R  E  B  O  P

B e a t    L i n k s


alt.books.beatgeneration is wateringhole for much Beat discussion these days.

Colin Pringle's extensive Beat Generation Archives are part of his monumental Wild Bohemian Home Page

Beat Literature is one of the most thorough compendiums of links around.

The Beat Page created by Naveen Jeereddi, Brian Potash, and Greg Maynard as students at the University of Michigan, is replete with historical context.

Marcus Williamson's Beat Resources answers Frequently Asked Questions, links to pages of dozens of poets, etc.

Beat Scene - Beat way of life & lit

The Neal Cassady Experience " dedicated to the Holy Goof "

Larry Smiths's Cultural Chronology of Early Beat Literature the Beat saga in context of world and cultural events, year-by-year 1945-1960

Attila Gyenis' superb DHARMA beat Links Page (based in Kerouac's hometown, Lowell ).

Dharma Bums ~ dedicated to exchange of ideas.

Literary Kicks ~ at the epicenter of the Beat Web, one of the Net's first ever major public personal mappings (of anything)
~ created and maintained by young writer, Levi Asher and which includes a hyperlinked Buddhism: The Beat Religion section

Beat-L(ist) is now defunct, but now there's the Subterraneans Subterraneans mailing list, with a generous helping of FAQs.
The relativelyh new Password subject directory not only has articles about the

Beats - The Sacred and the Downtrodden - but includes links to Buddhism as well as poetry and creative writing, plus movies and books for sale. 


B e a t    B o o k s


Beat Books ~ British catalogue Not to be confused with Beat Books mail order coolness since 1987, out of Berkeley.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights put "Beat" on the map, and the site is evolving into something equivalent for the '90s.

Compendium, London, posts an annual list of rare Beat books.

DHARMA Beat sells rare books and related stuff

The Beat Generation Catalog sells a whole array of Beat books and stuff (and their phone is 1-800-Kerouac !).

And Water Row, from Sudbury, Mass., distributes hard-to-find new Beat titles, as well as rare books and things to wear and hear. 

Beat   Poems


Jack Kerouac The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

Joanne Kyger Back to The Life of Naropa
" I woke up about 2:30 this morning and thought about Philip's ... "

Philip Whalen - from The Best of It
The Bay Trees Were About To Bloom

Gary Snyder How Poetry Comes to Me
Axe Handles
Hay for Horses
For All

Allen Ginsberg Scrap Leaves

Gregory Corso The Mad Yak

Beat Texts from Literary Kicks.

The Living Beatnik Circle is a hub of about a dozen websites of various writers influenced by Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Brautigan, Bukowski, Nin, Joyce, Henry Miller, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce ... 



C O M M E N T



"Beat" refers to what began as a small, ragtag influence of artists and intellectuals in postwar America ~ many of whom had never met. United by a common search for the genuine in life; registering a certain film noir dissatisfaction with the status quo. At a time when many equated patriotism with buying plastic ~ new consumerism ~ and NOT considering it at all strange to think that a searing white flash of nuclear bomb blast could wipe out all life on earth at any moment. [Sha-ZAM ! ]

Kerouac liked the word's religious connotation: "beatific." And he was there in the audience, October 31, 1953, San Francisco, at the Six Gallery, with Kenneth Rexroth emceeing Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen (where Allen Ginsberg stood up and first read Howl). (A flyer for the reading had announced "Free Satori.")

By 1968 (when word of the Cultural Revolution was reaching Western shores) the Beats had influenced an unprecedented youth culture emergent in America and Europe ~ hippies, yippies, hog farmers, provos, and peaceniks ~ (and thence new consumerism?) ~ manifest via the Beatles and the Stones, the Airplane and the Dead, Levi jeans and the I-Ching, etc.

You may regard them with some remove, but the way Whitman nagged Pound as a forerunner, their influence, their footprints, cannot be ignored.


Writers are, in a way, very powerful indeed.
They write the script for the reality film.
Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold
a million pairs of Levis to both sexes.
Woodstock rises from his pages.

- William S. Burroughs


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