beatnikery

Why this word is great

BEATNIKERY — [Noun] The behavior and attitudes characteristic of beatniks, marked by rejection of conventional norms, affinity for jazz, poetry, and existential brooding. From beatnik (a term for members of the 1950s counterculture movement, itself from beat + -nik, a suffix of Russian origin denoting a person associated with something) + -ery (a suffix forming nouns denoting behavior or characteristics). Unlike "bohemianism" (which spans centuries of artistic nonconformity) or "hippiedom" (which traded bongos for sitars and activism for psychedelia), beatnikery is a specific mid-century melancholy, a postwar shrug dressed in black turtlenecks. It is the clatter of typewriters in a Greenwich Village basement, the sour tang of espresso left too long in the cup, the way smoke curls around a beret in a dimly lit café—a fleeting, self-aware performance of disaffection, as if alienation were an art form.