>>If Eric has a recording of Ginsberg reading a proto-version of 'Howl,' in a friend's Lower East Side walk-up at 2:30 am sometime in 1955, I don't want to hear about it.
No, but I do have Ginsberg's head in a box in my closet.Dark humor aside, I have a very low opinion of Ginsberg as a person, based on many first-hand accounts of his students. Also, I have also come to detest his poetry as debased narcissism, but de gustibus ... people like what they like. On the other hand, a friend studied with him at Naropa and thought him sublime.
In the early '90s, AG lived a few blocks from me. For a couple months in '92, I couldn't seem to avoid him. Almost every time I went into the (now defunct) Kiev Restaurant at 7th and Second Avenue, he was there. If I went into Saint Marks bookstore, he was there. I'd stand beside him at corners waiting for red lights. He'd sit across from me in the uptown 6-Train from Astor Place. Arrgg!
Reverse paranoia: the irrational conviction that you are following someone. EricPS: Then there's Anne Waldman, fellow-boho to AG, who now lives in a suburban ranch-style home in Boulder. Sorta fits that boho-irony, like Dennis Hopper doing TV commercials for retirement funds.
PPS: Classic miscast: David Niven and Cary Grant in _Easy Rider_. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
