The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs

Blending biography, cultural history, and literary criticism, The Bop Apocalypse explores the religious concerns, metaphysical realities, and spiritual pursuits that undergirded the early friendship and literary collaborations among Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Williams S. Burroughs. Presenting a religious biography of the Beats from the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, John Lardas examines how Beat writers distilled a theology of experience — a religious vision that animated their everyday lives and art — from a flurry of disparate influences that included the saxophone wails of Charlie Parker, the psychology of William Reich, the hipster dialects of New York City, and especially the prophecies of Oswald Spengler. Revisiting the content of major works the Beats produced during the 1950s, Lardas considers how lived religion was incorporated into the way they wrote and demonstrates how they engaged America on moral grounds through the discourse of public religion.