Customer Reviews

Allen Ginsberg in America: With a New Introduction by the Author

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This is a fun, easy read that sketches Ginsberg and attendant loonies at the height of his reign as May King of the '60s Underground. Essentially an expanded New Yorker portrait, it tracks the poet's dizzying movements from the Jan. '67 San Francisco Be-In to its New York sequel that Easter. Kramer lays on the color a little thick in places--she's clearly writing for amused and knowing squares--but she's very much alive to the idealism of Ginsberg's slaphappy search for satori in the midst of hectic times. Kind of an 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' Lite, "A.G. in America" is a breezy contribution to the Sixties myth.

"howl" about fact that Allen..with help from Grove Press, Larry Ferlinghetti,& other seasoned anti HUAC activists...rsiked a lot more than even todays literary intelligencia, to protect free speech. See tribute to J. Michelin,hip street poet, "Ragged Lion".by Bennett.

This book has been a revelation to me. I sheepishly admit that I knew little about Allen Ginsberg or his poetry. When I read somewhere that Ginsberg and others had met with the Dalai Lama when they were in India in the early 60s and tried to convince him to drop acid, I thought I've got to read something about this guy. This book appears to capture Ginsberg and his times. I adore the amazing way that he seemed to relate with such empathy and insight with everyone he met: mainstream politicians, Hells Angels, activists, critics and hippies, straights and squares he had a knack for knowing what to say and how to say it to help people to wake up ... even if just a little. I laughed, I cried. Okay, mostly laughed. And I was gratefully informed. What a groovy book!

Jane Kramer doesn't know enough about poetic history, which makes this book unreadable. Ginsberg's exploits in America will pale, in the end, to his few poems of meagre merit. I didn't know this book was now out of print. I suppose that is a good thing, and makes any attempts at discrediting it pointless.