Greening Bohemia

The Environmental Arc of Beat Generation Literature

Chad Weidner

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Greening Bohemia is the first book to connect diverse Beat Generation literature to environmental concerns. What is the connection between the Beat Generation and the environment? Using careful textual and rhetorical analysis and integrating ecocritical concepts and critical vocabulary, this study shows the Beats’ varied environmental contributions. It challenges the boundaries of Beat literature by including sometimes marginal voices in the discussion. Greening Bohemia suggests that Beat writing contains deep insights into the human-nature relationship, critiques of consumerism, spiritual quests, and a vision for a more harmonious future human existence. The book places the Beat Generation in a larger ecological and cultural narrative, emphasizing its lasting impact and encouraging readers to reconsider its legacy. The study challenges the American ecocritical focus on nature writing and suggests that Beat-bohemian literature has environmental potential and traces cultural change to the present day. This study thus expands our understanding by re-examining well-known and neglected Beat Generation texts and promoting ecocritical responses to art. It highlights the enduring significance of the Beat Generation, and it encourages readers to reevaluate its legacy, considering contemporary attention to environmental concerns. In short, Greening Bohemia clarifies ways Beat texts connect to the most extraordinary defining problem of our age.

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative.

About the Author

Chad Weidner researches the intersection of ecocriticism, The Beat Generation, and ecopoetics. His work, Fractured Ecologies, is an anthology of transnational experimental writing to tackle global environmental issues. His first book, The Green Ghost: William Burroughs and the Ecological Mind, challenges existing studies and repositions Burroughs within an ecological frame. As a Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Humanities at Utrecht University, Weidner worked with feminist researcher Rosi Braidotti. He has done additional editorial work, including “Keep on Rolling Under the Stars” and “The Beat Generation and Europe.” Weidner is co-founder of the European Beat Studies Network and lectures on film, media, and rhetoric in the Netherlands.