The Beat Generation was a writing trend that began with a variety of writers whose works examined and affected postwar American society and government. Silent Generations promoted and released the majority of their works throughout the 1950s. The denial of linear story principles, the pursuit of spirituality, the study of American and Eastern faiths, the denial of financial consumerism, clear and specific depictions of the nature of humanity, psychotropic substance experimenting, and sexual freedom and investigation are all core aspects of Beat culture.
Among the most well-known instances of Beat literature are William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959), Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957). Both Howl and Naked Lunch were subjected to indecent prosecutions, which aided in the liberalization of printing in the United States. The Beat Generation was known as a generation of young bohemian hedonists who embraced non-conformity and unplanned innovation. Around the Columbia University campus in New York City, the steering committee of Beat Generation writers Burroughs, Huncke, Jack Kerouac Ginsberg, and Lucien Carr, met in 1944. Except for Burroughs and Carr, the primary protagonists ended up in San Francisco in the 1950s, when they joined and made acquainted with personalities linked with San Francisco Renaissance.
In the 1950s, a Beatnik society grew up around the intellectual period, even though important Beat writers were sometimes dismissive of it. The hippie and bigger alternative groups adopted features of the burgeoning Beat movement in the 1960s. As the bus driver for Ken Kesey's Furthur, Neal Cassady was the major connection between the two periods. Ginsberg's writing was also an important component of the hippie subculture of the early 1960s, in which he was directly involved.