20th Century American Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, 20th Century American Literature - Post WWII - Literary Criticism, U.S. Authors - 20th Century - Literary Biography, Literary Movements - General & Miscellaneous

Paradise Outlaws

Name: Paradise Outlaws
Author: Mellon
ISBN: 9780688164430

by Mellon

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Overview

In 1997, America lost two of its leading literary lights just months apart: Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. Their passings were clearly the end of an age. In the wake of this generational shift, original Beat scholar John Tytell, along with noted photographer Mellon, offers a highly personal collection of intelligent essays and stunning photos that illuminate the phenomena that came to be known as the Beat Generation. Part literary criticism, part memoir, part photo collection, Paradise Outlaws is a book as unconventional as its subject. John Tytell, who was the first scholar to take the Beats seriously in his groundbreaking Naked Angels, offers an authoritative identification of the political and cultural contexts of the Beats and their major works. Forty-five photographs, works of art in themselves, offer candid portraits of not just a few writers but also the musicians, painters, filmmakers, scene makers, activists, and playwrights who helped shape America's avant-garde since the Beats exploded onto the scene in 1956--people like Ginsberg and Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Hunter S. Thompson, Judith Malina, Patti Smith, Abbie Hoffman, and more. Each photograph is accompanied by a pithy and anecdotal caption. Accessible yet scholarly, Paradise Outlaws offers new insights into the ever-expanding rubric of "Beat," resulting in an informative, entertaining, and absorbing photo album of the last American literary movement.

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Editorials

Vanity Fair

John Tylell's Paradise Outlaws is the original beat scholar's Roman candle of a memoir, dosed with anecdote, lit crit, and spectacular Mellon photos...Go ahead, pull my daisy.

Library Journal

Tytell's Naked Angels (LJ 4/15/76) remains the best introduction to Beat writers and their work. His latest effort, a unique blend of critical analysis and personal reminiscence, evaluates the Beat Generation's place in American literature, stressing the movement's celebration of the individual and its distrust of established authority. A perceptive critic, Tytell is especially good at documenting the Beat Generation's influence on contemporary popular culture. Some 45 photographs taken by Mellon, Tytell's wife, enhance the text. Each photo is accompanied by a page or two of commentary. An essay on Tytell's experience teaching the Beats rounds out the volume. This engaging look at the Beat Generation will be of most interest to readers already familiar with the works of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. Highly recommended.--William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Personal reminiscence, literary analysis, biography, and historical overview: this volume throws every critical tool possible at its protagonists—the Beat triumvirate of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac—only to produce a mishmash of sycophantic praise and endless personal anecdote. The opening vignette of Paradise Outlaws combines a polemic against the tenets of New Criticism with a eulogy to a king setter named Shantih, and such a bizarre conflation of ideas sets the tone for a book undermined at every turn by its lack of focus. Tytell's exuberance offers only obvious insights into his subjects' otherwise fascinating lives, including such banalities as how the Beats rejected the values of America's Puritan heritage and felt stifled by the rampant conformity of the 1950s. The real hero of Paradise Outlaws seems to be Tytell himself: he desperately wants his readers to know that he was personally acquainted with these writers. Unfortunately, Tytell appears to be merely the Kato Kaelin of the Beat circle, always there at the right moment to be caught in a photograph. Nevertheless, the authorial presence thus destroys the objectivity needed to explore the work of his beloved friends. The main personal photographs of the Beats and their circle, taken by Tytell's wife, Mellon, contribute the book's only remarkable feature. Raw with candor and spontaneity, the pictures capture the men and their world in moments of sparkling clarity; such photos as one of Burroughs standing in his nattiest attire before a noose and Ginsberg sitting in his Cherry Valley, N.Y., kitchen capture their subjects in rare and personal moments. With so many wonderfulphotographs of the Beats and the people who shared their countercultural world, Paradise Outlaws could have been a great coffee-table book, if only it had been envisioned as such.