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!
Gary Snyder: Essential Prose
Gary Snyder: Essential Prose
In one volume, the indispensable prose of our “poet laureate of deep ecology”
Here is Gary Snyder’s own selection of his pathbreaking environmental essays, Buddhist journals, poetic notebooks, and more, including previously unpublished material
Gathered for the first time in a single volume and completing the definitive Library of America edition of his works, here is the essential prose of our “poet laureate of deep ecology”: philosophical essays, travel journals, poetic notebooks, reflections on Buddhism, environmental polemics, memoirs, speeches, interviews, letters, and other writings spanning the entire arc of Snyder’s lauded, seventy-year career. All of Snyder’s published prose collections are included, omitting only items he feels are repetitious or merely occasional, followed by a selection of previously unpublished private journals. Includes:
Earth House Hold: describing his life as a fire lookout in Washington State in the early 1950s, and his experiences as an initiate in a Kyoto monastery
“Poetry and the Primitive,” a kind of “ecological survival technique”
“Buddhism and the Coming Revolution,” which imagines the “nation-shaking implications” of spiritual discovery
He Who Hunted Birds in His Father’s Village, charting Snyder’s deep engagements with Native American mythology
Passage Through India: about a six-month pilgrimage with his wife and the poet Allen Ginsberg, culminating in a meeting with the Dalai Lama.
The Practice of the Wild: a classic of American environmental writing in the tradition of Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and Annie Dillard
The essays in A Place in Space and Back on the Fire: exploring bioregionalism, forestry practices, sustainability, and the ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada, where Snyder has lived since 1970
The Great Clod: a mediation on the intersections of nature and culture in Asian history and literature.
It’s all here, the profound reflections and inspiring meditations of our greatest living guide to the nature of meaning and the meaning of nature.