The Beat Generation
Whistlestop Bookshop opened in 1985. When I think about writers or categories or particular books that have sold steadily, without flagging, for over 30 years, I think I learn about my own philosophy of bookselling, I learn about my customers over time and generations, and I learn about the literature. Sometimes it is a book (Goodnight, Moon, say, or Killer Angels), sometimes it is a category (science fiction/fantasy or nature guides), and sometimes a particular author (Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Austen). I am both surprised and pleased that the Beats have sold since the beginning and show no signs of slowing down.
The history of the Beat Generation is complex and absorbing. Think of analogies being the Transcendentalists or the Lost Generation. Briefly and unfairly summarized, think of a small group of writers from very different backgrounds meeting at Columbia University after World War Two, creating the beginnings of a network that was nurtured in New York City but soon found simultaneous developments in San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest.
The Beats recognized and valued spontaneity, non-conformity, spiritual quests outside of social structures, suspicion of materialism, the intimate conversation between music (especially jazz) and language, and a burning, sometimes self-destructive, passion for freedom.
As you can see in our offerings here, Jack Kerouac was a central figure, as were Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Other names are here, too -- William S. Burroughs, Jr., Gary Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, Carolyn Cassady. I will add titles and writers as I remember the associations, and as new critical or historical evaluations are published. Enjoy what my customers have been celebrating for three decades plus now!
DVD - Naked Lunch [1991 film by David Cronenberg]
DVD - Naked Lunch [1991 film by David Cronenberg]
In this adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s hallucinatory, once-thought-unfilmable novel Naked Lunch, directed by David Cronenberg, a part-time exterminator and full-time drug addict named Bill Lee (Peter Weller) plunges into the nightmarish Interzone, a netherworld of sinister cabals and giant talking bugs. Alternately humorous and grotesque—and always surreal—the film mingles aspects of Burroughs’s novel with incidents from the writer’s own life, resulting in an evocative paranoid fantasy and a self-reflexive investigation into the mysteries of the creative process.
FILM INFO
Canada
1991
115 minutes
Color
1.78:1
English
Spine #220
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
High-definition digital transfer, approved by director David Cronenberg, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring Cronenberg and actor Peter Weller
Naked Making Lunch, a 1992 documentary by Chris Rodley about the making of the film
Special effects gallery, featuring artwork and photos alongside an essay by film writer Jody Duncan
Collection of original marketing materials
Audio recording of William S. Burroughs reading from his novel Naked Lunch
Gallery of photos taken by poet Allen Ginsberg of Burroughs
Film stills gallery (DVD only)
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film critic Janet Maslin and, for the Blu-ray edition, essays by critic and novelist Gary Indiana, filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley, and Burroughs
Cover by Neil Kellerhouse