Beat Atlas Book Review

One of the very best parts of having written The Beat Handbook and maintaining this blog is that City Lights Books - the pre-eminent Beat Generation book publisher on the planet - sees fit to send me relevant books for review. It's one big reason I love going to the post office!

Most recently, Beat Atlas: A State by State Guide to the Beat Generation in America by Bill Morgan, appeared in my mailbox. As the title suggests, it's a Beat tour guide for the whole country (supplementing City Lights' Beat tour guides to San Francisco and New York). I can see using this great resource in two ways. First, you can take it with you whenever you travel in the States. I plan to do that. Second, when you want to go somewhere but aren't sure where, you can use it as a destination-planning guide. I plan to do that as well. For example, right here in Maine are four places with beat connections: Brunswick, Northeast Harbor, Old Orchard Beach, and Orono. As with all entries, there is a description of why each particular location has a beat connection. Brunswick, Maine is home to Bowdoin College, where Lucien Carr attended (and was stalked there by David Kammerer). There are even cross-references to other entries. This particular one refers the reader to the Andover, Massachusetts entry for more details. I lived in Pennsylvania for most of my life, and the Commonwealth sports five entries: Feasterville (who knew?), Harrisburg (oh, yes, The Ghost of the Susquehanna), Muhlenberg, Philadelphia, and Swarthmore.

Even Little Rhody has beat connections: Newport and Providence. Naturally, San Francisco and New York aren't given all the detail possible since they enjoy dedicated beat tour guides. Denver, as you can imagine, has five-and-a-half pages of information. We learn that on one trip to Denver, Jack Kerouac hung out at Charlie Brown's Bar and Grill at 980 Grant Street, which is still in business. (Note to self: put that on the itinerary wish list.)

Another great feature of Beat Atlas is that it includes lots of pictures, some of which I don't remember seeing before, including early and later ones of various beat writers as well as locations (like the house at 34 Beaulieu Street in Lowell where Jack lived for a while). There are even a few pictures of Carl Solomon, to whom Ginsberg dedicated his epic poem, "Howl." I especially like the shot of Gary Snyder - sport-coated, turtle-necked, and pony-tailed - giving a reading.

Beat Atlas is all text and pictures: no maps. I like that because it saves on size and unnecessary clutter. It provides addresses, and it's easy enough to use the Internet or a GPS to get directions to a specific location. And even if an address isn't sufficient, part of Beat travel is the adventure, right? Another feature I like is all the historical information packed into such a small book. Did you know that Ginsberg worked as a spot welder for Eastern Gas and Fuel Association in the Brooklyn Navy Yard? Or that Timothy Leary was a cadet at West Point? There are interesting connections, too, like the irony of Jack writing about necking with a girl all the way to Indianapolis in On The Road and then the owner of the Indianapolis Colts buying the original Road scroll for over $2 million. Well, maybe that's not so ironic (my analysis, not Morgan's), but it's sure interesting.

There's a useful bibliography for additional reading, and a fairly extensive index (Kerouac has over 100 entries in it) gives the reader another way to plan trips. For instance, if you're a Gary Snyder fan, you could check out any of his 30+ index entries, pick your destination, and go go go.

I absolutely love this book. It's quirky, interesting, and practical. This is a travel guide that you will pick up just to read, in addition to using it for finding Beat destinations to visit. Beat Atlas has my highest recommendation.

You can order a copy from City Lights Books. While you're at it, you might want to pick up a copy of The Beat Handbook. It's made to be a traveling companion as well.

Review: Peter Conners' White Hand Society

A couple of weeks ago I received a review copy of Peter Conners' White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg, recently published (2010) by City Lights Books in San Francisco. I just finished reading it cover-to-cover, and it was an enjoyable read.

Conners' prose is clear and engaging. Chapter 1, "Blakean Vision in Harlem," starts thus:

July 1948. Allen Ginsberg lay in bed reading William Blake. He was 23 years old, heartbroken and lonely (p. 11).

That concise paragraph puts forth quite a lot of detail, and, combined with the chapter title, helps the reader predict exactly where the author is headed: a look into Ginsberg's vision he believes he received directly from William Blake and which launched Ginsberg on the spiritual/poetic path we beat generation aficionados know so well. Ginsberg vowed that day to honor his vision throughout his entire life, and his eventual experimentation with hallucinogens likely assisted him in meeting that pledge.

Chapter 2, "A New Game," introduces us to 35-year-old Timothy Leary, living in Spain with his two children and trying to "put two marriages and an increasingly uncomfortable social and professional life behind him" (p. 22). Already fighting clinical depression, Leary experienced a day of intense physical symptoms - burning scalp, swollen face, water blisters on his face, etc. - which led to a psychological transformation he described as his "entire identity melting away" (p. 24). Two years later he took his first dose of hallucinogens, picking up where his first brush with transformative experience left him.

Starting from those parallel consciousness-raising experiences, Conners then weaves his way through the history of hallucinogenic drugs (especially LSD and psilocybin), their creators/makers (e.g., Albert Hofmann, Owsley Stanley), their proponents (e.g., Ken Kesey), and the evolving but sometimes strained relationship between Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg. Along the way are stories involving Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William S. Burroughs, and other beat generation characters. We get to see the text of relevant letters written by Leary and Ginsberg, including a gem by Leary to musician Thelonius Monk in 1961 asking him to participate in his psychedelic mushroom research. We also get the background story of Leary's exciting escape from prison, aided by none other than the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers.

Throughout the book, Conners provides extensive details, but never to the expense of comprehension or reading enjoyment. One particularly important detail is the inclusion of the actual transcript from "The Houseboat Summit," an exchange between facilitator Alan Watts (on his boat the S.S. Vallejo), Leary, Ginsberg, and beat poet Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums). It's a prescient interchange of ideas about Leary's notion of "dropping out," with some of the best insights coming from Snyder's ecologically-focused perspective. (You can read it on-line here.)

This is an important addition to the literature on the beat generation, documenting the collaboration between two remarkable visionaries who took America on the ride of her life. If you're a beat generation fan, a hippie, a child of the 60s, or a fan of biographies, you'll be turned on by White Hand Society.

Click here to buy the book directly from City Lights.

Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg: Upcoming Review

Out of the clear blue California sky, a package arrived this past week. It was a book-sized package, and the return address was City Lights in San Francisco, which readers of The Daily Beat know is the premier beat generation bookstore on the planet. I had not ordered anything from City Lights, which could only mean one thing: they had again, as with Helen Weaver's book (see link on the right and my review here) The Awakener, entrusted me with a review copy of a new publication.

Indeed, I am now in possession of White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg by Peter Conners. I have promised my contact at City Lights - who e-mailed me subsequently - a review, so stay tuned.

With chapter titles like "Enter LSD, Exit Harvard" and "Human Be-In," it promises to be an interesting read.

The Year Everything Changed: 1959

Here's a review of the book, The Year Everything Changed: 1959, by Fred Kaplan. According to the reviewer, Charles Kaiser, the book contains a particularly good description of the impact of the beat movement.

As usual, I scour the web for beat news so you don't have to!

Enjoy....

The book review that launched Jack Kerouac's career

To read the book review that launched Jack Kerouac's career, see New York Times review of On The Road.

Quite a review, eh?

Book Review: The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder

This 2009 book published by Counterpoint Press is a collection of selected letters between beat generation founding father Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac friend/environmental writer Gary Snyder. As anyone reading this blog probably knows, Jack Kerouac wrote about Ginsberg and Snyder in his novels under fictitious names (to avoid libel). Ginsberg showed up frequently (source: Jack Kerouac Characters):

Big Sur - Irwin Garden
Book of Dreams - Irwin Garden
Desolation Angels - Irwin Garden
The Vanity of Duluoz - Irwin Garden
Visions of Cody - Irwin Garden
The Dharma Bums - Alvah Goldbrook
On the Road - Carlo Marx
The Subterraneans - Adam Moorad
The Town and the City - Leon Levinsky

Snyder appears less frequently, although in The Dharma Bums he is a major character:

Big Sur - Jarry Wagner
The Dharma Bums - Japhy Ryder

This collection of letters was edited by Bill Morgan, Ginsberg’s archivist and biographer for twenty years before the latter’s death in 1997. As Morgan states in the Editor’s Preface, “During the twentieth century, letters were a literary form that nearly everyone practiced. In today’s world of cell phones, text messaging and email, it all seems quaint and old-fashioned, but in the days before inexpensive long-distance telephone service became commonplace, the main avenue for communication was the written word” (p. v).

Ginsberg and Snyder met in 1955, and kept in touch by letter over the next 40 years. Their centrality to the beat literature movement is significant and unquestionable, making this book valuable to anyone with more than a passing interest in beat literature.

For Kerouac fans, don’t expect much mention of Jack. He is listed on 20 pages in the index. My own count is that Kerouac’s name is mentioned on 36 pages (of the 310 the letters take up) – a bit of a discrepancy – but in any event, the mentions are brief and not of much interest except for one: “Dreamt I saw Jack Kerouac last nite, told him he’d done enough work, he should take it easy and maybe write one book every 10 years and live to be 80 or 90 years old. I guess that’s advice to me” (p. 307). Ginsberg wrote this in January 1995 at the age of 68, and lived to be 70. I guess he had the dream a bit too late. Later in the same letter he says, “My heart’s still pumping but especially in travel I get out of breath easily, feel older and less energetic – so I guess the Kerouac dream applies” (p. 307).

In general, expect a lot of mundane correspondence. It is telling how often the two depended on letters to communicate about logistics (when they might see each other, real estate deals, schedules, business dealings, etc.). Letters often crossed in the mail, or one or the other, especially Ginsberg, would let them pile up while he traveled and get to them when he returned.

There are 16 pages of photographs of the two, ranging from 1955 to 1996. The only one that caught my attention was the one of Snyder standing on a mountain in the Glacier Peak Wilderness and “’pissing in the no-wind.’” Here’s a picture of my great friend Keith doing that off The Beehive in Acadia National Park this last August. I didn’t ask him if I could post this, but given that it’s an almost exact reproduction of the Snyder picture, I think he’d be honored.



I found the book interesting enough to read every letter straight through. I wish there had been more in the way of philosophy and critical dialogue, but that’s just not how the two used letters. Plus it was seldom a dialogue, given how long it sometimes took for one or the other to get around to answering a previous missive. They used letters more to stay in touch and handle logistics. The insight I took away was that these beat authors we lionize today were quite human, with faults and weaknesses and fears and the like, just as we mere mortals.

There are indeed a few in-depth philosophical musings (e.g., Snyder’s long 1962 letter explaining Buddhism in general and some specific visions he had on mescaline); and, there are plenty of one-liners of note, such as (from Ginsberg) “’hatred is not cured by hatred’” (p. 33), or “change is usually right” (p. 37), or “my roshi said when the word comes out in a flash it’s not a word, it’s your true mental state; when you search for the right word, it will never be the right word” (p. 37). Or from Snyder: “That is the simplest – and most difficult – way to get at suffering I guess, help out people who are suffering yourself. Ugh” (p. 65).

One of the strong threads of the letters centers around Kitkitdizze, Snyder’s home on the San Juan Ridge in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Ginsberg had a house there, but seldom used it, eventually selling it to Snyder. Many letters detail the development of the land, rental arrangements, improving Ginsberg’s house, tax issues, etc. Another thread is the amount of traveling the two did (not together) to teach and give readings or talks. They were prolific in this regard.

In summary, unless you’re a beat aficionado, this book may not be of that much interest. On the other hand, if you want an inside look into the friendship between two central characters of the beat generation, I think you’ll find this book well worth investigating.

In Ginsberg’s last letter in the book, he says, “I keep writing – journals and poems, much about physical aging or obvious deterioration of the body – with 2/3 of my heart working I have less physical energy approaching age 70 – tho [sic] I feel like 16 emotionally ….” (pp. 312-313).

That youthful spirit seems to be instrumental in great artists and it comes through in both Ginsberg’s and Snyder’s letters. May we all keep it right up until the end.