The Beats: Decadence and Disease

Is mutation load to blame for their subversive literature?

Written by Simon Maass.

Promulgated by researchers like Matthew Sarraf, Michael Woodley and Colin Feltham, mutational load theory contends that reductions in child mortality have led to the increased survival of detrimental mutations. Since those carrying such mutations might be more nihilistic and disillusioned with traditional norms than others, proponents speculate that modern decadence and social disintegration are at least partially caused by high mutational load.

Lengthy arguments have been made for and against this interpretation. If one accepts it, the history of the “Beat generation” can be taken as an anecdotal illustration—though it also fascinating in its own right.

The “Beat generation,” whose members became known as “beatniks,” was a highly influential cultural current that emerged in the US during the late 1940s and 1950s. Among other interests, it focused on transgressive and bohemian lifestyles, drug use, the rejection of bourgeois American mores, and enjoyment of jazz music. In many ways, the Beat generation paved the way for the hippie phenomenon that would replace it in the late 1960s.

An under-discussed aspect of the movement’s history is how many of its members suffered from poor health―physical, mental or both. Through its effect on their work, the sickliness of this fairly small group of mid-twentieth-century cultural pioneers contributed to the shifting of cultural values in the developed world. If the Beats’ ill health was due to harmful mutations (a notion difficult to test but fun to speculate about), this dovetails nicely with the theory that social norms have changed in recent history due to rising mutational load.

Let’s begin with two obvious points. First, a certain feebleness is suggested by the very term “Beat.” Though its etymology is somewhat complicated, it basically means “tired,” describing a group of people exhausted by the demands of 1950s society. Simply put, the Beat generation struggled to live up to the demands of conventional America. This suggests they may indeed have tended to be, in some way, less capable than the average person. Certainly, not everyone felt that the Beats’ discontent was warranted. In a famous article that helped to popularise the word “beatnik,” columnist Herb Caen highlighted the beatniks’ willingness to drink and party, snarking: “They’re only Beat, y’know, when it comes to work…”

Second, it is a well-known fact that Jack Kerouac, the Beat movement’s principal creator, drank himself to an early grave. For these reasons, the assessment that beatniks were often plagued by poor health and a lack of vigour looks rather plausible. Further details may serve to support this claim.

Beats and Mental Health

The poet Charles Bukowski once referred to the Beat generation by the names of four of its major authors: “Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso.” All four struggled with mental illness. David S. Wills has published well-researched and enlightening essays on the Beat generation through his website Beatdom. In one article, he notes that it was common for members of the Beat generation to be institutionalised for mental illness: “many of those who fell under the Beat label ended up in the ‘nuthouse.’”

The notable examples he lists are Allen Ginsberg (whose mother had likewise gone mad), Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Joan Vollmer (Burroughs’s wife), Elise Cowen (Ginsberg’s girlfriend who later committed suicide), Bob Kaufman, Gregory Corso and Herbert Huncke.

The fact that mental illness ran in Ginsberg’s family may be taken as an indication that, at least in his case, it was indeed genetic. Wills notes that Huncke, who came up with the label “Beat,” “was a lifelong criminal and drug addict.” He further states that, in Corso’s opinion, there were so few women among the Beats because “they were locked up in mental hospitals.”

Other authors have drawn similar connections. Beat expert Simon Warner observes that many members of “the Beat circle” showed signs of mental illness. “The principles of the Beats’ ‘New Vision’,” he adds, “seem to frame in themselves a commitment to a madness of sorts…” Megan Reynolds likewise contends that a common motif in Beat literature is identification with the insane, since lunatics stood outside the society against which these writers were rebelling.

It might be objected that artists and creative people in general are prone to mental illness, and that this is therefore not a distinctive feature of the Beat generation. Yet not all literary movements seem to be plagued by to the same degree. The New Formalist poets, for instance, show far less maladaptive behaviour than the Beats. New Formalism’s biggest name, Dana Gioia, may be the ultimate counter-example to the image of the artist as mentally ill misfit.

Prior to becoming a professional poet, Gioia graduated from Stanford Business School and embarked on a career in commerce, eventually working as vice president of General Foods. Gioia may be an extreme case, but most names associated with his school seem to have led more wholesome lives than most of the Beats.

Since New Formalism was a classicist reaction against the dominance of free verse, this observation accords with Max Nordau’s classic thesis that the congenitally mentally ill (“degenerates”) were especially common among practitioners of chaotic and unrestrained, as well as hyperemotional, artistic styles. Classicism might be healthy; romanticism, diseased.

Perhaps groups like the New Formalists are the exception, while the Beats are, to some extent, more typical of artists, or at least of artists in the modern West.¹ Even so, the Beats are worth discussing in their own right. For one thing, it has been plausibly argued that they were more diseased and destructive than other, comparable groups.

Norman Podhoretz makes this case in his widely-read 1958 article ‘The Know-Nothing Bohemians.’ “The Bohemianism of the 1920’s,” he writes, “was a movement created in the name of civilization.” “At its best, the radicalism of the 1930’s was marked by deep intellectual seriousness,” but the Beat generation’s Bohemianism “is another kettle of fish altogether. It is hostile to civilization; it worships primitivism.”

Whether or not one agrees with this assessment, the Beats should be discussed for their profound historic influence. As mentioned, they served as precursors to the radicalism of the 1960s. And yet, while everyone is aware of the hippies, there are many who have never heard of the Beat generation.

So far, this essay has focussed on biographic information about noteworthy Beat writers. This is, of course, anecdotal evidence. However, a systematic study of beatniks was conducted during the 1950s by psychiatrist Francis J. Rigney. As summarised by another author, Rigney’s findings:

were grave. He found that only fifteen of fifty-one [beatniks] were mentally sound. The remaining thirty-six were unable to deal with the basic challenges of life. Of this group, less than half had the ability to maintain a steady job, more than a fourth had been divorced, nearly twenty percent were alcoholics, and four percent were drug addicts.

Rigney opined that “the Beats, like alcoholics and juvenile delinquents, have severe social-adjustment problems.”

Beats and Military Service

In another article, Wills explores the Beat generation’s relationship with military service. Here, the record is more mixed, as a respectable number of the movement’s members did serve. In particular, “many of the Beats joined the Merchant Marine.”

Oftentimes, however, factors other than patriotism and/or a desire for combat may have been decisive. Some appear to have been motivated by a romanticised conception of life in certain parts of the military, such as the Merchant Marine. In certain cases, there was a desire to gather material for future literary projects.

Moreover, the Beats’ military endeavours were not always successful. Wills focuses on three experiences: Jack Kerouac’s, William S. Burroughs’s and Allen Ginsberg’s. In his view, “Kerouac’s military experience was … a tremendous failure. After only ten days in boot camp, he was assessed as so unfit for the environment that he was relocated to a military hospital for further examination.”

He made matters worse through flagrant insubordination, and a psychological evaluation concluded that Kerouac was schizophrenic, noting his hallucinations, suicidal thoughts and grandiosity. As a result, he was discharged from the Navy. Following his conscription during World War II, Burroughs had a similar experience, in that he, too, “found basic training to be intolerable.”

After a few months, Burroughs was discharged, due in part to his psychological problems. Before the US entered the war, he had already sought to join the military, but had been refused because of his “all-round poor health.”

Finally, Allen Ginsberg was hospitalised with pneumonia not long after he joined the Merchant Marine. Overall, these anecdotes paint an unflattering picture of the Beats’ mental and/or physical robustness―though it should be noted that Kerouac, despite his mental problems, was quite athletic. Decadence and physical vigor are not always antithetical.

Conclusion

The subject of the Beat generation is quite an important one, since the movement had far-reaching effects. Some even see in it a major turning point in twentieth-century culture. Roger Kimball, an often uncompromising conservative, has written:

We owe to the 1960s the ultimate institutionalization of radicalism: of drugs, pseudo-spirituality, promiscuous sex, virulent anti-Americanism, hypocritical anti-capitalism, and the precipitous decline of artistic and intellectual standards. But the 1960s and 1970s only codified and extended into the middle class the radical spirit of the Beats.

Unflattering though this characterization is, an advocate of the Beat ideals might at least find it gratifying to see so much influence attributed to his movement.

In recent years, several studies have suggested that conservatives tend to be healthier than liberals. It therefore makes sense that the Beat movement―which was left-leaning on the whole, especially in its later years―appears to have been full of sickly people.

However, some researchers believe that it is not conservatism itself, but rather behaviours associated with it, which improve health. This caveat is illustrated by the untimely death of Kerouac, who was politically conservative, yet libertine in some of his personal values, indulging in heavy drug use, copious drinking and a generally undisciplined lifestyle.

In his 1988 book Intellectuals, Paul Johnson argued that many of the thinkers who shaped today’s world had serious personal problems that bled over into their proposals for how society should be organized. The personal is the political. Perhaps no movement fits this pattern better than the Beat generation.

Simon Maass has a master’s degree in international relations. He writes about sociopolitical matters on Substack. His articles have appeared in Merion West and Intellectual Takeout, among other others.

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1. In his book Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia and the Decline of Civilizations, philosopher Benedict Beckeld notes that “our modern portrait of the quintessential artist” is that of an “angry” person “who hates his own civilization and acts like a swine in the name of his art”. He is marked by “a thin frame and a bad cough” along with “immorality” and “dissoluteness.” According to Beckeld, this stereotype goes back to “France and the Belle Époque.”