The Beat generation, a group of bohemian, alienated youths who rejected traditional social and artistic forms, got started in the 1940s at Columbia with a chance meeting in 1943 between two freshman floor-mates, Allen Ginsburg (Columbia College 1948) and Lucien Carr (Columbia College 1943–44).� Carr introduced Ginsberg to former football scholar Jack Kerouac (Columbia College 1940–42) who, in turn, introduced Ginsberg to William S. Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, and Herbert Hunke.� Ginsburg and Kerouac were students of legendary professors Mark Van Doren and Lionel Trilling.

Coincidentally, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was also a presence at Columbia at this time, though he did not know either Kerouac or Ginsberg.� After receiving his master's degree in 1947, Ferlinghetti moved to San Francisco in the early 1950s, founding the City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Publishers.� His publication of Ginsberg's poem Howl in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges.� Ultimately, he was acquitted, but the resulting publicity drew national attention to Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and the North Beach literary scene.

The origins of the group's name are obscure.� Beat was hipster slang for worn down or beaten by society.� To Kerouac, a devout Catholic, it meant beatific.� Holmes defined it as "undramatically being pushed up against the wall of oneself" in a November 1952 New York Times magazine article.� Whatever the etymology, this small group and their acolytes were dubbed beatniks by Herb Caen in his San Francisco Chronicle column of April 2, 1958.� Contrary to belief, beatnik did not derive from nudnik, a Yiddish expression for a boring or bothersome person.� Rather, Caen was referring to the recently launched Soviet space vehicle Sputnik.