For thousands of young Westerners, South Korea is an escape from reality. It is a place where money is easy and booze is cheap. By day they toil in crooked cram-schools, teaching the peninsula’s violent, video game-obsessed youth. At night they cut loose and embrace Korea’s famous drinking culture.   Among these disaffected young teachers is Alexander. Young, naïve and a little drunker than most, he is struggling to cope with life on the “wrong side of the world”. In The Dog Farm we follow Alex from girl to girl, beer to beer, across Korea, to Japan, and back again, in an unlikely love story.  "The heartfelt cavorting of Jack Kerouac across America is recalled in The Dog Farm." - 10 Magazine  "Hunter S. Thompson would’ve been proud. The Dog Farm is much like a gin and tonic – a bit too bitter for some and just what the doctor ordered for others." - Chris in South Korea  "Wills’ text remains an entertaining novel throughout, particularly for readers with experience living and/or working in South Korea. Alexander’s descriptions of day-to-day life for an expat in Korea will ring true to moments we have all experienced. I found the novel triggering memories that left me nodding in agreement… In addition, Wills’ prose is fluid and easy to read – a great achievement for his first piece of long-form fiction. I will certainly be seeking out his future work." - Daegu Compass

The Dog Farm

Literature & Fiction

Wills, David S.

Genre Fiction

Beatdom Books

Scientology is largely overlooked in major texts about the life and work of William S. Burroughs, author of some of the most notorious literature of the 20th century. Its importance in the creation of the Cut-up Method and Burroughs’ view of language as a virus is undermined by the omission of details regarding his interest in the religion over the course of a decade – certainly the most creatively fertile period of his life. Instead, biographers and critics tend to focus on his other obsessions in the realm of fringe science, and on the period during the early 1970s when Burroughs left the religion and began a public crusade against it.  However, Burroughs’ involvement with L. Ron Hubbard’s organization was no fleeting interest; he was a fully-fledged member and even obtained the rank of ‘clear’ – a prestigious achievement for a Scientologist. Scientology ultimately inspired the plot, the structure, and various elements of some of Burroughs’ most important works, including The Soft Machine and The Wild Boys. His fascination was genuine, and his progress through the hierarchical structure of the Church signals a dedication that he would later downplay after being excommunicated in 1969.  Now, for the first time, his life and literature are reexamined in the light of newly uncovered information about Burroughs’ fascination with this ‘weird cult,’ as he once described it.  "an engrossing read" - Tony Ortega

Scientologist!: William S. Burroughs and the 'Weird Cult'

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

This is the poetry of the San Francisco Renaissance of the 50s, reconsidered as literature: Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s lyrical cityscapes, Jack Kerouac’s blues and haikus, Allen Ginsberg’s saxophone prophecies, Gregory Corso’s obsessive odes, John Wieners’ true confessions, Michael McClure’s physical hymns, Philip Lamantia’s surreal passions, Gary Snyder’s work songs, Philip Whalen’s loose sutras, Lew Welch’s hermit visions, David Meltzer’s improvisations and discoveries, and Bob Kaufman’s jazz meditations. 
 Scholarship dances with poetic intuition and insight. Skip the footnotes, or not. Larry Beckett generates where it's at, cats. —Dan Barth, poet and Beat scholar, author of Fast Women Beautiful: Zen, Beat, Baseball Poems 
 I was genuinely knocked-out by [this] book. A generous &amp; insightful work on poets writ w/ a poet's mindful heart. Because of its timeline, I assume (&amp; hope) there will be more. It would seem immodest for me to blast a blurb, but my enthusiasm is genuine &amp; immediate. —David Meltzer 
 Larry Beckett's vivid, highly readable testament to the Beats provides a useful introduction to this wild-side school-out-of-school of American poetry, identifying the movement's twentieth century "oral scripture" (to quote his essay on Philip Whalen) as enduring Gospel for the Millennium. — Tom Clark poet, author of Jack Kerouac: A Biography 
 Oh sure, it's all these poems by poets whose names sing in our blood as the heart pumps; but it took Larry Beckett to marry ink to paper in such a way that it appears the words are written on wedding sheets. — Robin Rule poet, publisher of Beckett's Songs and Sonnets 
 "4.5 out of 5 stars... an intriguing exploration of the history of Beats and their poetry." - Portland Book Review

Beat Poetry

Beckett, Larry

United States

It is 1987 in New York's East Village. AIDS is devastating the intersecting worlds of drag queens, artists, and club kids. Lyssa, a young lesbian is working the phones at the AIDS Hotline, trying to find herself and some comfort amidst the chaos of the growing crisis. When she enters into a relationship with Simone, the woman of her dreams, she finds the sexual freedom she's been searching for, but her insecurities quickly take over. Soon, Lyssa is in a complicated relationship with Kevin, a recovering heroin addict, and her world implodes against the backdrop of sexual politics and personal tragedy.

The Third Kind of Horse

Auerbach, Michelle

Women's Fiction

Literary Nonfiction. Marc Olmsted, a young poet, wrote to Allen Ginsberg in 1972 and was surprised to receive a reply from one of America's most important poets. This letter began a friendship that lasted for decades, taking Olmsted on a journey through the literary world. In this, his memoirs, Olmsted details the turbulent events of his own life, which include sex with Ginsberg, filming William S. Burroughs, and encounters with other important counterculture figures. This "scrapbook" contains previously unpublished poems by Ginsberg, scanned letters and postcards by the poet, and photos, paintings, and posters collected by Olmsted during their friendship.

Don't Hesitate

Olmsted, Marc

Essays & Correspondence

Sarah, an early twenties writer for a respected San Francisco literary journal, is getting more and more recognition in the art world. As her budding status slowly climbs into the upper echelon, so does her punishing consumption of alcohol. Sarah soon finds herself about to be terminated at the journal due to her extreme indulgences with drinking libations. Sarah decides to take to the road all by herself for wanted escape and freedom, as well as to ponder her conflicted relationship with her boyfriend Theo.  After many provocative and dubious romps with many friends who she visits in select cities around America, Sarah soon accepts her addiction to alcohol and seeks to sober up. Sarah’s passion for literature and indie music helps her sail along the many difficult and lonely miles around the country.  Under These Stars is a contemplative road odyssey that shakes the beehive of post-college, early-career existence and distributes sweet honey to all who seek to better their damaging, cyclic ways.

Under These Stars

Tony R. Rodriguez

Literary

In The Beat Interviews, John Tytell speaks with Beat Generation luminaries Herbert Huncke, John Clellon Holmes, William S. Burroughs, Carl Solomon, and Allen Ginsberg about their lives and the lives of their contemporaries. These groundbreaking interviews were conducted in the 1970s and are collected here together for the first time. In addition, the author has gathered essays giving insight into the style and philosophy of the Beats, elucidating upon the interviews to provide a comprehensive overview of the Beat movement.  "John Tytell’s Beat interviews are particularly illuminating because he has always known the right questions to ask. Like all his valuable work on the Beats, starting with the ground-breaking Naked Angels, this book reflects a profound and informed understanding of their place in American literature, their cultural importance and the tumultuous lives they lived." – Joyce Johnson, author of Minor Characters and The Voice is All

The Beat Interviews

Tytell, John

Allen Ginsberg was one of the most politically engaged writers of his era, with a widespread social and cultural impact that was rare for a poet of his or any generation. In this volume, Eliot Katz takes a readable, scholarly look at Ginsberg’s most influential poems and explores the varied and inventive ways that Ginsberg turned his political ideas and perceptions into powerful poetry. While there have been some important, previous biographies and other books looking at Ginsberg’s life and work, this is the first full-length volume focusing primarily on how Ginsberg’s writing works as political poetry and on Ginsberg’s extraordinary influence on political culture over the ensuing decades. As a longtime poet and activist himself, as well as a friend of Ginsberg’s who worked with him on a number of poetry and activist endeavors, Katz brings a unique personal, political, and literary perspective to this project. This book—including its chapter on “Howl,” which offers an astute and original guide to reading Ginsberg’s most celebrated poem—will be of interest to students and scholars studying Ginsberg’s poetry in college classrooms, as well as to general readers and writers who enjoy Ginsberg’s work.

The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg

Katz, Eliot

History & Criticism

Allen Ginsberg told John Tytell that he would not understand the Beat Generation without first experiencing life in Mexico, and so, while writing Naked Angels, the first book to explore the development of Beat literature, Tytell headed south to Oaxaca. In this volume, Tytell examines the importance of Mexico to the Beat Generation, while recounting – via letters from that period to his wife, Mellon – his own experiences in Oaxaca. Also included are essays on Bonnie Bremser, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Patti Smith, among others.

Beat Transnationalism

In the years following World War II, the Beat Generation began a literary revolution that changed American culture profoundly. Literature, music, fashion, art... none of it would ever be the same again. The fifties and sixties were a vibrant time of social upheaval, when art flourished against a turbulent backdrop. This optimism gave way to the cynicism of the seventies, and another cultural transition most famously portrayed by writer Hunter S. Thompson. In this fun-yet-scholarly chapbook, Mickey Harper explores the history of the American counterculture from Kerouac to Thompson and all the landmarks in between.

Off the Road and Over the Cuckoo's Nest: A Literary History of the American Counterculture

Harper, Mickey

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