ABOUT THIS BOOK

Mexico features prominently in the literature and personal legends of the Beat writers, from its depiction as an extension of the American frontier in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to its role as a refuge for writers with criminal pasts like William S. Burroughs. Yet the story of Beat literature and Mexico takes us beyond the movement’s superstars to consider the important roles played by lesser-known female Beat writers.

The first book-length study of why the Beats were so fascinated by Mexico and how they represented its culture in their work, this volume examines such canonical figures as Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Lamantia, McClure, and Ferlinghetti. It also devotes individual chapters to women such as Margaret Randall, Bonnie Bremser, and Joanne Kyger, who each made Mexico a central setting of their work and interrogated the misogyny they encountered in both American and Mexican culture.

The Beats in Mexico not only considers individual Beat writers, but also places them within a larger history of countercultural figures, from D.H. Lawrence to Antonin Artaud to Jim Morrison, who mythologized Mexico as the land of the Aztecs and Maya, where shamanism and psychotropic drugs could take you on a trip far beyond the limits of the American imagination.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

DAVID STEPHEN CALONNE is the author of many books, including The Spiritual Imagination of the Beats and Diane di Prima: Visionary Poetics and the Hidden Religions. He has also edited five volumes of prose by Charles Bukowski as well as interviews with Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg. Calonne lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago. He currently teaches at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.

REVIEWS

"Calonne’s book brings together a mass of description, information, knowledge and quotation to form a wide-ranging compendium of Mexican connections across the Beat field. It should inspire scholars to examine in more depth a literary history too often chronicled in only the colourful but reductive terms of Beat biography."

— Oliver Harris, Professor of American Literature at Keele University and President of the European Beat Studies Netw

"With The Beats in Mexico, David Stephen Calonne finally fills a critical gap in Beat Generation scholarship—tracing not only the influences of Mexico on the major Beat writers, but on their predecessors, followers, and contemporaries. We devoured this thoroughly researched, beautifully written study. Highly recommended!"

— Arthur S. Nusbaum, Third Mind Books

"Calonne takes readers on a much-needed tour through the complex, often surprising relationship between the Beats and Mexico, offering insight after insight into numerous writers and their works—a book the size of the Pyramid of Kukulcán."

— Steven Belletto, author of The Beats: A Literary History

"In The Beats in Mexico, David Stephen Calonne provides a literary critic's reading of the countercultural movement's relationship with the country whose rich culture was slowly gaining appreciation in the U.S. . . . Calonne's own attitude to the Beats is rather like [Margaret] Randall's attitude to Mexico—he examines the source material thoroughly and is admiring rather than adulatory. . . . His detailed study demonstrates that though their work on Mexico was sometimes naive, the Beats were not callous appropriators—they were well-meaning apologists."— Daniel Rey, Writer's Mosaic

"Adds nuance to the popular understanding of the place of the Beats in twentieth-century US literature. . . . The extensive endnotes provided by Calonne invite one to consider the myriad possibilities for future research, allowing the reader to make connections beyond the pages of his book. For that reason, The Beats in Mexico rewards careful reading and scholarly imagination. Furthermore, the narrative Calonne provides is well organized, accessible, and very readable. . . . What The Beats in Mexico offers is an important standpoint from which to revisit the place of 'Mexico' in the literary imagination of foreign visitors to that country."— Review of International American Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

El Corno Emplumado

Troia: Mexican Memoirs