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 novel about 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.

Clinging to his idealism in a world of upward mobility and status seeking while worrying about his accomplished brother's life-threatening illness, Philip scribbles his way across San Francisco bohemia in search of collaborators in a new Beat movement as he tries to win the heart of the cocaine-fueled hostess at the trendy restaurant where he is a dishwasher. Failing that, Philip throws himself into the SF punk rock scene, joining the crowds pogoing at the Mabuhay and befriending some of the infamous bands that play there.

Yet even this newfound comradeship in rebelliousness cannot thwart his economic reality: on the verge of eviction from his writer's garret, Philip must decide if his struggle to "resist the system" is a heroic quest ... or a ruse to avoid facing his inescapable place within it.