The Beats: A Graphic History

Written by Harvey Pekar, Paul Buhle, and others
Art by Ed Piskor and others

Like a lot of people, I went through a pretty heavy Beat phase in my last couple of years of high school, which carried over into university.  I loved Kerouac's free-flowing and frequently annoying prose, and tried my best to get into Burroughs, although that was often pretty difficult.  I read some of the poetry, and developed a long-lasting love of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's work.  I did, however, outgrow them, and have only occasionally strayed into their territory since I turned 22.

This 'graphic history' was a nice reintroduction to some old friends.  The book mostly consists of graphic biographies of the Beats, although the further one gets into the book, the more free-flowing the comic strips are.  The first one hundred twenty pages or so are made up of biographies written by Harvey Pekar and drawn by Ed Piskor that focus on the central figures of the movement.  Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, and William S. Burroughs get lengthy entries, as befits their status as the holy trinity of beat-ness.  These parts are great, and while they didn't tell me much that I didn't already know, I appreciate the conciseness and economy of their tales.

After that, Pekar and Piskor focus on the minor beats, giving a few pages each to people like Philip Whelan, Ferlinghetti, and LeRoy Jones (Amiri Baraka).  At this point, the book is given over to a number of independent cartoonists, and becomes much more erratic in its quality.  That said, some of the best parts of this book are included at the end.

The bio of Kenneth Patchen (by Pekar and Nick Thorkelson) does a great job of infusing the text with Patchen's own poetry.  It was at this point in reading that I realised how little room was being given over in this book to examine or sample the Beats' actual writing.  This was a refreshing change.

Perhaps the best segment in this whole book though, is Joyce Brabner and Summer McClinton's 'Beatnik Chicks', an exploration of the women who were on the periphery of, yet central to, the Beat Movement.

In all, I appreciated this well-researched and well-produced book.