diego, Ginsberg can be heard reading early drafts of the poem to his fellow writing associates. Ginsberg "performed" the poem at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in October 1955. Fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, who attended the performance, published the work in 1956. Upon the book's release, Ferlinghetti and the City Lights Bookstore manager, Shigeyoshi Murao, were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and both were arrested. On October 3, 1957, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that the poem was not obscene. Although highly controversial at first, and excluded for years from the academic canon, "Howl" has gradually come to b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Six Gallery Reading
The Six Gallery reading (also called the ''Gallery Six reading'' or ''Six Angels in the Same Performance'') was an important poetry event that took place on Friday, October 7, 1955, at an art gallery on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. It was the occasion when Allen Ginsberg first performed his poem "Howl". The reading heralded the birth of the Beat Generation as well as the West Coast literary ferment known as the San Francisco Renaissance. History In 1952, artists Jess Collins and Harry Jacobus, along with poet Robert Duncan, opened the King Ubu Gallery (an allusion to Alfred Jarry's 1896 play Ubu Roi) on 3119 Fillmore Street near the intersection with Union Street in downtown San Francisco. Prior to its association with art and poetry, the building had been an automobile repair shop. In 1954, Wally Hedrick, a painter and Korean War veteran, teamed up with artists Deborah Remington, Hayward King and David Simpson, and poets Jack Spicer and John Allen Ryan (together ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
