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American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation

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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.

Excellent. The very best in book on the beat movement that I have read and, regarding Ginsberg with the main, but not only, focus on his pivitol mid-twentienth century poem 'Howl' there has never been and most probably never will be a more detailed understanding and appreciation of that great poem.
This book is absolutely essential for anyone interested in poetry and in the major movements in the written arts during America's critical mid-century political and artistic upheavals.

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.

In a moment that has become iconic in American avant-garde literature, Allen Ginsberg read the first part of his long poem "Howl" at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955. Several other local readings followed. Laurence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Press published the poem in 1956, and it has sold in excess of 800,000 copies. An obscenity trial in San Francisco in 1957 only added to the poem's notoriety. Howl presents a dark, bleak vision of America in the 1950s, but it also includes passion, religious hope, and a sardonic humor. It reflects part of the American fascination with the figure of the outsider in the Twentieth Century. Ginsberg's poem and his friend Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road" published in 1957 soon became the most famous texts of a small group of writers known as the Beats.

Jonah Raskin's study, "American Scream" (2004) tells the story of "Howl" and how Ginsberg (1926 -- 1997) came to write it. Raskin, Professor of Communication Studies at Sonoma State University, offers an informative, sympathetic study of Ginsberg which traces the many literary and personal influences that coalesced in his great poem. A combination of biography, history, and literary analysis, Raskin's book offers a good introduction to the poem.

Raskin describes Ginsberg's early life and shows how the poet's conflicted relationship with both parents influenced "Howl". Ginsberg's mother, Naomi, was a member of the communist party. She was seriously paranoid and spent much of her life in institutions. Her life and "madness" formed a pervasive theme for "Howl". Ginsberg's father, Louis, was himself a poet who, from Raskin's account, deserves to be better remembered. Although he wrote mostly conventional verses, some of Louis' writings have the apocalyptic character that his rebellious son captured in "Howl". Raskin's book insightfully desribes the father-son relationship. I would have liked to hear more about it. Raskin also discusses Ginsberg's friends in the "hip" Columbia University and New York City community of the 1940s.

Raskin carefully traces some of the literary influences on Ginsberg. Walt Whitman, of course, was a great influence on "Howl" as was Ginsberg's mentor, the American poet William Carlos Williams. But some of Ginsberg's influences may be less obvious. In his years at Columbia, Ginsberg was a careful student of literary surrealism and of modernism in the poetry of T.S. Elliott. Elliott's "The Waste Land" is a major influence on "Howl", and Raskin insightfully presents the many parallels in these two important 20th Century poems. Raskin also quotes from many earlier Ginsberg poems to show how modernistic themes, as well as issues with the poet's own sexuality, drug use, suicidal thoughts, institutionalization, and spirituality found expression in "Howl". Although afflicted with his own demons, Ginsberg was also a shrewd self-promoter. Raskin describes how Ginsberg worked, for the remainder of his long life, to reinvent "Howl" and to use his own eccentric behavior to market the poem.

Much of Raskin's book examines the American culture of conformity that developed in the 1950's. Ginsberg's poem was a protest against this culture as well as an expression of his own inner life. The more vivid sections of the book are about Ginsberg himself and about the way in which "Howl" became a poem both autobiographical and imagined.

The literary analysis of the work is offered in sections together with the treatment of Ginsberg's life and 1950's American culture. Raskin offers many valuable comments about "Howl", its composition, and its formal structure. Because of the mixed character of the study, the book does not offer a close reading of Ginsberg's text.

At the end of the book, Raskin captures well something of the spirit of "Howl". He quotes Kerouac's description of the poem as "beautiful in an ugly graceful way." Raskin himself concludes eloquently:

"With passion and precision -- and from a sense of anomie and terror -- Allen Ginsberg told the truth, as best he could, about himself, the world, and the cosmos. In "Howl", he owed no allegiance to any cause, party, or movement in poetry. By following his own muse he found his own voice and by expressing his own madness he disclosed much of the madness of America." (p. 230)

Raskin has written a scholarly work. Valuable as it is, the book does not reflect fully the iconoclastic, passionate, and violent world of the Beats. Even so, the book served its purpose in that it led me to reread "Howl" with greater understanding together with several of Ginsberg's related poems that Raskin discusses.This book is an accessible guide to "Howl".

Robin Friedman

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.