The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat GenerationIn these critical essays Gregory Stephenson takes the reader on a journey through the literature of the Beat Generation: a journey encompassing that common ethos of Beat literature—the passage from darkness to light, from fragmented being toward wholeness, from Beat to Beatific. He travels through Jack Kerouac’s Duluoz Legend,following Kerouac’s quests for identity, community, and spiritual knowledge. He examines Allen Ginsberg’s use of transcendence in “Howl,” discovers the Gnostic vision in William S. Burroughs’s fiction, and studies the mythic, visionary power of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry. Stephenson also provides detailed examinations of the writing of lesser-known Beat authors: John Clellon Holmes, Gregory Corso, Richard Fariña, and Michael McClure. He explores the myth and the mystery of the literary legend of Neal Cassady. The book concludes with a look at the common traits of the Beat writers—their use of primitivism, shamanism, myth and magic, spontaneity, and improvisation, all of which led them to a new idiom of consciousness and to the expansion of the parameters of American literature. |
Contents
1 | |
Jack Kerouacs Duluoz Legend | 17 |
3 Allen Ginsbergs Howl A Reading | 50 |
4 The Gnostic Vision of William S Burroughs | 59 |
Notes on the Poetry of Gregory Corso | 74 |
Notes on the Novels of John Clellon Holmes | 90 |
Notes on the Work of Michael McClure | 105 |
Richard Farinas Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me | 131 |
9 The Spiritual Optics of Lawrence Ferlinghetti | 139 |
The Literary Legend of Neal Cassady | 154 |
11 Conclusion | 172 |
Notes | 189 |
Selected Bibliography | 201 |
Index | 209 |
Back Cover | 217 |
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The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation Gregory Stephenson No preview available - 2009 |