The Portable Beat Reader - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140151028 ISBN 13: 9780140151022

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1992

Synopsis

An anthology of writing from the Beat Generation features the surrealism of Burroughs, the poetry of Ginsberg, the zen prose of Gary Snyder, and essays, songs lyrics, letters, and memoirs by Cassady, Corso, Di Prima, Dylan, Baraka, and Kerouac. Reprint.

About this title

Review:

The Portable Beat Reader is an excellent and thorough study of the Beat Generation, compiled and edited by Ann Charters, biographer of Jack Kerouac and one of our most notable experts on Beat literature and ideas. This lively work of scholarship goes deeply into the history of the Beat movement, investigating events such as the discovery (by writer William Burroughs) of the word beat to describe this literary generation. The reader includes essays on all the major prose and poetry writers, such as Allen Ginsberg, and offers rare insight into the literary-historical context of the movement.

About the Author:

Ann Charters, professor of English at the University of Connecticut, has been interested in Beat writers since 1956. After completing her doctorate she worked with Jack Kerouac to compile his bibliography. She has written a literary study of Charles Olson and biographies of black entertainer Bert Williams, and (with her husband) the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. She was the general editor of the two-volume encyclopaedia The Beats: Literary Bohemians In Postwar America and has published a collection of her photographic portraits of well-known writers in the book Beats & Company. She has also edited Jack Kerouac's On the Road for Penguin Modern Classics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0140151028
• ISBN 13: 9780140151022
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 688
• Editor: Ann Charters