Evergreen Review

Evergreen Review Dispatches from the literary underground, covers & essays 1957-1973

Book - 2025

"From the late 1950s to the mid-70s, work by contributors like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Amiri Baraka, Eldridge Cleaver, Tim Leary, Dennis Hopper, Jean Genet, Jerry Rubin, Bernadette Devlin, and Germaine Greer regularly appeared in the countercultural magazine Evergreen Review. Their subversive work and radical politics defined outsider literature for an entire generation. Edited by Barney Rosset of Grove Press, Evergreen Review was a quarterly illustrated/photography driven reflection of that genre. For the first time ever since their original print date, full color reproductions of all front covers of all 100 issues of the Evergreen Review from 1957 to 1973, plus hundreds of pages from many of the issues are reprinted exactl...y as they looked then - with all illustrations, photography, even the ads for other books, albums, letters to the editor, subscription offers, etc. - left intact! Historian Pat Thomas interviewed original 1960s era Evergreen staffers to get the inside scoop on the day-to-day operation of the magazine, and those conversations join new essays looking back on this golden era by John Oakes, Loren Glass, Kasia Boddy, Dale Peck, Ethan Persoff, Ken Jordan and Stanley Gontarski. Will this new Evergreen Review change the world as it did in the 1960s? Of course it will!"--Amazon.com.

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Subjects
Evergreen review.
Magazine covers > 20th century > Periodicals.
American essays > 20th century > Periodicals.
Literature publishing > United States > 20th century > Periodicals.
Popular culture > United States > 20th century > Periodicals.
United States > Politics and government > 20th century > Periodicals.
Illustrated works.
Essays.
Genres
Illustrated works
Essays
Published
Seattle, WA : Fantagraphics Books, Inc 2025.
Language
English
Other Authors
Patrick O. Thomas, 1964- (editor), Katie Westhoff (contributor), Ken Jordan, John Oakes, 1961-, Kasia Boddy, Loren Glass, Dale Peck, S. E. Gontarski, Nat Sobel, Ethan Persoff, 1974-, Claudia Menza, 1947-, D. Norsen
Edition
First Fantagraphics Book edition
Item Description
"The essays (and interviews) in red -- are newly written / conducted for this book -- to explore the history of Barney Rosset, Grove Press, and the Evergreen Review. Everything else listed are vintage (original) articles from the 1960s and 70s from the pages of the Evergreen Review. Also weaved throughout the book are the front covers of every issues of the Evergreen Review--all 100 issues from 1957 to 1973"--Table of contents.
Physical Description
353 pages : color illustrations ; 32 cm
ISBN
9798875000676
Contents unavailable.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A lively anthology of an archly contrarian, occasionally semi-pornographic, and highly influential magazine over its three decades. Editor Thomas, a learned student of all things '60s, makes a strong case for Barney Rosset and hisEvergreen Review as key agents of the era's evolving culture, politics, media, and entertainment: "Barney has not been properly acknowledged for morphing the sociopolitical terrain of the 1960s and early 70s. Along with the folks like Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, Bob Dylan and the Beatles, Barney Rosset created the 1960s." The 1957 debut issue was suggestive of that era-shaping mission: It contained an excerpt from Ginsberg's new poemHowl, a piece by Ralph Gleason on San Francisco jazz, a prose piece by the pre--On the Road Jack Kerouac, and works by many other Beat luminaries. Suggestive, too, was the fact that Cuban nationalists, put out by the review's glorification of Fidel and Che, fired an RPG into Rosset's Grove Press office, an act that "eloquently testified to Rosset's capacity to provoke American sensibilities." Thomas' anthology hits on many high points, including an essay by Brion Gysin explaining his cut-up method of composition; Norman Mailer's testimony at the Boston obscenity trial of William Burroughs'sNaked Lunch; and even the American debut of the French cartoonBarbarella, soon to be a major motion picture. It was in Rosset's pages that Ezra Pound lamented to Ginsberg his "stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism," that Dennis Hopper detailed how the iconic filmEasy Rider came to be, and that Twiggy revealed…well, more than readers had seen before, anyway. Jorge Luis Borges, Kay Boyle, Eldridge Cleaver, Bernadette Devlin: Every issue (and Thomas reproduces the covers of all of them) was a trove for readers, political activists, and fans of popular culture then and now. An enjoyable and illuminating stroll down a countercultural memory lane. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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