There are a number of important relationships between Bob Dylan and writers of the Beat Generation. Throughout his career Dylan has shared with the Beats the aesthetic assumption that true artistic expression is the result of a spontaneous outpouring of the soul and that revision often leads to overrefinement and falsification. In addition he is indebted to the Beats for having combined poetry with music, thus creating an audience that was ready to respond to unconventional lyrics sung to rock accompaniment, a combination folk-music purists were unwilling to accept. During the mid-1960s Dylan also shared the Beats' attitudes toward social authority, politics, and drugs, emphasizing the primacy of the self and rejecting institutionally prescribed norms. Finally, and most important, from the beginning of his rock period, the style of Dylan's most characteristic lyrics unmistakably reveals that Beat poetry was a strong influence on him as he developed...