Actor-writer Taylor Mead, "the funniest guy around," according to Jack Kerouac, is best known for his comic roles in such films as Ron Rice's The Flower Thief (1960), Bob Downey's Babo 73 (1964), and Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys (1968). Though Mead's fame derives more from his acting than his writing, his notebooks represent a strong, personal, and independent testament celebrating and exploring many of the same concerns as Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Disarming, intimate, narcissistic, and consistently clever, Mead's diaristic poems and prose notes invite comparison--in their moods--with Frank O'Hara and Carl Solomon. Moreover, their attention to social injustice shares much common ground with Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Taylor Mead was born the second of two sons to Harry and Priscilla Mead on the last day of the year (Mead will not reveal which) in Detroit, Michigan. His father, who practiced law and owned a chemical company, was one of the most...