The Beat movement, characterized by its chief commentator Kenneth Rexroth as "total rejection of ... official high-brow culture," had already begun to take shape when Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened City Lights Books on the edge of San Francisco's Chinatown in June of 1953. Two years before, Jack Kerouac had coined the phrase Beat Generation, and the counterculture group's parameters of concern--from active and violent social protest to passive disengagement from society in general--were operative in the works of such disparate writers as Allen Ginsberg, John Clellon Holmes, Neal Cassady, Carl Solomon, and Kerouac himself. However, the Beats had received little attention beyond their immediate circle, and generally the established presses and journals were not receptive to the Beats' work. Consequently, Ferlinghetti's "Journey to San Francisco" marked the first significant step toward the establishment of a definable literary school with a voice in the cultural and poetic development of the country.

Prior...