Featured Beat Generation Books

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books for sale

[001558] Cherkovski, Neeli. Whitman's Wild Children. Venice, CA: Lapis Press, 1988. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine / Fine. This is an unread copy. It's bound in bright blue cloth with silver lettering, 261 pages. The poets profiled are Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners, William Everson, James Broughton, Gregory Corso, Philip Lamantia, Harold Norse, Bob Kaufman, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. From the dustjacket: "Whitman's Wild Children is a first person, anecdotal, riotous collection of profiles of ten of America's most celebrated maverick poets. Take a wild ride on the L.A. freeways with Charles Bukowski, the legendary 'barfly' and 'dirty old man" of contemporary poetry; explore Manhattan with Allen Ginsberg, one of New York's more rebellious offspring; travel with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, defendant in the famed 'Howl' obscenity trial, a 'beatnik rabble rouser' to the FBI, a revered poet and influential diffident." Includes a bibliography. $40.00

[003992] Kherdian, David. Six San Francisco Poets. Fresno, CA: The Giligia Press, 1969. 2nd Printing. Wrappers. Good / Good. This book includes biographical info, interviews & photos of Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Brother Antoninus (William Everson). Wear to dustjacket with small tears at flap folds, chip at head of spine, some toning. Book is about very good with some toning, bump/small bends at lower corners. $11.95

[000095] Lee, Robert A., Editor. The Beat Generation Writers. London, England: Pluto Press, 1996. 2nd Printing. Wrappers. Very Good. Essays examining the work of Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Huncke, Neal Cassady, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Ted Joans, Bob Kaufman, and with a study of the women writers of the Beat Generation such a Carolyn Cassady, Bonnie Bremser, Joanne Kyger, and Diane DiPrima. $14.95

[001431] Maynard, John Arthur. Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991. First Paper. Wrappers. Very Good. Really well-researched account of the Beats as they were in Southern California, and more specifically, Venice. (Though often overlooked, there were Beat writers in places other than San Francisco and New York!) Maynard focuses largely on Stuart Perkoff, Lawrence Lipton, and their circles. With a great bibliography, expansive notes on sources, and lots of detail you won't find anywhere else. This copy is very good, with a bump to the bottom rear corner.This book will give you a much clearer of the scope of Beat writing, and will introduce you to some of the lesser-known Beats. Recommended! $14.95

[001068] Meldrum, Barbara H., Ed. . Under the Sun: Myth and Realism in Western American Literature. Troy, NY: The Whitston Publishing Co. , 1985. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good+ / No Jacket, as Issued. 13 essays, plus the editor's introduction. 230 pages, with an index. Slight soiling to the yellow cloth covered boards, else fine, as new. $24.95

[002782] Sawyer-Laucanno, Christopher. The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1992. First Thus. Wrappers. Fine. This is the revised edition. From the back cover: "Between 1944 and 1960, a second wave of expatriate American writers took up residence in Paris, some seeking the exciting ambiance of art and the bohemian life that Paris had offered earlier generations, some escaping from racist and materialistic aspects of the United States....Christopher Sawyer Laucanno sees through the Paris of glamourous legend to the sometimes starker reality of those times in this entertaining, anecdotal account of the friendships and associations the writers formed, the cross-cultural influences they experienced, what they discovered, and what they brought back." Among those who found themselves living in Paris during this time were Beat writers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin, Peter Orlovsky, & Harold Norse. Sawyer-Laucanno devotes a chapter to the Beat Hotel, the cheap Left Bank hotel where so many of the Beats stayed, and where Burroughs and Gysin discovered the cut-up technique. Some of the others who made their way to Paris during this era were Richard Wright, Chester Himes, William Styron, Alexander Trocchi, John Ashbery, & Harry Matthews. The book includes many pages of notes, a bibliography, an index, and several pages of photographs. This is a new, unread copy. $10.00

[001233] Sawyer-Laucanno, Christopher. The Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960. San Francisco, CA: Bloomsbury, 1992. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine / Near Fine. From the back cover: "Between 1944 and 1960, a second wave of expatriate American writers took up residence in Paris, some seeking the exciting ambiance of art and the bohemian life that Paris had offered earlier generations, some escaping from racist and materialistic aspects of the United States....Christopher Sawyer Laucanno sees through the Paris of glamourous legend to the sometimes starker reality of those times in this entertaining, anecdotal account of the friendships and associations the writers formed, the cross-cultural influences they experienced, what they discovered, and what they brought back." Among those who found themselves living in Paris during this time were Beat writers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin, Peter Orlovsky, & Harold Norse. Sawyer-Laucanno devotes a chapter to the Beat Hotel, the cheap Left Bank hotel where so many of the Beats stayed, and where Burroughs and Gysin discovered the cut-up technique. Some of the others who made their way to Paris during this era were Richard Wright, Chester Himes, William Styron, Alexander Trocchi, John Ashbery, & Harry Matthews. The book includes many pages of notes, a bibliography, an index, and several pages of photographs. Very slight wear to the covers. This is a new, unread copy. $12.95

[000770] Simpson, Louis. A Revolution in Taste: Studies of Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath & Robert Lowell . New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co. , 1978. First Edition. Wrappers. SIGNED. Good. Simpson has inscribed this copy on the title page, and dated it in November 1979. This is the paperback, published simultaneously with the hardcover. Price blacked out on cover, general wear to covers, some underlining and other marks on several pages. $20.00

[001167] Tytell, John. The Living Theatre. New York, NY: Grove Press, 1995. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good / Very Good. The story of Judith Malina and Julian Beck's creation of The Living Theatre. From the flap: "The story of The Living Theatre is also the story of the emergence of a New York avant-garde in the 1950s and the resulting counterculture of the 1960s. The company was a kind of theatrical tribe, creating and staging plays collectively, living communally, and cultivating an atmosphere of sexual openness and adventure. And what a cast of characters passes through these pages: Tennessee Williams, Frank O'Hara, Anais Nin, James Agee, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, Jackson Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists, Dorothy Day, John Ashbery, Peggy Guggenheim, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Alan Hovhaness and Maya Deren, among many others." This is a new, unread copy. Some bits of wrinkling at extremities of dustjacket, corner of rear flap bent, base of spine bumped. $19.95

[000600] Tytell, John. The Living Theatre. New York, NY: Grove Press, 1995. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine / Very Good. The story of Judith Malina and Julian Beck's creation of The Living Theatre. From the flap: "The story of The Living Theatre is also the story of the emergence of a New York avant-garde in the 1950s and the resulting counterculture of the 1960s. The company was a kind of theatrical tribe, creating and staging plays collectively, living communally, and cultivating an atmosphere of sexual openness and adventure. And what a cast of characters passes through these pages: Tennessee Williams, Frank O'Hara, Anais Nin, James Agee, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, Jackson Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists, Dorothy Day, John Ashbery, Peggy Guggenheim, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Alan Hovhaness and Maya Deren, among many others." This is a new, unread copy. Some bits of wrinkling at top and one corner of dustjacket. $19.95

[000431] Watson, Steven. The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels and Hipsters 1944-1960. ill. James Steinberg, Eric Hanson. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1995. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine / Fine. The history of the Beat Generation, told in fascinating detail. From the dustjacket: "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 evoked 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 ...Beat literature. 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." Highly recommended. Fine, in a fine dustjacket and covered in a protective Brodart cover. $30.00

[003069] Whitmer, Peter O. With Bruce VanWyngarden. Aquarius Revisited: Seven Who Created the Sixties Counterculture That Changed America (William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson) . New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good / Fine. 260 pages. Includes photographs, and an index. Some light wear at head & tail of spine, else fine in a fine dustjacket. $16.95

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