Acquisitions (108): Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles: Up Above the World (1966)

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Paul Bowles (1910-1999)

Paul Bowles: Up Above the World (1966)
[Habitat ReStore North Shore, Wairau Park - 17/4/24]:

Paul Bowles. Up Above the World. 1966. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1991.

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Bernardo Bertolucci, dir.: The Sheltering Sky (1990)

The Sheltering Sky

My only knowledge of Paul Bowles used to be that he was head honcho among the expatriate American writers in Tangier when William Burroughs arrived there in the mid-1950s. This was shortly after the latter had shot his wife Joan through the head in Mexico City - a tragic accident, he claimed, but one which he might not have got away with scot-free if he hadn't skipped town shortly afterwards ...

It wasn't until I saw The Sheltering Sky that I really began to fall under Bowles's spell.

John Malkovich & Debra Winger in The Sheltering Sky (1990)

There was something so mesmerising about it: the landscape, the heat, the sultry magnificence of Debra Winger in surely one of her greatest roles ... "For you there is only the desert," as Anthony Quinn says to Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. The Sheltering Sky, too, is definitely a film for those in love with the desert.

Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky (1949)

I read the book shortly afterwards. I wasn't disappointed, exactly. It's a powerfully written novel, and I can understand why it caused such a sensation at the time. But it is very much a book of that time: the era of Sartre and Camus and the other Existentialists. The film seems to translate that into something more universal.

But Bertolucci's film too, is now 35 years old. Perhaps it seems just as archaic to viewers today: nostalgia for the 1990s is no doubt just as powerful a thing for the young as nostalgia for the 1940s, however absurd that might seem to members of my generation.

Perhaps Debra Winger sums it up best, in her tribute to the film-maker, recorded shortly after his death in 2018:

It was such an intense experience filming The Sheltering Sky. ...
But the moment of shooting the movie I remember most ... was when we were at the edge of the Sahara Desert. I was in the robes I was wearing in the film. He was wearing a black leather Armani jacket and a scarf. He was girding himself against the infinite qualities of the desert. We are standing on the edge of this untouched sand. You can see in the forefront of the photo all the footprints and the dolly tracks where the crew had walked.
Then there were these vast dunes — just nothingness. I was to walk out into that, and hopefully they were driving out around the dunes and picking me up at the other end, but there were to be no footprints in the sand. The shot was opening up very wide, and it was very scary because everyone understood that you cannot walk easily in the desert. You can go over a couple of dunes and think you have gone in a straight line. There was this moment where life and the art of making a film about it were coming up against each other.
I said: “I love it here. Whatever happens is OK. I love it. I love how small I am in the scheme of things.” He said, “That’s exactly why I hate this place.” He said to me, “I don’t even go to a party if it’s not for me.” Now the party is all about him.

- Benjamin Svetkey: "Debra Winger Remembers Bernardo Bertolucci".
Hollywood Reporter (27/11/18)

Malkovich & Winger in The Sheltering Sky (1990)

And then, of course, there's the Jane Bowles factor. It would not really be much of an exaggeration to refer to her the Frida Kahlo of American letters - a very gifted artist, initially overshadowed by her famous husband, but now definitely coming into her own.

Jane Bowles in New York

As you can tell from the photo above, Kit in the film of The Sheltering Sky is very closely modelled on Jane Bowles (the same can also be said of the character in her husband's book). In particular, Debra Winger's hair and general look were carefully sculpted to look as much as possible like the intensely photogenic Jane:

Debra Winger in The Sheltering Sky (1990)

There are some who would argue that Jane was the more important writer of the two. Which of them you prefer comes down not so much to matter of taste as a matter of temperament, I suspect. Jane's oblique, unsettling short stories are certainly great in themselves - but their fragmentary nature gives a clue to how much greater than that were her actual literary ambitions.

She completed one novel, Two Serious Ladies, and one play, The Summer House, but many of the notebook fragments sound like the openings of abandoned, large-scale works which she was never able to carry to a conclusion - possibly more for reasons of health than of existential self-doubt.

Judy Davis in Naked Lunch (1991)

Perhaps this side of her is better expressed in yet another film embodiment, David Cronenberg's adaptation of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, where Judy Davis plays a version of Jane Bowles as 'Joan Frost', the estranged wife of a local novelist in the baffling port town of Interzone (= Tangier). The passionate, masochistic affair Joan is conducting with a local woman closely echoes events in Jane's own life, seen through the mordant lense of Burroughs' dislocating prose.

I don't know what it says about me that it's still one of my favourite films. Despite the lukewarm response it got from the critics at the time, I think it's now recognised as a classic piece of alternative cinema.

Ian Holm & Judy Davis as a version of Paul & Jane Bowles
David Cronenberg, dir. Naked Lunch (1991)

Paul, by contrast, started off as a serious modernist composer, but gradually morphed into a novelist and short story writer. His work as a translator is also impressive: particularly the Moroccan authors - often personal friends - whom he was able to introduce to the larger world of letters.

Was he anything like the reckless, rather self-satisfied character played by John Malkovich in The Sheltering Sky? There are certainly some resemblances, but if it was meant as a self-portrait, it's an exaggerated and caricatured one. The point about Bowles seems to have been that he self-consciously cultivated a reputation as an enigma.

The editor of his selected letters, Jeffrey Miller, was shocked to discover after Bowles's death how intensely the writer disliked him and resented his poking around in his personal archive. He'd thought they were friends, but the letters said otherwise. Maybe it was just Bowles's last joke on him, though - after all, he could have hidden the fact much more carefully if he'd wanted to.

Perhaps they really were friends all along, but Bowles resented his complacency. Or perhaps ... but the possible scenarios are endless. That's really the mark of a Paul Bowles story: no matter how carefully you parse and analyse it, there's always something more concealed at its core.

Jane & Paul Bowles

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Jane Bowles in Morocco

Jane Bowles
[née Jane Sydney Auer]
(1917-1973)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Novels:


1. Two Serious Ladies (1943)
   • Two Serious Ladies. 1943. Introduction by Lorna Sage. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000.

Plays:


2. In the Summer House (1943)

Stories:


3. Everything is Nice: The Collected Stories (1984)
   Plain Pleasures:
   1. Plain Pleasures
   2. Everything is Nice
   3. A Guatemalan Idyll
   4. Camp Cataract
   5. A Day in the Open
   6. A Quarreling Pair
   7. A Stick of Green Candy
   Other Stories:
   8. Andrew
   9. Emmy Moore’s Journal
   10. Going to Massachusetts
   From the Notebooks:
   11. The Iron Table
   12. Lila and Frank
   13. Friday
   From the Threepenny Review:
   14. Looking for Lane
   15. Señorita Córdoba
   16. Laura and Sally
   • Everything is Nice: The Collected Stories. Introduction by Paul Bowles. 1984. Virago Modern Classics, 328. London: Virago Press Limited, 1989.

Collections:


4. The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles. Ed. Millicent Dillon (1994)
5. Collected Writings. Ed. Millicent Dillon (Library of America, 2016)
   1. Two Serious Ladies (1943)
   2. In the Summer House (1943)
   3. Stories and Other Writings:
      1. A Guatemalan Idyll
      2. A Day in the Open
      3. Song of an Old Woman
      4. Two Skies
      5. A Quarreling Pair
      6. Plain Pleasures
      7. Camp Cataract
      8. A Stick of Green Candy
      9. East Side: North Africa
   4. Scenes and Fragments:
      1. Señorita Córdoba
      2. Looking for Lane
      3. Laura and Sally
      4. Going to Massachusetts
      5. The Children’s Party
      6. Andrew
      7. Emmy Moore’s Journal
      8. Friday
      9. “Curls and a Quiet Country Face”
      10. Lila and Frank
      11. The Iron Table
      12. At the Jumping Bean
   5. Letters



Jane Bowles: Collected Writings (Library of America, 2016)




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Paul Bowles in Tangier

Paul Frederic Bowles
(1910-1991)



Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House (Library of America, 2002)


Novels:


1. The Sheltering Sky (1949)
   • The Sheltering Sky. 1949. Penguin 2947. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
2. Let It Come Down (1952)
   • Let It Come Down. 1952. Introduction by the Author. 1980. Afterword by Barnaby Rogerson. Penguin Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.
3. The Spider's House (1955)
   • The Spider's House. 1955. Preface by the Author. 1982. Introduction by Francine Prose. Penguin Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.
4. Up Above the World (1966)
   • Up Above the World. 1966. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1991.
5. The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House. Ed. Daniel Halpern, ed. Library of America (2002)

Stories:


1. The Scorpion (December 1945) [CS] [LoA]
2. The Echo (September 1946) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
3. By the Water (October 1946) [CS] [LoA]
4. A Distant Episode (Jan-Feb 1947) [CS] [LoA]
5. Under the Sky (June 1947) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
6. Call at Corazón (October 1947) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
7. You Are Not I (January 1948) [CS] [LoA]
8. At Paso Rojo (September 1948) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
9. Pastor Dowe at Tacaté (February 1949) [CS] [LoA]
10. The Delicate Prey (Summer 1949) [CS] [LoA]
11. Pages from Cold Point (Autumn 1949) [CS] [LoA]
12. Doña Faustina (1950) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
13. The Circular Valley (1950) [CS] [LoA]
14. The Fourth Day Out from Santa Cruz (1950) [CS] [LoA]
15. A Thousand Days for Mokhtar (1950) [CS] [LoA]
16. Tea on the Mountain (1950) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
17. How Many Midnights (April 1950) [CS] [LoA]
18. Señor Ong and Señor Ha (July 1950) [CS] [LoA]
19. A Gift for Kinza [aka The Successor] (March 1951) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
20. If I Should Open My Mouth (April 1954) [CS] [LoA]
21. The Hours After Noon (1956) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
22. The Frozen Fields (July 1957) [CS] [CC] [LoA]
23. Tapiama (May 1958) [CS] [LoA]
24. Sylvie Ann, The Boogie Man (1958) [CC]
25. He of the Assembly (1960) [CS] [LoA]
26. Merkala Beach [aka The Story of Lahcen and Idir] (October 1960) [CS] [LoA]
27. A Friend of the World (March 1961) [CS] [LoA]
28. The Hyena (Winter 1962) [CS] [LoA]
29. The Wind at Beni Midar (1962) [CS] [LoA]
30. The Garden (Autumn/Winter 1964) [CS] [LoA]
31. The Time of Friendship (1967) [CS] [LoA]
32. Afternoon with Antaeus (Summer 1970) [CS] [LoA]
33. Mejdoub (Spring/Summer 1974) [CS] [LoA]
34. The Fqih (Fall 1974) [CS] [LoA]
35. The Waters of Izli (1975) [CS] [LoA]
36. Things Gone and Things Still Here (January 1976) [CS] [LoA]
37. Istikhara, Anaya, Medagan and the Medaganat (Spring/Summer 1976) [CS] [LoA]
38. Allal (January 1977) [CS] [LoA]
39. Reminders of Bouselham (June 1977) [CS] [LoA]
40. You Have Left Your Lotus Pods on the Bus (1977) [CS] [LoA]
41. The Eye (Fall 1978) [LoA]
42. Here to Learn (Summer 1979) [LoA]
43. Midnight Mass (Winter 1979) [LoA]
44. The Dismissal (Spring 1980) [LoA]
45. Madame and Ahmed (Summer 1980) [LoA]
46. Kitty (Summer 1980) [LoA]
47. Bouayad and the Money (July 1980) [LoA]
48. The Husband (Winter 1980) [LoA]
49. At the Krungthep Plaza (Winter 1980-81) [LoA]
50. In the Red Room (1981) [LoA]
51. The Little House (Spring 1981) [LoA]
52. Rumor and a Ladder (Spring 1981) [LoA]
53. Monologue, Tangier 1975 (Spring 1981) [CC] [LoA]
54. Monologue, Massachusetts 1932 (Autumn 1983) [CC] [LoA]
55. The Empty Amulet (1985) [LoA]
56. Hugh Harper (Spring 1985) [CC]
57. Julian Vreden (Fall 1985)
58. An Inopportune Visit (1986) [CC]
59. Unwelcome Words (January–February 1987) [LoA]
60. In Absentia (Spring 1987) [CC] [LoA]
61. Monologue, New York 1965 (1988) [CC] [LoA]
62. Dinner at Sir Nigel's (1988) [CC]
63. Too Far from Home (1991) [LoA]

Story collections:


6. A Little Stone (1950)
7. The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950)
8. The Hours After Noon (1959)
9. A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard (1962)
10. The Time of Friendship (1967)
11. Pages from Cold Point and Other Stories (1968)
12. Three Tales (1975)
13. Things Gone and Things Still Here (1977)
14. Collected Stories, 1939–1976 (1979) [CS]
    • Collected Stories 1939-1976. Introduction by Gore Vidal. 1979. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1990.
15. In the Red Room (1981)
16. Midnight Mass (1981)
17. Points in Time (1982)
18. Unwelcome Words: Seven Stories (1988)
19. A Distant Episode: Selected Stories (1988)
20. Call at Corazon (1988) [CC]
    • Call at Corazón and Other Stories. An Abacus Book. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1989.
21. A Thousand Days for Mokhtar (1989)
22. Too Far From Home (1991)
23. [with Vittorio Santoro] Time of Friendship (1995)
24. The Stories of Paul Bowles (2001)
25. Collected Stories and Later Writings. Ed. Daniel Halpern, ed. Library of America (2002) [LoA]

Travel:


26. [with Peter W. Haeberlin] Yallah (1957)
27. Their Heads are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (1963)
28. 17, Quai Voltaire: Paris, 1931-1932 (1993)
    • Included in: Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993. Ed. Mark Ellingham. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
29. [with Simon Bischoff] How Could I Send a Picture into the Desert? (1994)
30. Travels: Collected Writings, 1950–1993. Ed. Mark Ellingham (2010)
    • Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993. Chronology by Daniel Halpern. 2002. Ed. Mark Ellingham. Introduction by Paul Theroux. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.

Autobiography:


31. Without Stopping (1972)
32. Two Years Beside The Strait (1990)
33. Days: Tangier Journal (1991)

Plays:


34. The Garden (1967)

Poetry:


35. Two Poems (1933)
36. Scenes (1968)
37. The Thicket of Spring (1972)
38. Next to Nothing: Collected Poems, 1926–1977 (1981)
39. No Eye Looked Out from Any Crevice (1997)

Collections:


40. Paul Bowles: Selected Songs. Ed. Peter Garland (1984)
41. Too Far from Home. Ed. Daniel Halpern (1993)
42. Paul Bowles: Music. Ed. Claudia Swan (1995)
43. The Paul Bowles Reader (2000)

Letters:


44. In Touch – The Letters of Paul Bowles. Ed. Jeffrey Miller (1993)
    • In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles. Ed. Jeffrey Miller. 1993. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
45. Dear Paul - Dear Ned: The Correspondence of Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem (1997)

Translations:


46. Jean-Paul Sartre: No Exit (1946)
47. Roger Frison-Roche: The Lost Trail of the Sahara (1952)
48. Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi [Larbi Layachi]: A Life Full Of Holes (1964)
49. Mohammed Mrabet: Love with a Few Hairs (1967)
50. Mohammed Mrabet: The Lemon (1969)
51. Mohammed Mrabet: M'Hashish (1969)
52. Mohamed Choukri: For Bread Alone (1973)
53. Mohamed Choukri: Jean Genet in Tangier (1973)
54. Mohammed Mrabet: The Boy Who Set the Fire (1974)
55. Mohammed Mrabet: Hadidan Aharam (1975)
56. Isabelle Eberhardt: The Oblivion Seekers (1975)
57. Mohammed Mrabet: Look & Move On (1976)
58. Mohammed Mrabet: Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins (1976)
59. Mohammed Mrabet: The Big Mirror (1977)
60. Mohamed Choukri: Tennessee Williams in Tangier (1979)
61. "Five Eyes" by Abdeslam Boulaich, "Sheheriar and Sheherazade" by Mohamed Choukri, "The Half Brothers" by Larbi Layachi, "The Lute" by Mohammed Mrabet, and "The Night Before Thinking" by Ahmed Yacoubi (1979)
62. Mohammed Mrabet: The Beach Café & The Voice (1980)
63. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Path Doubles Back (1982)
64. Mohammed Mrabet: The Chest (1983)
65. Pociao: Allal (1983)
66. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The River Bed (1984)
67. She Woke Me Up So I Killed Her: 16 authors' short stories from various languages (1985)
68. Mohammed Mrabet: Marriage With Papers (1986)
69. Translations from the Moghrebi: by various authors (1986)
70. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Beggar's Knife (1988)
71. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: Dust on Her Tongue (1989)
72. Mohammed Mrabet: The Storyteller and the Fisherman [CD] (1990)
73. Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Pelcari Project (1991)
74. Jellel Gasteli: Tanger: Vues Choisies (1991)
75. Chocolate Creams and Dollars: by various authors (1992)
76. Mohammed Mrabet: Collected Stories (2004)



Paul Bowles: Collected Stories & Later Writings (Library of America, 2002)




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• category - American Fiction: Authors


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Acquisitions (59): The Beats

The Beats
[l-to-r: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs]

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Barry Miles: Call Me Burroughs (2013)


Barry Miles: Call Me Burroughs (2013)
[Hard-to-find Bookshop, CBD, Auckland - 21/3/2021]:

Barry Miles. Call Me Burroughs: A Life. 2013. Twelve. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2015.

Barry Miles: Call Me Burroughs (2015)


Selling the Beats

Is there any aspect of their lives which hasn't been written about by now? You'd think not, but fresh books keep on appearing - and not just biographies and reassessments, like the one above, but even new material, all these years later.

Just the other day I was trying to check how many volumes of Allen Ginsberg's journals were available at present, only to discover the existence of a massive trilogy of 'travel journals' which I'd never even heard of before:

Allen Ginsberg: Iron Curtain Journals: January–May 1965 (2018)

Allen Ginsberg: South American Journals: January–July 1960 (2019)

Allen Ginsberg: The Fall of America Journals, 1965-1971 (2019)

Journals, letters (whether correspondences with particular people or curated selections from the entire corpus) continue to appear in a steady, apparently unabating wave. Was there ever so much vicarious wish-fulfilment - and unassuaged desire to imagine yourself as once having been 'cool' - in so many sad, buttoned-up bookworms?

Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg: The Letters (2011)

I've written before about the Inklings industry (and been rebuked for being such a killjoy and spoilsport as to object to such - allegedly - innocent fun). Does the same reasoning apply to the Beats - also a somewhat ill-defined group of close friends with not dissimilar views and an addiction to expressing themselves in print?

Humphrey Carpenter: The Inklings (1978)

The comparison may seem an invidious one to admirers of either group. Lewis and Tolkien fans would object greatly to their being placed cheek-by-jowl with such an ill-assorted set of drug-raddled freaks. Beats groupies would see their own heroes on a much higher and more serious plane - in both literary and philosophical terms - than this reactionary bunch of pipe-smoking Academic elf-fanciers.

Paul M. Buhle, ed.: The Beats (2009)

I suppose that it is a bit sacrilegious - in both directions. And yet, for some perverse reason, I find myself attracted to both groups of writers. And much though I may scoff at the respective publishing industries that have grown up around them, I am their beneficiary.

I'm the one who hauls off and buys the latest volume of toenail clippings from the forty-years dead J. R. R. Tolkien. But I'm also the one who has to buy each 'revised and corrected' text of such Burroughs classics as Naked Lunch or Nova Express.

Mind you, in both cases, the precise nature of the line-up is open to debate. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are unquestionably the heavy-hitters among the Inklings - but no-one's ever seriously challenged Charles Williams' right to be considered as part of the group.

When it comes to the likes of Owen Barfield, Lord David Cecil, Adam Fox, Roger Lancelyn Green, Christopher Tolkien and other reasonably regular attendees at their meetings, it's harder to decide. They all shared a decidedly conservative Christian (or at least Theist) worldview, but does it make sense to regard them as part of the 'inner ring' (to borrow Lewis's own term)? After all, even such anomalous figures as Fascist poet Roy Campbell and pioneering Epic Fantasist E. R. Eddison held audience with the group at times, though with somewhat mixed results.

Slide to Doc: Romantic Poets: The First Generation

Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac, the 'big three' among the Beats, are equally dominant. In fact, one could see them as the closest modern equivalent to such famous groups as the Romantic Poets (Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, followed by Byron, Shelley, and Keats), or the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Dante Gabriel Rosetti, John Millais, and Holman Hunt; followed by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and J. W. Waterhouse).

The Big Smoke: Romantic Poets, Mark 2 (2017)
[l-to-r: Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats]

What, then, is one to say to the various and competing claims of Charles Bukowski, Lucien Carr, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Herbert Huncke, Ken Kesey, Gary Snyder, and a host of others to be regarded as core Beat writers? One can try to tidy them into sub-movements such as the Columbia University group or the San Francisco Renaissance, or else simply throw up one's hands in acknowledgment of the fact that it is, in fact, a pseudo-question.

The "6 Poets at 6 Gallery" Reading (October 7, 1955)

If you can't clearly define a movement, what sense does it make to argue over who was or was not a 'genuine' member of it? The answer, I suppose, is that such arguments do have a bit more substance than just the equivalent of proposing your own dream team for the Fantasy Underground Writers League. The names of your preferred candidates combine to spell out a kind of closet definition what a real Beat is (or was) without your having to justify it in detail.

Hence my decision to sidestep all that by sticking to the inevitable three - Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs - in this post.

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Norman Mailer: Four Books of the 1960s

There's an amusing passage in Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night (1968) where he gives a blow-by-blow account of a Robert Lowell poetry reading before the famous 1967 anti-Vietnam march on the Pentagon. Mailer, who considers Lowell's attitude to him somewhat patronising, can think of no better way of puncturing the patrician poet's self-esteem than by quipping that posterity might well judge Allen Ginsberg to be the superior poet.

Robert Lowell et al. marching on the Pentagon (1967)

Once again, I have to confess myself an admirer of both of these great writers, but ever since I purchased Ginsberg's then-hot-off-the-press Collected Poems in 1985, I've been unable to regard him as the clownish showman some poetry purists still believe him to be. Kaddish is, in my opinion, one of the great poems of the century, and listening to his own reading of it is an incomparable experience.

Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems 1947-1980 (1985)

So, yes, all the ampersands and tricks of verbal shorthand apart, I don't feel any doubt in admitting Ginsberg as (at the very least) a serious rival to Lowell as the greatest American poet of the mid to late twentieth century.

Peter Orlovsky: Allen Ginsberg (1972)

For many years I've taught the work and ideas of William S. Burroughs in Creative Writing classes as a useful antidote to unimaginative, middle-of-the-road realism. The sheer terrifying radicalism of his work and life are inspiring - at a distance, at any rate - and his status as a prophet of the post-nuclear, post-Auschwitz era is (once again imho) unchallengeable. For more detail, see some of my course notes on him here and here.

Ruby Ray: William S. Burroughs

Can I say the same for Jack Kerouac? Well, no, not really - I do understand why he seems to many as the only true 'Beat' in such a trio of misfits, and therefore the senior partner in the group. But he's never really appealed to me in the same way as the others - though I did dutifully work my way through On the Road back in the day. Enjoyed it, too, but somehow never got into any of its numerous sequels.

Jack Kerouac (1967)

Having said that, though, it's true that he, too, has served me well in Creative Writing courses. I used to like to invite local writers to come and address our first year Writing paper until our then Department got too stingy with its funding. Among our visitors was Michael Morrissey, author of the story "Jack Kerouac Sat Down beside the Wanganui River & Wept," one of our course readings.

Michael Morrissey, ed. The New Fiction (1985)

Michael Morrissey (2012)

Michael gave a most interesting talk about his experiences with this story. How he'd been courted by American collectors anxious to obtain a copy, and how it had constituted almost a parallel track in his writing career. On the one hand there were the Kerouac obsessives, on the other hand everybody else.

Baxter's Grave at Jerusalem on the Whanganui River

However, as it gradually began to dawn on me, over the years, that not only did most of the students listening to me not know who Jack Kerouac was, but that they'd never heard of James K. Baxter either, I did learn not to major on such tricksy juxtapositions.

Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters: 1940-1956 (1995)

So, while it may reach absurd extremes at times, I don't have any deep objections either to Beat-worship or Beat-commerce. If it increases people's knowledge of literature (which it inevitably will do - was there ever such a literary bunch of typists as Kerouac and his pals?) then all power to it.

Belinda Humfrey, ed.: Recollections of the Powys Brothers (2019)

It's a shame that it doesn't spill over to other, to my mind, equally interesting constellations of writers - the Powys brothers, or the Russian 'Nightingale Fever' poets - but then you can't have everything. Public taste is fickle and seemingly arbitrary at times, but there is a deep appeal to the idea of howling as you eat your naked lunch on the road which is rather hard to match with more conventional fare.

Beat Book Covers (2020)

•

Ann Charters: The Portable Beat Reader (1992)

Beat Bibliographies

Authors:

1. William Burroughs (1914-1997)
2. Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
3. Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)
4. Anthologies & Secondary Literature

---

Books I own are marked in bold:

William S. Burroughs


William Seward Burroughs II
(1914-1997)


Collections:


1. Ah Pook is Here, Nova Express, Cities of the Red Night (1981)
2. Three Novels: The Soft Machine, Nova Express & The Wild Boys (1988)
3. Word Virus: The William Burroughs Reader (1998)
   • Word Virus: The William Burroughs Reader. Ed. James Grauerholz & Ira Silverberg. 1998. London: Flamingo, 1999.

Longer Fiction:


4. Junkie (aka Junky) (1953)
   • Junky. 1953. Introduction by Allen Ginsberg. Harmmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
   • Junky: The Definitive Text of 'Junk'. 1953. Ed. Oliver Harris. 2003. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2008.
5. Queer. 1951–1953 (1985)
   • Queer. 1985. London: Picador, 1986.
6. Naked Lunch (1959)
   • Naked Lunch. 1959. Introduction by J. G. Ballard. Flamingo Modern Classics. London: Flamingo, 1993.
   • Naked Lunch: The Restored Text. 1959. Ed. James Grauerholz & Barry Miles. New York: Grove Press, 2001.
7. The Nova Trilogy (1961-1967)
   1. The Soft Machine (1961–1966)
      • The Soft Machine. 1961 & 1966. London: Corgi, 1974.
   2. The Ticket That Exploded (1962–1967)
      • The Ticket that Exploded. 1962 & 1967. Ed. James Grauerholz. The Cut-Up Trilogy: The Restored Texts. Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2014.
   3. Nova Express (1964)
      • Nova Express. 1964. London: Panther Books, 1968.
8. Dead Fingers Talk (1963)
   • Dead Fingers Talk. 1963. A Star Book. London: W. H. Allen & Co., Ltd., 1977.
9. The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969)
10. The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971)
    • The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead. 1972. London: Corgi, 1974.
11. Port of Saints (1973)
12. The Red Night Trilogy (1981–1987)
    1. Cities of the Red Night (1981)
       • Cities of the Red Night. 1981. New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1982.
    2. The Place of Dead Roads (1983)
       • The Place of Dead Roads. 1987. Flamingo Modern Classics. London: Flamingo, 1994.
    3. The Western Lands (1987)
       • The Western Lands. 1987. London: Picador, 1988.
13. My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995)
14. [with Jack Kerouac] And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. 1945 (2008)
    • [with Jack Kerouac] And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. 2008. Modern Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.

Shorter Fiction:


15. [with Sinclair Beilles, Gregory Corso & Brion Gysin] Minutes To Go (1960)
16. [with Brion Gysin] The Exterminator (1960)
17. Roosevelt After Inauguration and Other Atrocities (1965)
18. Valentine's Day Reading (1965)
19. Time (1965)
20. APO-33 (1965)
21. [with Claude Pelieu & Carl Weissner] So Who Owns Death TV? (1967)
22. The Dead Star (1969)
23. Ali's Smile (1971)
24. [with Brion Gysin] Brion Gysin Let the Mice In (1973)
25. Exterminator! (1973)
26. Mayfair Academy Series More or Less (1973)
27. White Subway (1973)
    • Included in The Burroughs File. 1984. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1991.
28. The Book of Breeething (1974)
29. [with Charles Gatewood] Sidetripping (1975)
30. Snack ... (1975)
31. Cobble Stone Gardens (1976)
    • Included in The Burroughs File. 1984. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1991.
32. Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology (1978)
33. [with Malcolm McNeill] Ah Pook Is Here and Other Texts (1979)
34. Blade Runner (a movie) (1979)
35. Dr. Benway (1979)
36. Die Alten Filme (The Old Movies) (1979)
    • Included in The Burroughs File. 1984. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1991.
37. Streets of Chance (1981)
38. Early Routines (1981)
39. Sinki's Sauna (1982)
40. Ruski (1984)
41. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1984)
42. The Cat Inside (1986)
43. The Whole Tamale (c.1987-88)
44. [with Brion Gysin] Apocalypse (1988)
45. [with Tom Waits & Robert Wilson] The Black Rider: A Musical (1989)
46. Tornado Alley (1989)
47. Ghost of Chance (1991)
48. Seven Deadly Sins (1992)
49. Paper Cloud; Thick Pages (1992)
50. Interzone (1989)
    • Interzone. Ed. James Grauerholz. 1989. London: Picador, 1990.
51. [with Graham Masterton] Rules of Duel. 1970 (2010)

Non-fiction:


52. [with Daniel Odier] The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs (1969)
53. [with Claude Pelieu] Jack Kerouac (1970)
54. The Electronic Revolution (1971)
55. [with Mohamed Choukri] Foreword to Jean Genet in Tangier (1974)
56. [with Brion Gysin] Colloque de Tangier (1976)
57. [with Brion Gysin] The Third Mind (1977)
58. [with Brion Gysin & Gérard-Georges Lemaire] Colloque de Tangier Vol. 2 (1979)
59. The Burroughs File (1984)
    • The Burroughs File. 1984. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1991.
60. The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
61. Uncommon Quotes Vol. 1 (1989)
62. Conversations with William S. Burroughs (2000)
63. Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997 (2000)
64. The Revised Boy Scout Manual: An Electronic Revolution. 1970 (2018)

Journals:


65. The Retreat Diaries (1976)
    • Included in The Burroughs File. 1984. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1991.
66. Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs (2000)
    • Last Words: The Final Journals. Ed. James Grauerholz. New York: Grove Press, 2000.
67. Everything Lost: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs (2007)

Letters:


68. Letter From A Master Addict To Dangerous Drugs. British Journal of Addiction, Vol. 53, No. 2, 3 August 1956.
69. [with Allen Ginsberg] The Yage Letters (1963)
    • [with Allen Ginsberg] Yage Letters Redux. Ed. Oliver Harris (2006)
    • [with Allen Ginsberg] The Yage Letters Redux. 1963. Ed. Oliver Harris. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2006.
70. Letters to Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957 (1976)
    • Letters to Allen Ginsberg, 1953-1957. 1978. New York: Full Court Press, 1982.
71. The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945-1959 (1993)
    • The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945 to 1959. Ed. Oliver Harris. 1993. London: Picador, 1994.
72. Rub Out The Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1959-1974 (2012)
    • Rub Out the Words: Letters 1959-1974. Ed. Bill Morgan. 2012. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2013.

Secondary:


73. Morgan, Ted. Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs. 1991. London: Pimlico, 1992.
74. Miles, Barry. Call Me Burroughs: A Life. 2013. Twelve. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2015.

David Cronenberg, dir. Naked Lunch (1991)




•

Allen Ginsberg


Irwin Allen Ginsberg
(1926-1997)


Collections:


1. The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952 (2006)
   • The Book of Martyrdom & Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952. Ed. Juanita Liebermann-Plimpton & Bill Morgan. New York: Da Capo Press, 2006.
2. The Essential Ginsberg (2015)
   • The Essential Ginsberg. Ed. Michael Schumacher. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2015.

Poetry:


3. Howl & Other Poems (1956)
4. Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958-1960 (1961)
5. Empty Mirror: Early Poems (1961)
6. Reality Sandwiches: 1953-1960 (1963)
7. Airplane Dreams (1968)
8. Angkor Wat (1968)
9. Planet News (1968)
10. The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948–1951 (1972)
11. The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971 (1973)
12. Iron Horse (1974)
13. First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs 1971-1974 (1975)
14. Sad Dust Glories: Poems Work Summer in Woods 1974 (1975)
15. Sad Dust Glories: poems during work summer in woods (1975)
16. Mind Breaths: Poems 1972-1977 (1978)
17. Poems All Over the Place: Mostly Seventies (1978)
18. Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977–1980 (1982)
19. Collected Poems 1947–1980 (1985)
    • Collected Poems 1947-1980. 1985. Viking. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
20. Howl Annotated (1986)
    • Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript, and Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporary Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts, and Bibliography. 1956. Ed. Barry Miles. 1986. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. 1995. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.
21. White Shroud: Poems 1980–1985 (1986)
22. Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1993 (1994)
    • Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992. 1994. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995.
23. Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems & Songs 1949–1993 (1994)
24. Collected Poems 1947–1985 (1995)
    • Collected Poems 1947-1985. London: Penguin, 1995.
25. Illuminated Poems (1996)
26. Selected Poems: 1947–1995 (1996)
27. Death & Fame: Poems 1993–1997 (1999)
    • Death & Fame: Poems 1993-1997. Ed. Bob Rosenthal, Peter Hale & Bill Morgan. Foreword by Robert Creeley. New York: Penguin, 1999.
28. Collected Poems 1947-1997 (2006)
    • Collected Poems 1947-1997. New York: Viking, 2006.
29. Howl & Other Poems: 50th Anniversary Edition (2006)

Prose:


30. Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness by Allen Ginsberg. Ed. Gordon Ball (1974)
31. Deliberate Prose 1952–1995 (2000)
    • Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995. Ed. Bill Morgan. Foreword by Edward Sanders. 2000. Perennial. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.
32. Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996 (2001)
    • Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996. Ed. David Carter. Preface by Václav Havel. Introduction by Edmund White. 2001. London: Penguin, 2001.
33. "The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats" (Grove Press, 2017)

Journals:


34. Indian Journals (1970)
    • Indian Journals: Notebooks Diary Blank Pages Writings March 1962-May 1963. 1970. New Delhi: Penguin, 1990.
35. Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties (1977)
    • Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties. Ed. Gordon Ball. 1977. New York: Grove Press, 1992.
36. Journals Mid-Fifties: 1954-1958 (1995)
    • Journals Mid-Fifties: 1954-1958. Ed. Gordon Ball. 1995. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
37. Iron Curtain Journals: January–May 1965. Ed. Michael Schumacher (2018)
38. South American Journals: January–July 1960. Ed. Michael Schumacher (2019)
39. The Fall of America Journals, 1965-1971. Ed. Michael Schumacher (2020)

Letters:


40. [with William S. Burroughs] The Yage Letters (1963)
    • [with William S. Burroughs]The Yage Letters Redux. 1963. Ed. Oliver Harris. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2006.
41. As Ever: Collected Correspondence Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady (1977)
42. Straight Hearts Delight: Love Poems & Selected Letters, by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Ed. Winston Leyland (1980)
43. The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (2008)
    • The Letters of Allen Ginsberg. Ed. Bill Morgan. A DaCapo Press Book. Philadelphia: Perseus Books Group, 2008.
44. The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder (2009)
    • The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ed. Bill Morgan. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009.
45. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters. Ed. Bill Morgan & David Stanford (2011)
46. I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955–1997 (2015)

Secondary:


47. Kramer, Jane. Paterfamilias: Allen Ginsberg in America. London: Victor Gollancz, 1970.
48. Miles, Barry. Ginsberg: A Biography. 1989. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.
49. Morgan, Bill. I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. 2006. New York: Penguin, 2007.

John Krokidas, dir. Kill Your Darlings (2013)




•

Jack Kerouac


Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac ['Jack Kerouac']
(1922-1969)


Collections:


1. The Portable Jack Kerouac. Ed. Ann Charters (1995)
2. Library of America: Jack Kerouac Edition (2007-2016)
   1. Road Novels 1957–1960: On the Road / The Dharma Bums / The Subterraneans / Tristessa / Lonesome Traveler / Journal Selections. Ed. Douglas Brinkley. Library of America, 174 (2007)
   2. Collected Poems: Mexico City Blues (242 Choruses) / The Scripture of the Golden Eternity / Book of Blues / Pomes All Sizes / Old Angel Midnight / Desolation Pops / Book of Haikus | Uncollected Poems. Ed. Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell. Library of America, 231 (2012)
   3. Visions of Cody / Visions of Gerard / Big Sur. Ed. Todd Tietchen. Library of America, 262 (2015)
   4. The Unknown Kerouac - Rare, Unpublished & Newly Translated Writings: The Night Is My Woman / Old Bull in the Bowery / Private Philologies, Riddles, and a Ten-Day Writing Log / Journal 1951 / Other Writings, 1946-1968. Trans. Jean-Christophe Cloutier. Ed. Todd Tietchen. Library of America, 283 (2016)

Fiction:


3. The Town and the City. 1946–1949 (1950)
   • The Town and the City. 1950. London: Quartet Books Limited, 1974.
4. On the Road. 1951 (1957)
   • On the Road. 1957. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1967.
   • On the Road: The Original Scroll. 1957. Ed. Howard Cunnell. Introductions by Howard Cunnell, Penny Vlagopoulos, George Mouratidis, Joshua Kupetz. 2007. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2008.
5. The Subterraneans. 1953 (1958)
6. The Dharma Bums. 1957 (1958)
7. Doctor Sax. 1952 (1959)
8. Maggie Cassidy. 1953 (1959)
9. Tristessa. 1955-1956 (1960)
10. Lonesome Traveler (1960)
11. Book of Dreams. 1952–1960 (1960)
12. Big Sur. 1961 (1962)
13. Visions of Gerard. 1956 (1963)
14. Desolation Angels. 1956 & 1961 (1965)
15. Satori in Paris (1966)
16. Vanity of Duluoz. 1967 (1968)
17. Pic. 1951 & 1969 (1971)
18. Visions of Cody. 1951–1952; 1959 (1972)
19. Good Blonde & Others. 1955 (1993)
20. Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings. 1936–1943 (1999)
21. Orpheus Emerged. 1944–1945 (2000)
22. [with William S. Burroughs] And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. 1945 (2008)
23. The Sea Is My Brother. 1942 (2010)
24. The Haunted Life and Other Writings. 1944 (2014)
25. La vie est d'hommage. 1950-1965 (2016)

Poetry:


26. Pull My Daisy (1940s)
27. Mexico City Blues. 1955 (1959)
28. The Scripture of the Golden Eternity. 1956 (1960)
29. Scattered Poems. 1945–1968 (1971)
30. Book of Sketches. 1952–1957)
31. Old Angel Midnight. 1956 (1973)
    • Old Angel Midnight (2016)
32. [with Albert Saijo & Lew Welch] Trip Trap: Haiku on the Road from SF to NY. 1959 (1973)
33. Heaven and Other Poems. 1957–1962 (1977)
34. San Francisco Blues. 1954 (1983)
35. Pomes All Sizes. 1960 (1992)
36. Book of Blues (1954–1961)
37. Book of Haikus (2003)

Plays:


38. Beat Generation. 1957 (2005)

Non-fiction:


39. Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha. 1955 (2008)
40. Some of the Dharma (1997)
    • Some of the Dharma. 1953-1956. Foreword by John Sampas. Ed. David Stamford. Viking. New York: Penguin, 1997.
41. Safe In Heaven Dead: Interview Fragments (1990)
42. Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings (2004)

Journals:


43. Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac (2004)
    • Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954. Ed. Douglas Brinkley. 2004. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Letters:


44. Dear Carolyn: Letters to Carolyn Cassady. Ed. Arthur and Kit Knight (1983)
45. Selected Letters, 1940–1956. Ed. Ann Charters (1995)
    • Selected Letters 1940-1956. Ed. Ann Charters. 1995. New York: Penguin, 1996.
46. Selected Letters, 1957-1969. Ed. Ann Charters (1999)
    • Selected Letters 1957-1969. Ed. Ann Charters. Viking Penguin. Harmondsworth: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1999.
47. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters (2010)

Secondary:


48. Charters, Anne. Kerouac: A Biography. 1973. Warner Paperback Library. New York: Warner Books Inc., 1974.
49. Johnson, Joyce. Door Wide Open (2000)

John Byrum, dir. Heart Beat (1980)




•

Barry Miles: The Beat Hotel (2000)


Anthologies & Secondary Literature


1. Charters, Ann, ed. The Portable Beat Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
2. Miles, Barry. The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963. New York: Grove Press, 2000.



Beats (late 1950s):
clockwise: Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac, David Amram, & Allen Ginsberg




•


• category - American Fiction, American Poetry, & American Prose


•