Sun. October 18, 7pm
Join us at the Counterculture Museum for an evening with Jonah Raskin, presenting his new book Keeping the Beat Alive, an exploration of San Francisco countercultures from the Beat Generation onward, who went against the grain in the Fifties and Sixties and whose work is still inspirational in these dark times.
Celebrated author and journalist Elaine Elinson presents her historical novel, Radiant as the Stars. Set in 1911, as the Jews of Eastern Europe flee the pogroms on the eve of the Russian Revolution, 20-year-old Anna Reader, idealistic and driven by a passion for justice, decides to head in the opposite direction—back to the Ukraine her parents fled years before. So begins a harrowing story of love, intrigue, betrayal, and survival. Read Jonah Raskin’s review of Radiant as the Stars here.
About the books:
Keeping the Beat Alive: Essays & Reviews on Books, Artists & Writers Who Made the US the Envy of the World
A collection of more than 40 original, groundbreaking reviews and essays about the writers of the Beat Generation, plus their contemporaries and fellow travelers. They include William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Robert Kaufman, Judy Dater, Joanna Kyger, Joanna McClure, Jan Kerouac, Tommy Orange, David Amram, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and more. The essays and reviews add up to a cultural and literary history of the US from the 1940s to the 2020s.
An analytical study of key texts by the writers of the Beat Generation, with descriptions of essential San Francisco cultural landmarks such as City Lights and the Beat Museum in North Beach, the Counterculture Museum in the Haight, and Bird & Beckett on Chenery Street, plus Black Mountain in North Carolina. Keeping the Beat traces the complex relationships between the Cold War and literature on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the bromance between Jack Kerouac and Robert Creeley, Jan Kerouac’s road novel, Gaza and Mosab Abu Toha’s poetry, geography and the work of Charles Plymell, Bob Fass and radio, Ted Joans and Black expression, Anne Waldman’s epic verse, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and agit pop and the legacy of the English romantic poet, William Blake. The volume also includes an introduction by Simon Warner, the editor of Rock and the Beat Generation, the poem “I’m Beat, You’re Beat” by author, Jonah Raskin, and his reflections on his own life and experiences in San Francisco.
Radiant as the Stars
She left America for a revolution—and found herself in its crosshairs.
As thousands of Jews flee the violence of Tsarist Russia for the promise of America, twenty-year-old Anna Reader makes a dangerous choice: she returns to the Ukrainian shtetl her family escaped six years earlier.
Driven by idealism and a fierce belief in justice, Anna joins her cousin Chava in the Jewish Labor Bund, a growing movement challenging oppression on the eve of revolution. But the homeland she remembers has become a place of suspicion, political intrigue, and constant danger. Viewed as an outsider after her years in Chicago, Anna struggles to earn the trust of the radicals she once called friends.
When Chava is arrested by the Tsarist authorities, Anna risks everything to save her. As betrayal closes in and the threat of imprisonment looms, she must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice for her beliefs—and whether survival itself is worth the cost.
Set against the turbulent years before the Russian Revolution, this gripping historical novel is a story of courage, loyalty, and one young woman’s fight for justice in a world on the brink of upheaval.
About the authors:
Jonah Raskin
A biographer, cultural historian, book and restaurant reviewer and a performance poet, Raskin has authored books about organic farming, British literature and the British Empire, American literature and the wilderness and edited a collection of Jack London’s essays, titled The Radical Jack London. Born in New York, raised on Long Island and a longtime Californian, he has taught at Winston-Salem State in North Carolina, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Sonoma State University where he chaired the communication studies department and offered courses on media law, marketing and coordinated the student internship program. A Fulbright professor at two Belgian universities, in Ghent and Antwerp, he has written for The Nation, The LA Times, The SF Chronicle, the International Herald Tribune, the North Bay Bohemian and elsewhere. He created the characters and co-authored the story for the Hollywood feature film, Homegrown. He currently writes for Counterpunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser and edits the newsletter for the residents at The Carlisle, a senior living facility in San Francisco.
Elaine Elinson
Elaine Elinson is coauthor of the award-winning Wherever There’s a Fight and Development Debacle, which was banned by the Marcos dictatorship. Named a San Francisco Public Library Laureate, her work has been published widely, including in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kirkus, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. and the Jewish Book Council. Elinson served two decades as the communications director of the ACLU of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News. She speaks Russian and sings in Yiddish. She lives in San Francisco and this is her debut novel.
This is a FREE event. Books will be available for sale.