The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture - Softcover

George-Warren, Holly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786885424 ISBN 13: 9780786885428

Publisher: Hyperion, 2000

Synopsis

The definitive illustrated collection of Beat culture from the people who made the scene--now in paperback

It's been nearly fifty years since Jack Kerouac took to the road, but Beat culture continues to be a popular and influential force in today's writing, music, and art.

With more than 75 contributors, this celebratory potpourri of words, illustrations, and photography contains original and previously published essays by Richard Miller, Ann Douglas, Johnny Depp, Michael McClure, Hettie Jones, Hunter S. Thompson, Joyce Johnson, Richard Hell, and others. It includes rare pieces from the Rolling Stone archives by William Burroughs, Lester Bangs, and Robert Palmer as well as intimate photographs by Robert Frank, Annie Leibovitz, and rarely seen photos taken by the Beats themselves. A rich tapestry of voices and a visual treat, this treasury of Beat lore and literature is a true collector's item whose entertainment value will go on...and on.

"A huge dim sum cart of a book...a first-rate companion." --Publishers Weekly

"Compelling reading."

--The Denver Post

About this title

About the Author

Holly George-Warren is the coeditor of numerous Rolling Stone titles, including The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. Her writing appears in The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock and Traditions: New York, among other books. She has also written for a variety of publications, including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Oxford American, and the Village Voice.

From Kirkus Reviews

Jottings and spottings from more than 60 writers, artists, academics, and pop-culture sages, most of them contributors to Rolling Stone magazine, that celebrate the romantic nihilism of the postwar Beat movement. The Beats were cool and don't we miss them, say Hunter S. Thompson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Amram, and Carolyn Cassady (Neal's wife). The rumpled, pot-smoking, hard-drinking, pansexual trio of Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac not only changed everything about American culture, according to Rolling Stone culture critics Greil Marcus, Mikal Gilmore, and Robert Palmer, but still informs a generation of snide, black-clad, biker-jacket-and-tight-pants rebels, represented in pointless essays from guitarist-turned-novelist Richard Hell, rocker Graham Parker, and actor Johnny Depp, who recalls that reading Howl ``left me babbling like an idiot, stunned that someone could regurgitate such honesty on paper.'' Some minor writings from the Big Three that were previously published in Rolling Stone (editor George-Warren proudly puffs the magazine as a promoter of Beat sensibilities) are lost among windy blasts of hagiography, no-longer-new journalism, and judgments that don't make much sense, such as Ginsberg buddy Michael McClure's revelation that the Beats were really ``the literary wing of the environmental movement.'' If it's hard to accept CUNY English professor John Tytells claim that Beat writing, abstract expressionist art, be-bop jazz, and Method acting are all manifestations of primal American rebelliousness, journalist Henry Cabot Beck assures us that Maynard G. Krebs, the feckless hipster played by actor Bob Denver in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, was not what the Beats were all about. Cultural history under a syrupy glaze of self-righteous nostalgia, anecdotal noodlings, and creaky profundity. (40 b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0786885424
• ISBN 13: 9780786885428
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 464