Part 1: "The best minds of a generation" East Coast Beats
The subterraneans (excerpt)
The Dharma Bums (excerpt)
Mexico City blues (excerpt)
Essentials of spontaneous prose
Belief & technique for modern prose / Jack Kerouac
A supermarket in California
On Burroughs' work / Allen Ginsberg
The Yage letters (exerpt)
Deposition: testimony concerning a sickness / William Burroughs
Joey Martinez / Herbert Huncke
Go (excerpt) / John Clellon Holmes
Mishaps, perhaps (excerpt) / Carl Solomon
Variations on a Generation (excerpt) / Gregory Corso
Part 2: "Heart Beat" Enter Neal Cassady
Letters to Jack Kerouac, 1947-1950 / Neal Cassady
Letter to Neal Cassady, early 1951 / Jack Kerouac
The first third (excerpt) / Neal Cassady
Visions of Cody (excerpt) / Jack Kerouac.
Part 3: "Constantly risking absurdity" Some San Francisco Renaissance Poets
Rexroth: Shaker and Maker by William Everson / Kenneth Rexroth
Constantly risking absurdity
In Goya's greatest scenes...
One thousand fearful words for Fidel Castro
Horn on Howl / Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Scratching the beat surface (excerpt)
Includes Snyder's poem, "A berry feast," Whalen's poem, "Plus Ca Change..." McClure's poems, "Point Lobos: animism" and "For the death of 100 whales" / Michael McClure
Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Night highway ninety-nine
Higashi Hongwanji - Note on the religious tendencies / Gary Snyder
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
A dim view of Berkeley in the Spring
Prose take-out, Portland 13:ix:58 / Philip Whalen
The night is a space of white marble
I have given fair warning
Ther is this distance between me and what I see
Fud at Foster's / Philip Lamantia
Taxi suite-after Anacreon
Not yet 40, my beard is already white
The image, as in a hexagram
I saw mystelf / Lew Welch
Part 4: "A few blue words to the wise" Other fellow travlers
Letter about Kerouac's prose / Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
Funny lotus blues... / Ray Bremser
The practice of magical evocation
Brass furnance going out / Diane DiPrima
The times they are a-changin'
A hard rain's a-gonna fall
Tarantula (excerpt) / Bob Dylan
Poem to Lee Forest / Brenda Frazer (Bonnie Bremser)
Greenwich Village of my dreams
1001 ways to beat the draft (excerpt) / Tuli Kupferberg
Poet of the streets / Jack Micheline
Post the Lake Poets Ballad
The day Lady died / Frank O'Hara
Lepers cry / Peter Orlovsky - Poem from jail (excerpt)
The cutting prow / Ed Sanders
A poem for record players
Children of the working class / John Wieners.
Part 5: "Tales of Beatnik Glory" Memoirs and posthumous tributes
Notes of a dirty old man (excerpt) / Charles Bukowski
Kentucky ham (excerpt) / William Burroughs, Jr.
Off the road (excerpt) / Carolyn Cassady
Dinners and nightmares (excerpt) / Diane DiPrima
Troia: Mexican memoirs (excerpt) / Brenda Frazer (Bonnie Bremser)
The Beat Hotel, Paris (excerpt) / Brion Gysin
Minor characters (excerpt) / Joyce Johnson
How I became Hettie Jones (excerpt) / Hettie Jones
Baby driver (excerpt) / Jan Kerouac
The day after Superman died (excerpt) / Ken Kesey
The mad cub (excerpt) / Michael McClure
Tales of Beatnik Glory (excerpt) / Ed Sanders.
Part 6: "The unspeakable visions of the individual" Later work
Nova Express (excerpt) / William Burroughs
Columbia U Poesy Reading-1975
The whole mess...almost / Gregory Corso
April Fool Birthday poem for Grandpa
Loba: Parts I-VIII (excerpt) / Diane DiPrima
The canticle of Jack Kerouac
Short story on a painting of Gustav Klimt / Lawrence Ferlinghetti
First party at Ken Kesey's
Anti-Vietnam War Peace Mobilization
Fourth floor, dawn, up all night writing letters / Allen Ginsberg
Song (I work with the shape)
The death of Kin Chuen Louie / Michael McClure
What would Tom Paine do? (Song) / Ed Sanders
I went into the Maverick Bar
Pine tree tops / Gary Snyder.
Appendix-three commentators
The white negro / Norman Mailer
Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen / Alan Watts
The game of the name (excerpt) / John Clellon Holmes.