The Beat Generation and its writers were very well connected with one another and often broadened their networks into spiritual ones. During the mid-1950s, San Francisco became a point of convergence, not only for the Beat writers but also for their Buddhist contemporaries. Buddhist scholars like D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts made San Francisco a well-connected hub of community centers and temples. These locations were made available to the public and attracted writers like Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, and Gary Snyder.
As the network analysis map below shows, many of the contacts and networks between Buddhist contemporaries and Beat writers overlapped due to mutual friends and colleagues. Many of these individuals worked in the community centers or institutions that both Suzuki and Watts taught at. In particular, Jane Imamura and Suzuki Roshi were mutual contacts of Philip Whalen via the San Francisco Zen Center. Many of the Beat writers in San Francisco were also connected via Allen Ginsberg, who organized the famous Six Gallery Reading in the fall of 1955, which brought Jack Kerouac into the community.
The network analysis visual below allows for user interactivity to explore how each of these individuals were directly or mutually connected with another. Please feel free to drag the positioning of each node with your cursor to expand or retract the size of the visual tool.
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Methodology
When creating this network analysis, careful consideration had to be made to accurately depict which individuals held the most connections in the Beat and Buddhist networks. The data for this network analysis was collected through correspondence that not only confirmed contacts between individuals, but also other individuals that were mentioned in the exchanges. Existing secondary scholarship helped to further confirm the existence of these connections.
Many of the individuals shown in the network analysis resided in the Bay Area throughout the mid-1950s. The interactive map below plots out locations relative to the development of the Beat Generation and Zen Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1955. Each plot not only describes the location but also who frequented it. With a few exceptions, a majority of the locations plotted on this map remain active within the San Francisco and Berkeley communities. Notably, the Buddhist Churches of America location in Berkeley moved to a separate lot to accommodate for the development of the Institute of Buddhist Studies (IBS).
The visual map below allows for user interactivity to explore the different locations that both the Beats and Buddhist individuals in the Bay Area frequented. Please feel free to click on each point for information. While not shown, you are able to click on the symbol “?” which will forward you to a separate page featuring an image related to each point on the map.
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Methodology
In order to make this interactive map, correspondence and secondary scholarship helped to confirm where certain individuals like Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder lived and resided in. While many of the institutions and community centers of the Buddhist contemporaries remained in the same location, a few were relocated.