Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement Book

Here's proof that literary criticism can be sheer joy to read.

I might recommend this book for its literary merits alone--Kenner's prose has the depth, precision, and fun of Nabokov's--but the range of learning here is also quite stunning. It's an education. You may not always agree with Kenner's narrative of modernism, but he certainly makes a strong case for the centrality of Pound. As a bonus, you can move on to The Cantos afterwards and commence to make sense of them.

I envy those reading it for the first time, but the third and fourth readings ain't so bad either.