The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats

by Allen Ginsberg

Overview

In 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem “Howl,” and Jack Kerouac’s seminal book On the Road, Allen Ginsberg decided it was time to teach a course on the literary history of the Beat Generation. Through the creation of this course, which he ended up teaching five times, first at the Naropa Institute and later at Brooklyn College, Ginsberg saw an opportunity to present the history of Beat Literature in his own inimitable way. Compiled and edited by renowned Beat scholar Bill Morgan, and with an introduction by Anne Waldman, The Best Minds of My Generation presents the lectures in edited form, complete with notes, and paints a portrait of the Beats as Ginsberg knew them: friends, confidantes, literary mentors, and fellow revolutionaries.

Ginsberg was seminal to the creation of a public perception of Beat writers and knew all of the major figures personally, making him uniquely qualified to be the historian of the movement. In The Best Minds of My Generation, Ginsberg shares anecdotes of meeting Kerouac, Burroughs, and other writers for the first time, explains his own poetics, elucidates the importance of music to Beat writing, discusses visual influences and the cut-up method, and paints a portrait of a group who were leading a literary revolution. For Beat aficionados and neophytes alike, The Best Minds of My Generation is a personal yet critical look at one of the most important literary movements of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802127983
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/17/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) was a poet, activist, and one of the Beat Generation's most renowned writers. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute. He won the National Book Award for Poetry and his groundbreaking poem Howl is one of the most widely read and translated poems of the century.

Bill Morgan has written and edited thirty-nine books, including I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg.

Anne Waldman is an internationally acclaimed poet, scholar, and activist. She is the author of more than 40 books, including Fast Speaking Woman, Vow to Poetry, and Helping the Dreamer. She is a recipient of the American Book Award’s Lifetime Achievement and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award. She divides her time between New York City and Boulder, Colorado.

Table of Contents

Foreword Anne Waldman ix

Editor's Preface xix

A Definition of the Beat Generation Allen Ginsberg 1

1 Course Overview 7

2 Kerouac's "Origins of the Beat Generation" 12

3 Reading List 23

4 Visions 25

5 Jazz, Bebop, and Music 31

6 Music, Kerouac, Wyse, and Newman 33

7 Times Square and the 1940s 43

8 Carr, Ginsberg, and Kerouac at Columbia 53

9 Kerouac, Columbia, and Vanity of Duluoz 60

10 Lucien Carr's Influence on Kerouac 77

11 Kerouac and Vanity of Duluoz, Part 2 80

12 Meeting Burroughs and Ginsberg's Suspension from Columbia 85

13 Kerouac and The Town and the City 91

14 Kerouac and Visions of Cody, Part 1 105

15 Kerouac, Cassady, and Visions of Cody, Part 2 118

16 Kerouac in Old Age 134

17 Burroughs's First Writings and "Twilights Last Gleamings" 139

18 Burroughs, Kerouac, and And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks 151

19 Burroughs, Joan Burroughs, and Junkie 158

20 Burroughs and Korzybski 177

21 Burroughs and the Visual 179

22 Burroughs and The Yage Letters 181

23 Burroughs and Queer 189

24 Burroughs and Naked Lunch 193

25 Burroughs and the Cut-Up Method 196

26 Burroughs and The Ticket That Exploded 202

27 Neal Cassady and As Ever 206

28 Kerouac and the "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" 219

29 Kerouac and On the Road 223

30 Kerouac and The Subterraneans 257

31 Jack Kerouac and Fame 260

32 Kerouac, Sketching, and Method 264

33 Corso and The Vestal Lady on Brattle 273

34 Corso and Gasoline and Other Poems 293

35 Corso and The Happy Birthday of Death 305

36 Corso and "Bomb" 311

37 Corso and "Power" 321

38 Corso and Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit 339

39 Ginsberg's Early Writings 343

40 Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams 359

41 Ginsberg and "The Green Automobile" 371

42 Ginsberg and "Howl" 390

43 Ginsberg, "Howl," and Christopher Smart 399

44 Ginsberg and Cézanne 408

45 Ginsberg and the San Francisco Renaissance 410

46 John Clellon Holmes 413

47 Peter Orlovsky 422

48 Carl Solomon 425

49 Kerouac's "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose" 429

Works Cited Within the Text 437

Allen Ginsberg's Reading List for "A Literary History of the Beat Generation" 441

Acknowledgments 445

Notes 447

Credits 457

Editorial Reviews

In a marvelous feat of editing and reorganization, Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's longtime bibliographer, biographer and friend, has condensed the 100 or so lectures Ginsberg gave in the five courses he taught on the Beat Generation between 1977 and 1994, totaling almost 2,000 pages of transcripts, into a compact and often spellbinding text, preserving intact the story of the literary movement Ginsberg led, promoted and never ceased to embody.

The New York Times Book Review - Ann Douglas

01/09/2017
Beat biographer Morgan’s (The Beats Abroad) transcript of Ginsberg’s university lectures, given first at Naropa Institute in 1977 and later at Brooklyn College, are a gold mine for anyone interested in beat literature. Ginsberg discusses William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, and himself, but Jack Kerouac is the soul of the book, portrayed throughout with admiration and affection, if not always reverence. Citing their influences in everything from jazz to Dostoyevsky, Ginsberg depicts the beats not as criminals, addicts, or delinquents but as restless, beatific seekers after spiritual truth. Covering mainly the years between 1947 and 1957, Ginsberg’s critical technique is to offer a catalogue of breakthroughs, epiphanies, and favorite passages or “big sentences,” interspersed with gossipy anecdotes and revelatory asides. Ginsberg reads and thinks like a poet; interested in language and style, he abandons narrative to leap from image to image, yoking grandiloquent statements with pungent summations and deadpan remarks. Fans of the period will embrace Ginsberg’s raconteur style and insider knowledge about his friends and their achievements; those who need a more comprehensive or linear grounding in beat literature might start with another of Morgan’s works. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Best Minds of My Generation:

“A marvelous feat of editing and reorganization . . . A compact and often spellbinding text, preserving intact the story of the literary movement Ginsberg led, promoted and never ceased to embody . . . Put together by an erudite genius of encyclopedic recall.”—New York Times Book Review

“Scholarly, wide-ranging and full of penetrating insight and fascinating literary gossip, the book is a major contribution to the core Beat canon, and provides an astonishingly intimate view of a homegrown American literary movement that would have a generative influence worldwide . . . Best Minds situates the Beats in cultural history in a way that no other exploration of their work does.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Bill Morgan has culled The Best Minds of My Generation from two decades of lectures delivered by Ginsberg, the Beats’ chief mouthpiece, lit hustler, chronicler and flamekeeper . . . The Best Minds of My Generation is a reminder that great writing is not always about good taste or approved schools of technique, but engagement, energy and revolt.”—Irish Times

“Jack Kerouac may have coined the term Beat Generation, but it was Ginsberg’s indefatigable energy that shaped and sustained one of the most significant movements in American literature . . . Morgan, a leading authority on Ginsberg and author of numerous books on the Beat Generation, has done a superb job organizing and editing the material, while preserving the poet’s voice and lecture style . . . Essential reading.”—Library Journal

“A gold mine for anyone interested in beat literature . . . Ginsberg reads and thinks like a poet; interested in language and style, he abandons narrative to leap from image to image, yoking grandiloquent statements with pungent summations and deadpan remarks. Fans of the period will embrace Ginsberg’s raconteur style and insider knowledge about his friends and their achievements.”—Publishers Weekly

“Authoritatively edited by Morgan from course material and tapes . . . While many classes were as free-wheeling, digressive, and opinionated as anyone might expect from Ginsberg, most offered close readings, literary background, candid recollections, and cogent analyses, highlighting both craft and literary influence . . . A rich sourcebook for literary historians and fans of the passionate, iconoclastic Beats.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A compilation sure to please followers of the Beat Generation’s Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and others.”—OutClique

From the Publisher

★ 03/01/2017
Jack Kerouac may have coined the term Beat Generation, but it was Ginsberg's indefatigable energy that shaped and sustained one of the most significant movements in American literature. In 1977, Ginsberg designed a course on the history of the Beat Generation, which he taught several times between then and 1994 at the Naropa Institute and Brooklyn College. Working from transcripts of nearly 100 taped lectures, Morgan, a leading authority on Ginsberg and author of numerous books on the Beat Generation, has done a superb job organizing and editing the material, while preserving the poet's voice and lecture style. Following Ginsberg's own emphasis, Morgan's selection focuses on the core New York City group: Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Ginsberg himself. Minor figures, including Herbert Huncke, Lucien Carr, and John Clellon Holmes, are covered to a lesser degree. The arrangement is more or less chronological as Ginsberg celebrates the lives and works of his literary brothers beginning with their early meetings in the 1940s. VERDICT Along with Morgan's earlier work, The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation, this firsthand account from the movement's chief spokesman will be essential reading for anyone interested in the subject. [See Prepub Alert, 10/31/16; "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/15/17, p. 23.]--William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

Library Journal

2017-01-10
The Beat generation, as seen by its central figure.During a 20-year teaching career, acclaimed poet Ginsberg (Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems, 2016, etc.) developed a syllabus for a course on the Beats, first offered at the Naropa Institute in Colorado, known as The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and later at Brooklyn College. Ginsberg's ambitious aim, writes Morgan (The Beats Abroad: A Global Guide to the Beat Generation, 2016, etc.), the poet's biographer and prolific chronicler of the Beats, was to convey a comprehensive literary, spiritual, and intellectual history of a growing and evolving circle of friends as well as to offer his own testimony as witness to the movement he helped create. Authoritatively edited by Morgan from course material and tapes, the syllabus considers writers chronologically, focusing on different works, or periods of development, in each class. Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Gregory Corso earn the most attention, with Neal Cassady, Diane di Prima, Bob Dylan, and Gary Snyder, among others, also brought in for consideration. While many classes were as free-wheeling, digressive, and opinionated as anyone might expect from Ginsberg, most offered close readings, literary background, candid recollections, and cogent analyses, highlighting both craft and literary influence. Jazz, he contends, inflected the "phrasings, rhythms, and patterns" of Kerouac's prose, as did the sound of "melancholy violins." Corso assiduously read Spenser and Milton. Of his own poetry, Ginsberg cites the influence of 18th-century British poet Christopher Smart, William Carlos Williams, Blake, Whitman, Shelley, and Yeats on his iconic "Howl," a poem, he says, "written for the people who read Time magazine as well as for the bohemian left." Ginsberg is generous in his portrayals, even of Kerouac's reactionary views in his old age and Burroughs' combative eccentricities (he was "dedicated totally and sacramentally" to exploring his own consciousness). A rich sourcebook for literary historians and fans of the passionate, iconoclastic Beats.

Kirkus Reviews