"Typewriter" is Enchanting Beat History

(citylimits.com)

On my recent visit to Miami, I stumbled upon The Typewriter is Holy, a fascinating history of the Beat Generation.

I attended an alternative college in the Midwest, where Jack Kerouac's On the Road was widely considered essential reading, if not a blueprint for the sort of Bohemian lifestyle many of my classmates espoused. Still, my knowledge of the Beats was largely acquired through reading select works by Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, and by visiting City Lights bookstore in San Francisco's North Beach, the unofficial home of the ramshackle group of writers who came to be known as the Beats.

I confess to a bit of hesitation as I perused the sale table at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida recently, one of the nation's outstanding indie bookshops. I was fascinated by the legend that hung over this distinctly American literary movement, yet knew little of the factual details until I read Bill Morgan's engrossing, comprehensive tome. Not only is his book thorough and informative, but it is great fun to read.

One of "Typewriter"s chief accomplishments is its ability to fold the renegade antics of such Beat luminaries as Neal Cassady into a cultural historical framework. Cassady is legendary for his mack daddy reputation for bedding numerous women, but his lengthy romantic relationship with Ginsburg and his literary aspirations are also illustrated, offering a portrait of a famous literary figure who was as much muse to his prolific peers like Kerouac and Ginsburg as he was frustrated artist.

In this sense of portraying the less famous figures in a key artistic movement like folk, Morgan's book is reminiscent of David Hajdu's marvelous Positively 4th Street, a cultural biography of the early 60s folk music scene as refracted in the relationships between Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and Joan's sister Mimi and her husband Richard Farina. While Baez and Dylan in particular are clearly the more famous figures in Hajdu's book, the reader learns that Richard's fatal motorcycle accident cut short the promising career of his wife and he, and that Dylan's early career was very much influenced by the at-the-time more famous Baez.

Morgan evokes the chaotic, vagabond existence of his main characters, revealing how figures like Burroughs spent years overseas, at least partly motivated by the relatively lax drug laws that allowed him to indulge his drug habit. He also details how jazz music not only inspired many Beats, but was often used as a backdrop to early Beat readings. Ginsburg emerges as the key figure of the movement whose academic achievements as well as astute career ambitions helped secure his literary legacy. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti is also revealed to be a benevolent publisher/owner of the bookstore/press that is City Lights. 

While "Typewriter" does trade in a bit of the details of the writers' love lives that may only be of passing interest to scrupulous academics, his book has sufficient merit as both a scholarly study and a cultural biography to appeal to a wide swath of readers. His apparent insider status as an associate of many of the key Beat characters lends a sense of authenticity to the book that helps make reading it an evocative experience.