The Bookstore --> Alan Kaufman

In 1999, Alan Kaufman and S. A. Griffin edited The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, a collection of the nonconformist and radical works of modern verse. Jim Chandler had this to say about it:

The Outlaw Bible is probably the definitive collection of American outsider poetry of the last half century--and I don't say that only because my poetry is included. Holding this big, mean volume is like clutching the dark electric streets that gave it life and feeling the vibration of poetic history ringing through one's body.

While an anonymous guy at Amazon.com said:

This is possibly the death-knell of modern literature. How hypocritical! How fraudulent! This book has obviously sacrificed true "outlaws" in order to fit in writers might have been outlaws for all of five minutes before being in Gap ads and their ilk. Kaufman should be ashamed of himself. What's worse, the few outlaws that ARE here are not given nearly as much attention as the ubiquitous sycophancy heaped on Allen Ginsberg and the wealthy others who earned a pretty penny capitalizing on hip-ness or beat-ness. This is commodified dissent at its most blatant and disgusting. As a collection of cultural fashion statements, it works. But as a collection of poetry that strives to defy conventional mores and set forth a radical and independent agenda, it is nothing more than a vacant and superficial commercial advertising what college kids are supposed to think is cool. This is not reflective of a zeitgeist, it is reflective of the trendy exploitation of packaged and commodified "hip".

How Allen Ginsberg's famous works on butt-fucking beautiful boys fail to defy conventional mores is beyond me, but if these controversial reviews intrigue you, The Outlaw Book of American Poetry is available from Buy.com. You go, questionable rebels.

In 1998, Alan Kaufman released a book of poetry called Who Are We?, available from Alibris.com, for $9.95. Here are a small sampling of the reviews for this tome:

"A new young Kerouac...Alan Kaufman's poetry has the bebop sound of the best Beat poetry."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"...avatar of Lenny Bruce, Walt Whitman and Jackie Gleason"
SAN FRANCISCO GUARDIAN

"...a great young poet...his verbal chords are big, crashing blues chords and boogie-woogie chords and loud thrash poundings. Under that verbal rocking is the heart of Walt Whitman..."
SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY

"...work that robes his anger at growing up in a country that seems to have forgotten that people like Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Jack London, Henry Miller, Getrude Stein and Jack Kerouac ever walked on this native earth. Alan has a vision of the broad-shouldered axe."
Neeli Cherkovski, SOMA

"A poet of the people is being born"
Jack Hirschman

Jew Boy Alan Kaufman's latest book is a memoir, Jew Boy, also available from Buy.com.

In a recent cover story in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, staff critic James Sulliven called Alan Kaufman an American-Jewish version of Hubert Selby Jr. and Jean Genet and went on to say: "At its heart-and a great big heart it is-JEW BOY is a classic, if wholly unconventional, American coming-of-age story...Kaufman's writing can make gorgeous dreams of some of his most disturbing memories...JEW BOY combines the core elements of Kerouac's wide-eyed discovery of an alternative America, Henry Miller's resolve to throw open the doors of private lives, however unflattering and Spiegelman's comic-book approach to the modern era's most horrific event, the Holocaust."

"A grand epic of a memoir...The concrete details of his passage are perfectly rendered, from the dark dense womb of his parents' apartment in the Bronx to his attempted escape to the open skies of On-the-Road America."
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author of East into Upper East

"Make no mistake: a star is born. A unique original voice with extraordinary stylistic grace and power brings to life the characters (including himself) on every page."
Harold Norse, author of Memoirs of a Bastard Angel