POLONOFF, DAVID - Wannabeat

"Set against the backdrop of a generation awakening from its countercultural dreams to the realities of a materialistic society, WannaBeat is an incisive and provocative coming-of-age story that can speak to the youth of today in their yearning for authenticity in the face of an increasingly artificial reality.

Living in San Francisco in the late 1970s, Philip Polarov is a writer scraping by on a series of odd jobs while attempting to turn his self-described "stream of drivel" into an Important Novel. As the last soldiers of the Beat Generation become ghosts in the North Beach neighborhood they put on the map and the Baby Beats, a new clique of their acolytes, take over the bars and coffeehouses, Philip searches for meaning, sex, drugs ... and an affordable place to crash."