Levi Asher

Beats in Time: a Literary Generation's Legacy Levi Asher

How does a 40-year-old literary generation suddenly become relevant again? It happened in the mid-1990s, when popular interest in Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and the rest of the colorful, profane gang exploded around the United States of America and the entire world. Literary Kicks, a website born in 1994, was there to witness it all, standing at the crossroads of emerging Internet culture and Beat inspiration. BEATS IN TIME, a new collection of essays and interviews from the archives of Literary Kicks, captures some of the freshest, most insightful and most irreverent writing about a new literary "craze" focused on some brilliant, eccentric old jazz poets, who barely saw it coming. Here's the tale of Levi Asher's audition for Francis Ford Coppola's movie version of 'On The Road', and John Perry Barlow's touching explanation of how Neal Cassady inspired the Grateful Dead song "Cassidy". Don Carpenter reminisces about a 1964 poetry reading with Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch, Laki Vazakas pays tribute to Marty Matz, Ray Freed pays tribute to Jack Micheline, Robert Creeley talks about web literature, W. S. Merwin and Allen Ginsberg get into a heated argument over forced nakedness as Buddhist prayer, Patricia Elliot describes William S. Burroughs's funeral in Kansas, and Michael McClure describes, on the fiftieth anniversary of the legendary Six Gallery poetry reading, what it all meant. BEATS IN TIME also includes interviews with William S. Burroughs by Lee Ranaldo, Diane DiPrima by Joseph Matheny, John Allen Cassady by Levi Asher and David Amram by Bill Ectric. The book's features an unusual centerpiece: a long recorded email thread featuring over 50 voices on the BEAT-L mailing list during the hours just before and after the announcement of Allen Ginsberg's death. Think you've already read everything there is to read about the Beat Generation? Check out the BEATS IN TIME and be surprised.