Through all of the madness in North Beach, there was a bright sunny side to the inherency of moment within the beat movement. For a style of writing that seemed to define a generation, the tragedy of suicides or deaths due to lifestyles boardering on the edge of the literary fringe cannot be overlooked. When glancing upon the list of early deaths due to tragedy, the names of these writers seem to stand out upon the flames of a youth having burned too bright to outlast their early beginnings; until their embers had left their mark upon the literary stage. Kerouac dead at age 39, Richard Brautigan kills himself by a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the height of his popularity, Neal Cassidy after running along a railroad track towards mexico falls downwards into an endless spiral of freedom propelled by his increasing use of intoxicating substances. Lawrence Ferlinghetti appears to stand our in the midst of these tragic deaths. His ability to have survived the waves of self destruction that grasped the lives of so many of his fellow artisans has given his poetry an essence that seems to shine on a literary movement, whose themes carried with them an atonement proclaiming death. The dark satire of Burroughs, the wildness of Kerouac, and the bohemian dangers of the worlds of Di Prima or Ginsberg became tempered by the beauty and eloquence of Ferlinghetti's poetry; whose poems and prose expose the beauty of life, while showing the full potential of humanity once those issues facing this darker side are resolved.
Born in Yonkers, New York, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was thrown into the life of early bohemia quite by accident. Like Allen Ginsberg, his family was struck by the disease of mental illness. Often, he was forced to move between orphanages, his aunt, or family friends. Because of his unstable and dysfunctional childhood, Ferlinghetti soon found himself on the streets and running with some of the most notorious gangs prevelant in his neighborhood, a path that eventually landed him a stay in a reform school. The life of the streets was soon replaced by a life of learning, and he would soon find himself in Columbia University. After serving in World War II in l944, he would return to Columbia in l948, eventually earning an M.A. that would carry him to Surborne, where he would obtain his PHD in l951. By l955, City Lights Books publishing press would be founded, and Ferlinghetti would become the center of this new group of talented poets and novelists.
He has stated that, "Only the dead are disengaged.", and this could well serve as a
