156 The people here see more visions: Barry Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), p. 121.
157 New Vision: Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography, p. 58.
157 There wouldn’t have been any Beat Generation: Howl, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Oscilloscope Laboratories, 2011), DVD; quote is from the bonus features.
157 I just can’t stand it: Colby Buzzell, Lost in America (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), p. 41.
157 What a great city New York is: Ann Charters, ed., Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940–1956 (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), p. 130.
159 Each of Kerouac’s books: Ann Charters, Kerouac: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1994), p. 159.
159 Benny has made me see a lot: Charters, ed., Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940–1956, p. 100.
160 I saw the best minds: Allen Ginsberg, Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography, Barry Miles, ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 3.
160 The period of euphoria: William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 2009), p. 225.
160 Just as, more than any other novel: Kurt Hemmer, ed., Encyclopedia of Beat Literature (New York: InfoBase Publishing, 2007), p. 247.
160 He didn’t object to being famous: What Happened to Kerouac?, directed by Lewis MacAdams and Richard Lerner (Shout Factory Theater, 2003), DVD.
160 People knew him all over the Village: Ibid.
160 I hitchhiked and starved: Holly George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats (New York: Hyperion Books, 2000), p. 119.
161 no wonder Hemingway: Charters, ed., Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957–1969, p. 169.
161 I’m Jack Kerouac: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 132.
161 Guys like Neal: Charles E. Jarvis, Visions of Kerouac (Lowell, MA: Ithaca Press, 1974), p. 129.
162 I’m Catholic and I can’t: Steven Kates, The Quotable Drunkard (New York: Adams Media, 2011), p. 213.
162 Jack liked his scotch: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 134.
162 learned one of the unwritten rules: Ibid., p. 133.
17: JUNKY
163 Artists, to my mind: Ann Charters, The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America, Vol. 1 (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research, 1983), p. xiii.
163 Morphine hits the backs of the legs: William S. Burroughs, Junky (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 7.
163 The needle is not important: William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 2009), p. 225.
164 I can’t watch this: James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg, eds., Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader (New York: Grove Press, 2000), p. 42.
165 I am forced to the appalling conclusion: William S. Burroughs, Queer (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. xxii.
165 He shot like he wrote: Thompson, Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone, p. 551.
165 Well, why don’t you: Jane Kramer, Allen Ginsberg in America (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 42.
166 A barrier had been broken: Ginsberg, Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, p. 168.
166 glorification of madness: Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography, p. 530.
166 who let themselves be fucked: Ginsberg, Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, p. 4.
166 filthy, vulgar, obscene: Ibid., p. 173.
167 Would there be any freedom of press: Bill Morgan and Nancy Joyce Peters, Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2006), p. 198.
167 Disgusting,' they said: David S. Willis, “Naked Lunch at 50,” Beatdom, no, 5 (2010): 12.
168 he romanticized drug use: William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser (Oscilloscope Laboratories, 2011), DVD.
168 When I was a kid: Martin Clarke, Kurt Cobain: The Cobain Dossier revised and updated edition (New York: Plexus Publishing, 2006), pp. 89–90.
168 There’s something wrong: Spencer Kansa, “The Rock God,” Beatdom, no. 7 (2010): p. 25.
169 The thing I remember about: Christopher Sandford, Kurt Cobain (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2004), p. 338.
18: DEAD POETS SOCIETY
171 Even without wars: Anne Sexton, “Hurry Up Please It’s Time,” The Complete Poems (New York: Mariner Books, 1999), p. 393
171 murderous and suicidal: Eric Maisel, The Van Gogh Blues (New York: Rodale, 2002), p. 138.
171 made passes at women: The Poetry Review, Vol. 73 (Poetry Society of America, 1983), p. 6.
172 Dylan murdered himself: Paul L. Mariani, Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), p. 274.
172 been said for sobriety: John Berryman, “57,” The Dream Songs (New York: Macmillan, 2007), p. 64.
173 best students: Mariani, Dream Song, p. 272.
173 Prostitution: Dawn M. Skorczewski, ed., An Accident of Hope: The Therapy Tapes of Anne Sexton (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. xvi.
173 I wanted to cuddle: Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2011), p. 89.
174 Any demand is too much: Ibid.
174 “kill-me” pills: Diane Wood Middlebrook, Anne Sexton: A Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p. 165.
174 There’s a difference between: Ibid.
174 I ought to stop taking: Ibid., p. 210.
174 Poetry led me by the hand: Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames, eds., Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), p. 335.
174 staying in shape: Anne Sexton, “The Addict,” The Complete Poems (New York: Mariner Books, 1999), p. 165.
175 Whisky and ink: Jane Howard, “Whisky and Ink, Whisky and Ink,” Life, July 21, 1967, p. 68.
175 When he first walked in: Ibid.
175 a man alone in a room: Ibid., p. 70.
175 I should know women: Ibid., p. 76.
175 would be bothersome: Ibid.
175 spinsters or lesbians: Ibid., p. 75.
175 He sweats a lot: Ibid., p. 70.
177 the way Americans mistreated: Mariani, Dream Song, p. 333.
177 every right to be disturbed: Jeffrey Meyers, Manic Power (New York: Arbor House, 1987), p. 13.
177 payment: Mariani, Dream Song, p. 385.
177 We have reason to be afraid: Howard, “Whisky and Ink, Whisky and Ink,” p. 76.
177 poor son of a bitch: Scott Donaldson, Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p. 461.
177 given the chance: Karen V. Kukil, ed., The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950–1962 (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 209.
177 That death was mine: Middlebrook, Anne Sexton: A Biography, p. 225.
178 O my love Kate: Steve Marsh, “Homage to Mister Berryman,” Mpls St Paul Magazine (September 2008).
178 interesting poetess: Annie Hall, directed by Woody Allen (MGM, 2000), DVD.
179 What ended that was Bob Dylan: Personal interview with Elizabeth Wurtzel, 2011.
179 deep and moving work: Eugene Pool, “Anne Sexton, Her Kind Mix Poetry with Music,” The Boston Globe (May 27, 1969).
179 young upstart: Mariani, Dream Song, p. 445.
19: THE MERRY PRANKSTERS
181 People don’t want other people: Scott MacFarlane, The Hippie Narrative: A Literary Perspective on the Counterculture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), p. 15.
181 the whole gang around: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 361.
182 I’ve seen God: Lewis Hyde, ed., On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), p. 126.
183 Acid is just a chemical illusion: Tom Underwood and Chuck Miller, eds., Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988), p. 43.
183 a great new American novelist: Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the C
uckoo’s Nest: The Viking Critical Edition, ed. John Clark Pratt (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 332.
184 I was too young: Rob Elder, “Down on the Peacock Farm,” Salon.com (November 16, 2001), http://www.salon.com/2001/11/16/kesey99/(retrieved July 2, 2012).
184 I write all the time: Magic Trip, directed by Alex Gibney and Alison Elwood (Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2011), DVD.
184 The bravest man in America: Peter Manso, Mailer: His Life and Times (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 261.
184 Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior: Todd Brendan Fahey, “Comes Spake the Cuckoo,” Far Gone Books (1992), http://www.fargonebooks.com/kesey.html (retrieved July 2, 2012).
185 Go in peace: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 240.
185 used to think we were going to win: Lawrence Gerald, “A 1992 New York Interview with Ken Kesey,” SirBacon.org, http://www.sirbacon.org/4membersonly/kesey.htm (retrieved July 2, 2012).
185 We’re only a small number: Ibid.
20: THE NEW JOURNALISTS
187 I’m an alcoholic: M. Thomas Inge, ed., Truman Capote: Conversations (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987), p. 364.
187 Part of me thought it was: Peter Manso, Mailer: His Life and Times (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 119.
188 that awful man who stabbed: Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, p. 367.
188 prime the pump: Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 19.
188 not a weekend went by: Eric Olsen and Glenn Schaeffer, We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), p. 182.
189 Take off your clothes: Denham, Sleeping With Bad Boys, p. 53.
189 a good night for you two: Ibid.
189 I tried to remember what: Ibid.
190 You don’t know anything about a woman: Michael Lennon and Donna Pedro Lennon, Norman Mailer: Works and Days (Shavertown, PA: Sligo Press, 2000), p. 114.
190 a tremendously sexy man: Wakefield, New York in the Fifties, p. 148.
190 enemy of birth control: Charles McGrath, “Norman Mailer, Towering Writer with a Matching Ego, Dies at 84,” New York Times, November 11, 2007.
190 a really exciting: Dissent 7, no. 1 (1960): 392.
191 attacked him with a hammer: Sally Beauman, “Norman Mailer, Movie Maker,” New York, August 19, 1968, p. 56.
191 He is a man whose faults: Gore Vidal, Sex, Death, and Money (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), p. 178.
191 He could reliably be counted on: McGrath, “Norman Mailer, Towering Writer.”
191 I like to talk on TV: Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans, and Andrew Frothingham, eds., And I Quote (New York: Macmillan, 1992), p. 328; no definite attribution exists for this quote, although Capote certainly may have said it in one of his many frivolous television interviews.
191 I’ve always been solitary: Beauman, “Norman Mailer, Movie Maker,” p. 147.
192 Truman was wearing a little: George Plimpton, Truman Capote (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1998), p. 104.
192 a ballsy little guy: Norman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 465.
192 the most perfect writer of my generation: Ibid.
192 I had to be successful: Alan F. Pater and Jason R. Pater, eds., What They Said in 1978: The Yearbook of Spoken Opinion (Los Angeles: Monitor Book Company, 1979), p. 421.
192 I began writing really sort of: Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy, Who the Hell Is Pansy O’Hara? (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), p. 282.
193 Lee protected him from bullies: Andrew Haggerty, Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 2008), p. 19.
193 as if he were dreamily: Jeffrey Helterman and Richard Layman, American Novelists Since World War II (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research, 1978), p. 83.
193 I feel anxious that Truman: Robert Emmett Long, Truman Capote—Enfant Terrible (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008), p. 50.
194 which is sad, because: Philip Gourevitch, ed., The Paris Review Interviews (New York: Macmillan, 2009), p. 33.
194 a really serious big work: The Saturday Review 49 (1966): p. 37.
194 very closest friends: Albin Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59; Novelist of Style and Clarity,” New York Times, August 28, 1984.
195 We were a little chilly: Plimpton, Truman Capote, p. 214.
195 He accelerated the speed: Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59.”
195 This is just like the book: Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), p. 438.
196 spoke badly of other writers: Plimpton, Truman Capote, p. 43.
196 This isn’t writing: Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59.”
196 you queer bastard: George-Warren, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats, p. 109.
196 Finishing a book is just: Applewhite, Evans, and Frothingham, eds., And I Quote, p. 309; while this quote is widely attributed to Capote, I’ve never found a good source for it.
197 they’re too dumb: Cosmopolitan 205 (1988): p. 181.
197 Writers don’t have to destroy: Plimpton, Truman Capote, p. 43.
197 He’s Truman. What can you do: Ibid., p. 69.
197 When God hands you a gift: Andrew Holleran, “Five-Finger Exercise,” New York, August 18, 1980, 69.
197 Let me go. I want to go: Biography: Truman Capote (A&E Home Video, 2005), DVD.
198 a good career move: Anthony Arthur, Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels from Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe (New York: Macmillan, 2002), p. 181.
198 most of them slim: Krebs, “Truman Capote Is Dead at 59.”
198 One’s eventual reputation: McGrath, “Norman Mailer, Towering Writer.”
198 two sides to Norman Mailer: Mary V. Dearborn, Mailer: A Biography (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001), p. 408.
21: FREAK POWER
199 I do not advocate: Anita Thompson, ed., Ancient Gonzo Wisdom : Interviews with Hunter S. Thompson (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2009), p. 321; this is often quoted as “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me,” which may or may not have been the words he used in a speech at Stanford—no one seems to know for sure.
200 to hell with facts: Ben Agger, The Sixties at 40 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), p. 262.
200 Hunter identified with F. Scott Fitzgerald: Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Dir. Alex Gibney. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2008. DVD.
200 a nation of frightened dullards: Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 251.
201 great writer: Beef Torrey and Kevin Simonson, eds., Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), p. 269.
201 A bird flies: Thompson, ed., Ancient Gonzo Wisdom, p. 61.
201 two bags of grass: Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 4.
202 I unfortunately proved: Breakfast with Hunter, directed by Wayne Ewing (HunterThompsonFilms.com, 2003), DVD.
202 In today’s culture: Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride, directed by Tom Thurman (Starz/Anchor Bay, 2007), DVD.
202 I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw: Thompson, ed., Ancient Gonzo Wisdom, p. 456.
202 The guy whipped out this vial: Corey Seymour and Jann S. Wenner, Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson (New York: Little, Brown, 2007), p. 211.
203 He’d come in the office: Ibid., p. 141.
203 Thank Jesus for Norman: Ibid., p. 433.
203 I was living for Hunter: Ibid., p. 218.
204 some kind of sex palace: Ibid., p. 223.
204 He enjoyed drugs, all kinds of them: Ibid., p. 240.
204 prevent pitching this film: Letter from Hunter S. Thompson to Johnny Depp, April 14, 1998; transcribed at http://www.johnnydepp-zone.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=118
09 (retrieved July 2, 2012).
205 I’m really in the way: Fear and Loathing: On the Road to Hollywood, directed by Nigel Finch (BBC, 1980), Videocassette.
205 And so we beat on: Seymour and Wenner, Gonzo, p. 272.
205 a sweet family moment: Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
205 17 years past 50: William McKeen, Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), p. 351.
205 The door was open: Seymour and Wenner, Gonzo, p. 67.
22: THE WORKSHOP
207 I never wrote so much: Dardis, The Thirsty Muse, p. 44.
207 With no other privilege: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Henry Nelson Coleridge, eds., Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, Vol. 1 (New York: George P. Putnam, 1848), p. 324.
207 There’s a question in my mind: Allen Hibbard, Conversations With William S. Burroughs (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), p. 72.
208 the days when a writer: Olsen and Schaeffer, We Wanted to Be Writers, p. 75.
208 facing the delicious prospect: Ibid., p. 91.
208 We go to workshops for community: Ibid., p. 99.
209 family had essentially washed: Ibid., p. 169.
209 I had John Cheever my second year: Ibid.
210 A student in your course: Letter from University of Iowa staff to John Cheever, dated November 27, 1973, http://www.writinguniversity.org/author/john-cheever (retrieved July 2, 2012).
210 Writing for Travel and Leisure magazine: Travel & Leisure 4, no. 9 (September 1974): 32–33, 50.
210 tended to be men of a certain age: Olsen and Schaeffer, We Wanted to Be Writers, p. 186.
211 My name is John Cheever: Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 4.
211 the most terrible, glum place: Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (New York: Ballantine, 1989), p. 504.
211 I can’t convince myself: William L. Stull and Maureen Patricia Carroll, eds., Remembering Ray (New York: Capra Press, 1993), p. 91.
23: THE TOXIC TWINS
213 processed by the hype machine: Susan Squire, “Zeroing in on Bret Easton Ellis: Embraced by N.Y. Literati for His First Novel, the Young L.A. Author Ponders an Encore,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1986.
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