Description
Book SynopsisThe Beat Generation and Counterculture examines three authors associated with the Beat Generation Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac and the relevance of their attempt to travel, learn, and write about exotic non-Western cultures and repressed minority cultures in the United States, projecting the influence of history, premodern religious practices, and postcolonial social and intellectual problems into the written development of countercultural ethos and praxis.
The Beat Generation and Counterculture underscores T. S. Eliot's emphasis on earning tradition that is, in order for the corrupt, decultured, and unimaginative West that had been ruined by World War II to survive, it would have to internalize and project the value of distant cultures that had been misunderstood and racialized for centuries. This book also addresses the frequent criticism that these authors were orientalist, white writers who freely translated non-Western culture without giving
Trade Review«Raj Chandarlapaty has emerged as one of the primary young scholars leading a probing reassessment of the seminal contributions of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. His extensive archival research, including previously unconsidered letters, places them and their work in a context much larger and diverse than heretofore considered. … It is fitting that the publication of this book coincides with the fifty-year anniversary of
On the Road and
Naked Lunch. Newcomers to the rich repository of aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural values in these landmark narratives will profit handsomely from the depth and breadth of research and insight between the covers of this stimulating scholarly achievement.» (Phillip Sipiora, Professor of English and Film Studies, University of South Florida)
