The Beats: A Very Short Introduction
David Sterritt
Jun 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by James Conlan
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3 hr 41 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the writers of the Beat Generation revolutionized American literature with their iconoclastic approach to language and their angry assault on the conformity and conservatism of postwar society. They and their followers took aim at the hypocrisy and taboos of their time-particularly those involving sex, race, and class-in such provocative works as Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (1956), and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959). In this Very Short Introduction, David Sterritt offers a concise overview of the social, cultural, and aesthetic sensibilities of the Beats, bringing out the similarities that connected them and also the many differences that made them a loosely knit collective rather than an organized movement. Figures in the saga include Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Clellon Holmes, Carolyn Cassady, and Gary Snyder. As Sterritt ranges from Greenwich Village and San Francisco to Mexico, western Europe, and North Africa, he sheds much light on how the Beats approached literature, drugs, sexuality, art, music, and religion.
About the author
David Sterritt is a film critic, author, and scholar. He is most notable for his work on Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, and his many years as the film critic for the Christian Science Monitor, where, from 1968 until his retirement in 2005, he championed avant garde cinema, theater, and music.
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