Beats & Company: Portrait of a Literary Generation by Ann Charters (review)

64 Western American Literature through her brother Ted and was immediately enchanted by her fragile beauty and refinement. She was the Jungian anima as princess and soul-mate, repre­ senting everything missing from hisrough life as sailor, tramp, and work-beast. His infatuation lasted for two years, inspiring a feverish spell of self-education and determination to succeed as a writer, until—ironically—through the same educational process he recognized that her bourgeois culture was gilded, not golden. His romantic passion cooled almost as quickly as it had flamed, and by the time he went to the Klondike in 1897, they were good friends only. Friends they remained, and London faithfully inscribed his new books for her, until her death from tuberculosis in 1915. Scrupulously edited and handsomely bound, both of Noto’s works are attractive additions to the burgeoning library of Londoniana. With a Heart Full of Love is especially valuable in providing new information about the Applegarth family as well as fresh insights into London’s complex personality. Unfortunately, it has been published only in a gift edition of 351 copies with a price tag of $75 each. What is needed is a larger printing at a more modest price, for this book is too important to be limited to London aficionados. EARLE LABOR Centenary College of Louisiana Beats & Company: Portrait of a Literary Generation. By Ann Charters. (New York: Dolphin/Doubleday, 1986. 159 pages, $29.95.) As John Clellon Holmes notes in his introduction to this collection of photographs, the Beat Generation is perhaps the most photographed literary movement in American history. Yet while the photo files of The Village Voice are probably full of “typical beatnik” shots when berets, goatees, and black sweaters were faddish, few photographers had the advantage of knowing the Beat writers well enough to capture anything deeper than simple snapshots. Ann Charters, a Charles Olson scholar and the first biographer of Jack Kerouac, knew the men and women she photographed, and for the past twenty years she has been collecting and writing about the works of Beat writers. She captures a unique warmth and vibrant energy in these candid portraits of Holmes, Kerouac, Olson, Ginsberg, Kesey, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti, Waldman, Creeley, Corso, Snyder, and others. Few are posed shots: Kesey rides his tractor on his Oregon farm; Ferlinghetti talks to Corso on the sidewalk outside City Lights; Holmes and Ginsberg stand grieving at Kerouac’sfuneral. Unlike the purposefully posed portraits of the Lost Generation writers in Paris decades earlier, there is a rush of things going on in this collection. The poets seem to be caught in mid-sentence, often on their way to somewhere else. This seems indicative of the movement, captured in a book which chronicles the romance of that energetic time. Though many of the photographs were taken within the past 10 to 15 years, gray hair, wrinkles, and death don’t squelch or date the romance or commitment these writers evoke. Reviews 65 While the text offers nothing new to anyone familiar with the author’s work or the history of the Beat Generation, Beats & Company is just the kind of book that might spark a young student to seek the important books of the movement and read them for the first time. It isa perfect companion to all the biographies and roman-a-clef novels for which the movement isknown. Critics have said the Beats may be the last of the literary “generations.” The Beat Generation, with its flurry of manifestoes, was a movement that evolved from certain hungers and common causes that today may seem passé to some. Perusing the pages of Beats & Company, however, one cannot help but wonder what forces may enliven our literature again with the spirit and guts that fueled the urgent convictions of the Beats. RICHARD ARDINGER Boise, Idaho The Beat Vision: A Primary Sourcebook. Edited by Arthur and Kit Knight. (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987. 292 pages, $18.95.) The editors offer two explicit reasons for publishing this collection: it documents “the only serious literary movement indigenous to this country,” and it strikes a blow for freedom “because the complacency and the totali­ tarian atmosphere that characterized much of the...