Back to home page - News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270

The Portable Beat Reader

by Edited by Ann Charters - £12.99  Penguin Books Ltd (2006)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9780142437537 | ISBN 10: 0142437530

Beginning in the late 1940s, American literature discovered a four-letter word, and the word was "beat." Beat as in povery and beatitude, ecstasy and exile. Beat was Jack Kerouac touring the American road in prose as fast and reckless as a V-8 Chevy. It was the junk-sick surrealism of William Burroughs; the wild, Whitmanesque poetry of Alan Ginsberg; and the lumberjack Zen of Gary Snyder.
 
The Portable Beat Reader collects the most significant writing of these and fellow members (and spiritual descendants) of the Beat Generation, including Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Bob Dylan, Leroi Jones, and Michael McClure. In poetry, fiction, essays, song lyrics, letters and memoirs, it captures the triumphant rudeness, energy, and exhilaration of a movement that swept through American letters with hurricane force.

"A deft and definitive collection. It catches the flavour of playful, serious defiance of the whole generation."
(Gary Snyder)

(Price & availability last checked: May 2018)

This website can't tell you if we have this book in the shop or not - to ask, phone us or use the enquiry link below. (We can order most books within 7-10 days, subject to availability.)
  


In booklists: USA: History, Writing Collections, USA: Culture and Society, USA: Radical America,
In categories: History & Biography, Poetry & Writing, Media & Culture, World - North America,

© News From Nowhere Co-operative Ltd IP24524R 2004-2024 | Privacy policy | Contact | return to top of page