Ecstasy of the Beats: On the Road to Understanding.

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
author of Calling Texas.

David Creighton’s book is not literary criticism but a combination of homage and pilgrimage. There are guidebooks to Beat New York and Beat San Francisco, but this beautifully produced volume is a guidebook to Beat America, and even to Mexico and Paris. It begins with a visit to Carolyn Cassady in England. She was married to Neal Cassady, the original for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, as Beat buffs will know. Creighton covers a surprising number of places among hometowns; his pilgrimage includes Lowell, Massachusetts, where Kerouac grew up; Neal Cassady’s Denver and Carolyn Cassady’s Nashville; William Burroughs’s East St. Louis. He does not neglect the famous haunts and houses in New York and San Francisco, but he also takes in Kamouraska, Quebec, heartland of the Kerouacs. He provides excellent photographs of all these places, and he includes maps and family trees. His deep knowledge of the Beats—they generated anecdotes at an astonishing rate as they lived and died—makes him a first-class tour guide. The long bibliography and thorough index will aid Beat aficionados in using this delightful book.