Ebook: Queer Beats: how the Beats turned America on to sex

Title Page; Dedication; Acknowledgments; Introduction; I. -- The Road of Excess; II. -- Male Muses; III. -- Queer Shoulder to the Wheel; Permissions; About the Author; Copyright Page.;The writings that shocked America out of the 1950s. Blasting through the crew-cuts and conformism of their day, the Beat writers were queer in the fullest sense of the word: their fluid sexuality challenged all sexual and romantic conventions. Most shocking of their unconventional attitudes was their embrace of same-sex eroticism. At a time when gay people were considered mentally ill or criminal, the Beats celebrated spontaneity and freedom in thought, word, and action. Their highest value was nakedness--even before Allen Ginsberg stripped bare at a poetry reading to silence a heckler. They would try anything once, then write about it.