From Publishers Weekly
In the early '50s, Allen Ginsberg began to dabble in Buddhism on one coast while Jack Kerouac (with the help of Gary Snyder, the model for Kerouac's hero in The Dharma Bums) expanded on his Transcendentalist-based interest in Eastern religion on the other. In 1955, with Ginsberg's famous reading of "Howl" at Six Gallery in San Francisco, East and West came together. The poetry and prose of this anthology shows the beat movement as a direct link between Emerson and Thoreau and the "new consciousness" of Eastern philosophy, which places the power of the individual at the spiritual center of life. Though some have criticized the beats as armchair Buddhists with Western values, most of them took their study of Eastern religion seriously: meditating, reading scriptures and, in some cases, traveling to Japan and becoming disciples of monks. Through poetry, letters, journal entries, interviews and lectures, Tonkinson, former managing editor of Tricycle, traces not only the relationships between these seminal figures and their influence on other writers, but also their shared beliefs.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Tonkinson's illuminating anthology of essays, poems, and letters by Beat writers is one of the inaugural titles of a new paperback publisher and the first book compiled by the editors of
Tricycle, the country's most prestigious Buddhist publication. Buddhism is thriving in the U.S., a phenomenon attributable in no small part to the writings of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Diane di Prima, to name the core group of this collection. Tonkinson and her contributors trace the origins of American Buddhism to transcendentalism and, later, a quest for freedom from the oppressive mind sets of the cold war era. The title reflects this union, joining, as it does, the Big Mind of Buddhism with the big sky of the American West and the open road so precious to Beat writers in search of a literature fluid enough to express their churning consciousness. The commentary is clarifying and invigorating, and the literary selections of both East and West Coast Beats and such kindred spirits as Kenneth Rexroth and Anne Waldman are superb.
Donna Seaman
