What was on Edward Albee's mind as he wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf: Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan and the revolutionary artists of the 60's

Bob Dylan
Originally uploaded by Shirley CR

The 60's revolution in the fine arts began in the late 1950's with the Beat ("beatnik") writers, among them Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs.

The American singer-songwriter and poet Bob Dylan, inspired by and lending inspiration to these writers, had an even greater impact on pop culture and the fine arts. His early 60's songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" became anthems for the US civil rights[3] and anti-war[4] movements.

Dylan revolutionized perceptions of the limits of popular music in 1965 with the six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone."

Kerouac wrote On The Road (1957), a romance about dropping out of college, hitchhiking and trying to become a poet and philosopher. Wikipedia says it defined "the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences."

William S Burroughs wrote numerous trippy and disturbingly sex-and-drug-oriented novels, the most famous of which is the 1959 non-linear work Naked Lunch. Says Wikipedia, "The novel's mix of taboo fantasies,peculiar creatures (like the predatory Mugwumps), and eccentric personalities all serve to unmask mechanisms and processes of control, and have led to much controversy."

Ginsberg became the most famous poet of America when his long poem, Howl, was judged obscene by the San Francisco
district attorney. The poem went to court because of its colloquial references to sexual acts. The ensuing publicity put Ginsberg and his poetry on the world map.

I recommend the recent James DeFranco movie Howl, which is a recitation of the poem and a re-telling of the court case.

Both Howl and Naked Lunch were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize what could be published in the United States.

The writers and singers of the Beat Generation became the world's new bohemian hedonists. The French and Germans had been the masters of hip art prior to this. They celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.

The original "Beat Generation" writers met in New York. Many found themselves in San Francisco in the mid-1950s. They drove and hitch-hiked cross country through the 50's and 60's. By the mid 60
s the Beat Generation gave way to the Sixties Counterculture, which was accompanied by a shift in public terminology from "beatnik" to "hippie."