"With their idiosyncrafic style and their focus on the freedom of the individual spirit, the Beat writers significantly influenced the development of the 1960s counterculture in the United States. Yet the impulse for liberation in post-World War II America was not unique to the Beat culture. It was represented in a variety of narratives in addition to the handful of Beat works available today.".

"This work examines the literary response to the spiritual malaise of Cold War society - a phenomenon that gave birth to what Thomas Newhouse calls the underground narrative. In this study, we see how a generation of young writers made a hidden world visible and chronicled the rise of a counterculture that would change America forever."--BOOK JACKET.