The beat goes on: inside the counterculture that changed America

There are a lot of reasons to thank the Beats. They were well-read like the English modernists and ecstatic like the French romantics. They rode west like frontiersmen, trolled the city streets like vagrants, and spoke with the improvised flair of jazz musicians. And in perma-press clothes and drug-fueled fits and spurts, they produced a canon of work that sought to dismantle the increasingly conservative conventions of post-WWII America--its art, its politics, and its way of life. In the process, they delved into the bohemian underbelly of American society, embracing everything the mainstream pretended to loathe, from drugs and sexuality to the degradation of its own values and aspirations. Not bad for a bunch of people who, ironically, defined themselves as an exhausted generation.

Yet another reason to thank the Beats is that they took a lot of pictures, like the ones collected in the new book Beat & Pieces (Photology), out this month. With all photos shot by Allen Ginsberg, who in addition to writing poetry served as the Beats' in-house picture-taker, the book captures people like Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Peter Orlovsky in all their hipster glory, hanging out in coffee shops, finding the glamour in grunge, plotting revolutions, and creating a counterculture all their own.

Stephen Mooallem is Interview's senior editor.

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