The Beat Generation Research Guide: Columbia

William Seward Burroughs II was a writer and visual artist, and a major figure in postmodern literature. He attended Columbia for his graduate study in anthropology and befriended Ginsberg and Kerouac in 1943, after briefly serving in World War II. He also briefly used the pen name William Lee. In 1951, Burroughs shot his wife Joan Vollmer, some reported as an accident, and was convicted of manslaughter with two years of suspended sentence.

Lucien Carr transferred to Columbia University from University of Chicago after a suicide attempt, which his family believed was escalated with the predatory stalking done by David Kammerer. In 1944, Carr stabbed Kammerer and dumped it in the nearby Hudson River, and Carr later pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. The book And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks was written in 1945, published posthumously, and was loosely based on the killing of Kammerer.

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was a poet and writer, known for his involvement with the Beat Generation, and was a major figure of the American counterculture. Ginsberg extensively studied Eastern religions and was a Buddhist. He talked actively about his communist connections, and was active in political protests, including the Vietnam War and the war on drugs.

Herbert Edwin Huncke was a writer and poet, and is known for having coined the term "Beat Generation" in conversation with writer John Clellon Holmes. Though Huncke did not attend Columbia, Huncke became acquainted with the circle through meeting and buying morphine from Burroughs. This later was written by Burroughs in his first novel, Junky.

Jack Kerouac was a novelist and poet of French-Canadian ancestry, best known as a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac was raised speaking French, and his writing is well-known for the stream of consciousness style. Kerouac also had a major impact on the popular rock music artists of the 1960s.

Though he did not attend Columbia, he met Ginsberg at Bellevue Hospital, a psychiatric hospital, and became acquainted with the others within the circle. With Ginsberg's insistence, Burrough's first novel, Junky, was published under Ace Books, a publishing company owned by Solomon's uncle. Solomon also published two chapbooks of prose poetry.