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The Beats: A Graphic History

3.47 · Rating details · 1,813 ratings · 310 reviews

The Beats: A Graphic History, those who were mad to live have come back to life through artwork as vibrant as the Beat movement itself. Told by the comic legend Harvey Pekar, his frequent artistic collaborator Ed Piskor, and a range of artists and writers, including the feminist comic creator Trina Robbins and the Mad magazine artist Peter Kuper, The Beats takes us on a wi ...more

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Hardcover, 208 pages

Published March 17th 2009 by Hill and Wang

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May 07, 2012 Sam Quixote rated it really liked it

Harvey Pekar presents a brief introduction to the artistic movement from the mid-20th century known as The Beats, focusing on the three major writers of this movement: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Pekar also takes a look at some of the minor artists while providing an historical context of this period.

The best parts of this volume are the appraisals of the lives of Kerouac/Burroughs/Ginsberg. While I knew something about these writers’ lives already and have read Harvey Pekar presents a brief introduction to the artistic movement from the mid-20th century known as The Beats, focusing on the three major writers of this movement: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Pekar also takes a look at some of the minor artists while providing an historical context of this period.

The best parts of this volume are the appraisals of the lives of Kerouac/Burroughs/Ginsberg. While I knew something about these writers’ lives already and have read their major works, I still learned some things about them I didn't before reading this. Kerouac was very conservative despite his reputation for being free-wheeling, and he was misogynistic, homophobic, and racist, all of which were odd stances as he was bisexual himself and had many Jewish friends (Ginsberg for one).

Burroughs' life was as sordid as I remembered it though I hadn't realised his own son's had been quite so horrific as well. I liked how Ed Piskor drew him throughout as a kind of vampiric zombie - Burroughs didn't seem like a nice person despite the art he produced.

Ginsberg's life was full of political activism and he could rightly be considered a celebrity because of his work and his connections to just about everybody within the Beat movement. He also comes across as the nicest person the group, a man with demons of his own but who didn't deal with them destructively nor allow them to destroy him.

The second half of this 200 page comic takes up the rest of the Beats, none of whom I recognised and shows you how well-researched and fascinated in the subject Pekar was. Through brief strips you get to know these people and a variety of artists illustrate these parts (Ed Piskor illustrated the first half of the book that covered Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg).

Joyce Brabner (Pekar's wife) contributes an excellent strip at the overlooked women of the Beat movement, showing the similarity between their difficult lives and their male counterparts’, which were somehow never recognised to the same extent. It also casts the "heroes" of the Beat movement in a critical light, showing them as pretentious, selfish and hypocritical.

Overall the book was an excellent read that was very informative about these interesting, though flawed, artists and this particular moment in history. More than anything, looking upon this explosion of art inspires you to turn your hand as easily as they did to anything at all, writing, music, painting, and so the book is overwhelmingly positive in this regard to creative readers looking for a spark to set them off.

Pekar manages to provide the reader with a highly informative and entertaining impression of this movement and anybody looking for a none-too-demanding overview of the Beats would do well to pick up this book. ...more

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May 03, 2010 Printable Tire rated it did not like it

Harvey Pekar at his best uses the patently exciting comic book medium to conjure the pretense of drama to altogether mundane run-of-the-mill life; at his worst, which includes this book, he and his collaborators damn and fumble with by default a fun medium hard to fuck up and an exciting topic and churn out pinko propaganda reminiscent of dull children’s textbooks with boring art and the text of highly slanted wikipedia articles.
If I was a teenager I would hate this book. I was never giv Harvey Pekar at his best uses the patently exciting comic book medium to conjure the pretense of drama to altogether mundane run-of-the-mill life; at his worst, which includes this book, he and his collaborators damn and fumble with by default a fun medium hard to fuck up and an exciting topic and churn out pinko propaganda reminiscent of dull children’s textbooks with boring art and the text of highly slanted wikipedia articles.
If I was a teenager I would hate this book. I was never given a reason why I should care about the beats, why they are exciting and not just some relic-historic fuddy-duddies. We are never given a glimpse of their prose, just a sling of meaningless adjectives and a dry recount of their lives- Howl was “great” or “revolutionary,” Kerouac met so-and-so, this guy pussied around for a while in his head and became a monk, Burroughs liked Tangier because of the little boys (mentioned three times!), etc. The most exciting background art used is a bookshelf. The book lacks any narrative punch, just slanted, biased facts, panels upon panels of retellings of similar biographies over and over again. Everyone comes out like a pompous windbag, a spoiled white-boy, and I’m fine with that: that’s what they were, but some of them did amazing things as pompous windbags and spoiled white-boys, this book just lacks the ability to make me care about the sometimes amazing things they did. I love Jack Kerouac, but he’s been taking a beating from the Cool Dad PC Bobos that have commandeered the beatnik (as well as all countercultural) movements, and there is nothing to really love about him here, as he is portrayed as a self-indulgent, homophobic gay manchild clamoring for money. We can’t get into any of these heads, we can’t see any of the drama, just The Information. Is there gonna be a quiz?
I hated how clean this book was, how all the beats were Saints and Geniuses. The art was clean to match the bland predictability of the factoid prose. They’re all treated as if they were MLK or Gandhi or some other pasteurized, artificial beatified (pun intended) figure. In other words, they don’t seem like real people, just historic articles.
I was looking forward to the other artists take on the Beats at the end of the book but they were for the most part disappointing. Only Beatnik Chicks by Joyce Brabner used the comic book medium in any stimulating way and what she personally had to say wasn’t altogether interesting. Jerry Lewis’ thing on Tuli Kupferberg had the most appropriate art but like the other pieces fell back on a dry recitation of the guy’s biography, purified and objectified so you can’t get into his head, but just see him as walking cardboard for the Leftist Movement and ends with a link to the Fugs website. Many other pieces serve basically as spam commercials to bastions of archaic cool like the City Lights Bookstore. This book also confuses Beats with just plain-old counterculturals, and sees too much of a smiling parallel between the Beats and the Hippies, when in my eye the two groups couldn’t be more apart. And no mention of Larry Lipton!
The 21st century has brought us sterile shit that has digitized the past into a homogenized New Liberal World Order, where lived people become whitewashed status figures, where interesting ambiguous fluctuating life becomes a string of meaningless facts and input data art. We live in a world past history, where the past people are mythologized or sneered at or respected too much to learn from.
If you’ve never heard of the Beats before or you’re in the library of some hippie middle school, then you might learn the names of some people you don’t know about so you can look them up on your laptop or ipoop and read the “original documents” that they are credited as authoring. The only guys I found in here that looked interesting was Kenneth Patchen and Slim Brundage. ...more

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Jul 07, 2009 Jackie "the Librarian" rated it really liked it

Shelves: glbt, graphicnovels, non-fiction, biography, history

I love the idea behind this book - present the leading figures of the Beat movement in graphic novel form. How fun! This is not only informative, it's a great way to get someone who might not pick up a standard biography of any of these folks to learn more about their lives.

Graphic novels work great for moving stories along, presenting action, taking you into a scene. However, it's more appropriate for short stories, and not so great for exposition. Here, especially for the Jack Kero I love the idea behind this book - present the leading figures of the Beat movement in graphic novel form. How fun! This is not only informative, it's a great way to get someone who might not pick up a standard biography of any of these folks to learn more about their lives.

Graphic novels work great for moving stories along, presenting action, taking you into a scene. However, it's more appropriate for short stories, and not so great for exposition. Here, especially for the Jack Kerouac chapter, there was so much background history to cover, that instead of episodes with movement, we get snapshots: Jack Kerouac discovers jazz, Jack Kerouac quits Columbia, Jack Kerouac meets Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac gets hooked on speed, Jack Kerouac goes to Colorado to hang out with Neal Cassady...

It was a lot of information, but none of it fleshed out. So, if you're like me, and you don't know a whole lot about the Beats, it was a little dry. Which is kind of surprising, given how sensational and how seedy some of the aspects of their lives were. Plenty of booze, drugs, and sex going on here! (But presented in a PG-13 way, so don't get too excited, folks.) And not helping the situation was the fact that I didn't like what I was seeing. Kerouac came across as a selfish, amoral man, who used women and didn't care about anyone but himself.

However, once the book moved past Kerouac, and on to Allen Ginsberg and others, there was less background information to cover, and so the authors could take more time with separate events, and it got more interesting. I found Ginsberg much pleasanter company than Kerouac, for one thing. I liked his intellectual curiosity, his generosity to other poets, and his working for causes such as gay rights.

There's one other longish chapter on Burroughs, and then many shorter chapters on other figures and places of importance. My favorite parts were the chapters on Diane di Prima, and especially Beatnik Chicks, written by Joyce Brabner, which were not just about the beat movement, but about the restrictions on women's roles back in the 50s. Women beatniks were fighting against not just 50s repression, but the whole long history of being seen as second class citizens:

Beatnik chicks wore pixie cuts or long hair with blunt cut bangs. They dressed in black clothes with black tights. They were something to laugh at. Many were too serious and too smart. Those beatnik chicks usually wore glasses that made them even more funny-looking. There was supposed to be something ridiculous about smart, serious women with glasses. That worried me.

And in this and the next panel we see a pictures of Brabner as a girl in 1961, and present day, wearing glasses.

Then she recounts the stories of the women around the Beats, who were treated as disposable by Kerouac and Ginsberg and Jones. Joan Kerouac, Hettie Jones, Joyce Johnson, Carolyn, Cassady, and others:

These women were not absurd ornaments. And they made much possible for women like me. They were "nobody's wife."

As a smart, glasses-wearing woman who appreciates being regarded as my own person, having my own career, and being more than just a wife, I was really moved by this chapter.

So, I recommend this book not for Kerouac's story, which I found as loathsome as Brabner does, but for the other Beats and the history of the movement. ...more

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Sep 24, 2011 James rated it did not like it

Booklist named this collaboration as one of the best works of graphic nonfiction published in the last year. I thought it was pretty much a waste of time - mine, Pekar's, and et al's . Harvey Pekar is brilliant when he's writing about Harvey Pekar, but this 'history' read like a high-school student's report - dry recitation of facts and criticism on the order of "I thought The Subterraneans was good. I don't know why the critics didn't like it." Adding incoherence to this desultory performance, there is a weird redundan Booklist named this collaboration as one of the best works of graphic nonfiction published in the last year. I thought it was pretty much a waste of time - mine, Pekar's, and et al's . Harvey Pekar is brilliant when he's writing about Harvey Pekar, but this 'history' read like a high-school student's report - dry recitation of facts and criticism on the order of "I thought The Subterraneans was good. I don't know why the critics didn't like it." Adding incoherence to this desultory performance, there is a weird redundancy that I found reminiscent of reading the Bible - you know, "God created man and woman. Male and female created He them," which , in fact, made this snoozefest read like a conflation of two indifferent high-school reports. Here's an example of what I mean:
"Always interested in gaining more knowledge about drugs and spirituality, Ginsberg took a trip to Tangier, then through Europe to India, to broaden his studies in 1961, and did not return to North America until 1963. In 1961, he took a round-the-world trip to enhance his spirituality. He ended up in India and stayed there for two years."
At one point Pekar claims that Burroughs performed armed robberies while living the Times Square hustler life portrayed in Junky. It's the first I've heard of it, and, while it makes for a sexier story than rolling drunks, I can do without a lazy schoolchild's Liberty Valance-y history, especially from someone I really admire.
The Ed Piskor art featured in the majority of the pieces is awful. The Holy Trinity are only distinguishable by crude signifiers: Ginsburg is the one with the glasses, Burroughs is the one with the dark circles under his eyes ('cuz he's a dope fiend, see) and Kerouac is the one who looks like a really pudgy Sal Mineo.
The sole meritorious exception in this nonentity is Joyce Brabner's "Beat Chicks," which is a superb reassessment of the role of women in Beat culture. It's incisive, deeply felt, the art (by Summer McClinton) is head and shoulders above that found in the the rest of the volume, and it turned me on to the very hep Suzuki Beane. ...more

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Jan 14, 2016 dianne rated it did not like it

A really bad graphic novel about the lives of the Beats. The storytelling is dull, dry, and pedantic. Methinks the Beats would have hated its sterility. The level of misogyny is mythic. There are a few different contributors but only one or two with any talent - it is as though we are supposed to give it all a big “hey OK!” because it's about Kerouac (spoiled mama’s boy who hated women) and Ginsberg et al. Yes most of us already knew Burroughs was a waste of air but here he is taking up more spa ...more

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Aug 23, 2010 Wallace rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, graphic-novel

Type: {Commuter Read: format lends easily to starting/stopping – and- Impress Your Friends Read: notable; prize-winner or all around intelligent conversation piece.}
Rating: {I’m Lovin’ It: Very Entertaining!}

Why You’re Reading It:

You’re interested in the beat generation an would like an easy overview
You enjoy graphic novels
You’re a Harvey Pekar fan
What I Thought:

Everyone knows about the beats, but not everyone knows about the beats. I w ...more

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Jun 16, 2009 HeavyReader rated it really liked it

Shelves: comics-graphic-novels, life-stories, us-history

This book is really GREAT!

It starts off with the big three of the Beat Generation--Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs--but also has plenty of info about other, equally important Beat writers.

I wish there had been more about women who were also Beat writers. (Why are we told explicitly how many kids Diane di Prima birthed, but are not given the same statistics about the reproduction of any of the men?) There is the awesome "Beatnik Chicks" section written ...more

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Oct 23, 2009 Carol rated it did not like it

My dislike of this book is not really the fault of the authors (although they often made Jack Kerouac look like Rod Blagojevich). I simply have decided, after years of study, that with the exception of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, the Beats were a vile lot of slumming degenerates.

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Jun 08, 2009 Michellette rated it did not like it

This is the most poorly written, poorly edited garbage I have ever read. I was fooled by the Daniel Clowesesque artwork into thinking there might be anything of substance in these pages.

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Aug 13, 2019 Ed Erwin rated it it was ok

Shelves: nonfiction, comics, history

Most of the text is by Harvey Pekar and is nowhere near as interesting as when he wrote about his own life. Most of the art is by Ed Piskor, and is OK but he's done more interesting biographies when he writes the text himself. (See Hip Hop Family Tree.)

The male "beats" were often jerks. That is why the story about "beatnik chicks" is a welcome relief. The best thing here for me is that it allowed me to discover whimsical poet/illustrator Kenneth Patchen. (The section about him can be read online here courtesy of the ...more

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Feb 17, 2019 nadia (( disquieting thing )) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: comics-graphic-novels-manga, the-beats, biography

2.5/5 for the women, really, and the sentiment.

as a 21st century woman, i despise the majority of what the men (again, the majority) of the beat generation stood for and represented. as an english literature enthusiast, however, it would be stupid of me not to acknowledge at least ginsberg's impact on american (and world) poetry and social consciousness, and burroughs-kerouac influence on prose. so, yeah, that's answering the question why.

in truth, i also just enjoy reading about the ...more

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Jun 04, 2009 Ryan rated it liked it

Good but uneven. The first half treats the lives of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs; the second half examines some of the lesser-known beats including Kenneth Patchen, one of my favorite authors - I was unaware that he was included in this book when I picked it up.

As a history or biographic comic, this certainly does the trick. You get a sense of the small social circle that birthed the original beats, as well as the generally unpleasant character of Kerouac and his friends. It's an ...more

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Jan 25, 2010 Kristen rated it liked it

Shelves: comic-graphic

As a fan of the Beats I really enjoyed this brief history and that it included a section on Beatnik women is always a plus. However I think if this was a first introduction you would be lost. This is for people already familiar with the characters described as all the histories are extremely short and some poorly done. The various artists that created the graphics make this interesting and for the most part it is a quick read.

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Sep 16, 2018 Sandra rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

And now I HAVE to go back and watch 'Kill Your Darlings' again. I loved that they included the most ignored women of the Beat Generation. Especially the Sassy 'Beatnick Chicks' session. Ah man. This book took me back to my university days, especially the night I encountered Ginsberg's "Howl". And one must comment on the art. Ah! This is a beautiful book!

P.S. I need to listen to The Fugs.

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Jun 21, 2018 Corey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Marvelous cartoon overview of the beats, from the early 50s to Tuli and the Fugs.

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Jan 10, 2012 zxvasdf rated it really liked it

The Beat Generation has been glamorized for subsequent generations, the romance of the open road and stripped inhibitions tickling the experimental nature of our socially constrained selves. We admire these men for being brave enough to be so true to their convictions as to submit to every whim and desire to be wrangled into something vicarious for the reader.

The truth is the long swathes of sullen apathy between frantic moments, the twitch of unfulfilled addiction, the thing that puts the beat The Beat Generation has been glamorized for subsequent generations, the romance of the open road and stripped inhibitions tickling the experimental nature of our socially constrained selves. We admire these men for being brave enough to be so true to their convictions as to submit to every whim and desire to be wrangled into something vicarious for the reader.

The truth is the long swathes of sullen apathy between frantic moments, the twitch of unfulfilled addiction, the thing that puts the beat in the Beat Generation. Offering a perspective one doesn't often receive while digesting the canon of Beat writers' works, The Beats: A Graphic History connects the dots for the Generation's Holy Trinity and exposes a nitty gritty we probably wouldn't have grokked by ourselves.

Most of the revelations concerned Kerouac himself; because he is regarded as the figurehead of the movement, most of the later reviews are of praise and admiration. The darker aspect of Kerouac's frustration, his misogyny, his inability leave home to completely strike out on his own. Burroughs is as reptilian as ever, likeable in his unlikeability; Burroughs has always been my favorite, because he has a way with words, and of building strange, offensive worlds with them. His life is stripped out for all to see, leathery and repulsive, but you can't help but stare into that sun. For myself Ginsburg has increased in esteem. Ginsberg, although a little strange, even for the standards of the times, was REAL. He truly believed in what he said, and the madman shed all shame of the flesh and emotion so that he could walk among us a weird hippie prophet.

But... after the prosaic and too-short vignettes of other heroes of the Generation, the real gem of this book is revealed: the little recognized group within the Beats: women. Yes, the beatnik women and the women who loved the men who went away on whim's wind. It was a hard life, but they defined entire generations as much as their male counterparts did, although their influence isn't as easily recognized within the turbulence of Kerouac and Ginsberg.

This book was a illuminating change of perspective for this fan of the Beat Generation, and it has caused me to revise my opinion of some of their works, especially Kerouac's. ...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Mick Phillipe rated it really liked it

I picked this book off of the library shelf because it looked intriguing. And I didn't know ANYTHING about the beat poets. I'm not really poetry fan either, but I've always wanted to know about these people. It's so strange to think that they existed during a time of cookie cutter houses and perfect 50s housewives.. and they were NUTS. I could never dare to live like they did, and I think most people can agree with me on this.
I'm not talking about the sex and drugs part, but the fact that they ...more

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Jul 17, 2010 Elizabeth rated it liked it

Shelves: graphic-novels, adult-non-fiction

I can't remember when I read this book though I do remember a red haired boy from Lowell tried to impress me on the train by telling me Jack Kerouac was also from Lowell (which I knew since I had just read that two pages before he told me). I imagine it was shortly after it came out in the spring of 2009 but may have been more recently. The brief biological sketches of Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg were interesting...sort of. I loved the artwork, but I could have just read a bunch of wikipedia ...more

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Jan 18, 2010 Malbadeen rated it it was ok

The first 1/2 was interesting if nothing else for it's titillation factor but the 2nd 1/2 seemed too scattered - I gave up on it.

*note to SanFrancisco - I LOVE you, you should know by now how much I LOVE you. I love your murals, I love your restaurants, I love, love, love China Town in the morning (the colors! the buckets of spices! the exotic vegetables - the POTENTIAL!) uhhhh and ahhhh and ohhh the neighborhood gardens, the buildings, the Castro

but

please

eno ...more

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Aug 27, 2016 Thomas Garcia rated it it was ok

At times amusing and entertaining, at other times disappointing. The numerous writers in this collection of comics offer skewed, often conflicting, interpretations of the Beats that occasionally perpetuate misinformation or hide information. Sometimes these interpretations conflict with one another, which leads the reader to conclude that these are simply interpretations of Beat history. However. the subtitle, "A Graphic History" suggests that the book is objective.

In addition, some ...more

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May 18, 2012 Belinda rated it really liked it

Shelves: graphic-novels

Very nice summation of the Beat movement by Harvey Pekar and many artists and writers--all of it carries Pekar's dark humor and opinions. The art is wonderful--varying from bio to bio. My only real complaint is the re-telling of the "misogynist" attitudes the male beats are always accused of and rumor mongering about Kerouac's sexuality (does not matter to me, but it's been called out as untrue by many people close to Kerouac.) I always find it ironic that people praise Ginsberg to the moon as t ...more

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Apr 14, 2009 Jeremy rated it really liked it

Shelves: comics

This is a really enjoyable, boiler-plate history of the Beats. The main focus for the first 100 pages is on Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. Pekar really peels away the mystique that these guys have developed and shows the people behind the mythos (and what terrible people they could be, racist, homophobic, openly misogynist, pedopheliac, murderous bastards they were).
The second half of the book is dedicated to the perennially over-looked figures of the movement like d.a. Levy, Diane De p ...more

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Sep 01, 2009 Terry rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, graphic-art

I just watched "American Splendor" so I was definitely in the mood for this book! It's too bad the opening biography of Kerouac is kind of tedious--first he moves here, then he moves there, then he goes over there, then he comes back here, then he--blah. The other biographies are more interesting, and the authors do include a great number of writers who tend to get some short shrift (in the mainstream anyway, those people who really aren't familiar with poets or poetic movements), although the s ...more

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May 11, 2009 Theresa rated it really liked it

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the lives of the Beats in a graphic novel format. It is such a fitting way to tell their stories, and should be considered an important contribution to the ongoing tale of the Beat generation. This book, I feel, both adds to their mystique and tears down a lot of the wonder and awe surrounding them. Really, they were a bunch of loathsome characters--scumbags--misogynist jerks. Nonetheless, they did change the world in their own way, broke down walls, surely. Th ...more

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May 20, 2012 Irwan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, finished

I saw the best minds of The Beats generation.
Enviable for their heroic freedom, non-conformity, and original, long-lasting, liberating impact in the history.
Not so for their pains and torturous life. Some self inflicted. Short lived, yet-possibly-meaningful lives.

I saw the best minds of my generation immersed in the perverted, middle-class, non-stop streaming of non information.
One-second wisdom of statuses and tweets, scraping for the minuscule of drama, one and then to the next.
...more

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Dec 02, 2009 Gary rated it really liked it

Shelves: own, the-beats, art, literary-history, comics-and-graphic-novels, favorites

I had a sense this would be very good and it was. It is set up nicely. Having separate chapters on Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs. Then it swithces gears and gets into the lesser known beats, the SF scene and the City Lights Bookstore.
This is a must have for anyone interested in the beats, and the medium of graphics really fits well. It is hilarious, and informative. It should prove a springboard for many in discovering more about this dynamic time.
Within the graphic story it also m ...more

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May 10, 2015 Mark rated it it was ok

There's is nothing wrong with the artwork and I generally like Harvey Pekar, but this graphic volume that illustrates the lives of both the dominant and lesser figures of the Beat movement has a feel of just being dumbed down biography.
It may work as an introduction for someone completely unfamiliar with Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs...etc. But if you have some knowledge of these authors and would like to know more, you would be better served in reading some full length biographies.

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Apr 02, 2009 Joe rated it it was ok

The 3 main stories are annoying. Kerouac story is particularly annoying. Other material is a mixed bag. A few stories in the latter half of the book are drawn well and entertaining, but there's also some really stupid stuff in here. If you're really into the Beats this may be even more annoying than if you're not. In short, this book is mostly annoying and not recommended.

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Sep 13, 2010 Nick Kives rated it it was ok

This book starts out strong and interesting. First 100 pages are on Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs, but then the next 100 pages are just short blurbs about 20 other people. Not enough to give real information about them except to list their name.

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