Beat Literature & History
The Beat Generation may be most famous for Jack Kerouac (On the Road), Allen Ginsberg (Howl), and William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), but in fact it claims an amazing number of inspired writers. Delve into our complete selection of fine books by and about the Beats and their accomplices —among them,  Neal Cassady, Herbert Huncke, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Ted Joans, John Clellon Holmes, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Bob Creeley, Kenneth Rexroth. Browse your favorite author, search for a specific title, or just look through the entire selection of over 200 Beat books, presented alphabetically by author.

Books in this online selection represent only a sliver of what we offer in the store. If you've got a particular book in mind and want to check on its availability, call us at 415-362-8193.

  |  Neal Cassady
  |  Gregory Corso
  |  Bob Kaufman
  |  Jack Kerouac
  |  Gary Snyder

   
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Beat Thing
David Meltzer
During the late 1950s, David Meltzer was an active poet in the San Francisco North Beach scene often reading with jazz musicians at various bars and coffeehouses. Beat Thing is part poetry and part exposé, both tribute to the down in the street...
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Beat Writers at Work
The Paris Review
Collected here are interviews with the great Beat and Black Mountain writers from the pages of The Paris Review. In this new compendium, the writers describe their art and lives, creating a unique and fascinating record of their...
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The Beats
A Graphic History
Paul Buhle, Harvey Pekar
I've read a lot of Beat books in my time here at City Lights, but none are quite as fun as this graphic history. The perfect collection for those who think they've heard all the stories about Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, et al. The Beats also provides...
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Beats at Naropa
Amassed from the riches of the Naropa University audio files, this collection offers an exciting new look at the Beats—whose influence lives on in the arts and politics of our time. In this often spontaneous, in-their-own-words oral history of...
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Bed of Sphinxes
Selected Poems
Philip Lamantia
Allen Ginsberg wrote that Philip Lamantia was one of his poetic teachers, an American soothsayer on the level of Edgar Allen Poe, and I don't know how much more encouragement you'd need to check out this stunning collection. "The Owl" ("the dark steps...
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Big Sur
Jack Kerouac
An interesting biography of what happens when fame and age taint the dream of being "on the road" in the life of this aspiring poet. The book details Kerouac's descent into alcoholism and hope for salvation. I think this is one of his greatest...
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Book of Blues
Jack Kerouac
These eight extended poems, composed between 1954 and 1961, offer exuberant forays into language and consciousness that combine rich imagery, complex internal rhythms, and a reverent attentiveness to the moments.
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Book of Dreams
Jack Kerouac
"In the Book of Dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about."Excerpt:WALKING THROUGH SLUM SUBURBS of Mexico City I'm stopped by smiling threesome of cats who've disengaged themselves...
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Book of Haikus
Jack Kerouac, Regina Weinreich
Highlighting a lesser-known aspect of one of America's most influential authors, this new collection displays Jack Kerouac's interest in and mastery of haiku. Experimenting with this compact poetic genre throughout his career, Kerouac often included...
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The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice
First Journals and Poems: 1937-1952
Allen Ginsberg, Juanita Lieberman-Plimpton, Bill Morgan
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) kept a journal his entire life, beginning at the age of eleven. In these first journals the most important and formative years of the poet’s storied life are captured, his inner thoughts detailed in what the San Francisco...
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Book of Sketches
Jack Kerouac
A never-before-published book of poems by Jack Kerouac—in a deluxe package In 1952 and 1953 as he wandered around America, Jack Kerouac jotted down spontaneous prose poems, or “sketches” as he called them, on small notebooks that he...
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The Burroughs File
William S. Burroughs
Trenchant writings by that sardonic ""hombre invisible,"" William Seward Burroughs, perpetrator of Naked Lunch and other shockers. These malefic and beatific, mordant and hilarious straight-face reports on life are mostly from scatter-shot...
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Collected Letters, 1944-1967
Neal Cassady
Neal Cassady is best remembered today as Jack Kerouac's muse and the basis for the character "Dean Moriarty" in Kerouac's classic On The Road, and as one of Ken Kesey's merriest of Merry Pranksters, the driver of the psychedelic bus "Further,"...
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Collected Poems 1947-1997
Allen Ginsberg
Here, for the first time, is a volume that gathers the published verse of Allen Ginsberg in its entirety, a half century of brilliant work from one of America's great poets. As the chief figure among the Beats, Ginsberg changed the course of...

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