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Concisely told and full of fascinating detail, The Birth of the Beat Generation chronicles the life and times of the maverick poets and novelists William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, as well as the San Francisco group, which included Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder. It also evokes the figures surrounding them, including Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, and Peter Orlovsky. This is the first book to link the Beats to one another, explaining how they became a group and tracing the connections between Beat lives and such Beat literature as Kerouac's On the Road, Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, and Burroughs' Naked Lunch. Accompanying the text are maps, more than one hundred photographs, two sociograms, quotations from Beat works and conversation, chronologies, and a vast lexicon of the slang that defines the nuances and complexities of the Beat world and mind.… (more)
User reviews
Birth of the Beat Generation does not only delve into the core members of the original group. Watson takes you behind the curtain to meet the mothers, girlfriends, wives, and muses of the Beats, the less often talked about women of the generation. They had their own addictions and mental failings, but they always played second fiddle to the boys. Everyone seemed to searching for sexual identity. Everyone seemed to be one card short of a full deck. Everyone slept with anyone, regardless of actual preference. Celebrity was a beast to be chased, but once caught, extremely hard to tame. To be a Beat you had to be a libertarian, write confessional poetry, be open to mind-bending drugs, sexual liberation, and embrace pacifism.
Birth of the Beat Generation is not your average book. It has unusual dimensions. The photography is sprinkled throughout like Easter eggs. Quotes, a slang dictionary, and fun facts are written in the margins. I appreciated the flow chart of players, when they met, their relationships to one another, and the seriousness of their connections. The best margin information was what was on everyone's book shelves.