"Forest Beatniks" and "Urban Thoreaus"

The Beat Movement, which first rose to attention in 1955, has often been viewed by critics as an urban phenomenon the product of a postwar-youth culture with roots in the cities of New York and San Francisco. This study examines another side of the Beat Movement: its strong desire for a reconnection with nature. Although each took a different path in attaining this goal, the writers considered hereGary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Lew Welch, and Michael McCluresought a new and closer connection to the natural world. These four writers, along with many of their counterparts in the Beat era, provided a crucial spark that helped to ignite the environmental movement of the 1970s and provided the foundation for the development of the current "Deep Ecology" worldview.

Autorentext

Rod Phillips is Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing at Michigan State University's James Madison College. He earned his Ph.D. in American Studies at Michigan State and is widely published as a critic, poet, and journalist. He has written numerous articles for professional journals in the field of American literature, including essays on Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Jack Kerouac, Lew Welch, and Kathy Acker.

Zusammenfassung
"Rod Philips' essays gave me a keener sense of the import of my old friends' writings. They are a very useful introduction to the writings of Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Lew Welch." Donald Allen, Editor of "Evergreen Review" and "The New American Poetry: 1945-1960" "The Beats have had an urban, late-night-jazz-club image, thanks to mass media coverage dating back to the fifties. Rod Phillips offers a deeper reading here, connecting Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder, and their colleagues to profound American currents of nature awareness." Thomas J. Lyon, Editor of "This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing" and "The Literary West: An Anthology of Western American Literature"