Description
The Beat Road is a terrific snapshot of the Beat Generation after it had become history but while many of its central figures were still very much alive, writing, gathering, and carrying on. Edited by Arthur and Kit Knight, the anthology brings together John Clellon Holmes, Paul Krassner, Ray Bremser, Joanna McClure, Jack Kerouac, Diane di Prima, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne, and Jack Micheline. The contents include Kerouac letters, a Diane di Prima interview by Anne Waldman, a Corso letter to Gary Snyder, Ginsberg’s “A Version of the Apocalypse,” poetry, drawings, and other material—a wonderfully unruly cross-section of the Beat orbit.
Just as good are the photographs documenting the extended Beat family in 1982: Ginsberg with Ken Kesey and John Clellon Holmes; Herbert Huncke with Diane di Prima; Jack Micheline with Mirage; and Michael McClure with Mellon Tytell and Kit Knight. It has the feeling of a family album made at a moment when the first-generation Beats and the writers, artists, and fellow travelers around them could still wind up in the same room. Signed by both Arthur and Kit Knight, this is a particularly appealing copy of an anthology that captures not just Beat literature, but the living community surrounding it.
A wonderful signed Beat Generation anthology connecting Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, di Prima, Kesey, Huncke, McClure and the Knights.
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