Desolation Argonauts

Book excerpt: Pipedream meets reality along Route 66. Charged up with expectation, Henry Collins, a man with a subconscious Magnum fixation, and his band of argonauts explore the beat generation trail. Searching for the ghosts of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, they rub shoulders with next generation beats in roadhouses and speakeasies, and survivors from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Recognising their romantic visions of beatdom are tainted with fallacy and paradox, after six weeks on Route 66 travelling from Chicago to LA and returning to the Windy City on a northerly route, they exit the world of intellectual and down and out beats, flushed with an appreciation that no counterculture, no matter how seductive, approaches perfection.