David Sterritt

As usual from this consistently useful series, a very solid, fluff-free treatment of the subject in an astonishingly small space: Sterritt takes us efficiently through where the Beats came from, what they stood for (or rather: against), who they were, what they wrote, and how they influenced their own and later generations. We get reasonably detailed biographies of the main players, especially Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, a look at their most important works, and a good overview of the circumstances in which they worked. The culture of unfettered sex, drugs and free jazz they existed in might look selfish and destructive when we see it from our perspective, sixty or seventy years later, but Sterritt reminds us that for the most part they were very serious creative artists, with their ground-breaking "spontaneous" prose and poetry actually being subjected to a great deal of careful selection and editing before it was ever published.… (more)