Anti-Humanism in the Counterculture

This book offers a radical new reading of the 1950s and 60s Americanliterary counterculture. Associated nostalgically with freedom of expression, romanticism, humanist ideals and progressive politics, the period was steepedtoo in opposite ideas - ideas that doubted human perfectibility, spurned themajority for a spiritually elect few, and had their roots in earlier politicallyreactionary avant-gardes. Through case studies of icons in thecounterculture - the controversial sexual revolutionary Henry Miller, Beat Generation writersJack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and self-proclaimed'philosopher of hip', Norman Mailer - Guy Stevenson explores a set of paradoxesat its centre: between romantic optimism and modernist pessimism; between brutal rhetoric and emancipatory desires; and between socialegalitarianism and spiritual elitism. Such paradoxes, Stevenson argues, helpexplain the cultural and political worldsthese writers shaped -in their time and beyond.