Beat Culture and the New America 1950-1965

Now that Francis Ford Coppola is making a film of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the beats--Kerouac, Ginsberg, Whalen, Cassady, and others, some gone but not forgotten--are due for another in a series of periodic rediscoveries by the mainstream media. This heavily illustrated book does the work of several tomes. It analyzes beat culture from a historical viewpoint, showing its growth in the Cold War as an expression of alienation on one hand and utter artistic joy on the other. It also charts the rise of a postwar African American intellectual movement whose influence remains strong; examines the effect of beat sensibilities on the hippies who followed a decade later, and on youth culture generally; and traces the path of beat ideas in the arts, especially film. Most of all, it makes you want to turn to Desolation Angels and Howl for the first or the hundredth time for a righteous dose of bebop delight.