{"product_id":"venice-west","title":"Venice West","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"A most remarkable book... a wonderful account of an odd and unlikely place where for a brief time a small number of people pursued a romantic vision of what a life dedicated to art should be like... a superb story.\" --William ONeill  author of American High: The Years of Confidence  1945-1960 The beatnik was born in Venice  California  in the 1950s. An imaginary figure in many respects  the invention of both the media and the people who played the beatnik role and the character quickly assumed nearly mythic proportions for the American public. Coffeehouses  beards  poetry  drugs  and free-wheeling sexuality were all associated with the beatnik  the quintessential rebel who  by rejecting material values  represented both a threat and an alluring alternative to the dominant middle-class culture. In this fascinating book  John Arthur Maynard tells the story of the poets and promoters who invented the Beat Generation and who  in many cases  destroyed themselves in the process. In this look at the least remembered (but in its time  most publicized) beat enclave  Maynard focuses on two of Venices most newsworthy residents: Lawrence Lipton and Stuart Z. Perkoff. Lipton began as a writer of popular detective stories and screenplays  but was determined to be recognized as a poet and social critic. He eventually published The Holy Barbarians  which helped to create the enduring public image of the beatnik. Stuart Perkoff was a more gifted poet; with fascination and horror  we follow his failed attempts to support his family  his heroin addiction  his first wives courage and mental fragility  his sexual entanglements  his imprisonment  and the development of his own writing. Other characters who move in and out of the story are Kenneth Rexroth  Jack Kerouac  and Allen Ginsberg  as well as lesser-known poets  artists  hangers-on  and the many women who were rarely treated as full members of the community. For most of the 1950s  the Venice beatniks were able to live and work in isolation. Once the media decided that beats made good copy  however  their peace was shattered. Reporters  drug dealers  violent criminals  and would-be beatniks invaded Venice in such force that many \"square\" residents began an unrelenting campaign to purge their community of bohemianism. This campaign persisted long after the beats  who tended to ignore politics  had yielded the stage to a new generation of political activists. In this collective biography  based largely on unpublished sources  Maynard tells us how these events affected public perceptions and the beats own perceptions of themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44949552988213,"sku":"ByrdShop_0813516536","price":93.61,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780813516530.jpg?v=1770079850","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/venice-west","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}