The Fifties

by David Halberstam

The Beats, as they came to be known, revered those who were different, those who lived outside the system, and particularly those who lived outside the law. They were fascinated by the criminal life and believed that men who had been to prison had experienced the essence of freedom from the system. In Go, Holmes described their world as “one of dingy backstairs ‘pads,’ Times Square cafeterias, bebop joints, nightlong wanderings, meetings on street corners, hitchhiking, a myriad of ‘hip’ bars all over the city, and the streets themselves. It was inhabited by people ‘hung up’ with drugs and other habits, searching out a new degree of craziness; and connected by the invisible threads of need, petty crimes of long ago, or the strange recognition of affinity. They were going all the time, living by night, rushing around to ‘make contact,’ suddenly disappearing into jail or on the road, only to turn up again and search one another out. They had a view that life was underground, mysterious, and they seemed unaware of anything outside the realities of deals, a pad to stay in, ‘digging the frantic jazz,’ and keeping everything going.” They were fascinated also by urban black culture, and they appropriated phrases from it: dig and cool and man and split. They saw themselves as white bopsters. They believed that blacks were somehow freer, less burdened by the restraints of straight America, and they sought to emulate this aspect of the black condition. An interest in African-American...