angelheaded hipsters burning

Any attempt to label an entire generation is unrewarding, and yet the generation which went through the last war, or at least could get a drink easily once it was over, seems to possess a uniform, general quality which demands an adjective ... The origins of the word 'beat' are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. Its members have an instinctive individuality, needing no bohemianism or imposed eccentricity to express it. - John Clellon Holmes

[bandaidpennylane]

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

excerpt from Howl, Draft 1

from Howl 50th Anniversary Ed. Original Draft facsimile, transcript, and variant versions

[havingapoemwithyou]

revolutionary letter #26 by Diane Di Prima

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

“Peter Orlovsky legs crossed mysterious-haired, W.S. Burroughs with camera & hat shading Mediterranean sun, myself white-pants earnest smoking, Alan Ansen resolute visiting from Venice to help type new apocalyptic cut-up material overflow from Naked Lunch, Gregory Corso’d been gambling at casino with Francis Bacon, Corso here sunglassed & Minox’d, Ian Sommerville assisting sound-collage electronic & stroboscope alpha-rhythm & Dream Machine experiments with Bill & Brion Gysin then in town, Paul Bowles squinting in bright mid-day light seated on ground, company assembled outside Burroughs’ French-door’d room on garden, my Kodak-Retina in young Michael Portman’s hands, Villa Muniria, 1 Calle Magellanes, Tangier July 1961." (photo and caption by Allen Ginsberg)

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

What Jack Kerouac Left Behind

A recent exhibition at the Grolier Club featured ashes that fell from a cigarette the novelist was probably smoking on the day he died. Joyc

[joeinct]

Snowy Backyards. January 23, Photo by Allen Ginsberg, 1987

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

“I think the celebration of Christmas has changed within the short span of my own lifetime. Only twenty years ago, before World War II [sic] it seemed that Christmas was still being celebrated with a naive and joyous innocence whereas today you hear the expression, “Christmas comes once a year like taxes”.

read Kerouac's full essay on Christmas from 1957 here

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

The Junky's Christmas

Text by Burroughs - short produced by Coppola

PDF

more

[thermaldamage54]

Jan Kerouac in 1978.Credit...Fred W. McDarrah/The New York Historical, via Getty Images

[kammartinez]

The Female Picaresque: Jan Kerouac’s Baby Driver by Amanda Fortini

October 24, 2025 – “Jan Kerouac’s darker and more extreme brand of mischief make her father’s On the Road high jinks seem tame and even a ta

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

Jack Kerouac

[opticandmasturbation]

Jack Kerouac, Florida, 1961

By Robert Frank

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

‘Very significant’ Jack Kerouac story discovered after mafia boss auction

Exclusive: Two-page 1957 manuscript signed by author linked to his classic of beat literature On the Road

"We hit Denver with the gas gauge kissing empty and the Hudson coughing dust from a thousand desert miles. It was that wild, holy, and crazy time when Dean and I were inseparable, two halves of a lost and found coin, and Marylou was with us, a sad-eyed angel in a too-tight sweater. The money was gone, spent on gas and cheap wine and a wild night in a Tucson motel that ended with a fistfight and a sprint to the car. Now we are broke, the sky was the colour of a dirty nickel, and a mean mountain wind cut down Larimer Street."

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

"Perhaps events are pre-written and pre-recorded and when you cut word lines the future leaks out."

Burroughs, speaking on the cut-up technique from Odier's - The Job, Interviews with William Burroughs

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

from left to right: Sandra Wood, John Wood, Frank Stanford, AG, Peter Orlovsky, Lynnice Butler, Jack Butler

via here.

Allen Ginsberg traveled to the Ozarks in 1969.

[muhammadgiovanni]

16mm footage of Jack Kerouac, New York, NY, 1959.

[fuckyeahbeatgeneration]

Revolutionary Letter #1

I have just realized that the stakes are myself I have no other ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over the roulette table, I recoup what I can nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag this flesh all I have to offer, to make the play with this immediate head, what it comes up with, my move as we slither over this go board, stepping always (we hope) between the lines

Diane di Prima (1934-2020)

https://poets.org/poem/revolutionary-letter-1