iDEATH is a place where the sun shines a different color every day and where people travel to the length of their dreams. Rejecting the violence and hate of the old gang at the Forgotten Works, they lead gentle lives in watermelon sugar.
In this book, Richard Brautigan discovers and expresses the mood of the counterculture generation.
Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. This collection brings together the famous poems that made his name as a defining figure of the counterculture.
They include the apocalyptic 'Howl', which became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956; the moving lament for his dead mother, 'Kaddish'; the searing indictment of his homeland, 'America'; and the confessional 'Mescaline'.
Dark, ecstatic, and rhapsodic, these works show why Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century.
The epigraph for Howl is from Walt Whitman: "Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" Announcing his intentions with this ringing motto, Allen Ginsberg published a volume of poetry which broke so many social...
Desolation Angels is a vivid, semi-autobiographical novel by the renowned Beat Generation author, Jack Kerouac. This book is part of his celebrated Duluoz Legend series.
Kerouac takes us on a journey through a key year of his life, starting from his time as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade mountains of Washington state. The story follows his fictional self, Jack Duluoz, as he transitions from the isolation of the mountains to the vibrant life of bars, jazz clubs, and parties in San Francisco.
The novel captures Kerouac's travels across the world, from Mexico City to New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London, in the company of his thinly disguised Beat cohorts like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs. Through their poetry, parties, mountain vigils, and spiritual contemplation, Kerouac presents a tale filled with energy and humanity.
Desolation Angels reflects Kerouac's own psychological struggles and his disillusionment with the Buddhist philosophy he once embraced. It’s a story about living, traveling, adventuring, and embracing life without regrets.
Jack Kerouac, one of the great voices of the Beat generation and author of the classic On the Road, here continues his peregrinations in postwar, underground San Francisco.
The subterraneans come alive at night, travel along dark alleyways, and live in a world filled with paint, poetry, music, smoke, and sex. Simmering in the center of it all is the brief affair between Leo Percepied, a writer, and Mardou Fox, a black woman ten years younger.
Just at the moment when she is coolly leaving him, Leo realizes his passion for passion, his inability to function without it, and the puzzling futility of seeking redemption and fulfillment through writing.
Naked Lunch is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone. The vignettes are drawn from Burroughs' own experiences in these places and his addiction to drugs (heroin, morphine, and while in Tangier, majoun [a strong hashish confection] as well as a German opioid, brand name Eukodol, of which he wrote frequently).