Transgression in Beat Generation Literature
Well, this one's easy. Transgressive fiction and poetry is exactly what you think it is: literature that's dirty, down-low, obscene, shocking, illegal, or just plain strange. The Beats wanted a real revolution.
And a revolution doesn't attempt to change the way things are slowly, bit by painful bit. Nope. So, these guys didn't quietly revise censorship practices. They tried to burn all the old conventions down as fast as they could. They wrote about whatever they wanted, and used a ton of profanity.
Let's put it this way: if the internet had been around when the Beat boys were blowing up, their stuff would've been labeled NSFW, kiddos. Perhaps even NSFL: Not Safe For Life.
Chew on This:
Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is a complex, epic piece of poetry. And it did just what the title suggests—it made a lot of noise. Why? Because it discussed "naughty" things. Like gay sex. And poverty. And drugs. These things were not to be talked about in super-uptight 1950s America. But Ginsberg thought it was ludicrous that his country expected him not to talk about the kinds of sex and love that were a part of his own life. Kind of crazy, huh? So, he let the revolution begin with him. Way to go, Ginny.
Naked Lunch is like a long laundry list of transgressions. In it, William S. Burroughs's characters do drugs, kill cops, organize orgies, commit other various crimes, and write from different time periods and hallucinations. Published in 1959, the novel was quickly banned in the U.S. And when it finally got an American debut, it was slapped with an obscenity lawsuit. Like "Howl" before it, Naked Lunch challenged what it meant to be obscene—and the very definition of literature.