One of the central relationships in the Beat scene was the friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ginsberg introduced Snyder to the East Coast Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, while Snyder encouraged Ginsberg to explore the beauty of the West Coast and introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism. From 1956 through 1995 (shortly before Ginsberg's death), the two men exchanged more than 850 letters, the most significant of which are collected here by Ginsberg biographer and editor Bill Morgan.
"To read their letters ... is to overhear the evolution of a remarkable friendship and the birth of a literary flowering we know as the Beat movement."—SFChronicle
