Understanding the Beats / Edward Halsey Foster.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-223) and index.

Foster provides a survey of the four major Beat writer: Jack kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Gregory Corso. The writers were closely allied from the beginning of their careers and shared a particular vision of America, one which in turn defined much of their most celebrated work. They wrote in opposition to the materialistic, conformist culture tey saw developing in postwar America, seeking through their fiction and poetry a way out of that world. Literature, as Foster demonstrates, allowed both writer and reader to see things as they were while, at the same time, providing an entry into transcendent realities. The best-known Beat works, On the Road, "Howl," and Naked Lunch, responded directly to social and political conditions at mid-century while indicating ways to escape them.