The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and the American Culture

Celebrating the spontaneous, freewheeling, drug-taking, taboo-breaking 1950s and '60s artists called Beats or beatniks, this is a huge dim sum cart of a book, loaded with essays, reprinted book reviews, commissioned memoirs, interviews and pictures. Editor George-Warren (co-editor of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll) divides the book into six sections that give a historical overview; pay tribute to Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg; examine less well-known figures; and assess the Beats' influences on American culture today. Given the possible pitfalls of a long anthology, and the ""spontaneous"" Beat ethos, the writing here is surprisingly polished. Cultural critics include Lester Bangs, who provides a rapid-fire elegy on Kerouac (""the decades fall past like dominoes into bookless eras of daily apocalypse""); Greil Marcus, who turns up twice (on Ginsberg and Kerouac); and Richard Meltzer, who lets loose with his hipster jive in an overview of Beat books. There are memoirs by major players in the movement, including Burroughs, Carol Cassady and Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and homages from self-proclaimed heirs of the Beats, including Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth) and Johnny Depp. Amusing debates emerge, about the meaning of Maynard G. Krebs for the movement, and whether hippies or punks were truer to the beatnik spirit. On the serious side, Allen Ginsberg comes in for criticism as a self-promoter, held responsible for the deleterious effect of fame on Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Without excerpts from the fiction or poetry, this anthology isn't an introduction. But it is a first-rate companion. (July)