The Cambridge Companion to The Beats

The inclusion of the Beats in the Cambridge Companions series signals an assimilation of the Beats’ anti-establishment seriousness into another variety of seriousness to be found in the academy. Indeed, such is the jarring of the juxtaposition of the Beats and the Cambridge Companion series that the editor of this volume, Steven Belletto, opens his Introduction, “Fans of irony will appreciate that The Cambridge Companion to the Beats now exists”. He goes on to sketch a picture of the Beats; “they wrote against conformity, consumerism, and the values of mainstream culture. From a literary perspective, they often positioned their writing...