Beat Generation (play)

Last updated
Beat Generation
Beat Generation (play).jpg
First edition
Author Jack Kerouac
Country United States
Language English
Genre Play
Publisher Thunders Mouth Press
Publication date
Oct 2005
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-84749-007-0
OCLC 84151484

Beat Generation is a play written by Jack Kerouac upon returning home to Florida after his seminal work On the Road had been published in 1957. [1] Gerald Nicosia, a Kerouac biographer and family friend has said that theatre producer Leo Gavin suggested that Kerouac should write a play; the outcome being Beat Generation. [2]

It was rejected by theatre companies and was shelved in warehouse storage until being rediscovered in a New Jersey warehouse in 2005.

A part of Beat Generation went on to provide the script for the 1959 film Pull My Daisy , which starred Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Alice Neel, David Amram, Richard Bellamy and Delphine Seyrig. [3] It was named after the poem "Pull My Daisy" by Kerouac, Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. [4] Kerouac provided improvised narration to the film. [5]

Since then excerpts have appeared in Best Life Magazine (July 2005), and the play has been published by Thunders Mouth Press. Beat Generation received its world premiere as part of the 2012 Jack Kerouac Literary Festival from October 10–14 in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. [6] It was announced the play would be presented in a staged reading format by Merrimack Repertory Theatre and the University of Massachusetts Lowell. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Kerouac</span> American writer (1922–1969)

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beatnik</span> Media stereotype based on characteristics of the Beat Generation

Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s and early 1960s 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 in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The name was inspired by the Russian suffix “-nik”, which was used to denote members of various political or social groups. The term “beat” originally was used by Jack Kerouac in 1948 to describe his social circle of friends and fellow writers, such as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. Kerouac said that “beat” had multiple meanings, such as “beaten down”, “beatific”, “beat up”, and “beat out”. He also associated it with the musical term “beat”, which referred to the rhythmic patterns of jazz, a genre that influenced many beatniks.

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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 Silent Generationers 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.

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Joyce Johnson is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. She was born Joyce Glassman in 1935 to a Jewish family in New York City and raised in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, a few blocks from the apartment of Joan Vollmer Adams where William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac lived from 1944 to 1946. She was a child actress and appeared in the Broadway production of I Remember Mama, which she writes about in her 2004 memoir Missing Men.

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<i>Visions of Gerard</i>

Visions of Gerard is a novel by American Beat writer Jack Kerouac. Kerouac wrote it over the course of the first two weeks of 1956, while staying with his sister Caroline in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and it was published in 1963. It is the first volume in Kerouac's "Duluoz Legend". Visions of Gerard focuses on the scenes and sensations of childhood as evidenced in the short yet happy life of his older brother, Gerard. Kerouac paints a picture of the boy as a saint, who loves all creatures and teaches this doctrine to four-year-old Jack. Set in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, it is an exploration of the meaning and precariousness of existence.

Carolyn Elizabeth Robinson Cassady was an American writer and associated with the Beat Generation through her marriage to Neal Cassady and her friendships with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other prominent Beat figures. She became a frequent character in the works of Jack Kerouac.

Ann Charters is Professor Emerita of American Literature at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. She is a Jack Kerouac and Beat Generation scholar.

"Pull My Daisy" is a poem by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. It was written in the late 1940s in a similar way to the Surrealist “exquisite corpse” game, with one person writing the first line, the other writing the second, and so on sequentially with each person only being shown the line before.

Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. Kerouac used the name "Duluoz Legend" to refer to his collected autobiographical works.

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References

  1. Sullivan, James (2012-10-11). "Jack Kerouac's Lost 'Beat Generation' Play Premieres". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
  2. Glaister, Dan (2005-05-20). "'Lost' Kerouac play resurfaces after 50 years". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2019-11-22.
  3. "Pull My Daisy". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
  4. Diggory, Terence (2004), "What Abstract Art Means in Pull My Daisy", in Skerl, Jennie (ed.), Reconstructing the Beats, Palgrave Macmillan US, pp. 135–149, doi:10.1057/9781403982100_10, ISBN   978-1-4039-8210-0
  5. Guidry, Ken (2014-05-20). "Watch: 30-Minute Short 'Pull My Daisy' Written By Jack Kerouac & Co-Directed By Robert Frank". IndieWire. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
  6. Trueman, Matt (2012-03-13). "Jack Kerouac play to receive world premiere". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2019-11-22.
  7. BWW News Desk. "Tony Crane, Joey Collins to Lead BEAT GENERATION at Merrimack Repertory Theatre, 10/10-14". BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved 2019-11-22.