Even before I booked my plane ticket to San Francisco, Calif. (on a whim), I had wanted to go to City Lights Bookstore — the old gathering place of the Beats, where Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” was first published in 1954, and where generations of Beatniks continued to pay homage.
I was 16 when I first read “On the Road,” and was immediately entranced by the viscerality of Jack Kerouac's voice, the fluidity of meeting people at the time and the porousness of all boundaries — sexual, moral and spiritual. I remember finishing the book enveloped in the delicious evening heat in Singapore’s Botanic Garden, a wave of euphoria washing over me. Like many other Kerouac fans, I had devoured the following passage countless times, copied it in journals and committed it entirely to heart.
“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”
The Beat Generation emerged as a countercultural response to the spiritual void in post-WWII America, with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs as its most salient voices. The movement first started at Columbia University, where Kerouac and Ginsberg were both dropouts; by the 1950s, it had settled in the Bay Area, especially in neighborhoods near Beat poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s bookstore, City Lights.
Beat poets wrote in an authentic, unfettered style, with minimal edits. “First thought, best thought” was Ginsberg’s philosophy. Hallucinogenic drugs, sexual freedom and affinity with Eastern religions characterized much of their lifestyle.
When I finally walked up the hill in North Beach and saw City Lights in person, I felt like travelling back in time and patting my 16-year-old self on the shoulder. “You made it,” I wanted to whisper to her.
The second floor of the bookstore features a poetry room dedicated entirely to the Beat Generation and is thoughtfully decorated with historic photographs and posters. It’s obvious, however, that no amount of restorative effort could replicate the glory of the bygone era. I’ve already acquiesced that the closest I’d ever come to Kerouac would remain the moment when his words first kindled a part of my adolescent heart. Something was set aflame and kept on burning — will not stop burning, I hope.
I picked up multiple books from City Lights. “Artful” by Ali Smith, “Strange Hotel” by Eimear McBride and “My Mother: Demonology” by Kathy Acker. I finished “Strange Hotel” during my West Coast sojourn. A dreamy glimpse into the potently dark landscape of feminine impulses and self-deconstruction, the endless (and wordless) tug-and-pull between men and women in hotel lobbies, bars and rooms around the world.
I also discovered “Checkout 19” by Claire-Louise Bennett in Dog Eared Books, another well-curated independent bookstore in the Mission District in San Francisco. Picking it up from the shelves and immediately feeling I should buy it, I started thinking about the ways we encounter books throughout our lives, seemingly at random, which was the book’s thematic concern, too. As if by unspoken affinities, the invisible hand of the universe orchestrates encounters between humans and books — in dusty corners of used bookstores, childhood cabinets, as presents from people who have greatly understood us at a time, maybe still do.
Most interestingly, certain books seem to enter our lives exactly when we need something from them — a quote, a new framework of thinking, a particular way someone has worked through a blockage — when their tenor corresponds to something stirring within us. I’ve always believed in resonance, not just with people, but also with spaces and inanimate objects as well. The idea of resonance between texts and individuals feels particularly beautiful to me.
There’s also a joyfulness to discovering books on trips, the way they inevitably bear the imprints of streets, subway rides and the versions of self temporarily invented in new cities and landscapes.
Before my trip, I had imagined the West Coast as somewhat culturally barren, known primarily as a tech hub. But wandering in San Francisco has proven me wrong. I’m already looking forward to further delights, bookish or otherwise, upon future returns.
Christy Liang '28 (she/her) is an Arts & Culture Editor.
She is an English & Religion major who loves long conversations, live music in underground bars, and movies that are a little pensive. She's genuinely curious about what goes on in other people's minds.
