“The Sordid Hipsters of America”: Beat Culture and the Folds of Heterogeneity

Abstract

At mid-century, the cultural fabric of America appeared to be under-A going a profound process of modernization and homogenization and the symptoms—some ominous, some banal—seemed to be manifested everywhere. The reasons seemed complex and broad, involving Cold War politics and post-Taylorist labor practices, altered family structures and housing patterns, religious beliefs and media technologies, the demographics of urbanization and developments in psychology. One result, for a significant minority of Americans, was that the increasing affluence and security of the postwar period was disturbed by—even displaced by—a sense that the range of cultural and personal possibilities had been unacceptably reduced. Perhaps the most recognized reaction, both lauded and condemned, involved the Beat Generation, a small bohemian group that came together in the 1940s and was vaulted from anonymity into the public eye in the 1950s following the highly publicized appearance of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, works that appeared just as a vigorous public debate about conformism was reaching its peak. One reason for this was the attempt by the Beats to explore, adapt, and establish collective heterogeneous spaces

Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky. Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.

—Malvina Reynolds, “Little Boxes”