Allen Ginsberg Books

Like many, my introduction to William S. Burroughs was Naked Lunch; a book that may very well be the most authentic description of a drug addict's personal, nightmarish hell. I picked up Junky afterwards, not knowing what to expect, and came away disappointed at first. "That's it?" was the thought ringing through my head, as Junky comes off as a straight forward tale of a drug addict on the brink, compared to the picture that Burroughs so vividly painted with Naked Lunch. Deciding to give Junky another chance and putting everything about Naked Lunch on the back burner, the book now comes off as a cautionary tale more than anything else. Burroughs weaves a harrowing, autobiographical tale of Bill Lee: a man with an Ivy League background who discovers the highs and joys of morphine and other members of the junk family, and the experiences that Lee goes through as he tries to kick the habit, only to fall back into it again and again. As said before, Junky is a more straight forward portrait of addiction, and when read side by side with Naked Lunch, comes off as the reality of Burroughs' drug raddled Hell. It definitely doesn't have the kind of impact of Naked Lunch, or even some of Burroughs' other works, but there is still something about Junky that resonates a powerful voice that one should always open an ear for. All in all, if Naked Lunch was your introduction to Burroughs as well, don't let Junky's more straight forward narrative put you off, as it is definitely worth your time.

If you're looking for something different, check out this impressive first novel. Although not a long novel (about 120 pp.), it's wildly original, highly descriptive writing begs a second reading.

_Junky_ is surprisingly well-structured. Believe it or not, there is a plot!

Characters drop in and out of the story, so that the novel itself feels like some sort of crash pad. Everyone is fair game for Burrough's observations; many are described in a surreal, hilarious way. I like the way Burroughs varies sentence and paragraph length, giving an improvisational feel to the book, as if it's a be-bop record or a Jackson Pollock drip painting. (And maybe that's the intent?)

Again, nothing escapes Burrough's critical eye. Although he is homosexual and a junkie, he shows contempt for some of the trappings and adherents of these 1950s subcultures.

Some of my favorite lines include:

- "Waves of hostility and suspicion flowed from his large brown eyes like some sort of television broadcast."

- "'You're both mother (expletive deleted)ers.' She was half-asleep. Her voice was matter-of-fact as if referring to actual incest."

- "A young man lurched in with some object under his arm." (Burrough's word choice is hilarious - "lurched"!)

- "The place looked like a Chop Suey joint. ... The walls were painted black and there was a Chinese character in red lacquer on one wall.

'We don't know what it means,' she said.

'Shirts thirty-one cents,' I suggested."

Perhaps Burrough's self-observation and sense of humor likely contributed to his longevity. It's hard to believe he lived to age 84!

_Naked Lunch_ is next on my list.

I first devoured this book back in 1991 as I sat in a bathtub in Liverpool. Never before had I come across anything like it. Upon this rereading, I remain surprised at the way it still manages to resonate. I am not a big fan of Burroughs overall as I found Naked Lunch a very hard slog, but the clear, simple prose of Junky tells a-- regrettably brief--tale of a colorful life spent on the margins. Fifty years later its narrative continues to shock. The characters and associations described within are as unique as you'll find in literature. I just wish the book was longer as Burroughs wayward days were interesting enough for 500 pages. It moves like On the Road but the author's realism is what one finds most endearing. It's a life most of us will never know, but Old Bull Lee's snapshot is good enough.

Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk by William S. Burroughs ***

To be honest I did not enjoy this very much. I am a massive Burroughs fan, he is easily one of my favorite authors of all time, and I have read nearly all his work, and enjoyed almost all of it. Junky is the exception to that. I at times felt the book to be, dare I say boring. Burroughs attempt at the occasional humor was dry and not witty like on most of his work. I found the plot, or lack there of really, to be bland and at times annoying. His style seems to even be strained here, which is sad considering he is one of the most original writers in American history, as well as one of the most underrated.

Now even this, the definitive text didn't save the story for me. I am not saying this was totally bad, so please don't get me wrong. Junky has lots of potential, and could have been one of his best works, but for me personally this just seems weak for an author of his stature.

Junky could be the most effective anti-drug book ever written.

This is not the William S. Burroughs of The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (Burroughs, William S.) and certainly not the same guy who wrote Naked Lunch: The Restored Text. This is a Burroughs who's not talking to himself or talking to his admirers. Instead this an author who is stretching to reach the reader with the actual smelly, lonely, desperate, empty reality of the junky.

It's a reality that Burroughs has explored in his fiction and that he has occasionally mined for characters and atmosphere. But nowhere, not even in Exterminator! has he come as close to offering up this direct-if bleak-conversation with the reader. It's worth noting that, outside the world of book-lovers, this may be his most well-known work because it does such a stark and effective job of describing the day-to-day world as it's experienced by the junky.

Lynn Hoffman, author of the somewhat different bang BANG: A Novel

Don't get me wrong. I attended 3 readings by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky at Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusettes in the late 1970's and even recorded "Contest of the Bards" and handed him a copy of it at his request,... I 'absolutely' consider his oratory style of delivery and poetic verse and style amazing and brilliant and so very very entertaining and inspiring.. but the 'greatest' epic poem or poet of his century I just can't agree with. Gary Snyder made such an impact with introducing the marriage of Zen and the Orient into modern poetry style of his day (as Vincent vanGogh and Gauguin did in painting in the Expressionest era in painting/art), and Gary's poems of the passing of a day's events are so brilliant and open and revealing, and Jack Kerouac's style and impact, and Ferlinghetti's brilliance stemming from such a variety of different drugs... T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Patty Smith, Bob Dylan, ... Marianne Moore,... grins... there are so many just 'great' poets from that and before and after generations in American history... one can really not call one the 'greatest' of any of their peers when there is such an overabundance of wealth to choose from and to have been entertained and inspired by. Howl is about the 'awakening' of american society, the public, the 'beginning' of awakening that could happen. But we actually have reverted, we actually believe that it was 'only' Russians or Chinese or Cubans or the Germans of WWII who were lied to or not told the truths by their governments whether led by Political Action Groups, Special Interest, drug companies, oil companies, insurance companies, etc. The rending of the veil of sleepiness of being 'content' socially is what Howl is all about, the 'rage' against that as we should be enraged against the last moment of breath to deaths' face as deat come to take us to the next realm. I don't know if anybody actually feels the rage of "Howl" within anymore, whether it was worth it after all, after all of the tea and ices... shrugs.

While Allen Ginsberg's three-part, long poem "Howl" is borne of a particular moment in American history --- the Joseph McCarthy congressional witch hunts; the cold war with Russia (which includes, to a degree, the Korean War); social and racial unrest --- it is still possible to read and appreciate the work without the context of the time. The staccato beats of the stanzas, the raw and potent language, as well as the cross-country travels in the poem are all worth exploring in detail outside of the realm of Ginsberg's cultural experience. With powerful imagery, specific American locales, and references to John Milton, William Blake, Neal Cassady and the Bible, the 1956 poem ushered in not only the age of Beat poetry, but a lasting piece of fury, compassion and madness.

The opening line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" sets in motion a seemingly endless list of unnamed, but mostly male, people whom the narrator apparently knew who lost their sanity in the streets, subways, back alleys and bars of America. Written as a single, run-on sentence, the rhythm scheme is structured as mini-tales, each passage of a new, mind-blowing experience beginning simply with "who," connecting back to that first line of the poem. The sense of dislocation within familiar terrain is the theme repeated throughout, with places in the heartland like Laredo, Texas and Arkansas as sinister and terrifying as Chicago and New York City. The people of the narrator's generation come from and travel to all points on the U.S. map, but share the common states of sorrow and confusion, unable to feel grounded within landscapes that no longer hold the same security and dependency that they once did. When the "angelheaded hipsters [...] / [...] bare their brains to Heaven under the El" and "[drink] turpentine in Paradise Alley," the America that once made sense is transformed into a jumble of seedy and depressed places where screaming at God, poisoning oneself, and having meaningless s*x for an almighty, capitalistic dollar is the current norm.

Time, space, eternity, the universe and Plato are invoked throughout the narrator's journey across America, allowing Ginsberg to delve into the big questions asked by man, albeit without attempting to directly answer any of them. He is ambitious in his reachings, detailing the concerns and experiences of an entire generation, his only judgments coming in the form of labeling the various acts performed as the actions of an insane group of people. He then follows the list of his generation's misdeeds with a section devoted to Moloch, invoking the biblical Canaanite who also shows himself in poems by Coleridge and Milton. The third and final section addresses Carl Solomon, a real-life friend to Ginsberg, to whom the poem is dedicated. It continues the societal course of madness to its logical conclusion, with Solomon in a Rockland, N.Y. mental hospital receiving treatment for the destruction of his, the best, mind.

Amazing, this book truely is one of the books of modern Bohemia ... A must for every dark-inspired beat-nick.

If you love Whitman, you'll be a fan of this book. It's short, but the free verse is very similar.

Howl, And Other Poems-Allen Ginsberg *****


When originally released in the 1950's Howl was one of the most contraversial works in literature up to that point even rivaling that of Ulysses. Filled with shocking imagry and what some may concider to be distasteful wording and dipictions of overt homosexuality and non-conformity along side excessive drug use and things of that nature. The author as well as other poets were taken to court on the subject matter of the poem was obscene, which it was latter ruled not to be.

Many will tell you in todays world that Ginsberg as well as all the other Beat poets were overrated and hyped up to be something that they really were not, well this is all a matter of opinion but that opinion is just wrong.

Regardless of whether the beats were 'hyped' and if this poem had not been taken to court there is no way it would have been this popular but that does not howeve mean that it would be any less powerful and well written.

So in the end you must read Ginsberg for your self and form your own opinion. But most of the time people who read his poems agree that he is one of the best, and while Howl is not his best work, it is truly a powerful poem non the less.

I saw the movie before I purchased the book. I really enjoyed the movie and I had to buy the book to make the comparison. While I found them to be quite different I really enjoyed both in their places. The book was scattered at times but always honest. You really get a sense that you are hearing about Dito's life with out a filter, the flaws as well as the triumphs. I would recommend this book to anyone between 16 and 60 (especially if you've ever lived in New York).

I just finished watching the movie.I got goosebumps.
I grew up in the neighborhood and moved out to Long Island about 6yrs ago.
I went to Immaculate Conception Grammar school and graduated in 86'
Dito captured Astoria down to the very minute detail

Too bad they didnt show Father Angelo in the movie. He was the best !

I hope the movie gets some awards, it was eerie watching your childhood caputured in such astounding detail by such a fine writer.

There are stretches of this book that sound like the writer is
channeling Jack Kerouac. In fact, sometimes the channeling is so
faithful that you could even mistake it for plagiarism. But this really
isn't anything like The Dharma Bums (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Instead it's more a narcissistic, disjointed story
of a borderline sociopath (who may or may not be the author).
The key is in the beginning pages when the author describes his hero's
adventures in Astoria. It's a record of meanness and violence that has
its echoes through the rest of the book.
The movie, I'm told, has some promise, but you could do better to skip this little piece of drivel and try On The Road by Jack Kerouac Poster by Len Deighton, 24" x 34" instead.

Really enjoyed the book...........not to mention Dito was a neighbor of mine in Astoria.....

I really liked the movie version of "Saints" for its gutsy portrayal of Dito's experience coming of age in Astoria. Unfortunately, the screenplay is far superior to the book. The book starts with Dito's early years but merely skims the surface and proceeds to a disjointed, sprawling narrative about Dito's adventures (mostly drunken or drug addled) as a punk rocker. He drops a lot of names but the story never goes anywhere. It sounds like he dictated this into a tape recorder and had someone transcribe his musings. And I'm not convinced he didn't make a few things up along the way. And, by the way, Yogaville is not close to either Farmville or Richmond and Raleigh, North Carolina is not a small town (if you read the book you'll understand the references). There's really no point to this book and after a while his stories are pretty tedious.

this book was required reading when I was in high school, to be able to reread it with all the real people mentioned was a wonderful treat

This is an excellent version of a cult classic book that I HIGHLY recommend. With real names, more details and a sweet introduction you can't go wrong.

KLB

I read the standard version of ON THE ROAD years ago - and loved it. But having just read the unbroken by paragraph or chapter rush of the scroll version, it's like the literary equivalent of a Wellesian cinematic long take. And it makes a difference, a big difference in the book. It is no longer a book, it is the very onrush of Life and it is trip that carries you along whether you want to go or not. There is a truly hypnotic appeal in this unbroken narrative that is, yes, diluted in the standard version. The real names are welcome, the more explicit sexuality is welcome - but it is the literary long-take that makes this original version so complelling and irresisitable. (And just as an aside, as there would be no true Abbott without Costello and vice versa...there probably would not have been a Kerouac without Cassidy. Or if there were, he probably would have been lame and tame and not much remembered. But Kerouac's writing of the "Holy Goof" Cassidy smacks of a synergy that comes pure from Heaven - or Hell, if you disapprove the admittedly madcap lifestyle of the book's main hero.) Anyway - back to my main point - the unbroken scroll reads like how it was meant to be...for in its FORM is its very meaning...and that is that Life is a road and a rush and a journey and a thing to be explored, adventured into, seeking, searching...for Life is Movement and this book is the most mobile book ever written. A must...like a breath of fresh air! Like the wind blowing your hair through the open window of an immortal car on an unending drive. An Odyssey for our times - still! Thanks, Jack!

Fifty years ago
A wind started to blow
across America land of the free
The change was from normal to strange to beatific ectasy
and all be-
cause one man broke the sanctified clause between seen and unseen
and since his intense vision
of life, of love, of joy of strife
none of us could ever be the same again

Who do I worship? Who do I blame?

Jack.

I read his books/ I bleed his books dry with coffee in one hand
Blue Pentel in the other
And the man is blindly mad as well as kindly Saint brother

Him paint-
ing word pictures of pivateslideshowlife for all to see
He
and his pal Dean Moriarty
going across this great big wild plain

A trip for child mind
For angel heart
For illumiated soul
For frustrated dry bones of body weak

Shallow, hollow, small and frail
Hoping to find the Holy Grail.
Seek and ye shall find more than you could know

He infected intellects with sick artistic glow
Gave new license to be free
with words so easy without structure without form
so startling so mad so glad so sad
this storm of Beatific Fury.

Hip beyond words his echo remains
and his literary gifts still stains this world
In 1967 we sent the saint back to Heaven
no one to fill Jack's old shoes
no one will
and I got the blues

Poor sad Jack.

We need you back.


Peace & Blessings,
john, 'the Light Coach'

I mean, it's hard to write a review of something that people are stil trying to figure out exactly what it is, poem, novel, autobiography, jazz riff, all the above. It was great to see the unedited, unchanged version with original names and some relatively (to our times) tame sexual themata. I whizzed right through it trying to capture to wild ride Kerouac was on while writing this single paragraph tale of our age. When read alongside the more familiar version with paragraphs and quotations marks and pseudonyms, it was easy to see the power of the book and the overwhelming effect it must have had on readers when it first came out, even if it was in the more muted version. I loved it.

It also doesn't seem like the kind of book which requires either a synopsis or a lengthy review. This is not the Count of Monte Cristo, let's face it. It is hard to say that the book has a real plot per se. But it shook a generation because of its immediacy and honesty and emotional power. Maybe Truman Capote didn't like it (he called it "typing" not writing). But this was something new and raw, and plenty of people didn't like Miles Davis either.

The goings on in this decrepit old Paris Hotel, run by an old French lady who cooked Cassoulets for the guests, were astounding. A gathering point for starving artists, especially planetary beatniks, we discover that the unbridled use of hard drugs and graphic homosexuality were a lot more common than Eisenhower would have let us in America think! *.*

This book is a hoot but I want to say up front that it was seriously well-researched by the author. It's predominantly about some well-known, perhaps infamous, American Beats, most of whom (in this hotel anyway) were bisexual drug users. There were also other 'artists' from various places in the world who either lived in The Beat Hotel (the hotel really didn't even have an official name), or they 'visited' as guests of residents for varying lengths of time.

The peccadillos of these characters defy sanity. There's scrying, crying, heroin use, singing, pornography generation, speculating on psychedelic inventions, poetry readings, and tons of all manner of sex.

William Burroughs seems to be the main guy in this life adventure -- we hear of the untimely death of his wife (at another location) as Burroughs was smashed, playing "William Tell" with her for the entertainment of the equally drunken and high guests, ultimately putting a bullet in her forehead. He was never arrested for this incident.

The chief guy whom we expect to find lodged firmly in The Beat Hotel never made it: Jack Kerouac. But pretty much every one of his dubious associates made at least a visit.

This book is well-written -- a real page-turner and quite hilarious. It matters not if the reader is gay, straight, or anywhere in-between sexually... you'll much enjoy this book. And, if ever there was a clear example of 'truth being stranger than fiction', this one is it.

Really, I do. The book is in-depth and includes pertinent photos. The cut-ups and Gysin's paintings, as well as the total exploratory consciousness mindmeld attitude in inspiring. Barry Miles has once again succeeded in writing another great book on the Beats.

Perhaps 9, rue Git-le-Coeur will never be one of those addresses that everyone immediately recognizes. Yet, for a brief period of time, it was home to Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Brian Gysin, and was infamously known as The Beat Hotel.

"The Beat Hotel" serves as an extended biographical sketch, presenting detailed glimpses into the histories of these artists - Burroughs' accidental shooting of his wife, his intense love affair with Ian Sommerville, Ginsberg's problematic relationship with his mentally ill mother, the "Howl" obscenity trials, his affairs with Burroughs, Kerouac and Orlavsky.

What results is an often frank, always engaging depiction of the drugged out, free-loving world that produced such classic as Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" and Ginsberg's "Kaddish."

It's to the author's credit that he achieves and exceeds his goal of increasing the reader's appreciation of these often neglected rebel artists.

The first time I read this book, I turned back over to the first page and read it again. It was that good. I am a huge Burroughs fan, and I learned a new appreciation for Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Brion Gysin. The grist of this book provides insight into the day-to-day maze of creativity whose epicenter happened to be Post WWII Paris. If you are looking for a fresh, lively, intelligent glimpse into the creative process of Burroughs, Gysin, Corso, Ginsberg and others, this is the book for you.

Like, baby, I am not a big fan of the beats, dig? I was too young for it - it was dead by the time I was aware of it. And in hindsight it seems so self-indulgent.

But.

This book is really great. I lived in Paris for a spell, not far from said hotel (though it was long gone) and this is wonderfully interesting chronicle of ex pat life in Paris during the late 50s, early 60s, a bunch of fabulously interesting characters - reminiscent of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London (or whatever it was called) which was pretty darn clever (and if you like this, you have to read that.)

Adaptation is an art form often attempted but rarely perfected, mastered only through a certain mysterious symbiosis, a careful translation of creation to creation. More than a simple carbon-copy insta-fax, true adaptation is about instilling the tangible soul of a original into the humunculus of another medium. With the difficulty and unfathomable intimacy involved in such a process, it makes perfect sense to approach Illuminated Poems with a sense of foreboding, of tangible fear that somehow the rhythmic be-bopping beat poems of the great Ginsberg will somehow find themselves impossibly pacified, sterilized, and castrated. One look at the languid lyricism contained in both the words and images of this volume proves those reservations as gloriously unfounded. A sensuous synthesis dances from page to page as Eric Drooker and Allen Ginsberg trade messages across mediums, words swirling into pictures and back again, a heavenly tide of contemporary Blake that comprehends chaos in retrospect. The triumphs and consequences of free love, psychedelic drugs and bohemian lifedeath are laid bare in lyrics, their essences captured in captivating canvases of brilliant madness. And at the center of it all, 'Howl' uncut and complete, the single shouting synapse of a generation, screaming a semi-nostalgic SOS. A must-buy.

an excellent illustrated book of gonsberg's poems

A great introduction to the poems of Allen Ginsberg. The illustrations are bold and arresting. Highly recommended.

This a beautiful book, that not only shares ginsbergs work but works with the images created by eric drooker to communicate the poems and songs vividly, providing candy for the eyes and mind. I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys ginsberg, no ginsberg collection is complete without it , in my opinion.

If you are a real Ginsberg fan, you'll appreciate having this book in your collection, even if you you're not a big art lover. The art will inspire a new appreciation of the poems- and it's easier to carry than your "bible"(collected poems)! Poems inside: The Altering Eye Alters All, An Eastern Ballad, A Mad Gleam, In Death Cannot Reach What Is Most Near, Song, Lay Down Yr Mountain, Manhattan Thirties Flash, Morning, Howl, Footnote to Howl, New York Blues, Native New York, On Neal's Ashes, Punk Rock Your My Big Cry Baby, Get It?, Capital Air, Pentagon Exorcism, Love Forgiven, War Profit Litany, When The Light Appears, Tears, The Lion For Real, I'm A Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg, Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms, This Form Of Life Needs Sex, Birdbrain!, American Again, New Stanzas For Amazing Grace, X-ray Manhattan, Jumping the Gun On the Sun, Rock Song, Gospel Noble Truths, The Ballad of the Skeletons, Father Death Blues, Confession Is Dream for the Soul, and my favorite, Sunflower Sutra.

its tough to review this book as the work is so diverse but i was overall disappointed by the work. ive always felt the ginsberg was more of a personality than a poet. bukowski is a poet--ginsberg sometimes has some clever moments

Ginsberg is my favorite poet of all time. From government issues, to insanity, to sexual exploration pieces, to requiems for lost friends, this man has done it all. No collection of poetry has been topped by this one.

Ginsberg writes in the forward he has consulted fellow verse men. The collection encompasses the entire career. Son of a poet, he is an accomplished writer of poetry early in his career as evidenced by "The Shrouded Stranger". Ginsberg used craft to control emotion and outrage and harness his imagination in, for instance, "Siesta in Xbalba". He was very concerned to assist the reader by placing words on the page carefully.

HOWL is dedicated to Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady. Ginsberg's images have seeped into our language. It is no surprise to run into sutra, neon-lit, angel, holy, visions, omens, hallucinations. His great predecessor Walt Whitman is cited.

Surely one of the century's greatest poems is Ginsberg's poem to his mother, KADDISH. The mother, Naomi, his father, Louis, his brother, Eugene, his home, Paterson, are all featured in the work. Ginsberg wrote in remembrance of Frank O'Hara, chatty prophet and poet of building glass. The Cedar Bar is empty without him it is asserted.

The Bob Dylan influenced "September in Jessore Road" is topical and one of the poems provided with musical accompaniment. In 'Ego Confession" Ginsberg wants to be known as the most brilliant man in America. Certainly he was a titan. The "Plutonian Ode" mockingly lists places corrupted by radioactivity. In the end the poet chimes that he dreamed a dream of homeless places.

The poem GREEN AUTOMOBILE is addressed to Neal Cassady and it is emblematic of the whole collection. Notes in the back contain pictures of friends and notable subjects. A touching picture of Allen, Louis and Naomi at the 1940 World's Fair is included.

finally able to get around to reading ginsberg, i was quickly let down. i am a huge fan of the beats. kerouac is one of my favorite writers, burroughs isn't far behind, i believe a lot of what they believe, i love to read about their lives, corso and snyder are poets i like, so i expected to be blown away by ginsberg. he is one of the three leaders of the movement. but his poetry continually let me down. don't get me wrong, he has some wonderful works (howl, kaddish, and a few others), but as a whole, his work is highly dissapointing. i almost wonder if he received his reputation because of friendship with kerouac and cassady or if it all rests on howl. i think he was more a personality than a poet. but i do think this book should be read by anyone serious about poetry, literature, or the beats. he is still an essential poet.

It is daunting to undertake the review of a book of Allen Ginsberg's poems. If fact, it is impossible. The extent of his talent, his willingness to experiment, the number of broad themes that run through his work, defy any four-paragraph explication. This collection of poems, selected and edited by Ginsberg himself is really the poet's last oversight of his own life. In four hundred pages covering nearly fifty years we are given not a collection of poetry, but an interior autobiography.

Ginsberg died in 1997, of the complications of Hepatitis C, the same year I discovered that I was suffering from the same disease. His death was untimely, not in the sense that he died too young, but because his creativity, the unique vision that allowed him to be critical, sarcastic, caring and brutally honest had not yet exhausted itself. 'Selected Poems' captures his many facets, from the anger of 'Howl' to the whimsy of 'The Ballad of the Skeletons.' One of my favorites is the simply early 'Song' that opens with "The weight of the world is love." This is the poem that circulated the Internet when he died.

Ginsberg is often perceived as a political or social poet, voicing first the concerns of the Beats and then the Anti-War movement. He is always questioning the motivation of those in authority, and those that were not as well. This collection also explores his open homosexuality and his long spiritual quest. Ginsberg's poetry is himself. For all his technical brilliance, what we remember in the reading is the intensity of his presence in his poems. Filled with knowledge, Ginsberg was not the kind to resort to academicism.

'Selected Poems' is a lean presentation. A short preface by Ginsberg leads off; followed by poems in order by appearance, arranged by the volumes they appeared in. A section at the end contains fragmentary notes and comments by the poet on the individual poems. Yet I am happy that I have this volume of his work rather than something more complete. For this is the work that Ginsberg, in retrospect, felt was important, and I think you will agree. As the poet said, "I didn't come here to solve anything. I came here to sing and for you to sing with me."

Timothy Leary is a mythological figure. Almost everyone has an opinion of him, even if they have never read a word he wrote.
Often opinions are second-hand filtered through this or that media source.

The editor for this book, Robert Forte, one
of Mircea Eliade's last students at the University of Chicago,
does not provide us with second-hand information that he has digested, but instead, gathers an anthology of viewpoints from those who knew Timothy Leary. Not all are positive, and I was surprized to read the negative remarks of Owlsley Stanley in regards to Leary. Thanks to this compendium, we are allowed past the veil of the myth and get a glimpse of the human Timothy Leary.

Robert Forte knew Timothy Leary personally and has edited another book, Entheogens and the Future of religion, that I highly recommend.

Thomas Seay

This book is a source of comfort to anyone disgruntled by Robert Greenfield's less than appreciative bio of Timothy Leary. Editor Robert Forte calls his project a "festschrift," which, if my rusty German holds up, loosely means "celebration of writing." It is by no means balanced; its cover promises castigations but delivers only one, ironically from former outlaw chemist Owsley Stanley. There are polite rebukes of Leary's methods from Huston Smith and Myron Stolaroff, but the rest of the book is mainly a chorus of paeans, a love fest that gets sloppy in places.

Part of Forte's thesis is that Leary will come to be vindicated and revered as another Socrates or Galileo. Inevitably the uptight world will recognize the transformational power of psychedelics and, grasping the keys to the missing link in evolution, start popping them like vitamin supplements. Why millions of grateful acid veterans haven't united to demand a change in the drug laws goes unexplained. Like a lot of other issues the book grazes. Why was Eldridge Cleaver not more supportive of Leary in Algeria? Why was Art Linkletter hostile to Leary? What happened to Leary's children? What was "The Brotherhood" that Forte cryptically refers to a couple of times? What about the charges that Leary betrayed friends, including the lawyers who helped him avoid lengthier prison time? Although Forte concedes that Leary failed "to confront his shadow," the negative aspects of his life, he left the shadowy particulars for Robert Greenfield to detail.

There are other shortcomings. The correspondence between Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard is vacuous, discussing where and when they plan to meet next. Albert Hofman's contribution is brief. Hunter Thompson's more caustic criticisms of Leary are absent, replaced by a short, all-is-forgiven comment. Some of the respondents use a pretentious argot prevalent in the `60s, reflecting the mindless blather of the drug-addled. And there are outrageous claims that transcendentalist philosophers Emerson and Thoreau took drugs, that psychedelics brought forth the computer revolution and the Internet. At least Forte didn't suggest that psychedelics are "the only visible hope for a race tottering on the brink of extinction." That claim was in a recent letter of complaint from the Leary estate to The New Yorker over the favorable review its critic gave to the Greenfield book.

I don't blame Forte for being a cheerleader. He was only 11 years old during the '67 Summer of Love, so he didn't see the zombies walking down Haight Street and other hippie enclaves ingesting not only psychedelics but other wares sold by hierarchical criminal outfits (such as the Brotherhood?) engaged in the "democratization" of drug distribution. Gosh and golly, why would law enforcement ever consider LSD a gateway to heroin, methamphetamine and crack? Set and setting indeed.

I thought I'd had enough of Leary after reading the Greenfield book, but I picked this one up after browsing its table of contents. It has limited appeal, so I give it three stars: one for the interview with Huston Smith, one for the interviews with Metzner & Stolaroff, and one for likening Leary to Huck Finn. Greenfield mistakenly linked him to Tom Sawyer.

Regardless of one's personal opinions about Timothy Leary, one cannot really deny the fact that he was a great man; great in the sense that his thoughts and ideas influenced an entire generation (and continues to do so), and that A LOT of people had - and still have - A LOT of strong feelings about everything he stood for. Perhaps it's too early to figure out how extensive his influence actually was. Everything he talked about didn't revolve around LSD, even though many tend to think just that. What many don't know, for instance, is that he contributed greatly to the field of psychology and developed different tests that are still in use today.

Robert Forte has edited a book, not about Leary's life, but more about people who met him, were familiar with him, were close to him, were affected and influenced by him, and all in all had some sort of relation to him. Some of these people are Winona Ryder (to whom Leary was godfather), Hunter S. Thompson, Albert Hofmann (the chemist who synthesized LSD in 1938), Ken Kesey (another "psychedelic pioneer"), Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, and many more.

Some of the contributions consist of Forte simply interviewing the individual in question, while in other cases the contributor has written the piece him/herself. But it's not all about Leary all the time. Timothy Leary is more a book about the psychedelic revolution itself than about one of its leading advocates. Richard Nixon referred to him as "the most dangerous man in the world", and sure, a great deal of the content is about him, what he accomplished, different incidents in his life, and so on. However, another great deal is about the use and abuse of psychedelic drugs, how they shaped and changed society and individual consciousness, how dangers (or harmless) they actually are, what happens to people who choose to try them, and how these now criminalized drugs could be used beneficially in different sorts of therapies.

It's not the best book on the market if you want to learn more about Timothy Leary's opinions and messages, but on the other hand, it's a great book if you want to know some of the influence and the affect he had on his surroundings. Furthermore, through its use of sensible discussions by and with well-informed and rational people, the book offers great knowledge about the absurd American "War on Drugs" and all the hypocrisy this futile and senseless war is built upon.

This is a rich and revealing book that I always recommend to anyone trying to grasp the contradictory figure that was Timothy Leary - not least because many of its subjects are still struggling to grasp exactly what hit them when Leary entered their lives. Highlights for me include the essays by Ram Dass, Robert Anton Wilson and Ralph Metzner, as well as William Burroughs' ability to use a few brief words so well. Winona Ryder's eulogy is also terrific -- it has since been included in Copeland's book on the greatest eulogies of our time, and I liked it so much I used it as the foreword to my own biography on Leary, 'I Have America Surrounded'.

As Forte writes in his introduction, this is "not a biography of Leary, nor an in-depth study of his ideas", and as such the critical review on this page by R. Goldstein seems to have missed the point of the book. Forte is not attempting to be a 'cheerleader' or promote his 'thesis', as is claimed, but instead provides a forum where those who knew Leary could record their memories and reminiscences. True, the majority are positive and loving, but this is no reason to criticize the book. The fact is Leary was deeply loved by many - which is something that those who condemn his character find it convenient to overlook. For this reason the book is an important record, but perhaps more importantly it is those who knew him best who often have the most revealing insights - and this is why the book is so valuable.

Robert Forte is one of the most important living documentarians of psychedelic history and phenomonology. In this book, he's gathered a myriad voices of people who were really "there" when Leary was influencing people and who therefore have valuable commentary worth hearing -- both positive and negative. The folksy, chatty style of this book make it a pleasure to read. Along with his other book "Entheogens and the Future of Religion," Forte is performing an important informational and documentary service toward a fair assessment of the role that drugs have in society and also of the real-life figures who have affected this. This book is a must read for anyone interested in what Tim Leary (and for that matter, ...) were really like.

This vignette of the poetic birth of the now classic _Howl_ by Allen Ginsberg puts those radical years in cameo and also provides biographical wherewithall leading up to the seminal moment, the same moment as that of the beats, thence the brouhaha of the sixties generation, so dearly beloved of current cultural conservatives, now gone to the dogs and deserving all howling echoes still reverberating. Interesting is the early Ginsberg, and the discombobulation of his neuroses maturing into a creative tide.

The myth of the Beat Generation has become cliche. That's what author Jonah Raskin has to say in this new book. According to Raskin, the likes of Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs were not devoted artists who shunned fame and fortune.

Instead, Ginsberg actively sought fame and fortune, but did so in an unconventional way. Specifically, Ginsberg's epic poem Howl was purposely written to create controversy which lead to notoriety and eventually a lot of money. Ginsberg also set up a Bhuddist institute in Colorado to capitalize on his fame.

The institute also served Ginsberg's need to cultivate publicity and raise large amounts of money without appearing to "sell out." The institute also ran a school for aspiring writers that included a faculty consisting of many other leading Beat Generation writers.

In recognizing fact that so many Beat Generation writers praised poverty while enjoying quite materialistic lives, author Raskin has shattered the myth of the Beat Generation. If anything, the Beats's writing had more in common with the hackneyed horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft than with anything truly original.

This book is an excellent contribution to the literature about the Beat Generation.

Jonah Raskin indirectly makes the case that Ginsberg's "Howl" was the epicenter of the Beatquake. He never comes out and says that but it's clear he believes that Ginsberg's work and the Six Gallery reading in 1955, connected many strands in the Beat movement.

Ginsberg was close friends with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, the other titans of Beat literature. He had a sexual relationship with Neal Cassidy who was the inspiration for Dean Moriarty, the leading character in "On the Road." He used heroin and other drugs in the 1940s and lived with Herbert Huncke who was a Beat prototypical character; junkie, thief, hustler, poet and rebel. Ginsberg bridged the coastal divide of the Beat movement. He lived in New York City during forties when it was the breeding ground for the movement, helping to hone the movement's sensibility and giving people the urban anonymity where they could live on the fringes of society. But the Beat movement only became visible when it flowered in San Francisco, a city that celebrated eccentricity and rebellion and the place where he chose to first read "Howl."

"American Scream" is not a critique of "Howl." While it does reference sections of the poem and talk about many iterations and traces the origins of specific images and allusions, it in no way purports to be a thorough analysis of the work. Instead the book gives us a fresh look at the young and struggling Allen Ginsberg who wanted to deny his sexuality and fit in with the intelligentsia. His precarious mental state and quirky genius made that pose impossible for him to maintain. The reading of Howl came at a time when Ginsberg had embraced both his homosexuality and his mental illness and that gives the poem a sense of giddy rage.

Raskin always makes sure that all roads lead back to Howl, both in the moment it was sprung on the world at the Six Gallery Reading and the text that Ginsberg kept re-working for many years after. "American Scream" covers a lot of ground from post-war American political, cultural and intellectual history, literary criticism, a courtroom drama over censorship and the emergence of a poetic genius All of it is written in very engaging, readable prose and easily makes the case that Howl was a watershed moment and text in nineteen fifties' America.

A worthwhile treatment of the history of the writing of an important American poem. However, this book is not a history of the Beat Generation. It covers Cassady, Kerouac, and Burroughs, but only insofar as they intersected with Ginsberg. This is mostly a literary biography of Ginsberg. That doesn't diminish its value, but it does point to the book's main focus.

The book is best in its focus on Ginsberg's formative years and the themes of alienation and fear that went into the creation of "Howl." The book has less to say about the poem's aftermath: the infamous reading in San Francisco, the seizure of the book by customs officials, and the susequent obscenity trial are dispensed with in a chapter, and Ginsberg's subsequent life is summarized in a few pages.

The book is also written in what is frequently a bloodless, dry style that fails to do justice to the feverishness of the times and the people involved. You never get away from the fact that you are reading a book written by an academic, albeit a thoughtful and sympathetic one. There are other books out there that capture the times more passionately. However, if you are intrigued by the era and are looking for a jumping-off point to explore other work about the Beats, you could do a lot worse than using this book as an introduction.

AMERICAN SCREAM is a well-done precis of everything that was happening in American culture at the time Ginsberg wrote HOWL and in the months that succeeded his breakthrough.

Better yet, Raskin has had quite a coup and he has persuaded Ginsberg's psychoanalyst (Dr Hicks) to talk about the mental and emotional torments Ginsberg had first to overcome before he could begin the writing proper, and he has ventured into the dusty file bins and uncovered for us the actual records of Ginsberg's stays in mental hospitals and psychiatris facilities. Heretofore such records were only vaguely guessed at. Raskin uses the new information wisely, much as Diane Wood Middlebrook was able to use the testimony of Anne Sexton's analyst when writing her biography some years ago of Sexton.

There are a few places where I disagree with Raskin's implications. Regarding the now-notorious "6 Gallery" reading in San Francisco where AG premiered HOWL, Raskin states, "Many of the notable local poets--Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Robin Blaser--were not included in the program, and so the gala event at the Six Gallery was a cultural snub of sorts to the poets who thought they embodied the best of Bay Area poetry." This is disingenuous, as Raskin knows: neither Duncan, Spicer nor Blaser was living in the Bay Area at the time. Duncan was at Black Mountain College, Spicer living in NYC, and Blaser in Boston. How is this a "cultural snub"? It's also a shame that such a classy book should be spoiled by the numerous typos. On one page alone the names of two poets who spoke at Ginsberg's funeral are mis=spelled, so we have Andrew "Shilling" instead of Schelling, and Robert "Haas" instead of Hass. They show up in the index thus abused as well.

The first thing that surprised me about these letters was how fine Cassady's vocabulary was; and how well-read he was. The letters really show why he was such a profound influence on Kerouac and Ginsberg. Also, these letters weren't written to be published, so they are unforced and natural. How about that sexual exploit on page 77? My goodness! Can we, in the year 2006, forgive Neil's use of the "N" word in the year 1948...in much the same way as Mark Twain's use of that word? I guess that's up to each reader to decide. Anyway, I find this book to be a superlative example of a modern muse in action.

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Now's your chance.......

Read between the lines of what Jack Kerouac
was saying in On the Road, or at least get closer
to his hero Dean Moriarty (real name Neal Cassady).

This book officially published this winter in the
USA and available on import in the UK is a
CAUSE CELEBRE of the Beat World. Possibly
the best Beat read you'll have had since On the Road.

Neal Cassady's Letters - produced by Carolyn
Cassady and others, brilliantly edited (and that
doesn't mean cut) by Beat authority Dave Moore.

Having read On the Road we think we know it all?
We don't know half of it. Neal's Letters flesh out
the legend. For instance they show the married side
of Neal with intimate letters between himself and
Carolyn, something On the Road barely touches on.
They reveal the extent of the 'manage a trois' which
existed between Neal, Carolyn and Jack.

You want something even spicier? Try the long letter
to Alan Ginsberg starting on p.199 ...or Diana's note
on Neal p.142-143, or Neal's outrageous letter starting
p.327 and you'll see why Neal Cassady joins The
Marquis de Sade, Casanova, and Rasputin as
a sexual enchanter.

Bristolian Dave Moore's meticulous annotation and footnotes
link the letters, explain them, and make a narrative of them.
They prove Neal an engaging writer who's free-form
style inspired Kerouac in his genius to make
a prose-poem of the tale.

It's not difficult to see why Kerouac and his muse have
been down-graded over the years, and even vilified.
There's enough work here for a thousand sociologists.
At a time when, here in Britain, Jamaican men are
being persuaded to change their `out husband' lifestyle
and settle down with their wives and the children they
father, Neal Cassady epitomised the very life style
they're eschewing becoming the `white negro' of
Kerouac's classic, not only in terms of jazz music
and pot, but also adopting the black male role of
sex-object and stud.

No wonder the media wants to play him down - the
man who hitched a train and threw a generation off the rails.

As Joe Strummer said: "When we first read On
the Road we weren't digging Kerouac's prose - we
wanted to be like Dean Moriarty". He ended his life
as only a man like that can - broken and crying on
a railway line in Mexico.

Saint or sinner? Looser or winner? As the man who
straddled 100 women and Kerouac's prose makes
his literary debut - you make up your mind!

Neal Cassady was, for most of his adult life, a prolific writer, spreading his hep words to the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Bill Burroughs, and other beat writers who used Neal as the star of many of their works (especially K). Cassady is a born storyteller, as is evidenced by his energetic and exciting letters; however, it becomes evident that he is not a born writer, and as exciting as his letters are, they say quite little. Regardless, it is obvious how Cassady became a new archetype of American modern literature, and fans of the Beats would be remiss not to check out this wee tome. Note that after his imprisonment for distributing "tea" the volume drops off considerably. Was it prison, life or LSD that lessened the latent genius' writing? We'll never know.

Neal Cassady fans rejoice! This is the book you've been waiting a long, long time for. If Neal has captured your imagination (he's certainly captured mine) surely you've been frustrated about how little information there is about him. Yes, he's Dean Moriarty, Cody Pomeray, Speed Limit, and Cowboy Neal. He even wrote an (labored, as you'll discover) autobiography, "First Third". But, in a way, none of it prepares you for these collected letters because it's within them that we get to see the many sides of the Neal Cassady legend, primarily in his own words.

The two aspects I enjoyed most about this book were his hopes to be a family man and his desire to be an author, favorite aspects I suppose because that's not how I saw him previously. He tried hard to be a good husband and father but his muse wouldn't let him. And in these letters you see the creative, free-wheeling writing ability he was capable of but just couldn't get together in book form. Kerouac credits Neal for inspiring the style he'd develope for "On the Road" and on, and throughout the 50's encourages him to continue his writing.

The bulk of this collection dates before 1957, before the publication of "On the Road" and the whole beat sensation. In that regard it's very special to have the inside look at these letters which at the time of their composition no one would have had the faintest clue would be published. These are letters between friends, aspiring artists and lovers when there was no email and long distance phone calls were a luxury. Neal's writing was sometimes pedestrian but at other times it would soar, making clear why Ginsburg, Kerouac, etc argued he was the greatest writer of the group.

The editor Dave Moore does a wonderful job bringing continuity to the letters with his commentary throughout the book. He connects the dots where needed providing necessary back-story in an unabtrusive manner.

One complaint I do have about the book is that during the 60's the quantity of letters seriously drops off. He wrote less and less or the letters are lost or both, but it does leave a hole in Neal's story. As a result we miss out, in his words, on his life as he transitions from the beat generation to the hippie generation.

I have come to some new conclusions of my own about Neal, as will any reader. There is room for more writing on this most facsinating subject (esp his life in the 60's--why, he even lived with the Grateful Dead at their famed 710 Ashbury residence during the Haight's blossoming) but "Selected Letters" fills a huge void.

Jack Kerouac is a great writer, who wrote some great books. Neal Cassady is the energetic, life-filled hero of many of them, including "On the Road," in which Neal is represented as "Dean Moriarty."
Tom Wolfe is another great writer, who wrote the amazing "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," in which Neal is also a prominent character, this time the driver of a psychedelic busful of hippies.
In these books, and in others, Neal Cassady stands out distinctly as a fascinating character worthy of study--a man with an almost bottomless manic energy, the sex drive of a large crowd, and a penchant for joyriding in stolen cars.
This book here, however, goes a little deeper, is a little more personal, and as a result, damages many of the romantic illusions that have been built around his character.
This is Neal's life in his own words, in words from letters meant only for his friends and lovers and family, not for the public. There is some dishonesty here, but still it's very intimate, and very disclosing.
This book shows the sides of Neal that were often downplayed in books about him, sides that would have made him a much less sympathetic character: the neglectful way he treated and cast aside his wives and children, the almost psychopathic detachment from the crimes he committed and the women he used, the anger and the bitterness over his lot in life, the general disloyalty, the pathetically unsuccessful attempts at trying to be a writer, and the transparent tries to make his often empty life seem more significant than it was and his often horrible choices seem less like choices and more like fate.
All that would be fine however, if he had only been a better writer. As it is, the book is still a fairly compelling read that will keep you turning the pages and keep you interested. But the writing is typical. Average. Drug-addled. Bland.
He never had the discpline to cultivate what talent he may have had, and it shows.
This is a book to read to acquaint yourself better with Neal Cassady the character...if you want to. Unfortunately, along the way, you'll have to get a bit involved with Neal Cassady the writer.
He's certainly no Kerouac, even if he did help to inspire his style.