Ed Sanders: Tales of Beatnik Glory (1975)

An interview by Charles Ruas with the author of Tales of Beatnik Glory, originally broadcast in 1975 on WBAI-FM.

Owner of the Peace Eye bookstore, publisher of the legendary Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, and founding member of The Fugs, Ed Sanders was a central figure and originator on the beatnik-hippie scene. His mammoth ode to the '60s, written over a 30-year span, contains two 1995 volumes in addition to the earlier two volumes published in 1975 and 1990.

Tales of Beatnik Glory is a history lesson, activist primer, and an innovative hybrid of both prose and poetry and fiction and memoir. Set mostly in the Lower East Side of New York City, the stories are populated with real citizens (such as underground filmmaker Jonas Mekas, fellow Fug Tuli Kupferberg, and poet Allen Ginsberg) mingling with Sanders's composites of local characters.

•