Salem State College's Special Collection on the Beat Writers features the primary writers who gave birth to the Beat Generation and were in the vanguard of the movement: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. These three met through mutual acquaintances while living in New York City around 1944. They, along with a mutual friend, Lucien Carr, sought a "New Vision" of artistic expression that rejected conventional artistic themes and subject matter during the conformity-crazed post war era.
During the 1940s and 1950s , being "Beat" in America meant being iconoclastic. The Beat Generation had lived through the trauma of World War II and found itself in the grip of its Cold War aftermath. They questioned the morality of atomic warfare and refused to conform to the consumer-driven economy of post-war America. Neither were they willing to settle down in the comfort and security of the suburban lifestyle nor work for corporate America. Upward mobility and conformity were rejected in favor of a bohemian subculture consisting of jazz, poetry, drugs, sexual liberation, and America's open road. The Beat Generation writers portrayed the underside of post-World War II American culture.
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