TOUGH POETS PRESS


Happiness Bastard
Kirby Doyle
October 12, 2020 / 224 pages
ISBN 9780578732039 Paperback / $15.99

The only published novel by West Coast Beat poet Kirby Doyle (1932–2003), "written on a sojourn that my lover post-wife and I took to New York in 1959–1960." Originally published in 1968 by Essex House.

"A brutal work of black humor born of Doyle's own struggle with poverty, drug addiction, and unhappy love affairs. . . . One of the great lost novels of the Beat Generation."
— Raymond Foye

"The most important innovative breakthrough in wordcraft since Howl, Naked Lunch, The Free-Lance Pallbearers by Ishmael Reed, Informed Sources by Willard Bain and Mailer's Why Are We In Vietnam? . . . Read Happiness Bastard by Kirby Doyle. Then, if you still don't know where it's at, the hell with you."
— Lawrence Lipton, Los Angeles Free Press

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