Jack Kerouac must have felt pretty miffed when the term ‘Beatnik’ became a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s. Bongos, berets, goatee beards, coffee houses, turtlenecks, dark glasses, smoking Gitanes and partner swaps in the suburbs! The actual word was coined by Herb Caen in a 1958 article in the San Fransisco Chronicle. He added the Russian suffix ‘nik’ to the term Beat Generation.  In the vernacular of the period, “Beat” indicated the culture, the attitude and the literature, while the common usage of “beatnik” was that of a stereotype that Madison Avenue advertising agencies could sell what was ‘cool’. Baby Boomers have destroyed our planet’s environment as much as humanly possible, they’ve made investment properties and vulgar consumerism necessities, then they had a good go at destroying banking systems worldwide and ruined a whole generation’s chances at obtaining anything like the standard of living they’ve enjoyed. A very talented generation indeed and so totally removed from Kerouac’s original vision and belief in beatitude.

Kerouac explained what he meant by “beat” at a Brandeis Forum, “Is There A Beat Generation?”, on November 8, 1958, at New York’s Hunter College Playhouse. Seminar panelists were Kerouac, James A. Wechsler, Princeton anthropologist Ashley Montague, and author Kingsley Amis.

I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with “Beat”… the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific. People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks and finally I was called the “avatar” of all this. “The Origins of the Beat Generation” (Playboy, June 1959)

Here are some great moments in Beatnik popular culture.