Beatniks

The term "Beat Generation" came about in 1948. It was introduced by Kerouac and was meant to describe the underground, anti-conformist youth that were in New York at the time. "Beat" was slang for "beaten down" or "trodden down" at the time, although, he also was thinking of a spiritual connotation, as in "beatitude." The term "beatnik" was first used by Herb Caen, who added the Russian suffix "-nik" to the term beat, six months after the launch of Sputnik I. Ray Carney, a Boston University professor, wrote that "Much of Beat culture represented a negate stance rather than a positive one. It was animated more by a vague feeling of cultural and emotional displacement, dissatisfaction, and yearning, than by a specific purpose or program [...] Beat culture was a state of mind, not a matter of how you dressed or talked or where you lived." (I thought it would be better to quote someone, since I know nothing on the subject.) The "beatniks" were often described as being "countercultural" or "anti-materialistic." This kind of reminds me of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, who often described people as "phony." I guess this makes a little sense, since the book came out in 1951.