[Item #5275] The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation. William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure.
The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation
The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation
The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation
The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation

The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation

Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. First Printing. Hardcover. “In these critical essays Gregory Stephenson takes the reader on a journey through the literature of the Beat Generation: a journey encompassing that common ethos of Beat literature—the passage from darkness to light, from fragmented being toward wholeness, from Beat to Beatific. In his introduction, Stephenson provides a brief history of this literary and cultural phenomenon and establishes the basis of these authors’ right to be called a “generation“ (from Front Flap). Among the literary critical realities “The Daybreak Boys” thought-provoking promo copy winks at or alludes to is the (then still ongoing) academic fire fight between establishment literary scholars (on one side) and the happily metastasizing army of budding Beat scholars, on the other. The latter group were actively turning their craft into a “field,” – doing so by installment, with each new wave-making book, or paper a trophy for their case, and a plank in their platform. On the other side were the bulk of establishment literary scholars, who doubted not only the Beats’ canonical worthiness, but the very idea that the Beat literary-cultural phenomenon constituted a “generation,” at all). Making matters hairier was the fact that establishment voices were not the only voices aligned with those contesting the notion. Beat legend Gregory Corso himself offered a tacit, if unrelated buoy of support in the form of his oft-recited, quotable quip: “Four writers do not a generation make.” This resistance (and the resistance to the resistance) made for a literary-critical Custer’s Last Stand in miniature; an act whose purpose was solely to prevent — and by any means necessary — the Barbarians’ admittance to the faculty lounge. Stephenson’s adept analyses merge, hand-in-glove, with a format that makes “The Daybreak Boys” accessible (and nutritive) even today, — years after the “hottest period” of literary-critical warfare ended. Despite that happy fact, relics from these dialogues endure; and Stephenson’s “Daybreak Boys” is veined with proof, bullet-points, like musket balls, everywhere abounding. A veritable T-bone steak of scholarship, “The Daybreak Boys” is sure to satisfy even the most exacting of Beat-critical gourmands…peppered by both experience & insight. Stephenson's book "features," or fixes their focus upon everyone listed in the "Author field" above (William S. Burroughs; Neal Cassady; Gregory Corso; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Allen Ginsberg; Jack Kerouac, & Michael McClure, among others), and the Beat readerly electorate stands to be made wiser by reading it. [ISBN: 0-8093-1564-5]. Hardcover in unclipped dust-jacket: First Edition, although not explicated as such on copyright page; First Printing, as indicated by number sequence thereon. Book in very fine condition with only slightest shelf-wear to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers; virtually pristine. Dust-jacket in correspondingly very fine condition; equally commendable for its collector-grade cleanliness. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #5275]

Price: $40.00