"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!"
Jack Kerouac, "One the Road"

Check out recommended Beat Writer Books mentioned in the Portable Beat Reader. For more books, Search Books

Beat Writers	Suggested Books
Jack Kerouac	On the Road, Subterraneans, Dharma Bums
Allen Ginsburg	Howl, Collected Poems, 1947-1980
William Burroughs	Junky, Naked Lunch
Norman Mailer	The White Negro
Allen Watts	Wisdom of Insecurity
John Clellon Holmes	GO!,  The Horn
Gary Snyder	Riprap and Cold Mountain, Turtle Island
Lawrence Ferlinghetti	Coney Island of the Mind, Endless Life
Michael McClure	Lighting the Corners, The Mad Club
Herbert Huncke	The Herbert Huncke Reader
Neal Cassady	The First Third
Philip Whalen	Overtime: Selected Poems
Philip Lamantia	Bed of Sphinxes: Selected Poems
Mezz Mezzrow	Really the Blues
Carl Solomon	Mishaps Perhaps
Ken Kesey	One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
Kenneth Rexroth	One Hundred Poems from the Japanese
Charles Bukowski	Tales of Ordinary Madness
Lew Welch	Trip Trap: Haiku on the Road
Bob Kaufman	Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness
Amiri Baraka	LeRoi Jones - Amiri Baraka Reader
Diana DiPrima	Revolutionary Letters
Ray Bremser	Blowing Mouth: The Jazz Poems
Brenda Frazer	Troia: Mexican Memories
Tuli Kupferberg	First Glance
Jack Micheline	North of Manhattan
Frank O'Hara	Lunch Poems, Collected Poems.
Peter Orlovsky	Clean Asshole Poems
Ed Sanders	Tales of Beatnik Glory
Anne Waldman	Vow to Poetry, Fast Speaking Woman
John Wieners	Cultural Affiars in Boston
Carolyn Cassady	Off The Road
Brion Gison	The Beat Hotel, Paris
Gregory Corso	Gasoline, Happy Birthday of Death
Joyce Johnson	Minor Characters
Hettie Jones	How I Became Hettie Jones
Jan Kerouac	Baby Driver