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Who are the creative representatives of this movement??

Nymphomaniacs, junkies, homosexuals, drug addicts, lesbians, alcoholics, the weak, the frustrated, the irresolute, the despairing, the derelicts and outcasts of society.

They embrace independent poverty, usually with a `` shack-up '' partner who will help support them.

They are full of contempt for the institution of matrimony.

Their previous legalized marriages do not count, for they hold the laws of the state null and void.

They feel they are leagued against a hostile, persecutory world, faced with the concerted malevolent opposition of squares and their hirelings, the police.

This is the rhetoric of righteousness the beatniks use in defending their way of life, their search for wholeness, though their actual existence fails to reach these `` religious '' heights.

One beatnik got the woman he was living with so involved in drugs and self-analysis and all-night sessions of sex that she was beginning to crack up.

What obsessions had she picked up during these long nights of talk??

Sex as the creative principle of the universe, the secret of primitive religion, the life of myth.

Everything in the final analysis reduced itself to sexual symbolism.

In his chapter on `` The Loveways Of The Beat Generation '', Lipton spares the reader none of the sordid details.

No one asks questions about the free union of the sexes in West Venice so long as the partners share the negative attitudes of the group.