Abstract
The fifties in the United States marked the emergence of a small group of writers who proudly called themselves “beat,” as if the name were a badge of distinction, a banner of revolt unfurled in the face of a hostile and benighted world of “squares.” They attracted a considerable following among the discontented, the frustrated, the maladjusted, the neurotic who, in the name of creative freedom, embraced a life of poverty and alienation. Unlike the literati in England at the time who desired on the whole little more than their equitable share of the benefits conferred by the Establishment, the prophetic spokesmen of this group were in violent opposition to their society; they rejected both the specious lure of the Communist program and the promise of the American Dream in an age of affluence. Reacting bitterly against the dominant native myth of success, what they sarcastically dubbed the religion of “Moneytheism,” they sought to keep spiritually alive by experimenting with drugs and sex and art.
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© 1972 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Glicksberg, C.I. (1972). Revolt and Madness. In: Literature and Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4851-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4851-3_5
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