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!
I Remember
I Remember
I REMEMBER.
Granary Books, 2001. Item #GB_87
ISBN: 9781887123488
4 1/2 x 7 in., 184 pp., smyth-sewn.
Our reprint of this classic was issued in conjunction with the traveling exhibition and catalogue Joe Brainard: A Retrospective. In 1970, Angel Hair Books published the first edition of I Remember—700 copies that quickly sold out. Brainard wrote two subsequent volumes for Angel Hair, More I Remember (1972) and More I Remember More (1973), both of which proved as popular as the original. In 1973, the Museum of Modern Art published Brainard’s I Remember Christmas, a new text for which he also contributed a cover design and four drawings. Excerpts from the Angel Hair editions appeared in Interview, Gay Sunshine, The World, and The New York Herald. In 1975, Full Court Press issued a revised version, which collected all three of the Angel Hair volumes, the MoMA booklet, and added new material, using the original title I Remember. The most recent edition was published by Viking Penguin in 1994.
The Granary Books edition includes all of the material from the Full Court and Viking Penguin edtions along with a newly written afterword by Ron Padgett. Designed by Amber Phillips, the Granary edition has been available since 2001 with more than 20,000 copies in print.