materialism, and also the feeling that the culture itself didn't honor the human spirit and didn't honor creativity. >> in the early 1950s, the nation recognized in its midst a social movement called beat generation. and a novel titled "on the road" became a best seller. >> when kerouac's book comes out, it became a revolution, defined a new generation of what being beat means. and it defined it as a spiritual revolution, that if we're living in an age of conformity, if everybody's trying to work for the corporation, that you're losing a sense of self. >> i was traveling west one time at the junction of the state line of colorado. and i saw in the clouds, huge and massed above the theory golden desert of even fall, a great image of god with four fingers pointed straight at me. come on, boy, go thou across the ground.