The beats were a group of American writers, whose radical, often shockingly explicit style quickly made them both infamous and widely admired in the conservative mores of the 1950's. Their writing challenged the status quo in American society, exposing and denouncing the greed, materialism, and injustice which they saw in society; among the most famous of these works was Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." Their writing also often dealt with themes of alienation from what seemed to be normal society, much of it self imposed in a search for a greater truth and spirituality they called the "New Vision," which they sought through the use of drugs, sexual experimentation, and a lifestyle considered extremely radical in the era.
Arguably the three most influential beat writers were Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs. They met through Colombia university; Ginsberg as a student, Kerouac as a renegade ex-student, and Burroughs as a friend of Colombia and fellow beat writer Lucien Carr. All talented writers, they were a motley crew, Kerouac a macho football player from a conservative working class family, Ginsberg a gay, Jewish bookworm from a from a family of communists and socialists, and Burroughs a misfit from an affluent midwestern family turned veteran of the New York underworld junkie life (which he documented in his novel Naked Lunch); despite these vastly different backrounds, they soon became great friends. The group migrated to Greenwich Villiage in New York City and later to San Francisco, a trip which inspired Kerouac's famous novel On the Road.