Tell us who you like and why!

Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Maynard G. Krebs and let's not forget Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady.

and Peter, paul and Mary, at the tail end. I remember my dad turning me on to peter paul and mary, but i'm certain he shielded me from the rest of them until i somehow stumbled on to the whole beat wrter thing, was it 68? was i just 16?

who can remember way back then ...

my fav would be ginsberg, maybe not so much because of his beat roots, but because of how he morphed into a beautiful hippie, and then on and on into lfe. just a beautiful man. and gary snyder for his pure calm and intelligence. axe handles. who'd a thunk life really is just that simple?

anyway, cool beans, starting this group. snappin my fingers for ya. kudos.

When I was a tiny tyke Maynard G. Krebs was my beatnik ideal from Dobie Gillis. ;-)

I think you have to be careful describing Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Co. as "beatniks"!

They were not. They are better described as original members of the Beat Generation, or "Beats."

"Beat Generation" was a term coined by Kerouac and John Clellon Holmes in 1948 to describe the literary movement of which they, together with Ginsberg and Burroughs, were a part (taking as precedent the term "Lost Generation" for the previous generation of writers such as Hemingway). These members of the Beat Generation literary movement were known as Beats.

The term "beatnik" was invented by a San Francisco journalist Herb Caen in 1958 (from the Russian satellite 'Sputnik') to describe the mass of young followers of the Beat writers, who sprang up in the wake of the publication of "On the Road" and "Howl" during the previous two years.

Confusing the words Beat and Beatnik is like confusing Musician and Groupie. Kerouac was not a Beatnik, and neither were Ginsberg, Holmes, and Burroughs.

Kerouac, in particular, hated the term:

"I have never, personally, had anything to do with 'the bearded beatniks'." (1959)

"I never was a beatnik -- they're just plain phonies, phonies walking around." (1964)

"I refuse to be called a beatnik." (1967)

#4 addresses a certain cheesiness about beatniks. Europe has poseurs, Americans beatniks. The best "beatnik" work was done against the grain that the label confers. Happy accidents.

Maynard G. Krebs...