Hell: An Illustrated History of the Netherworld

It is not uncommon for major cultural or artistic revolutions to be reduced to their most obvious symbols when their history is popularized. Names like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, for example, have become synonymous with the term Beat Generation. Knight's thorough and well-researched book attempts to rectify the notion of the Beat Generation as singularly male. By bringing to light a wide array of writers via biographies and fiction, poetry and other texts (many previously unpublished), Knight firmly establishes both well-known and lesser-known women such as Jane Bowles, Josephine Miles, Eileen Kaufman, Hettie Jones, ruth weiss, and Denise Levertov as having been either essential precursors to or equal participants in this 1950s' revolution that brought poetry to the streets. While several of the Beat women became successful writers--Levertov, Mary Korte and Joanna McClure are still writing today--this book also chronicles the sad lives of the women who married Beat poets and lost themselves in the process. Knight's study, however, is not a critical one, and the overall nostalgic tone of the book leaves no one, collectively or individually, accountable for the fact that most of these writers did not reach their prime. There are entertaining sidebar anecdotes sprinkled throughout but expanded critical and biographical materials would have greatly strengthened the book. Nevertheless, this is an unprecedented look at a group of women whose works were largely ignored until now, and it is a useful addition to any study of the Beat Generation. Illustrations. (Oct.)