Rebels of the conventional and stiff 1940s and 50s, the Beats celebrated spontaneity and freedom both intellectually and sexually. Marler explores the sexual pulse that throbbed throughout the Beats' writings - from the perverse cut-up' prose of William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch and the homoerotic poetry of Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac's letter to Neal Cassady in which he declares (despite sexual encounters with Ginsberg and Gore Vidal): 'Posterity will laugh at me if it thinks I was queer'. Other contributors include Diane di Prima, Frank O'Hara and Herbert Huncke.'
