What novels would you recommend to someone who loves Beat literature, but is mainly just familiar with Ginsberg/Burroughs/Kerouac?

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Please recommend anything you think I would like. It doesn't have to be by an author recognized as part of the Beat generation (although it can be), but just anything with a vaguely similar sense of writing/description/storytelling.

― Lee is Free (Lee is Free), Sunday, 12 February 2006 03:44 (twenty years ago)

hubert selby jr., "last exit to brooklyn"

― hstencil (hstencil), Sunday, 12 February 2006 03:46 (twenty years ago)

Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn and Sexus. (I haven't read much more Miller than that.)

― pixel farmer (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 12 February 2006 03:49 (twenty years ago)

diane di prima

― Anthony Easton, Sunday, 12 February 2006 03:52 (twenty years ago)

Revolutionary Letters got me in trouble with my Calvinist sister and brother-in-law when I was a kid.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Sunday, 12 February 2006 03:54 (twenty years ago)

(A teenager-kid.)

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Sunday, 12 February 2006 03:55 (twenty years ago)

You might like Paul Bowles. My favorite of his that I've read is Let It Come Down. Though Bowles might be too straight for your taste. How about Andre Breton's Nadja? Poor mad mad Nadja.

― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Sunday, 12 February 2006 03:58 (twenty years ago)

try Louis Ferdinand Celine. 'Journey to the end of the night' was an enoromous beat influence

― sffd, Sunday, 12 February 2006 04:40 (twenty years ago)

Ditto Thomas Wolfe's "Of Time and the River", I believe. Though it may only have been on Kerouac.

― Øystein (Øystein), Sunday, 12 February 2006 05:12 (twenty years ago)

Second Selby; suggesting Bowles and Bukowski.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 12 February 2006 05:28 (twenty years ago)

Kesey/Ferlinghetti/Brautigan

― Jaq (Jaq), Sunday, 12 February 2006 05:59 (twenty years ago)

John Fante -- Ask The Dust.

― David A. (Davant), Sunday, 12 February 2006 07:00 (twenty years ago)

Nathan West - Miss Lonelyhearts/ Day of the Locust

― jel -- (jel), Sunday, 12 February 2006 09:58 (twenty years ago)

There's a great anthology - Protest: The Beat Generation & the Angry Young Men. It points in some fairly interesting directions. Hopefully it would lead you to Colin Wilson, which would be fun.

― Nicholas Passant (Nicholas Passant), Sunday, 12 February 2006 11:41 (twenty years ago)

Esteban Buttez's "You can Beatnik but you can't Beetroot!"

― ESTEBAN BUTTEZ~!!! (ESTEBAN BUTTEZ~!!!), Sunday, 12 February 2006 11:46 (twenty years ago)

Red Dirt Marihuana (And Other Tastes) Terry Southern

Tales Of Beatnick Glory Ed Sanders

City Of Night John Rechy

Really The Blues Mezz Mezzrow

Beneath The Underdog Charles Mingus

The Room Hubert Selby Jr

Requiem For A Dream Hubert Selby Jr

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Sunday, 12 February 2006 12:40 (twenty years ago)

to place the beats in the context of their times, try these non-fiction books. a stretch perhaps, but not a huge one. (BTW some of the "novels" listed above are memoir/autobiography.)

Advertisements for Myself Norman Mailer

Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce Albert Goldman

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Sunday, 12 February 2006 14:26 (twenty years ago)

And seconding Fante.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Sunday, 12 February 2006 17:34 (twenty years ago)

Selby, Fante, mebbe Brautigan (if you dig the San Fran twee-gloom thing), mebbe Richard Meltzer's The Night (Alone).

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Sunday, 12 February 2006 17:39 (twenty years ago)

Find a copy of The Herbert Huncke Reader (by Herbert Huncke, of course).

― huck (shookout), Sunday, 12 February 2006 19:31 (twenty years ago)

Trout Fishing In America, etc. by Richard Braughtigan

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Sunday, 12 February 2006 20:27 (twenty years ago)

J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 13 February 2006 15:38 (twenty years ago)

Gary Snyder

― senseiDancer (sexyDancer), Monday, 13 February 2006 15:58 (twenty years ago)

Samuel Beckett, More Pricks than Kicks

If you don't mind short stories, and enjoy the ludicrous.

― Collardio Gelatinous (collardio), Tuesday, 14 February 2006 05:53 (twenty years ago)

anyone who liked "on the road" should check out henry miller's "air conditioned nightmare," it's a much more cynical take on the same sort of material. he wrote a sequel to it called "remember to remember" but it's out of print and hard to find.

and of course "huckleberry finn" is pretty much the original beat book, and probably the best one of them all. try to get the version re-edited by some twain scholar a while back, with the boring "tom sawyer" section at the end shortened and a missing chapter restored.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 14 February 2006 06:10 (twenty years ago)

Nathaniel West Miss Lonelyhearts - oh yes, absolutely!

Also a nice pair of post-beat works:
Jim Dodge Stone Junction
Russell Hoban Kleinzeit

― NickB (NickB), Tuesday, 14 February 2006 09:55 (twenty years ago)

Second 'The Ginger Man' by J P DOnleavy - a great book.
Staying in the British Isles, you try read Alexander Trocchi: 'Cain's Book' or 'Young Adam', or even B S Johnson: 'Albert Angelo'

― bham, Tuesday, 14 February 2006 10:15 (twenty years ago)

Alexander Trocchi - Cain's Book

― Space Is the Place (Space Is the Place), Tuesday, 14 February 2006 15:46 (twenty years ago)

Richard Farina - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
Thomas Pynchon - V
J.P. Sartre - Nausea

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 14 February 2006 15:55 (twenty years ago)

gregory corso
neal cassady

― slow jamz and white guy indie acoustic shit (Chris V), Tuesday, 14 February 2006 16:25 (twenty years ago)

Nelson Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side and The Man with the Golden Arm are great books, I'm not sure what their relationship to Beat is exactly. John Clellon Holmes' Go is wonderful too, and pre-dates most of the big guys' stuff.

― Abu Hamster (noodle vague), Tuesday, 14 February 2006 16:37 (twenty years ago)

DAN Fante - Moochy or Chump Change

― Lil' Eno (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 14 February 2006 19:22 (twenty years ago)

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