Name: The Best Minds of my Generation: A Literary History of the Beats
SKU: 50140654
Price: 29.30 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Ginsberg, Allen
ISBN: 9780802127983

portada The Best Minds of my Generation: A Literary History of the Beats

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

Type

Physical Book

Author

Allen Ginsberg

Publisher

Grove/Atlantic Inc

Synopsis "The Best Minds of my Generation: A Literary History of the Beats "

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.

Allen Ginsberg

(Author)

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Irwin Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was one of the most emblematic figures of American alternative culture. The publication of the poem Howl (1956) was the trigger that consolidated beat poetry and gave it a concrete form. Soul of the Beat Generation, he gathered around him Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and even the elusive William S. Burroughs, and fought tirelessly for the writing and publishing of his works. A prominent figure of the so-called "Flower Revolution" and the hippie movement of the sixties, he fought against war and racism, spread rock, chemical and mystical alteration of states of consciousness as a cultural element, and was always at the forefront of social and literary scenes, promoting libertarian ideas and notions of spirituality and authenticity, which always kept him in the crosshairs of the authorities. He traveled the world reciting his poems.

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