Gregory Corso is a member of what might be described as the original triumvirate of Beats that also included Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The three writers are linked by personal friendship and mutual literary influences that date back to the mid-1940s and early 1950s in New York; and they came to represent the Beat Generation in public consciousness because of their highly visible presence on the West Coast shortly before the publication of Kerouac's novel On the Road and the publicity surrounding the obscenity trial of Ginsberg's Howl, the two events that in 1957 helped bring the existence of the Beat Generation to national attention. Of the three writers, Corso is perhaps the quintessential Beat, in the sense Kerouac gave the word--that is, one who discovers joy ("beatific") through suffering ("beat")--for, in Kerouac's words of admiration, Corso was "a tough young kid from the Lower East...