The Dharma Bums Rebels, Taking It to the Street and the New American PoetryYou don't need a destination to escape. All you need to know is what you leave behind. In the 1960s, young men and women in the United States, especially on the West Coast, turned away from nearly two centuries of American tradition. They ran in so many different places that it would be impossible to generalize about their goals and philosophies. What they had in common was the race itself. America was drowning in materialism. In "A Coney Island of the Mind," Lawrence Ferlinghetti characterized the land of the free and the home of the brave as "a continent of concrete interspersed with bland billboards illustrating imbecilic illusions of happiness" (New American Poetry, ed. Allen, p131). John Sinclair criticized a country that needed "eighty-seven different brands of toothpaste" and "millions of bad cars" (Takin' it to the Streets, ed. Bloom, p303). After the novelty of automobiles and other products wore off, some Americans began to feel that the emphasis on manufacturing was changing the character of the country. Economic prosperity had gone to America's head, and in the drive for profit, idealism had been left behind. Kafka is quoted by Richard Brautigan in his novel Trout Fishing in America as saying that "I like Americans because they are healthy and optimistic." (Takin' it to the Streets, p280) The new generation of Americans, however, were not at all optimistic about their country's future. They have watched the land of the free and the home of the brave degenerate into a production line of televisions and plastic gadgets. The loss of individuality was what many feared. In... middle of the paper... there is all the enthusiasm and all the rebellion. It was they who, according to Ginsberg, "screamed on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts" (p185). However, all of their manuscripts said different things. Mainstream America had two hundred years of tradition behind it, and in addition to that it had the force of habit and a leader in the form of the United States government. The new generation only had the belief that a change had to happen. But their passion and extravagance made people listen. Works Cited Allen, Donald, ed. The new American poetry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.Bloom, Alexander and Breines, Wini. Taking it to the street. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995. Kerouac, Jack. Dharma wanderers. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1986.