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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
With characteristic modesty, writer Kashner opens his memoir with a caveat to readers: this isn't an encyclopedic history of the beat generation. Rather, it's his own story of how it felt to leave home and learn to be a poet by hanging out with the great beat poets, albeit in their more gentled phase (past their road-tripping days, but still full of "crazy wisdom"). It was 1976 when Kashner, a fresh college dropout, decided to follow his dream and apply to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a yet-to-be-accredited division of the Buddhist Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo. As their first (and for a while only) student, Kashner's assignments included finishing and typing Allen Ginsberg's poems; preventing Gregory Corso from scoring heroin; cleaning the home of their guru, Rinpoche; and mediating between William Burroughs Sr. and Jr., not to mention attending the odd lecture. Kashner undertook all this weirdness with fretful earnestness-e.g., forever worrying that Ginsberg would attempt to seduce him, that Corso would shoot up and he'd be branded a failure, that the school wouldn't get accredited and his parents would regret letting him go there, and that his lack of poetry expertise would be discovered by his teachers. Were this just the saga of an innocent in beat bohemia, Kashner's chronicle would be merely amusing, but his genuine love for his crazy-wise mentors makes this a curiously affecting coming-of-age story. 8-page b&w photo insert not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Novelist and poet-at-heart Kashner has produced a kind of Almost Famous coming-of-age story both about the beginning of his life as a writer and about the end of the Beat generation of writers. As the first student in Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets, Kashner unwittingly walks into an environment of "crazy wisdom" (the extreme following of desires) as promulgated by Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (as if Ginsberg and the other Beat leftovers needed a reason to explore all things sensual). A young Jewish boy without much life experience, Kashner is the perfect witness, simultaneously in awe and aghast. This memoir retraces Kashner's awakening to the very human flaws within his mentors and himself. Kashner is no Beat apostle or name-dropping "I knew them when" so-and-so. Instead, he's an honest, sensitive, and funny storyteller, a perceptive observer who sheds light and shares discovery with his readers. His memoir is about enlightenment, the kind that comes from looking back with compassion but with eyes wide open. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
With characteristic modesty, writer Kashner opens his memoir with a caveat to readers: this isn't an encyclopedic history of the beat generation. Rather, it's his own story of how it felt to leave home and learn to be a poet by hanging out with the great beat poets, albeit in their more gentled phase (past their road-tripping days, but still full of "crazy wisdom"). It was 1976 when Kashner, a fresh college dropout, decided to follow his dream and apply to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a yet-to-be-accredited division of the Buddhist Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo. As their first (and for a while only) student, Kashner's assignments included finishing and typing Allen Ginsberg's poems; preventing Gregory Corso from scoring heroin; cleaning the home of their guru, Rinpoche; and mediating between William Burroughs Sr. and Jr., not to mention attending the odd lecture. Kashner undertook all this weirdness with fretful earnestness-e.g., forever worrying that Ginsberg would attempt to seduce him, that Corso would shoot up and he'd be branded a failure, that the school wouldn't get accredited and his parents would regret letting him go there, and that his lack of poetry expertise would be discovered by his teachers. Were this just the saga of an innocent in beat bohemia, Kashner's chronicle would be merely amusing, but his genuine love for his crazy-wise mentors makes this a curiously affecting coming-of-age story. 8-page b&w photo insert not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Novelist and poet-at-heart Kashner has produced a kind of Almost Famous coming-of-age story both about the beginning of his life as a writer and about the end of the Beat generation of writers. As the first student in Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets, Kashner unwittingly walks into an environment of "crazy wisdom" (the extreme following of desires) as promulgated by Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (as if Ginsberg and the other Beat leftovers needed a reason to explore all things sensual). A young Jewish boy without much life experience, Kashner is the perfect witness, simultaneously in awe and aghast. This memoir retraces Kashner's awakening to the very human flaws within his mentors and himself. Kashner is no Beat apostle or name-dropping "I knew them when" so-and-so. Instead, he's an honest, sensitive, and funny storyteller, a perceptive observer who sheds light and shares discovery with his readers. His memoir is about enlightenment, the kind that comes from looking back with compassion but with eyes wide open. Janet St. John
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
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