The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation

by Bill Morgan

Overview

Anyone who cares to understand the cultural ferment of America in the later twentieth century must know of the writings and lives of those scruffy bohemians known as the Beats.

In this highly entertaining work, Bill Morgan, the country's leading authority on the movement and a man who personally knew most of the Beat writers, narrates their history, tracing their origins in the 1940s to their influence on the social upheaval of the 1960s.

The Beats, through their words and nonconformist lives, challenged staid postwar America. They believed in free expression, dabbled in free love, and condemned the increasing influence of military and corporate culture in our national life. But the Beats were not saints. They did too many drugs and consumed too much booze. The fervent belief in spontaneity that characterized their lives and writings destroyed some friendships.

As we watch their peripatetic lives and sexual misadventures, we are reminded above all that while their personal lives may not have been holy, their typewriters and their lasting words very much were.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582437385
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	05/01/2011
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Bill Morgan is a painter and archival consultant working in New York City. He is the author of numerous books about Beat Generation history and its writers, most recently The Beats Abroad: A Global Guide to the Beat Generation, Peter Orlovsky: A Life in Words, and The Typewriter is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation. He has edited collections of writing and correspondence of many of the Beat Generation's most important authors, including Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Burroughs, Snyder and Corso. He is a painter and a Civil War expert, and has worked as an archivist for Lawrence Ferlinghtetti, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, Diane diPrima, Oliver Sacks, Arthur Miller and Timothy Leary among others.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

1 Friendship and Murder 1

2 The Lumpen World 13

3 The Adonis of Denver 24

4 Insanity 34

5 The Subterraneans 45

6 Literary Lives 58

7 The Name of a Generation 72

8 To the West Coast 81

9 Nightmare of Moloch 91

10 The Six Gallery 101

11 Desolation and Loneliness 111

12 Censorship and Vindication 122

13 Fame 133

14 The Threads Loosen 148

15 The Circle Widens 158

16 Cut-ups 168

17 Bitter Fruits 180

18 Setting the Global Stage 192

19 A Culture Turned Upside Down 201

20 The Sixties 214

21 The End of the Road 226

22 Aftermath 231

23 Respectability 238

24 Acceptance 244

25 Postscript 247

Source Notes 251

Selected Bibliography 265

Index 275

Editorial Reviews

The title of this not-so-rough guide to the mid-century social circle, of which Allen Ginsberg was the center, is taken from the poet's “Footnote to Howl.” For Morgan, Ginsberg was the “locomotive” for the group of journeyers, addicts, loiterers, and seekers that came to be known, in Jack Kerouac's term, as “beats” and who would act as catalyst for the late 1950s beatniks as well as the social movements of the 1960s. As Morgan points out, this was a boys' club—the combustible William Burroughs, murderer Lucien Carr, the charismatic bisexual Neal Cassady, the incorrigible Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, and others more on the fringe, like Ken Kesey—and a white one at that. In part, such could be explained by the zeitgeist, in which even (largely gay) revolutionaries were unconscious participant-prisoners. The infamous and essential On the Road manuscript consisted of attached papers fed through Kerouac's typewriter like a roll of paper in an early word processor printer, and bravely promoted by agent Sterling Lord, represents for Morgan (in a bit of a stretch) how far ahead of their time the beats were. Although Ginsberg biographer Morgan cannot deliver a firsthand account of the beat history, readers do gain some immediacy regarding the legendary lives and loves of this motley crew that changed the world. (May 11)

Publishers Weekly

"The Typewriter is Holy is a wonderful romp, a totally engrossing history of the Beat generation, and those wildly colorful figures who brought about a seismic change in our culture. It makes sense of the intersecting lives of Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs and others whose great adventures gave birth to the upheavals of the Sixties. No one alive knows these people as well as Bill Morgan does, and the result is a fascinating chronicle.”
—Dinitia Smith, author of The Illusionist and Remember This

“At long last we have a first-rate history of the Beat Generation! Bill Morgan’s The Typewriter Is Holy not only explores the enduring revolutionary appeal of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs but proudly brings marvelous lesser known Beat artists like Alan Ansen and Joanne Kyger into the Main Game mix. A masterful synthesis brimming with clarity and erudition”
—Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and editor of Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954.

"Bill Morgan draws on an encyclopedic knowledge of the Beat writers to shine sober, sympathetic light into the dark corners of four tortured lives. His painfully personal profiles of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and William Burroughs show how their misguided search for personal freedom trapped them in their own obsessions and addictions, yet also sparked an enlivening burst of creative genius."
— Don Lattin, author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America.

From the Publisher

Morgan (I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg), the author of several books on Beat literature, takes his title from Ginsberg's Howland employs a wide focus to portray the remarkable group of writers and artists that became known as the Beat Generation. He suggests that Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, and others had such divergent aims and styles that they cannot properly be considered a literary movement. Instead, he sees them as a circle of friends who loved literature and were united by Ginsberg. The book traces their entrances to and exists from one another's lives, documenting their involvement with forces that were to reshape American society in the second half of the 20th century, including the freespeech, antiwar, gay liberation, and environmental movements. VERDICT Morgan makes a strong case that Ginsberg was the glue that held the group together. A solid contribution to Beat studies, this lively history will interest scholars and general readers alike. Highly recommended.—William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

Library Journal