The Portable Beat Reader
10 best books like The Portable Beat Reader (Ann Charters): Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg, A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems, Turtle Island, Gasoline & The Vestal Lady on Brattle, Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs, Go, First Third & Other Writings - Revised & Expanded Edition Together With A New Prologue, Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir, Memoirs of a Beatnik, Collected Poems, 1947-1980
Neal Cassady was a living legend, his dauntless, wild spirit immortalized in the bible of the Beat generation, Jack Kerouac's "On the Road."In this vivid, comic, and wise account, Neal's wife captures the turbulene and raw excitement of her years with Cassady, with Kerouac(her sometime lover), and...
| Author | Lawrence Ferlinghetti |
| ISBN | 0811200418 |
This is one of the best-selling poetry books of all time, and, although that is no guarantee of poetic excellence—after all, Rod McKuen and Martin Farquar Tupper both sold a lot of books in their day—it is a sign that the author had his finger on the pulse of his time, that his work embodies the yearnings...
| Author | Gary Snyder |
| ISBN | 0811205460 |
Describing the title of his collection of poetry and occasional prose pieces, Gary Snyder writes in his introductory note that Turtle Island is "the old/new name for the continent, based on many creation myths of the people who have been here for millennia, and reapplied by some of them to 'North America'...
| Author | Gregory Corso |
| ISBN | 0872860884 |
A good collection from one of the more undervalued Beat poets. Corso has strong merits, but his work comes across as darker and more pessimistic than others, and does not speak to me in the way that Ferlinghetti does or (to a lesser extent) Ginsberg. Much as "Howl" was in many ways Ginsberg's defining poem,...
| Author | Ted Morgan |
| ISBN | 0380708825 |
Anarchist, heroin addict, alcoholic, nihilist, homosexual crusader, and brilliant writer, William S. Burroughs was the patron saint and Prince of Darkness of the Beats of the 1950s. His ground-breaking avant-garde masterpiece NAKED LUNCH shocked the literary world with its graphic descriptions...
| Author | John Clellon Holmes |
| ISBN | 0141188391 |
The novel that launched the beat generation's literary legacy describes the world of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neil Cassady. Published two months before Kerouac began On the Road, Go is the first and most accurate chronicle of the private lives the Beats lived before they became public figures....
| Author | Neal Cassady |
| ISBN | 0872860051 |
Immortalized as Dean Moriarty by Jack Kerouac in his epic novel, On the Road, Neal Cassady was infamous for his unstoppable energy and his overwhelming charm, his savvy hustle and his devil-may-care attitude. A treasured friend and traveling companion of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs,...
| Author | Joyce Johnson |
| ISBN | 0140283579 |
Jack Kerouac. Allen Ginsberg. William S. Burroughs. LeRoi Jones. Theirs are the names primarily associated with the Beat Generation. But what about Joyce Johnson (nee Glassman), Edie Parker, Elise Cowen, Diane Di Prima, and dozens of others? These female friends and lovers of the famous iconoclasts...
| Author | Diane di Prima |
| ISBN | 0140235396 |
Long regarded as an underground classic for its gritty and unabashedly erotic portrayal of the Beat years, Memoirs of a Beatnik is a moving account of a powerful woman artist coming of age sensually and intellectually in a movement dominated by a small confederacy of men, many of whom she lived with and...
| Author | Allen Ginsberg |
| ISBN | 0060914947 |
This is the dawn of a new age......in my reading life.
I finally finished this f%&$in' book!
I remember the moment I purchased this book - it was New Year's Eve 2007 (about to be 2008 and the GFC changed the vibe everywhere that next year I remember) in downtown Brisbane at Borders Bookstore...
| Author | Anne Waldman |
| ISBN | 1570624275 |
The Beat movement exploded into American culture in the early 1950s with the force of prophecy. Not just another literary school, it was an artistic and social revolution. William S. Burroughs proclaimed that the Beat writers were “real architects of change. There is no doubt that we’re living...
| Author | Bill Morgan |
| ISBN | 0670037966 |
Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Howl, the first full biography of Allen Ginsberg—from birth to death
Allen Ginsberg was America’s most influential poet since World War II, a figure who was in the vanguard of every popular movement of that time, from the emergence...
| Author | Brenda Knight |
| ISBN | 1567312969 |
The Beat Generation created an American revolution in literature and culture that transformed the mid-twentieth century. The Beats helped make literature a democracy. All one needed, they believed, was passion and a love of the written word. The names of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady,...
| Author | Barry Gifford |
| ISBN | 1560257393 |
Here, in what has become a classic of its kind since its publication in 1978, is the fascinating story of Jack Kerouac, "King of the Beats" and American literary legend, recorded through the voices of his friends and lovers. Authors Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee retraced Kerouac's life at home and on...
| Author | Gerald Nicosia |
| ISBN | 0520085698 |
In 1969 Jack Kerouac died a premature death. While his legendary lifestyle and unique creative talent made him a hero in his lifetime, his literary influence has grown steadily since. With Memory Babe (a childhood nickname honoring Kerouac's feats of memory), Gerald Nicosia gives us a complete biography...
| Author | Steve Turner |
| ISBN | 0670870382 |
Forty years after the publication of On the Road Kerouac has won the critical recognition he long deserved, inspiring passionate interest from a new generation of readers. This lively, visual biography highlights Kerouac's impact on the 1950s and 1960s and tracks his relentless devotion to his work,...
| Author | Jack Kerouac |
| ISBN | 0670848778 |
Written during a critical period of his life, Some of the Dharma is a key volume in Jack Kerouac's vast autobiographical canon. He began writing it in 1953 as reading notes on Buddhism intended for his friend, poet Allen Ginsberg. As Kerouac's Buddhist study and meditation practice intensified, what...
The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
| Author | Alan Kaufman |
| ISBN | 1560252278 |
The definitive collection of anti-establishment American poetry, from Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac to Sapphire and Tupac Shakur
"Welcome to the Wild West of American Poetry, the Hole-In-The-Wall of Blakean vision, a two-fisted saloon of New World dreams where you'll meet the greatest Outlaw...
| Author | William S. Burroughs |
With the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959, William Burroughs abruptly brought international letters into the postmodern age. Beginning with his very early writing (including a chapter from his and Jack Kerouac's never-before-seen collaborative novel), Word Virus follows the arc of Burroughs's...
