The results of this experimentation are often exasperating, typically exhilarating, and always the product of minds that seem to be constantly bobbing and weaving, overflowing with mad, mystic energy. At its best, the prose is kaleidoscopic, unpredictable, full of strange rhythms and vibrant color. At its worst, the writing is so silly and self-indulgent that one expects the page to erupt with the sound of bongos beating and fingers snapping. Often, you’re not sure exactly how to react: “The Sir Francis Drake hotel,” wrote Ginsberg, “— which has a Golgotha robot — eternal — smoking machine crowned visage.”
     In Kerouac and Ginsberg’s letters, as in their fiction, the writing is most effective when their idealistic assault on literary form is tinged with human emotion. Thankfully, there is more than enough humor and humanity in Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters to justify the holy foolery.
     Considering the Beats’ continued hold over a certain segment of the popular imagination, it’s easy to overlook a key aspect of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters: its uniqueness. While the Beats’ pioneered an attitude toward form and fiction that retains considerable influence today, they don’t appear to have had any stylistic influence whatsoever. No one really writes like the Beats now. In fact, no one except the Beats really has. Prose like this, for better and for worse, is unlikely to appear again in our lifetime.