Beat writers have long been perceived as iconoclasts, critical of the Great Books and canonical literature in the western world. This reputation, to which the writers themselves contributed, is misleading, as this volume powerfully reveals. Over twelve chapters, the collection, edited by Murnaghan and Rosen, two Classicists, demonstrates that, on the contrary, a large number of Beat writers, and writers associated with the Beat ‘movement’, re-appropriated and responded to Greek and Latin literature in their work.

Hip Sublime is timely: as the editors point out in their introduction, for a long time Beat studies were ‘often more concerned with the glamorously self-destructive features of [the writers’] lives than with analysis of their work’ (p. 2), with the latter's ‘manic, free-wheedling side’ (p. 3) than with the craft that went into it and its renegotiation of the past. But, to borrow T.S. Eliot's famous words in Tradition and the Individual Talent, ‘no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone’, and the volume partakes in a relatively recent development in Beat scholarship that focuses on the reworking of traditions. If the influence of Romanticism has already been analysed, this volume is the first study to draw our attention to the importance of Greek and Latin literature for those writers.

The twelve chapters that compose the collection are as many snapshots of the diversity of Beat engagements with Greek and Latin texts. Diversity is a central notion here, and one that characterises many aspects of the volume. We are presented, first of all, with a variety of critical perspectives, as the contributors come from both the disciplines of Classics and of twentieth-century literature, and adopt a wide range of methodological approaches, from close readings to, for instance, a structuralist framework inspired by Vladimir Propp in Chapter 3. Diversity is also evident in the writers discussed in the volume. Some are well known and strongly associated with Beat writing (Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Philip Whalen), while others are more loosely affiliated with it (Robert Duncan, Ed Sanders, Kenneth Rexroth and, on the periphery, Charles Bukowski, Robert Creeley and Charles Olson). Efforts to include at least one woman, Diane di Prima, to counterbalance the perception of Beat writing as male, should be noted. Finally, diversity characterises the writers’ relationships with the Classics and their degree of familiarity with the material. The chapters range from studies of classically trained writers (Ed Sanders, Chapter 7) to those who had to rely on English translations for their re-appropriations (Charles Bukowski, Chapter 5); from analyses of translations, with varying degrees of closeness to the originals, to texts adopting a loose ‘mythical method’.

Despite this variety, the volume remains a very coherent collection, and the work of the editors should be commended. The volume is organised in three main sections, and whenever relevant, the chapters cross-reference each other. This understanding of the volume as a whole, sometimes lacking in other edited collections, helps the reader build bridges between individual case studies and invites comparisons. Chapters 1–3 focus on the motif of the journey borrowed from Classical texts and reworked into Beat poetry and fiction. After S. Dickey's illuminating overview of the katabasis as a motif in Allen Ginsberg's ‘A Supermarket in California’ and ‘Howl’, and in Jack Kerouac's Big Sur and Orphans Emerged, C. Gair turns to the anabasis in Kerouac's early work, and L. Reynolds to the quest as a structuring element in William Burroughs's work. Chapters 4–6 similarly discuss a single topic, this time Catullus. Essays by M. Pfaff, M. Johnson and N. Selby analyse the presence of the Latin poet in the work of three different writers, highlighting again the variety of modes of re-appropriations among the Beats: respectively in Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski and Robert Creeley. The second half of the volume is structured a little more loosely. Chapters 7–9 deal with the reception of epigrammatic poets: Sappho in Ed Sanders (by J. Skerl), Pindar in Robert Duncan (by V. Moul) and the Greek Anthology in Kenneth Rexroth (by G. Nisbet). The last three chapters include an overview of Classical presences in the work of Philip Whalen by J. Falk, a discussion of Diane di Prima's Loba by N.M. Grace and T. Trigilio, and an essay on Charles Olson's localism by R. Fletcher.

Across the sections, critical approaches resonate with each other. The volume contains many illuminating close readings, which, in their detailed attention to the relationship between the Classical and the modern texts, enhance our understanding of the latter. This is the case in the opening chapter by Dickey as well as in Pfaff's essay on Catullus in Ginsberg's early work and ‘Malest Cornifici tuo Catullo’ and in Selby's analysis of Creeley's ‘Stomping with Catullus’ as an example of his poetics of adultery. Several scholars also contextualise Beat receptions of the Classics within a broad Anglophone historical framework and show how Beat writers were influenced by the ways in which past generations read and represented Greek and Latin authors. Such considerations usually lead to fascinating and informative analyses, for example, of the influence of Mackail and Rice on Rexroth's work on the Greek Anthology by Nisbet, of the importance of James Joyce's Ulysses for Kerouac by Gair and of the ways in which Sanders's Sappho finds her place within the context of her Anglophone reception from the Victorian period to the 1960s by Skerl.

It is hard to find much at fault with the volume. Perhaps more attention could have been drawn to the disparity between the authors under study as regards the depth of their engagements with the Classics: writers for whom Greek and Latin literature have played a significant role are juxtaposed with others who may have only engaged with the material on a more superficial basis and/or during a rather limited period of time. All, however, receive the same degree of attention and space. This, however, is very minor and does not impact on the quality of the essays. Well-researched, informative and clearly written, they will appeal to a mixed audience of Classicists and twentieth-century specialists as well as advanced students.

The volume is a very welcome addition to studies in classical reception. Exposing readers to many aspects of a topic that has been neglected so far it is an invaluable starting point that will stimulate further conversation.