Beat generation. The main representative plan: Introduction

On the Road provides us with many clues as to how to go about answering this question. This passage, in which Sal discusses their rendezvous with Rollo Greb, is particularly rich in suggestion:
“He had more books than I’ve ever seen in all my life—two libraries, two rooms loaded from floor to ceiling around all four walls, and such books as the Apocryphal Something-or-Other in ten volumes. He played Verdi operas and pantomimed them in his pajamas with a great rip down the back. He didn’t give a damn about anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider through the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstasy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He could hardly get a word out, he was so excited with life. Dean stood before him with his head bowed, repeating over and over again, “Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes.” He took me into a corner. “That Rollo Greb is the greatest, the most wonderful of all. That’s what I was trying to tell you—that’s what I want to be. I want to be like him. He’s never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he’s the end! You see, if you go like him all the time you’ll finally get it.” “Get what?” “IT! IT! I’ll tell you—now no time, we have no time now.” Dean rushed back to watch Rollo Greb some more.”
For Dean, Rollo Greb represents “the end”, the ultimate form of Beat. He is a man who is literally made speechless by the intensity and excitement of living. But he also “lets it all out”, expressing himself eccentrically and spontaneously, with apparent disregard for the judgments of others. He “knows time”—that is, he recognizes death and understands that he should live emphatically and unapologetically in this moment, as the next is never guaranteed.
Rollo Greb epitomizes the “free spirit” archetype. He is utterly and unabashedly and irrevocably climaxing in a sort of orgasm of feeling, expression, appreciation, existence. Dean claims that going like him is the key to “getting it”, which we might take to mean something like tuning in to the spirit of life, flowing perfectly with things, transcending all typical worries or fears. Whether or not this state of being is realistic or sustainable is irrelevant—it is the portrait of an ideal.
The Tao of On the Road
An interest in Eastern religions was another characteristic of the Beats, and this influence is evidenced throughout On the Road. Flowing like Rollo Greb, without attachment or expectation, seems closely related to the Buddhist or Taoist notion of playful non-resistance, but perhaps with a twist of ecstatic lust for the world.
On the precipice of a journey east, Dean delivers a monologue that has undertones of this same worriless, all-embracing state of being:
“‘And it’s not even the beginning of it—and now here we are at last going east together, we’ve never gone east together, Sal, think of it, we’ll dig Denver together and see what everybody’s doing although that matters little to us, the point being that we know what IT is and we know TIME and we know that everything is really FINE. Then he whispered, clutching my sleeve, sweating, “Now you just dig them in front. They have worries, they’re counting the miles, they’re thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they’ll get there—and all the time they’ll get there anyway, you see. But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won’t be at peace unless they can latch onto an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end.’”
Dean notes that he and Sal will surely have a wonderful time simply going together. It matters little what they see or what others are doing because their joy resides in their way of traveling—one of trust in the road and constant affirmation.
Dean contrasts this state with that of the other passengers in the car who are unable to escape their habitual worrying. Worry, it seems, has become their comfort zone, and they are unable to travel without anxiety, thus “betraying time”—that is, overlooking the moment in favor of frivolous and insignificant considerations. After all, “they’ll get there anyway”, as Dean puts it, expressing a sort of submission to the fact that time will (in many ways) move us where it will move us, regardless of whether we resist it or embrace it.
“Digging” “IT” All
Embracing everything—being, the self, experiences—is the only way for Dean, the only way as far as the Beats are concerned. Embracing the ‘now’, for Dean, results in “knowing time”, an idea that continues to reappear throughout the text. The novel suggests that time expands or contracts based upon where we direct our attention. Time seems to suspend and deepen for the characters in the novel because they appreciate what is immediately before them—they focus on unique details that others would overlook.