The beat generation

A new book of photographs by Burt Glinn – featuring a recently discovered essay by Jack Kerouac – captures the beat generation in all their jazz-heavy, late-night glory

Writers of the Beat Generation. These authors rejected conformist society and sought to make their own way.

Burt Glinn shot the Beats in New York’s jazz clubs, coffee shops and Village bars.

The literary world has become more gender-inclusive since the beats of the 1950s. Just as well, because it’s jarring to find yourself in love with a world that doesn’t love you back

Sunday Reading: The Beat Generation || 5:00 A.M. Photograph by Bruce Davidson / Magnum The poet Allen Ginsberg was born ninety-two years ago today, on June 3rd, 1926. To celebrate, we’re bringing you pieces about the Beat Generation and the ways it changed American culture. Subscribers can read Jane Kramer’s two - part Profile of Ginsberg, which follows him across America, from Greenwich Village to San Francisco. In…

A new catalogue of Kerouac's paintings is crucial in studying the overlap in his investment in writing and painting.

Philip Whalen (left) and Jack Kerouac, 1956 © Walter Lehrman

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.

Flyer for “Beat Poetry Reading” at the Charles Street Meeting House, October 24, 1977, with Ed Sanders, Joe Dunn, Eero Ruutila, and J.D. Dawson.