Synopsis
Over 100 poems, memoirs, and stories by women who were associated with the great icons of the Beat Generation: Kerouac, Cassady, and others. Includes reminiscences by two of Kerouac's girlfriends and by Carolyn Cassady, poems by Elise Cowen and Fran Landesman, a memoir by Diane di Prima, and much more.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-08-01 | | Series: | High Risk Bks) | | Editor: | Richard Peabody |
| Size | | Height: | 8.8 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
This anthology gathers the Beat-period writings of 26 women who were often overshadowed by their male contemporaries, but whose art both shaped the Beat aesthetic and laid the cornerstone for the outlaw female artists of today. Among the featured writers are Jan Kerouac, Joan Haverty Kerouac, Eileen Kaufman, Diane Di Prima, Ruth Weiss, and many others.
Industry Reviews
Although the Beat Generation was largely fueled by male camaraderie, the role of women in the movement has become a hot topic of late. Peabody's work, which follows close on the heels of Brenda Knight's Women of the Beat Generation (LJ 10/1/96), covers many of the same writers, including Joyce Johnson, Hettie Jones, Diane DiPrima, and Jan Kerouac. With the exception of Leo Skir's moving essay on Elise Cowen, however, there is minimal overlap because each work presents different selections by the featured authors. This anthology is the more valuable for showcasing work by less-celebrated writers like Bonnie Bremser and Fran Landesman and for providing excerpts from unpublished memoirs by two of Jack Kerouac's ex-wives, Frankie "Edie" Parker and Joan Haverty. This well-balanced anthology, which should focus more attention on Beat women, is recommended for all literature collections. William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Moore
Too many of these 125 pieces of verse, memoir and fiction seem to depend on some connection to the beat icons a crew whose youth has withered in far too many books. Once again, we get the con man Neal Cassady (in a memoir by Carolyn Cassady) and we get ratty Jack, the alcoholic Kerouac trying to force one or another wife or girlfriend to have an abortion (in memoirs by Joan Haverty Kerouac and Frankie "Edie" Kerouac-Parker). Memoirs are very popular in this collection, and for good reason in many ways the beat movement resembled a high-school clique, with personality and judgments of cool and uncool at a premium. There are some surprising treasures here nonetheless the poems of Elise Cowen and Fran Landesman, for instance, which, with a minimum of work, make a maximum out of verbal transparency reminding one of Stevie Smith's verse, or Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. More typical of the tone of the anthology is Diane di Prima's account of her strenuous, implausible couplings with a junky boyfriend. In this frothy piece, one sees an odd resemblance to the advertising copy that the beats claimed to revile. Both offer substitutes for the real thing. (Nov.)
Lopate
These poems, memoirs, and stories pulse with a distinctively female energy, and are electric with cosmic ponderings, hot sex, cool jazz, drug-enchanced visions, the revelations of travel, the thrill of living out of bounds, and the wisdom gained from listening to the muse and questioning society's version of how a woman should live.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Seaman
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