Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons, and Impact - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1851094008 ISBN 13: 9781851094004

Publisher: ABC-CLIO, 2005

Synopsis

The coverage of this book ranges from Jack Kerouac's tales of freedom-seeking Bohemian youth to the frenetic paintings of Jackson Pollock, including 60 years of the Beat Generation and the artists of the Age of Spontaneity.

Beat Culture captures in a single volume six decades of cultural and countercultural expression in the arts and society. It goes beyond other works, which are often limited to Beat writers like William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, and Michael McClure, to cover a wide range of musicians, painters, dramatists, filmmakers, and dancers who found expression in the Bohemian movement known as the Beat Generation.

Top scholars from the United States, England, Holland, Italy, and China analyze a vast array of topics including sexism, misogny, alcoholism, and drug abuse within Beat circles; the arrest of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti on obscenity charges; Beat dress and speech; and the Beat "pad." Through more than 250 entries, which travel from New York to New Orleans, from San Francisco to Mexico City, students, scholars, and those interested in popular culture will taste the era's rampant freedom and experimentation, explore the impact of jazz on Beat writings, and discover how Beat behavior signaled events such as the sexual revolution, the peace movement, and environmental awareness.

About this title

About the Author

William T. Lawlor, PhD, is writing emphasis coordinator and professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, WI.

Reviews

Grade 9 Up–A piquant celebration of all things Beat, packed with articles on the figures, the literature, the music, the art, the humor, the influences, the drugs, and the despair. The book offers fascinating reading and a window through which this movement, still more famous than understood, can be glimpsed. There is some attempt to link the Beats to their social and political impulses, and to finger them as founding fathers of all countercultural movements to come. The longer essays on the major figures run from three to five pages with a chronology at the end; most of the articles are much shorter. The writing is relatively clear, though some of the related minutiae does become tedious, and a refrain of victimization and martyrdom is sounded repeatedly. From Wilhelm Reich and Lenny Bruce to William S. Burroughs and Timothy Leary, the Beat movement appears littered with the bodies of fallen geniuses, outrageously ignored or abused by the powers that be. Though a few women are represented (Joyce Johnson, Anne Waldman, Diane di Prima among them), for the most part the Beat movement is considered an all boys club as noted in the article Sexism and Misogyny. There are many illustrations–some of them quite evocative–and plenty of cross-references. Libraries owning Lynn M. Zott's multivolume The Beat Generation (Gale, 2003) probably won't need this resource. However, Lawlor's single-volume work is possibly the best overview of the topic for high school students.–Herman Sutter, Saint Agnes Academy, Houston, TX
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This volume covers the Beat Generation: the musicians, writers, and artists as well as the culture and history. Following introductory material that includes a thematic entry list and a detailed chronology are more than 250 alphabetical entries, most of them biographical. Each entry varies in length from a short paragraph to 20 pages and provides bibliographic references and, in the case of entries for people, a list of principal works and projects. The three most influential Beat figures, William Seward Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, are covered in detail. Other entries treat topics such as Censorship, Cold war, Film, New York City, and Sexual attitudes and behavior. Kerouac's travels, as the "chronicler of the Beat Generation," are described, as is the major role that music played in Beat culture. The volume also covers little-known magazines that helped give voice to Beat expression. Black-and-white illustrations can be found throughout the text.

The Beat Generation: A Gale Critical Companion (2003) deals with Beat literature in much more depth, if more selectively. Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons, and Impact covers the whole Beat spectrum, enlightening the reader not only about literature but also about the painting of Jackson Pollock, the dance of Merce Cunningham, the "Beatness" of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, the educational philosophy of Black Mountain College, and the Beat style of dress. A useful purchase for public and academic libraries. Carol Sue Harless
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: ABC-CLIO
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1851094008
• ISBN 13: 9781851094004
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Lawlor William T.