Review
Hard to Be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats – Review
Marc Olmsted
Hard to Be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats
by Robert Inchausti
$16.95, Shambhala Books
The title of this collection comes from a rather obscure Bruce Springsteen song that David Bowie covered and ...
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Interview
Iain Sinclair — Hard to Beat — in conversation with Chris Kelso
Chris Kelso
What is there to say about Iain Sinclair that hasn’t already been covered a million times before in a million different interviews? Well, probably not a lot actually. Lauded and derided in equal measure, as flaneur, grand ...
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Review
A Simple Blues with a Few Intangibles
by George Wallace – Review
Marc Olmsted
George Wallace is a PostBeat poet.
As defined by the ground-breaking Whitney Museum show of 1995, the era of 1950 to 1965 can be considered to be the time brackets of realized Beat art, literature and film. ...
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Writing
October in the Railroad Earth
Jack Kerouac
October in the Railroad Earth is a long, flowing prose poem recounting Jack Kerouac’s memories of his experiences as a “student brakeman” on the Southern Pacific Railroad in California. In his interview with Paris Revi...
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Classics
The Joan Anderson Letter
Neal Cassady
In December 1950, Jack Kerouac received the so-called "Joan Anderson letter" from Neal Cassady. Kerouac later said the letter inspired his new writing style in On The Road. Kerouac thought the letter was lost when somebody d...
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Essay
Meet the Beats: Herbert Huncke
Hilary Halladay
When opportunity literally knocked not long after his return from sea, Herbert was ready for a new diversion. It was 1944, the war would soon end, and change was inevitable, even for an unemployed drug addict for whom change...
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Classics
Jack Kerouac explains what "Beat" means – in French
Jack Kerouac
I love this interview with Jack Kerouac, conducted in French, from a Canadian chat show. I was always surprised, whenever anybody asked Kerouac what the "Beat" generation meant, that nobody ever took into account the fact th...
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