Beginning in the late 1940's American literature discovered a four-letter word & the word was beat Beat as in poverty & beatitude ecstasy & exile Beat was Jack Kerouac touring the American road in prose as fast & reckless as a V-8 Chevy It was the junk-sick surrealism of William Burroughs; the wild Whitmanesque poetry of Allen Ginsberg; & the lumberjack Zen of Gary Snyder The Portable Beat Reader collects the most significant writing of these & fellow members (and spiritual descendants) of the Beat Generation including Neal Cassady Gregory Corso Diane di Prima Bob Dylan Leroi Jones & Michael Mc Clure In poetry fiction essays song lyrics letters & memoirs it captures the triumphant rudeness energy & exhilaration of a movement that swept through American letters with hurricane force