The Beat Generation
Explore the definitive Beat Generation reading list, featuring Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Allen Ginsberg's Howl, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, and Neal Cassady's The First Third.
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Chronicles the way of life of the beat generation as Dean Moriarty speeds across America.
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Howl, and Other Poems
by Allen Ginsberg
This collection of poems by Ginsberg created a sensation when it was first published in 1956, becoming the subject of an obscenity trial and changing the literary landscape forever.
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Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.
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The First Third
by Neal Cassady
Autobiographical writing by the "hero" of Jack Kerouac's On the road.
