Because of "Nomad" and his connections to "avant garde" poetry, Linick was present during the 1957 "Howl" trial in San Francisco. He watched coverage of Kennedy's assassination on Allen Ginsberg's TV in 1963. During summers spent in New York he also got to know many of the authors who dominated the anthologies in subsequent years. Knowing of his interest in such affairs, his mentor at UCLA, George Mowry, suggested he choose a dissertation topic from this world. The result was "A History of the American Literary Avant-Garde Since World War II". In 2017 Linick published in "Beat Scene" magazine some of the original research for this dissertation, including responses to a questionnaire returned to him by Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Charles Bukovsky. The event was of particular interest to Beat scholar James Campbell, who wrote about Linick's article in "The Times Literary Supplement".