…i couldn’t tell you, but i swear it has nothing to do with the first three letters of their name.the following explains nothing in regards to the beaver/beatnik connection, but it is a fabulous quote nonetheless:
“…beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction - We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer - It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation…”
- Jack Kerouac, "About the Beat Generation," (1957), published as "Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation," in Esquire magazine in March, 1958 (http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/beatgeneration/BG-Definitions.htm)
“solitary bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization.” god damn.
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