Become a rebellious intellectual bohemian beatnik.
Embrace your inner rebel with our curated list of beatnik bohemian books for the intellectual nonconformist. Discover counterculture classics and radical reads that inspire free thought and artistic defiance.
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America (the Book)
by Jon Stewart
Offers tongue-in-cheek insight into American democracy with coverage of such topics as the republican qualities of ancient Rome, the antics of our nation's founders, and the ludicrous nature of today's media.
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Grendel
by John Gardner
This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic. "An extraordinary achievement."âNew York Times The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This is the novel William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouacâs classic American novel of freedom and the search for originality that defined a generation âAn authentic work of art.ââThe New York Times Inspired by Jack Kerouacâs adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naĂŻvetĂŠ and wild abandon and imbued with Kerouacâs love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hopeâa book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Hunter S. Thompson
50th Anniversary Edition ⢠With an introduction by Caity Weaver, acclaimed New York Times journalist This cult classic of gonzo journalism is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken. Also a major motion picture directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.
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ID: 0140149295
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The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test
by Tom Wolfe
Wolfe details his wild cross-country ride with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, offering a vivid portrayal of the hippy subculture in its own joyful, psychedelic, excessive, and terrifying colors.
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The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caufield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.
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Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegutâs masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is âa desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth centuryâ (Time). Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time ⢠One of The Atlanticâs Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the worldâs great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barberâs son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming âunstuck in time.â An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegutâs writingâthe political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive witâthat have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim OâBrien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegutâs words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as âthe kind of writer who made peopleâyoung people especiallyâwant to write.â George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be âthe great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.â More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegutâs portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own eraâs uncertainties.
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Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to some one dangerously sane -- a masterpiece of our time.
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X
by Malcolm X
If there was any one man who articulated the anger, the struggle, and the beliefs of African Americans in the 1960s, that man was Malxolm X. His AUTOBIOGRAPHY is now an established classic of modern America, a book that expresses like none other the crucial truth about our times. "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." TEH NEW YORKTIMES
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
An international bestseller and the basis for the hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of the defining works of the 1960s. In this classic novel, Ken Keseyâs hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the storyâs shocking climax. âBRILLIANT!ââTime âA SMASHING ACHIEVEMENT...A TRULY ORIGINAL NOVEL!ââMark Schorer âMr. Kesey has created a world that is convincing, alive and glowing within its own boundaries...His is a large, robust talent, and he has written a large, robust book.ââSaturday Review
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Fight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk
This underground classic first published in 1996 tells the darkly funny story of a god-forsaken man who discovers that his rage at living in a world filled with failure and lies cannot be pacified by an empty consumer culture.
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The First Third
by Neal Cassady
Autobiographical writing by the "hero" of Jack Kerouac's On the road.
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides ⢠Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wildeâs story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the authorâs most popular work. The tale of Dorian Grayâs moral disintegration caused a scandal when it ďŹrst appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novelâs corrupting inďŹuence, he responded that there is, in fact, âa terrible moral in Dorian Gray.â Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wildeâs homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Grayâs relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, âBasil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to beâin other ages, perhaps.â
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The Outsiders
by S. E. Hinton
Over 50 years of an iconic classic! This international bestseller and inspiration for a beloved movie is a heroic story of friendship and belonging. No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he's got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his friendsâtrue friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is beating up on âgreasersâ like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to expectâuntil the night someone takes things too far. The Outsiders is a dramatic and enduring work of fiction that laid the groundwork for the YA genre. S. E. Hinton's classic story of a boy who finds himself on the outskirts of regular society remains as powerful today as it was the day it was first published. "The Outsiders transformed young-adult fiction from a genre mostly about prom queens, football players and high school crushes to one that portrayed a darker, truer world." âThe New York Times "Taut with tension, filled with drama." âThe Chicago Tribune "[A] classic coming-of-age book." âPhiladelphia Daily News A New York Herald Tribune Best Teenage Book A Chicago Tribune Book World Spring Book Festival Honor Book An ALA Best Book for Young Adults Winner of the Massachusetts Children's Book Award
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The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
A group of expatriates travel from Paris to the Pamplona bullfights.
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Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck
A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him. "A thriller, a gripping tale . . . that you will not set down until it is finished. Steinbeck has touched the quick." âThe New York Times