This is the second volume of essays by Jim Burns, and like the first it deals mainly with American writers active from around 1930 to 1960 and a little beyond. Among the writers covered are Clifford Odets, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Anatole Broyard, and John Clellon Holmes, together with a variety of left-wing authors and several poets and others associated with the Beat Generation. There are also essays about the abstract-expressionist painters and several jazz musicians.
Jim Burns was born in 1936 and has been active as a poet, essayist, reviewer, and little-magazine editor for fifty years. His first collection of essays, Beats, Bohemians and Intellectuals, was published by Trent Books in 1990, and Laying Something Down: Poems 1962-2007 by Shoestring Press in 2007. His most recent volume of poetry is Streetsinger (Shoestring Press. 2010).