Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac's City (Paperback)

by Bill Morgan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
If you still groove to the work of the Beat poets, and Kerouac is your idol, a guided visit to their New York stomping grounds is a mandatory pilgrimage. If, alternatively, you're going to New York but feel overwhelmed by its size and options, a focus--taking a walking tour of Kerouac land, for instance--could provide an entertaining structure. Whatever your reasons, if a Kerouac junket is in your cards, Morgan's guidebook provides all the history, stories, neighborhood routes, and Beat trivia you could desire.

Each tour is easy to follow. Morgan tells you how long the tours take to walk (most are a couple of hours), how to reach the starting points by subway and bus, and includes a map of the route region, complete with labeled highlights, followed by a narrative that's a pleasure to read, evincing poetic talent, historic knowledge, and specific, precise instructions. Take the Columbia University tour, for instance. Starting on the east side of Broadway at 116th Street in front of Columbia's main gates, and lasting two to two and a half hours, it takes in the scene where the Beat Generation first appeared in the 1940s "like a wild seed in a city garden." Stopping at McMillin Theater (where Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky performed a poetry reading on February 5, 1959), Columbia Bookstore (site of a Ginsberg vision that led to his book The Visionary Poetics of Allen Ginsberg), and Low Library Plaza (site of many early beat photos), the tour continues by St. Paul's Chapel, Hamilton Hall, Butler Library, and the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity, passes the room Ginsberg took in 1948, the 1944 domicile of the Kerouacs and Joan Vollmer Adams, and the brick apartment building where the Kerouacs lived with Joan Adams, then continues by Riverside Park, the West End Bar, the Yorkshire Residence Club, and an apartment where William S. Burroughs once lived. There are 23 sites in all. Morgan explains each site's Beat significance, including quotes from poems and novels that allude to it. Morgan details nine such walks, taking in Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Queens, Yonkers, and the Bronx. With a who's who of Beat personalities and dozens of historic photos, The Beat Generation is as much a contribution to the literary world as it is a useful and enlightening travel guide. --Stephanie Gold

Product Description

Set off on the eternal trail of the Beat experience in the city that inspired many of Jack Kerouac's best-loved novels including On the Road, Vanity of Duluoz, The Town and the City, and Desolation Angels. This is the ultimate guide to Kerouac's New York, packed with photos of the Beat Generation and filled with undercover information and little-known anecdotes.

Eight easy-to-follow walking tours guide you to:

Greenwich Village bars and cafés where Kerouac and his friends Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs, Diane di Prima, Gregory Corso, Hettie and LeRoi Jones, John Clellon Holmes, Joyce Johnson, and others read poetry, drank, turned-on, and talked all night long.

The Chelsea-district apartment where Jack wrote On the Road.

Midtown clubs where Beat poets mingled with artists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and listened to jazz and blues greats Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday.

Times Square, a magnet for Kerouac and the Beats.

Columbia University, where the original Beats first met and began a revolution in American literature and culture.

Each tour includes a map of the neighborhood, subway and bus information, and an insider's angle on Jack Kerouac's life in New York. A must for Beat enthusiasts and critics.

Bill Morgan is a painter and archival consultant working in New York City. His previous publications include The Works of Allen Ginsberg 1941-1994: A Descriptive Bibliography and Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Comprehensive Bibliography. He has worked as an archivist for Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Timothy Leary.

Product Details

• Paperback: 166 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872863255
• ISBN-13: 978-0872863255
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 4.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #723,853 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great stuff for beat locals and tourists alike, July 28, 2000

By	phigirl (new york, ny) - See all my reviews

of course anyone who lives in new york city can tell you where the white horse and cedar tavern are, but do they all know that where sam goody now stands on sixth avenue and ninth street is the very same place that the cafeteria kerouac wrote about extensively in visions of cody once stood?

this book is filled with a lot of well-known and plenty of not so well known places where various members of the beat generation ate, performed, lived, got drunk in, or otherwise played out their lives. the tours are broken down by area and there are clear directions to help you find where you're going (even if the place no longer exists). each tour also begins with a street map of the area covered and clearly numbered destinations, which was very helpful, although i did wish that the book had also come with an overview map of all manhattan and destinations so that i could more easily combine tours or skip around to places of interest if i didn't want to follow a complete tour.

each stopping place in the tour book includes a paragraph or two on why the place is important to beat history and who/what occured there. although the title of the book claims that new york was "jack kerouac's city," the tours really include many of the other important beat figures as well as a few others that were influenced by the beat movement, such as bob dylan.

this is a great way for beat aficionados visiting new york to get a taste of the city, and a fun way for locals to spend an afternoon or two discovering new spots and seeing familiar places in a new light.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than wandering, June 6, 2000

By	MyComa - See all my reviews

It would be next to impossible to find these places on your own. Even more impossible to learn as much about each of the sites as is presented in this guide. Each tour follows a logical route and there are plenty of stops that you probably never would have thought of--eg. Serpico's apartment, the former site of Thomas Wolfe's East 8th St. apartment. Using this guide is a great way to see the Village, East and West. And the insight will keep you reading even as you're moving to the next stop. Take your time. Spread the tours over a couple of afternoons. And linger for a while in Washington Square.

A great companion to this book is "The Beat Generation in New York." I wouldn't recommend carrying this heavy book around with you, but after you've finished the tours, open the book to look at the pictures taken at many of the places you've just visited.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shoe leather resident tourism, May 23, 2005

By	Heath Row "h3athrow" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Having moved to New York not long ago, I've been devouring the history and architecture of the city. This book blends the best of both, adding a third party to the mix -- literature. Dividing the city -- mostly Manhattan -- into eight two-hour walking tours, this guidebook offers literary references, beat-gen biographical information, and urban commentary in a useful, insightful style. The book is due an update -- the Gotham Book Mart has moved and several once-vacant lots are no longer undeveloped -- but this book has made for several wonderful walking weekends, and I know I'll retrace my steps in the future.