The story and history of the Beats couldn't be found in the traditional libraries or archives of academic research. For preeminent historian of Beat culture John Tytell, it had to be found in the bars, towns, roads, and hangouts of these writers and figures. And as Writing Beat demonstrates, the same techniques apply to new and future writers.Approaching the history of postwar twentieth-century American literature, and in particular the Beat literary movement of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and others, Tytell finds himself uniquely positioned as an eyewitness to many of these stories. In this book, he shares his insight with the reader. As he interviewed, drank, traveled, and survived countless moments with some of these literary legends, Tytell discovered much about the craft of nonfiction and biography, and the nature of history. Writing Beat demonstrates, through Tytell's growth as a professor and historian of the Beats, lessons learned and hazards encountered for those aspiring to become writers themselves.As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, Writing Beat reminds us writers do not spring to life fully formed, and the struggle to get to literature can be a blast.

Product Description: “This was Allen Ginsberg,” Gordon Ball declared after recounting intimate moments with the cultural icon and beloved Beat Generation poet on East Hill Farm, outside Cherry Valley, New York.During the late 1960s, when peace, drugs, and free love were direct challenges to conventional society, Allen Ginsberg, treasurer of the Committee on Poetry, Inc...read more

Product Description: Large paperback.

Product Description: The phrase "beat generation"―introduced by Jack Kerouac in 1948―characterized the underground, nonconformist youths who gathered in New York City at that time. Together, these writers, artists, and activists created an inimitably American cultural phenomenon that would have a global influence...read more

Product Description: Lu Anne Henderson was a beautiful 15-year-old girl in Denver in 1945 when she met Neal, a fast-talking hurricane of male sexuality and vast promises. The two married, and soon they were hanging out with a group of would-be writers, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg...read more

Vividly recreates the period from 1957 to 1963, when Paris's Beat Hotel, a cheap rooming house on the bohemian Left Bank, became the home and gathering place of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Harold Norse, and other luminaries of the Beat Generation. Reprint. (view table of contents)

The thoughts of such rockers, rebels, and intellectuals as Allen Ginsberg, Richard Hell, and Robert Mapplethorpe come to light in this collection of interviews and essays covering New York's legendary underground culture from the 1950s Beat Generation through the 1970s Punk explosion to the present. (view table of contents)

A holiday anthology for the entire family includes fifty-seven classic poems and dozens of engravings, highlighting such works as Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' and Longfellow's 'Snow-flakes'

Product Description: Large paperback.