Reviews

A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation by Richard Peabody

srenee213's review

3.0

Read for school. This book is mostly memoir and poetry, and while I didn't read all of it, I think I read enough to get a good feel for the writing. In class, we looked at the writing of 10 of the 27 authors: Carolyn Cassady, Elise Cowen, Diane di Prima, Jan Kerouac, Joan Haverty Kerouac, Joanne Kyger, Joanna McClure, Margaret Randall, Laura Ulewicz, and Anne Waldman. The poems were a little "out there" for me, but then I'm not much of a poetry fan anyway. Some of them had really nice rhythm and images though. The memoir/fiction bits were my favorite. They're short but packed full of drama- love, marriage, sex, drugs, etc. I haven't read any writing by the (more famous) men of the Beat generation, but I think if I had, I could've appreciated this book more. The writings by Cassady and the Kerouacs were interesting on their own, but some of the kids in my class who had read Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg definitely came out with a different opinion of the men after reading these stories by the women in their lives.

I would give the fiction 3.5 stars and the poetry 1.5, so I'm rounding that out to 3. An okay read.

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