Authors: Alan Kaufmann (Editor), Barney Rosset (Editor), Neil Ortenberg
ISBN-13: 9781560255505, ISBN-10: 1560255501
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: December 2004
Edition: First Trade Paper Edition
The Outlaw Bible of American Literature will serve as a primer for generational revolt and an enduring document of the visionary tradition of authenticity and nonconformity in literature. This exuberant manifesto includes lives of the writers, on-the-scene testimony, seminal underground articles never before collected, photographs, cartoons, drawings, interviews, and, above all, the writings. Beat, Punk, Noir, Prison, Porn, Cyber, Queer, Anarchist, Blue Collar, Pulp, Sci-Fi, Utopian, Mobster, Political—all are represented. The Bible includes fiction, essays, letters, memoirs, journalism, lyrics, diaries, manifestoes, and selections from seminal film scripts, including Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, and Taxi Driver. The editors have brought together an extravagant, eclectic, searing, and unforgettable body of work, showcasing Hustlers, Mavericks, Contrarians, Rockers, Barbarians, Gangsters, Hedonists, Provocateurs, Hipsters, and Revolutionaries—all in one raucous cauldron of rebellion and otherness. This prose companion to the best-selling award-winning Outlaw Bible of American Poetry features selections from Hunter S. Thompson, Exene Cervenka, Patti Smith, Dennis Cooper, Malcolm X, Sonny Barger, Maggie Estep, Lenny Bruce, Henry Miller, R. Crumb, Philip K. Dick, Iceberg Slim, Gil Scott-Heron, Kathy Acker, Jim Carroll, Charles Mingus, Norman Mailer, and many others.
Is an outlaw writer one who threatens to fill Marshall McLuhan with pencil lead? The editors of this overstuffed anthology never quite get around to defining just what "outlaw literature" is and what makes it illicit, dangerous, or otherwise suspect, except to hint that it stands in some sort of opposition to the world of "reality shows, Botox, or IPOs," to say nothing of a "culture coming of age in the grip of Google and Wal-mart." Resounding sentiments, those, and the editors, famed counterculturists in their own right, presumably know outlaw literature when they see it. Still, you might wonder: What do Richard Brautigan and Mickey Spillane, who took home hefty advances and even heftier royalty checks, really have in common with, say, Boxcar Bertha and Sonny Barger? Would Emma Goldman have much to say to Valerie Solanas, Ray Bradbury to DMX? Only a deconstructionist, perhaps, could say with any authority. For our purposes, being an outlaw writer appears mostly to mean using lots of naughty words (Barry Gifford: "Willie Wild Wong, you dumb motherfucker!"; Jim Carroll: "'I am the proletariat, you dumb bastard,' he said, 'and I think those motherfuckers are off their rockers") and doing lots of naughty and unhealthful things (Norman Mailer: "I threw up a little while ago and my breath is foul"; William Burroughs: "Junk sickness, suspended by codeine and hop, numbed by weeks of constant drinking, came back on me full force"). Still, there are lots of good and memorable things here, among them Paul Krassner's memoir of dropping acid with Groucho Marx; Dee Dee Ramone's heartfelt plea, "Please don't kill me now, God. I would love to be the last Ramone to die" (no such luck, sorry); and MalcolmX's spot-on prediction that after his death "the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with 'hate.'" A freeform category, then, marked by a rather shapeless but still quite readable, collection. Good stuff, if you like that sort of thing.
Prologue : voices from outlaw heaven | ||
The sexual outlaw | 1 | |
The house on Mango Street | 4 | |
Live from death row | 5 | |
Ballad of Easy Earl | 6 | |
The basketball diaries | 8 | |
Psychotic reactions and carburetor dung | 11 | |
Complete | 13 | |
L'Anarchie flier | 14 | |
Paradoxia | 15 | |
Fight club | 20 | |
Tropic of Cancer | 25 | |
Ask Dr. Mueller | 31 | |
Pimp | 37 | |
Close to the knives | 39 | |
What did I do? | 40 | |
American splendor anthology | 45 | |
Don Quixote | 53 | |
Last exit to Brooklyn | 54 | |
Tin Pan Alley | 59 | |
An American dream | 63 | |
Jew boy | 68 | |
The journal of Albion Moonlight | 78 | |
The sheltering sky | 83 | |
Cool for you | 86 | |
Junky | 89 | |
Leaving Las Vegas | 94 | |
Jan and Jack | 101 | |
Baby driver | 103 | |
On the road | 105 | |
Minor characters | 111 | |
The first third | 117 | |
Off the road | 119 | |
Go | 125 | |
An accidental autobiography | 130 | |
Rolling Thunder logbook | 133 | |
Paintings | 135 | |
On Dee Dee Ramone | 136 | |
Legend of a rock star | 138 | |
E.A.R.L. | 142 | |
Interview with Tupac Shakur | 145 | |
Tarantula | 148 | |
Miles | 151 | |
Tha Doggfather | 154 | |
James Brown : the godfather of soul | 155 | |
To do the right thing | 160 | |
Please kill me | 163 | |
The vulture | 170 | |
Please don't let me be misunderstood | 173 | |
The old, weird America | 178 | |
Ripening | 181 | |
The woman rebel | 189 | |
Thelma & Louise | 192 | |
SCUM manifesto | 198 | |
The illegal days | 205 | |
Living my life | 210 | |
Intercourse | 221 | |
The birth of feminism | 224 | |
Hell's angel | 225 | |
Street justice | 232 | |
Troia | 237 | |
Freewheelin Frank | 242 | |
The electric kool-aid acid test | 251 | |
Outlaw woman | 260 | |
Always running | 267 | |
If he hollers let him go | 270 | |
Push | 275 | |
Never die alone | 280 | |
Sweet Sweetback's baadasssss song | 286 | |
The scene | 290 | |
The white boy shuffle | 297 | |
Down these mean streets | 301 | |
Rope burns | 303 | |
Weird self portrait at sea | 311 | |
Sister of the road | 312 | |
Bound for glory | 316 | |
Grand Central winter | 320 | |
You can't win | 323 | |
Beggars of life | 328 | |
Midnight cowboy | 331 | |
Black fire | 342 | |
Diary of an emotional idiot | 347 | |
The bell jar | 352 | |
Requiem for a dream | 356 | |
The passionate mistakes and intricate corruption of one girl in America | 359 | |
In the city of sleep | 361 | |
Complete | 366 | |
A different kind of intimacy | 367 | |
Whoreson | 371 | |
Shock value | 377 | |
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius | 382 | |
Monkey girl | 385 | |
Dogeaters | 387 | |
Geek love | 390 | |
Fahrenheit 451 | 399 | |
The lost | 404 | |
Sales pitch | 408 | |
The hellbound heart | 410 | |
Naked lunch | 416 | |
Drawing blood | 424 | |
The Manchurian candidate | 426 | |
The grifters | 429 | |
The big kill | 434 | |
Taxi driver | 436 | |
Thieves' market | 443 | |
Dark passage | 447 | |
Really the blues | 450 | |
Angels of catastrophe | 453 | |
The man with the golden arm | 457 | |
The big hunger | 461 | |
The asphalt jungle | 464 | |
The getaway man | 467 | |
Dogs of God | 471 | |
Escape from Houdini mountain | 476 | |
The car | 477 | |
Drugstore cowboy | 481 | |
This outlaw shit | 485 | |
Love all the people | 490 | |
The way it has to be | 492 | |
American skin | 496 | |
The ceremony | 502 | |
Terminal lounge | 506 | |
Sketch | 511 | |
On the yard | 512 | |
Soul on ice | 521 | |
In the belly of the beast | 523 | |
Sketches | 526 | |
Life in prison | 527 | |
Cool hand Luke | 531 | |
The family | 534 | |
Introduction to short eyes | 537 | |
Short eyes | 539 | |
The sexual outlaw | 545 | |
Hardcore from the heart | 553 | |
Candy | 557 | |
Period | 564 | |
City of night | 564 | |
Shirts & skin | 569 | |
Now dig this | 574 | |
Public sex | 577 | |
One flew over the cuckoo's nest | 585 | |
Nigger | 593 | |
Assata | 598 | |
The delicious grace of moving one's hand | 599 | |
The autobiography of Malcolm X | 606 | |
How to talk dirty and influence people | 607 | |
My acid trip with Groucho Marx | 611 | |
The teachings of Don Juan | 617 | |
The abortion | 618 | |
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas | 624 | |
Vintage Dr. Gonzo | 629 |