Tales of Beatnik Glory [Paperback]

Ed Sanders (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 8, 2004

Ed Sanders’s mock-heroic (and heroic) odyssey follows poet, filmmaker, and activist Sam Thomas, editor of Dope, Fucking, and Social Change, and a variegated cast of castoffs, dropouts, peaceniks, freakniks, and mendicant filthniks, from Kansas through the beatnik and hippie countercultures of New York City’s Lower East Side and Greenwich Village. From the Freedom Rides and confrontations with the Alabama Klan to the “hate-dappled” Summer of Love, Tales of Beatnik Glory is the epic of America in the sixties, in a language of droll invention and stoned mythopoesis, from a man who once dared to exorcise the Pentagon. This revised edition adds two new volumes and includes twenty-five never-before-published stories

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Here's another alternate life fantasy: If I were a Beat, [Ed] Sanders is the Beat I'd most like to have been. Virtually the only one I really admire as a poet: his Egyptological and classical Greek learning inflect, in a brilliant way, his vision of the East Village as a site of comic, mythic, pornographic legends. Beatitude fused with grungitude: a sensibility best exemplified in prose in Sanders' Tales of Beatnik Glory."

Product Details

• Paperback: 784 pages
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press; 2nd edition (December 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560256524
• ISBN-13: 978-1560256526
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,210,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Bush's Amerika, Sanders' "Glory" more necessary than ever, February 12, 2005

By 

R. Cook (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tales of Beatnik Glory (Paperback)

I'm thrilled this book has finally arrived! I have the previous printing of this book, the Citadel Underground edition which contained Volumes One and Two of Sanders' marvelous autobiographical/historical tales, set in a time long long ago and (sadly) very far away, and I have periodically checked the bookstores over the years to see if the expanded book (promised by Sanders years ago) had ever seen fruition.

At almost double the the last set of tales, this presents a great value even for those who (like me) own and cherish a previous edition of this book. Young people who read this book will be amazed to learn there was a time in America where one did not have ransom one's life merely to house and feed oneself, when one could be free to pursue personal pursuits, whether artistic or merely whimsical, where a sense of play and of hope were in the zeitgeist. Oldsters who lived it and semi-oldsters (such as myself) who were too young to have lived it but who observed it will take these tales as a tonic, a vivid reminder that life can be hopeful and creative and fun, can be other than mere grubbing for subsistence, can be affirmative rather than merely resigned, and that one can live as one chooses rather than be co-opted.

Sanders tells these tales with brio and zest, and anyone who does not at least partly envy the lives lived by his characters must be presumed to have never realized he or she lives in a Platonic cave, yet to actually experience the light of day.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Would Have Read It At One Sitting Had it Not Been So Long!, January 14, 2011

By 

Joseph S. Romaninsky "joesreads" (Gouldsboro, PA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tales of Beatnik Glory (Paperback)

This massive volume is an exhuberant, often poignent, celebration of the counterculture(s)
of the Sixties. If there is an ounce of the bohemian in your soul, if you are fortunate to
have lived during that tumultuous, nutty, important decade, or if you are young and have
wondered what the nostalgic fuss of your elders is all about, this is a book to read. For
this old Beat Wannabe, a book to cherish. The many interrelated tales of a great cast of
characters give the feel and the day-to-day details of the hip world of artists, activists,
and memorable eccentrics like no other I have read. Right on!

5.0 out of 5 stars A true addition to the literature of America - really!, January 13, 2012

By 

Clayton Emery - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tales of Beatnik Glory (Paperback)

Simply amazing book that draws you in and won't let go. A cadre of misfits, losers, lovers, idealists, grifters, dreamers, and others wash up in the Lower East Side and interact. Everyone's busy, everyone's moving, everyone's weird in their own adorable way. Life bumps along for the beatnik-turned-hippie culture, morphing as inside and outside influences beat on it. Little snippets of stories interconnect and interweave lives. The color is amazing, the pictures are "You are there!" the humor and philosophy are tied in with masterful layers of details and asides. You really care about every person Sanders writes about, no matter who they are. And he pulls no punches, doesn't gloss over. Women are angry about beatnik men. People steal from friends. Some flip out. Others shirk when called upon. And through the community wander cops, moms, kids, elders, reporters. And the language is lyrical and haunting in places. As two disgruntled beat/hips leave for good, they go off hitchhiking "into the lonely beauty of America." This book will stick in your head for the rest of your life!