Entre Bukowski en una esquina europea y hipsters

He visto las mejores mentes de mi generación destruidas por la locura, histéricos famélicos muertos de hambre arrastrándose por las calles, negros al amanecer buscando una dosis furiosa, cabezas de ángel abrasadas por la antigua conexión celestial al dínamo estrellado de la maquinaria de la noche, quienes pobres y andrajosos y con ojos cavernosos y altos se levantaron fumando en la oscuridad sobrenatural de los departamentos con agua fría flotando a través de las alturas de las ciudades contemplando el jazz... (De Aullido, de Allen Ginsberg)

"Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation", by Jack Kerouac, Esquire magazine, March 1958

"The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmesand I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of ageneration of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roamingAmerica, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific,beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way wehad heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and inthe Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwarAmerica--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'deven heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way,with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meantcharacters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitaryBartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--thesubterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine ofthe West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight,experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poorand glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (wethought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in thepostwar France of Sartre and Genet and what's more we knew about it--Butas to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was reallyjust an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup ofblack coffee, playing record after record of Wardell Gray, Lester Young,Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talkingmadly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd writestories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goateehitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message ofblowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter thePenniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroesand wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating thenew 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only ahandful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightilyswiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind ofefficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of theuniversalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total PoliceControl of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity,the generation itself was shortlived and small in number."