What is the setting of The Portable Beat Reader by Various?

The book is set in numerous different places as the Beats traveled a great deal and were often scattered across the world. The first section of the book is largely set in New York City during the late-1940s when the Beats main areas of activity were Columbia University and Times Square. The first section also discusses Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady's travels through the Midwest to Chicago and Mexico to Mexico City, which is described as a city of constant motion. Finally in the first section, William S. Burroughs writes of his travels through the jungles of South America. The second section is primarily set in Denver in the early-1940s when Cassady is growing up there.

Part three switches focus to San Francisco during the mid-1950s during the poetic San Francisco Renaissance. A number of the poems, however, are also set in the Pacific Northwest, especially those by Gary Snyder who grew up in that area. Most of the remainder simply revisits these locations except two chapters of section five. The first is William Burroughs Jr.'s story of visiting his father in Tangier, Morroco where he lived and wrote for a number of years. The other is Brion Gysin's article on the Beat Hotel in Paris, which was a popular destination for Beats such as Gregory Corso, Kerouac, and Burroughs.