Hunter S. Thompson Books

A resource and bibliography of Hunter S. Thompson's Work By Marty Flynn

David S. Wills’ Beatdom Now

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There is no doubt about it, there is a serious shortage of publications that peel off the outer layer of whats going on in the World today; and dig a little (or a lot) into what has caused the problems we’re trying to deal with today. Magazines like Scanlans and Ramparts, however short lived gave us a look into the cause rather than the effect.  David Wills has come up with the idea of creating a magazine called Beatdom Now, walking a similar line to the muckraker of old but with a modern twist. He wants your opinions, thoughts and reports on what’s going on in your World. Personally I think it’s a great idea and long overdue. David let me lift the piece below from his site here It will give you a better idea on what he’s looking for. You can contact David at editor@beatdom.com. Also for more of David’s work you can check all his sites, the links are half way down this page on the right. So get writing. Get it off your chest.

Beatdom Now

I want to start a second magazine – a sister publication for Beatdom. This has been a goal of mine for a long time, but Beatdom is a cruel mistress. She demands more attention than I can normally afford, and a second magazine might just kill me… But it might just make me, you and our readers all a little happier… It might just make the world a brighter place.

I want to depart from the world of the Beat Generation and focus on the world around us. Beatdom has always claimed to be a study of the Beat Generation – literary, historical, cultural – but also professed an interest in exploring the world around us through the messages set forth by Ginsberg, Kerouac et al. We’ve published rants and musings on the modern world, and explored the reincarnations of the Beat Generation, through our new fiction and non-fiction.

And Beatdom will continue to do all that. It’s not changing. Issue Five will follow in the style is the first four, and be entirely unaffected by the publication of Beatdom Now.

What I want from Beatdom Now is to take our regular writers and readers, and maybe a little of the style, and simply forget all our heroes. Beatdom is a literary journal. We explore the past. But in Beatdom Now we will take the stylistic teachings, and moral messages, and just be journalists…

That may sound strange, because Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs etc etc were not journalists. In fact, during the heyday of the Beat Generation they weren’t even particularly interested in the politics of the world – they wanted to take refuge and carve out a space for themselves among the madness.

But we are taking style and morals from the Beats, as well as from Hunter S. Thompson and other late twentieth century writers and artists. I want to publish creative non-fiction that is dedicated to the destruction of injustice, and the dissipation of illusions. I want to read the sort of thing you wouldn’t find in all the biased, dumb popular press outlets.

I know Gonzo was a one man genre, and that people look foolish for taking too much inspiration from Thompson’s work, but that needn’t be the case. Take an intelligent look, and write your own report on the world. Forget drink, drugs and parody; remember truth, skill and sledgehammer vitriol.

Let’s change the world with another adventurous assault on the publishing world.

Submissions are now open for Issue One, with no deadline currently given… Find something in this world that makes you sick, and use your words to destroy it.

Written by hstbooks

August 30, 2009 at 16:24

Posted in Uncategorized

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