The Beats : Authorships, Legacies EPUB

The book aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the Beat Generation, whilst offering original readings of key texts.

It will contextualise the Beats, examining how and why these writers reacted to the conservatism of post-World War II America.

In so doing, the book will be a useful resource for students interested in cold war culture, post WWII counter culture, poetics and jazz.

The book will be written clearly but it will not be simplistic; it will engage with critical responses to the Beats (neo-imperialism, transnationalism, treatment of female characters, and their relationship to, and treatment of, African American culture).

As such, the volume will be a useful introduction to the Beats for undergraduates, whilst at the same time providing postgraduates with a clear sense of the more nuanced arguments and critical debates.

The book will examine key works by the Beats - for example, Kerouac's On the Road, Burroughs's Junky and Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems - as well as works by less well-known poets (Harold Norse, Bob Kaufman).

The book will not attempt to analyse every work by the main players but it will reference a large number of their novels, essays, poems and films in order to analyse the innovative formal aspect of these writers' work.

The rationale of the book is that any attempt to cover all works by Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs in one book would result in sketches, rather than analyses.

At the same time, the book will not focus solely on the best-known books by Beat writers.