Set against the backdrop of a generation awakening from its countercultural dreams to the realities of a materialistic society – San Francisco in the late 1970s – Philip Polarov is a would-be writer scraping by while attempting to turn his self-described “stream of drivel” into an Important Novel. As the last soldiers of the Beat Generation become ghosts, and the Baby Beats, a clique of their acolytes, take over the bars and coffeehouses, Philip searches for meaning, sex, drugs ... and an affordable place to crash. WannaBeat is an incisive and provocative novel about yearning for authenticity in the face of an increasingly artificial reality.
