City Lights, San Francisco’s indie publisher and bookshop, may sit on a fault line but over the years it has created a few shock waves of its own. More than 50 years on, authors, readers, booksellers and publishers are still squeezing into this cake slice of a bookshop in North Beach for a taste of what’s next.

It was established in 1953 by poet and ‘beatnik’ Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin to provide a progressive, all-paperback alternative to books available at the time. It’s where the Beat Generation laid their hats and where publishing and selling Allen Ginsberg’s Howl got Ferlinghetti and bookseller, Shigeyoshi Murao, arrested in 1957 on obscenity charges. Their victory in court guaranteed the sale of other previously banned books – including D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. (Three years later British readers achieved similar rights after the failed prosecution of Penguin for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover.)

Countercultures don’t all fade away. Ferlinghetti is still here, going into the shop almost daily to see the veteran team, some of whom have been around for more than 30 years. There are also plenty of alert youngsters who will read, recommend and help on the shop floor. The strict curatorial approach makes their vision clear and unapologetic - this is no Beat mausoleum.

“We’re able to take chances on writers and we hope that when we put books on our shelves it means something,” says bookseller Paul Yamasaki, “It’s important to make a very clear political statement.” This means no bestsellers, no Ayn Rand (too conservative) and no ‘three for twos’. Good to know that there are still publishers looking for more than profit.

Photojournalist Lou Dematteis, recently got City Lights’ backing for Crude Reflections. The book documents the impact of TexacoChevron's oil excavation of the Ecuadorian basin, where doctors report higher levels of cancer and birth defects from water pollution. “Others were really interested in the story, but went no further because they were worried about a lawsuit,” said Dematteis. “City Lights had similar concerns but they had the courage to publish. Without an independent publisher, it would never have made it.”

A small publishing house like this can manage to produce only 14 new books a year (although the aim is to push on to 20). Each one that makes it on to the shelves is a reminder of how many important, progressive books never make it off the slush pile.

Agonist and troublemaker, Mattilda Berstien Sycamore is another of City Lights’ latest protégés. A San Franciscan, she feels a special historical and intellectual attachment: “It’s the ideal publisher for my novel. Its history of publishing work that is politically incendiary, sexually saturated and defiant matches my work exactly.” You may want to decide for yourself but if you want the gist, So Many Way to Sleep Badly is a gender-bending novel about: “rats and pigeons and roaches and health issues, insomnia, drugs, friends on drugs, bad sex, having sex for money, sex for recreation (and not knowing the difference) and trying to live ethically.” The book unearths subjects still relatively untouched in popular culture and is probably not one for Richard and Judy. If City Lights publish it, you’re not going to be reading anything similar elsewhere.

In the UK, we have recently celebrated the inaugural independent booksellers week aimed at wiring up a circuit between reader, writer and bookseller. It involved authors coming not to promote their books but to work in their local shop. This would make Ferlinghetti happy. He once said: “Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.”

City Lights is a flagship local bookshop for a flotilla of self-sufficient booksellers and publishers around the world who are committed to independent thought and who refuse to succumb to a mass-marketed literary canon. We may not like some of the books but, if we care about their right to be read, City Lights is an indie institution whose actions still speak louder than words. The beat goes on.

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