Pines and Plains Libraries

Follows the counterculture escapades of members of the Beat generation as they seek pleasure and meaning while traveling coast to coast. As he travels across 1950s America, aspiring writer Sal Paradise chronicles his escapades with the charismatic Dean Moriarty. Sal admires Dean's passion for experiencing as much as possible of life and his wild flights of poetic fancy

From the Publisher: A deluxe edition of Kerouac's masterpiece on the 50th anniversary of its first publication. First published in 1958, a year after On the Road had put the Beat generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful, influential, and bestselling novels. The story focuses on two untrammeled young Americans-mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer-whose...

Coming down from his carefree youth and unwanted fame, Jack Kerouac undertakes a mature confrontation of some of his most troubling emotional issues: a burgeoning problem with alcoholism, addiction, fear, and insecurity. He dutifully records his ever-changing states of consciousness, which culminate in a powerful religious experience. Big Sur was written some time after Jack Kerouac's best-known works, following a visit to northern California and...

This in-depth biography--the first to explore the ups and downs of Neal Cassady--takes a look at the man who achieved immortality as Dean Moriarty, the central character in Jack Kerouac's On the Road. A charismatic, funny, articulate, and formidably intelligent man, Cassady was also a compulsive womanizer who lived life on the edge. His naturalistic, conversational writing style inspired Kerouac, who lifted a number of passages verbatim and unaccredited...

In 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem "Howl," and Jack Kerouac's seminal book On the Road, Allen Ginsberg decided it was time to teach a course on the literary history of the Beat Generation. Through the creation of this course, which he ended up teaching five times, first at the Naropa Institute and later at Brooklyn College, Ginsberg saw an opportunity to present the history of Beat Literature in his own inimitable way....

A profile of the iconic author's early years offers insight into his efforts to bridge his dual cultural heritage while exploring how his French Canadian background enriched his prose.

Includes material on Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsburg, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, and Kenneth Rexroth, among others.

"Born in the wake of World War II, and reaching expressive peaks during the otherwise staid 1950s, the Beat Generation was the first in American history to defiantly break from the past and point the way forward for young Americans. Every subculture to emerge since owes a debt to the Beats, who left an indelible mark on American history." "Drawing on extensive research to show just how profound an impact the Beats had on American culture, politics,...