The Beat Generation Galleries and Beyond (Softcover)

Like all labels that stick, the nickname “Beat” richly and succinctly characterizes major aspects of its so-called movement, which sprang from the ecstatic and tortured rhythms of visionary poets, painters, and musicians. Tellingly, informatively, paradoxically, meanings of “beat” extend from a resolute self-affirming strike and an appointed path to their dark opposite–dissipated and hopelessly exhausted resolution or morale. “Beats” can also mean a dissonant battering set up by discordant patterns.

Authors: John Natsoulas, Bruce Nixon, John Fitz Gibbon, Gerald Heffernon, Kenneth Baker, Terry. Tafoya, Tony Williams, Katherine Chapin, Seymour Howard, Whitney Halstead, James Yood, Peter Selz, Diane Chin Lui, Robert Pincus

230 pages