and in the restorative powers of the beat of jazz music and poetry" (Microsoft Encarta, 2001). Many writers in the group later renounced the term when they felt it lost its meaning. It took the beats a long time before they gained fame however. Jack Kerouac's novel, On the Road, went through many different publishers before anyone agreed to print it. When it did come out it was heavily criticized by the press. In the 1950's the lifestyle that On the Road explored was considered deviant. "The stereotype that emerged in the mass media was a spaced-out beatnik, dressed in black, pounding on bongo drums and muttering gibberish as poetry" (Microsoft Encarta, 2001). America's youth, however, identified with the feelings of despair and the need for freedom expressed in their work. The beats created a revolution that began with many young people leaving their conventional lives to hitchhike around American and find themselves. Like most subcultures, the Beat Generation rebelled against the social and cultural norms of their time. For them it was the post World War II society that they rejected. "Cultural historians point out that acquisition of consumer goods, which had been scarce during wartime, became a central feature of postwar life, driven by the mass media, advertising, and generous loan terms" (Encarta, 2001). The beats refused to be a part of the expanding consumer culture. Not only did they reject changing American values, the beats also rejected the traditional writing styles of the era. "Kerouac spoke and wrote of a 'Spontaneous Prose'; Ginsberg described 'poetry adapted from prose seeds, journals, scratchings, arranged by phrasing or breath groups into little short-line patterns according to ideas of measure of American speech' " (Allen 1973). This informal writing style made it extremely difficult to get their work published. Along with their radical writing style, the beats also incorporated jazz, philosophy, dru...
