Out of this environment came writers such as Jack Kerouac, who would later become an unwilling leader of the beat movement. Jack Kerouac was a hard man. He had lived a hard life, hitch-hiking across America several times; followed by years of heavy drinking, which would later take his life in the home of his sister. Ginsberg, the creator of Howl also sprang from the same waters, and with Burroughs would place prose and poetry inside realms never before entered into by the American public. America was going through new changes; and the American public was beginning to ask questions concerning their self-identity, as well as, the world around them. Americans had started to question the changing wide diversity of lifestyles, and the Vietnam war coupled with the prosperity generated from the l950's and early l960's had produced social factors that proved conditional for a social and intellectual renaissance. The 70's seemed to end with a sense of tragedy. Thousands would suffer as the war ended, faith in the govern- ment would be weakened, and a president would resign in disgrace. Through each decade, the North Beach movement seemed to produce works that captured the spirit of their time through prose and poetic meter.
Some writers appeared to stand out, ex- emplifying each decade. The wanderings of Kerouac, and the darkness of the writings of Burroughs captured the underside of that era combined with a meaningful desire for an un- defined sense of searching. Ginsberg captured the intellectual society of the l950's with Howl, producing a poem that proved to be a narrative for a generation. Brautigan became an unwilling participent in the Beat movement. Drawn only by the opportunity to create works of poetry and prose, he soon seemed to embody the hippie movement of the late 60's and early 70's. His style and unique sense of humor placed him in the position of unwilling spokes- person up until the early 80's; when he died at the height of his career by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Hunter S. Thompson would con- tinue to spread mayheem; questioning social authority well into the 90's.
In Boulder, Colorado, a traveler once inquired from a local citizen what the strange booming sound was that he kept hearing at five in the morning.
"Oh, don't worry.", said the citizen with a casual air of indifference.
"That is only Hunter S. Thompson shooting off his cannon."
And, througout this reign of literary terror and beauty, Lawrence Ferlinghetti kept the home fires burning at City Lights Bookstore, calmly writing a new poem each year, and greeting the next generation of the literary bohemia on Columbus Avenue.
Bukouski would come to define the beat
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