Companion to our Beat tour guides to San Francisco and New York, Beat Atlas: The Beat Generation in America is a state-by-state guide to the rest of the nation's significant Beat locales. Beginning with Jack Kerouac's Lowell, Beat Atlas takes us through the terrain mapped out in his novels, as well as to sites depicted by poets like Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. From William Burroughs' Lawrence, KS, to Neal Cassady's Denver—and everywhere in between—Beat Atlas contains a wealth of historical information subdivided by region and state for easy reference and is illustrated with photographs by Ginsberg. It also follows the movements of Beat contemporaries like the New York School, the Black Mountain Poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Written by Beat authority Bill Morgan, and rich with literary lore, Beat Atlas makes an ideal companion for armchair travelers as well as those "on the road."
"It's fun to imagine just what building Dashiell Hammet had in mind when he wrote about Sam Spade’s office, or whether Melville was looking at the whale-like form of Mt. Greylock when he wrote Moby Dick, but with the Beat writers there is no need to speculate. When Kerouac wrote about the Stations of the Cross at the grotto in Doctor Sax, he was describing an actual spot that still exists in Lowell. The 'houseless brown farmland plains rolling heavenward in every direction’ that inspired a Ginsberg poem can still be seen in Kansas today. All you need is a map and the desire to get out there and see it yourself. This guide is designed to help you follow your own interests to some unusual parts of the literary landscape."
—from the introduction by Bill Morgan
Foreword and Preface from Beat Atlas
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