New Olympia Reader
A rich selection of articles, stories, book extracts, poems, plays, cartoons, and covers from the first decade of America's premier avant-garde magazine of the 50's and 60's (Evergreen Review lasted until 1973, but its importance as an iconoclastic voice waned with the arising of the 60's countercultural movement). The array of writers and work published by founding editor Rosset was staggering: Reprinted here from Evergreen Review's first year alone are--to name just a few entries--original short stories by Samuel Beckett and Jack Kerouac (with his ``October in the Railroad Earth'' predating the publication of On the Road); Allen Ginsberg's Howl (previously published only as a pamphlet that'd been seized by customs officials); a selection from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind; and a long passage from Alexander Trocchi's Cain's Book. Though much of the material has by now shown up in other books, numerous items (including the marvelous covers- -e.g., the classic one from 1966 of a heavily bearded Ginsberg cavorting in a sport coat and Uncle Sam top hat--and several reprinted comic strips--notably, Michael O'Donoghue's The Adventure of Phoebe Zeit-geist)--are here saved from oblivion. To see them all together is not only to take a stimulating walk down Memory Lane but to remember how much influence and prophetic insight a daring literary magazine with high standards can have. --Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an alternatePaperbackedition.