Allen Ginsberg – A degenerate?
Guest Post by Mikey
Allen Ginsberg who died 11 years ago at the age of 70 was a famous American poet. He was a central figure in the Beat Generation, bohemians who wished to destroy bourgeois morality. If it did not conform to the norms accepted in society, Ginsberg and others of this 1950s Beat Generation were attracted to it. In the words of the New Jersey Poet Laureate, Amiri Baraka, (who himself has courted substantial controversy for his poem alleging the Israelis were complicit in the 9/11 attacks) who published the work of Ginsberg , the Beat Generation were those “who came to the conclusion that society sucked.” Homosexuality, free love, copious consumption of drugs and vagrancy were examples of rebellious qualities to be admired. Ginsberg simply glorified in his homosexuality and use of LSD and other drugs. As one critic commented, for Ginsberg, “going mad in America was the only way to be sane, to get high on drugs was the only way to be sober” and “the perverse was infinitely superior to the normal.”
An example is the 1956 poem, “Howl,” that he wrote “under the influence of various drugs” that shot him to fame and recognition. This poem contained the following lines:
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness.”
Many critics believed “Howl” to be magnificent, a masterpiece and something to be admired. This was by no means a one off poem. In 1982, by the time he was in mid-fifties, Ginsberg wrote the following lines, allegedly based on an incident he had personally experienced:
“…he fucked me in the ass
till I smelled brown excrement
staining his cock
& tried to get up from bed to go the toilet for a minute
but he held me down & kept pumping at me, serious & said
‘No, I don’t want to stop I like it dirty like this.’”
Poems such as this went on. There are the lines in his collaborative effort:
“Fuck me & fist me
In your army enlist me
Poop on me when you’re at ease.”
Some may consider the above pure pornography, but not the critics – “Ginsberg is responsible for loosening the breath of American poetry at midcentury” and that he was deserved of “a memorable place in modern poetry” was a typical comment from a prominent poetry critic. Nor did the educational establishment shun him. Ginsberg was proud to exclaim, “I have achieved the introduction of the word ‘fuck’ into texts inevitably studied by schoolboys.”
If Ginsberg’s poems are not shocking enough, how about his membership and active promotion of NAMBLA, the North American Man Love Boy Alliance, an organisation largely devoted to promoting the legalization of homosexual pedophilia? He was quoted as saying,
“Attacks on NAMBLA stink of politics, witchhunting for profit, humorlessness, vanity, anger and ignorance … I’m a member of NAMBLA because I love boys too — everybody does, who has a little humanity.”
This was a theme in one of his poems, “Old Love Story,” which was critical of those who “think the love of boys is wicked.” In an interview he commented, “I don’t know exactly how to define what’s underage” and added that he had “never made it with anyone under fifteen.”
None of this stopped Ginsberg from winning the National Book Award, the national Arts Club Gold Medal for lifetime achievement and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The praise was not limited to Americans as he also impressed the Europeans and not ably the French as the French Minister of Culture awarded him the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters). Nor did it stop him getting rich, when most poets struggle to get paid anything for their work, Ginsberg was paid a publisher’s advance of $160,000 for poetry and Stanford University went on to pay $1.2 million for his papers.
So my question is as follows: Was Ginsberg a poetic genius and someone whose work is deserved of study and criticism by in the English departments of the worlds great universities, or is he someone that deserves no better than to be forgotten and his books of poetry to remain gathering dust in library bookshelves, only to be used by doctoral students in sociology departments researching an obscure subject such as twentieth century literary perverts?
Comments
| 15 November, 2008, 7:03 pm |
I think what was important about Allen Ginsberg and his friend Jack Kerouac was what they represented - the Beat generation, those that rebelled against American culture for little more than the sake of rebelling. If it was shocking to society, it was to be admired. A fierce attack on this was published by Norman Podhoretz in Partisan Review vol. XXV, No.2 (Spring 1958) entitled “The Know-Nothing Bohemians.” This was more of an attack on Kerouac than Ginsberg but Podhoretz linked “the spread of juvenile crime in the 1950’s” with the Beats. He concluded:
Being against what the Beat Generation stands for has to do with denying that incoherence is superior to precision; that ignorance is superior to knowledge; that the exercise of the mind and discrimination is a form of death. It has to do with fighting the notion that sordid acts of violence are justifiable so long as they are committed in the name of ‘instinct.’ It even has to do with fighting the poisonous glorification of the adolescent in American popular culture. It has to do, in other words, with one’s attitude toward intelligence itself.
Ginsberg was not amused by this. In fact, in a scowling attack on Podhoretz, he wrote:
…THEY CAN TAKE THEIR FUCKING literary tradition AND SHOVE IT UP THEIR ASS…
| 15 November, 2008, 7:11 pm |
I find ‘Howl’ a wonderful work, not because it’s shocking or transgressive, but because it is musical and vivid. And likewise, though it is fashionable in certain circles to sneer at them, much of the rest of the Beats’ work: there is gaucheness and some laughable philosophical keystones (not least the constant fetishisation of ‘noble savagery’) for sure, but there is also some kick-ass phrase-making, scene-painting and encapsulating of previously unspoken elements of the postwar American collective psyche. And without them, rock’n'roll, literature and many other parts of our culture would be very different.
I think for much of his life Ginsberg was a grotesque and sleazy clown, but whether through genius or serendipity, some of his work and some of his actions and connections put him in a very interesting position in our cultural history. So I say no - don’t write him, or the Beats, off. Read them, and teach them, warts and all - as the often ridiculous, pathetic, nasty pieces of work that they were - but appreciate them and their work as a product of and influence on what was happening around them.
| 15 November, 2008, 9:29 pm |
It certainly evokes a sort of nostalgia about a particular period. But then, cheap music does that well, too.
So, is this great art?
| 15 November, 2008, 10:22 pm |
If by “cheap music” you mean something quickly knocked-off with no pretensions to high culture, like… oh I don’t know… a Goffin and King song, then it can evoke a lot more than just nostalgia.
Is ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ high art? Is ‘Howl’ high art? I dunno. People are massively moved by both, people study both, people read historical and cultural significance into both, other artists are influenced by both. I’m not trying to be wilfully relativist here, but surely there are strengths and weaknesses of pieces of art much more worth discussion than whether we fit them into a (necessarily arbitrary) canon of the “high”.
| 16 November, 2008, 12:05 am |
Is that pornographic? It’s obscene all right, but is it actually sexy? Can’t say it rocks my boat. It reminds me of Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers, which was obscene without being pornographic.
Don’t know if you know the parody of Howl:-
Squeal
I saw the best minds of my generation
Destroyed—Marvin
Who spat out poems; Potrzebie
Who coagulated a new bop literature in fifteen novels; Alvin
Who in his as yet unwritten autobiography
Gave Brooklyn an original lex loci.
They came from all over, from the pool room,
The bargain basement, the rod,
From Whitman, from Parkersburg, from Rimbaud
New Mexico, but mostly
They came from colleges, ejected
For drawing obscene diagrams of the Future.
They came here to L.A.,
Flexing their members, growing hair,
Planning immense unlimited poems,
More novels, more poems, more autobiographies.
It’s love I’m talking about, you dirty bastards!
Love in the bushes, love in the freight car!
I saw them fornicating and being fornicated,
Saying to Hell with you!
America.
America is full of Babbitts.
America is run by money.
What is it Walt said? Go West!
But the important thing is the return ticket.
The road to publicity runs by Monterey.
I saw the best minds of my generation
Reading their poems to Vassar girls,
Being interviewed by Mademoiselle.
Having their publicity handled by professionals.
When can I go into an editorial office
And have my stuff published because I’m weird?
I could go on writing like this forever . . .
— Louis Simpson.
That’s sour conservatism speaking about the avant garde that gets the paycheck as well as the respect.
| 16 November, 2008, 12:08 am |
“Read them, and teach them, warts and all - as the often ridiculous, pathetic, nasty pieces of work that they were - but appreciate them and their work as a product of and influence on what was happening around them.”
Nah, the only reason to read and teach any poem is because it’s good. Stuff its relationship to the Zeitgeist. That’s a totally secondary consideration.
| 16 November, 2008, 12:32 am |
That’s sour conservatism speaking about the avant garde that gets the paycheck as well as the respect.
Well quite. And it totally fails to grasp the fluid metre of the original poem which gives it its power.
Nah, the only reason to read and teach any poem is because it’s good. Stuff its relationship to the Zeitgeist. That’s a totally secondary consideration.
I didn’t mean that its cultural-historical resonance should be the reason for teaching it, simply that it should be taught if you are going to teach the poem. And I think that, at least in the case of ‘Howl’, the poem should be taught because it is good.
| 16 November, 2008, 12:43 am |
In my opinion, much of Ginsberg is junk and should never have been published, the sort of thing that should have been rejected by any publishing house. The point is that they weren’t. Howl and Other Poems was published and to critical acclaim. I am inclined to think that there is something of The Emperor’s New Clothes about Ginsberg’s poetry. But despite this, the mere fact that the poems were published, were highly acclaimed and are taught to university students mean that they cannot be ignored.
The fact that I deemed them worthy of discussion by writing this post means that I have not ignored them, they have made me think about poetry and what it is. Irrespective of my own view, Ginsberg’s poems will continue to be taught to, and discussed by, students. For that reason alone, the poems are important, In answer to the question, “Is it art?” the answer has to be yes. David T’s question is different. He asks, “is this great art?” This is a subjective matter, but if I had to give an answer, I would say “No, it is not great art, it is vulgar art that gets so widely discussed mainly because of how vulgar it is.”
| 16 November, 2008, 12:54 am |
“But despite this, the mere fact that the poems were published, were highly acclaimed and are taught to university students mean that they cannot be ignored. ”
Except for the bit about the university students, you could say the same about the poems of Felicia Hemans. They are totally ignored these days except for a scrap about the boy stood on the burning deck.
“For that reason alone, the poems are important,”
“Importance isn’t important. Good writing is.”
| 16 November, 2008, 1:36 am |
Importance isn’t important.
I shall have to think about this rather profound statement.
| 16 November, 2008, 12:18 pm |
John Wilmot said and did it all in the 17th century.
| 16 November, 2008, 1:56 pm |
Graham,
He certainly did. Maybe, Ginsberg’s poems are therefore important. In a few hundred years time when historians are considering 20th century culture, they will be able to comment not just on his poems but also on how his poems were praised by the art establishment. Reading it now, it would be a shame if the Wilmot poem that you linked to had been completely forgotten - the same may one day be said of Ginsberg.
| 16 November, 2008, 3:40 pm |
KB Player: Kia-ora.
Graham: Hell hath no fury like a man scorned.
| 16 November, 2008, 5:25 pm |
“Importance isn’t important.”
Mikey - It wasn’t me who thought of that one, it was Kingsley Amis. Reading something because it’s “important” is like meeting someone for the same reason. It may help your career but is not the best way to approach poems or people.
Sue R - G’day
Graham - Isn’t the Ginsberg poem, judging by that extract, a celebration of sex while the Rochester one, which I glanced at, is full of disgust?
| 16 November, 2008, 8:52 pm |
KB Player,
Isn’t part of the problem, good writing is subjective? Presumably Ginsberg was so highly acclaimed because enough people in the right places thought his poems good. I have a problem with this idea. An example that comes to mind is James Joyce’s Ulysses. This was a set text for first year undergraduates studying English at my college. Without exception, everyone I knew studying English detested the book and many had urges to throw it in the fire. Given English undergraduates at a decent college were not impressed with that book, why was it inflicted upon them? Presumably because either the book is considered important or good or both by “those that matter.” Now, English undergraduates may not be as well read or as knowledgeable as university professors but they are not dumb - Given I did not study English and have not read the book, whose opinion do I hold in greater stead? The combined weight of the undergraduates I knew or the stuffy professors? In my opinion, it is no contest. I am going with the undergraduates and that is what I have done as I have never attempted to read that book. It could be a mistake as if I did read it, I may agree with the professors.
The problems of subjectivity!
| 16 November, 2008, 9:23 pm |
I can’t get past page 30 of Ulysses though people that I admire eg George Orwell thought it great. And I love The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
As you say, it is subjective, and when it comes to what is taught in Universities, it’s a kind of tipping point of subjectivity - enough high ups have decided this is good. So it gets included in the canon. However, some get picked up and others dropped as fashions change.
| 17 November, 2008, 3:54 pm |
“I am going with the undergraduates and that is what I have done as I have never attempted to read that book.”
Sorry, but that - along with all your other comments about Ulysses - just makes you a fucking twat. And an ignorant one at that.
Hiding behind notions of ’subjectivity’ is okay if you’re a feeble-minded student or a fan of postmodernism - in the real world, however, there are things that are objectively great. Ulysses is unquestionably one of those things.
| 17 November, 2008, 5:50 pm |
Whoops, forgot I was even commenting on this.
Graham - Isn’t the Ginsberg poem, judging by that extract, a celebration of sex while the Rochester one, which I glanced at, is full of disgust?
Hmm, the great libertine certainly felt some self-disgust at the end of his life but I really think that “A ramble in St James Park” shows his own knowledge (is George Michael disgusted by his “rambles” on Hampstead Heath I wonder?) Wilmot seems to me disgusted only by the fact that the woman he talks about has become the passive “pot” instead of joining in the lusty endevours with (to use a word popularised a little later) gusto don’t you think?
Maybe, Ginsberg’s poems are therefore important. In a few hundred years time when historians are considering 20th century culture, they will be able to comment not just on his poems but also on how his poems were praised by the art establishment.
Strangely I don’t think that there is any chance of Ginsberg being forgotten in a hurry. He is too important a figure in explaining the counterculture of the fifties and sixties - as for his poetry, it will live or die on its own merits but for me, I much prefer Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english/poemscult/ferlinghettirev_print.shtml
| 17 November, 2008, 5:56 pm |
I think that if the great and good of an English department cannot interest at least some of their students in the magnificent prose mastery of Joyce and Ulysess then there is something significantly wrong with that English department.
As Henry Miller had it:
All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet - if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.”
| 17 November, 2008, 5:57 pm |
Those three short extracts of Ginsberg’s prose poetry are insufficient to form a judgement. I have googled and found longer extracts from ‘Howl’ and I was - at a first reading -, impressed and I think the poem is a worthy successor to Rimbaud’s Season in Hell. The fact that his poems are full of fucking and excrement is neither her nor there. It depends on what is done with them.
I think Mikey made a mistake in using the word ‘degenerate:’ it was used by you-know-who to condemn all intellligent modern art in Germany. Ginsburg belongs to the ‘thread’ of European Decadence which he americanised under the influence of Whitman. Behind us we have Rimbaud, Jean Genet and others. Excrement and mud were favourite words of the great Austrian poet, Georg Trakl. Decadence was the anitidote to the false cardboard poster health which was promoted by the growth of fascism and which has a pernicious enough influence in USA puritanism. Osip Mandelstam wrote: “But the decadents were Christian artists, in their way the last Christian martyrs. The music of putrefaction was for them the music of resurrection.”
It does not matter how relatively great a poet Ginsberg was; what matters is the phenoomenon itself and what it expresses. In a way he says everything that is clamped down by commercial culture. To relegate him to dusty shelves and crusty academics is the perfect way to to evade the wound he opens.
I know that Harry’s place is dangerous ground, where angels and even devils might fear to tread and am expecting to be called a fucking twit. I am one of God’s fragile creatures - but I can take it.
| 17 November, 2008, 6:46 pm |
Paul,
I see you are a fan of Ulysses. That is your right. Each of us only have a limited amount of time to read books and hence we have to be selective. One method of selection is what people whose opinions we respect say about them.
I selected Ulysses on purpose. I know many people think it is a superb novel - but given a choice through limited time of reading that, or as one of those very same undergraduates suggested to me, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, I selected Tolstoy. I cannot comment upon Ulyssees as I have not read it, but I can comment on the Tolstoy novel and in my opinion that is simply superb.
I read numerous other books that one of those undergraduates had suggested to me and in general I respected her opinion massively. I still recall at how I loved Voltaire’s Candide and Nabakov’s Lolita both read at her suggestion.
Regarding Ulysees it was not just one person but numerous students I know hated it. I note your differing opinion but I do not know who you are. In the event a number of people,including those book readers that I respect, tell me that I have the wrong opinion and must read it, I will, but until that time I have no desire. In my spare time for literature, I would rather read some of the Philip Roth novels that I have not read.
| 17 November, 2008, 6:57 pm |
Graham - Your quote from Henry Miller is hysterical. Thank you.
Felix, thanks for your comment. The reason I questioned whether Ginsberg was as a degenerate is not because of the lines of his poems, but because of his life in general - using all sorts of drugs (including heroin on a number of occasions) - what he did that led him to be suspended from Columbia (a particularly nasty prank on his cleaning lady), associating with a con man, being arrested for possession of stolen goods and the list goes on.
| 17 November, 2008, 8:48 pm |
“I cannot comment upon Ulyssees as I have not read it…”
So why mention it at all then? Or are you determined to just wear your ignorance with pride?
Sorry, but if you’ve not read it, you should be ashamed of yourself. Like I said, it’s not up for debate - certainly not with the likes of you and a few gormless students - whether it’s a great work of art or not. Because it is a great work of art - you and your dopey mates do absolutely nothing to change that. In the same way that thousands of school kids grumbling about Shaklespeare doesn’t diminish his greatness. Don’t you get it? It’s not a difference of opinion, it’s just you being utterly and totally wrong.
Actually, you’re beyond wrong - because you haven’t even fucking read the book. So what do you know?
Here’s a tip: don’t mention Ulysses again until you’ve had the decency to at least read it.
| 18 November, 2008, 12:51 am |
Paul,
I find your comments arrogant and rude. Your gratuitous use of vulgar language and insults does not impress me. You put your own opinion on a book as something that is not up for debate. Since when are your opinions the definitive opinion?
I have not commented on what I think of Ulysses. All I have commented upon is why I have not read it. Irrespective of your own comments I have just read elsewhere something that will confirm my view of why I have not read it. John Greenway, commenting on the difficulty in reading Ulysses said in 1955:
To read it with ease, one should have a Ph.D. in comparative languages and literature; to read it with difficulty, one should know the Odyssey, The Golden Bough, Joyce’s life and other works, E. K. Chambers’ William Shakespeare, and much about the history of English literature, the Celtic Renaissance, Irish politics, and Roman Catholic liturgy.
Greenway goes on to comment that via demonstrating “a vocabulary of nearly 25,000 words, Joyce transcends the bounds of Webster’s International”
Source:
John Greenway, “A Guide through James Joyce’s Ulysses,” College English, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Nov., 1955), pp. 67-78
I have no particular desire to read a book where I would need to keep by my side a full set of the volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary because a standard dictionary will simply not do.
I have no idea who you are or why you think you are so great. Maybe you would like to enlighten me?
| 18 November, 2008, 11:09 am |
in the real world, however, there are things that are objectively great
This is a hilariously, bull-headedly stupid statement.
“The real world” is precisely where “objective greatness” - that is timeless, absolute, total superiority - literally cannot exist. In the real world a work can be more complex, more influential, more moving to particular people, more widely-read, more elegantly constructed, more challenging, but how on EARTH can you define objective greatness in the “real world”? Answer: you can’t - it necessarily requires an appeal to the metaphysical. Ergo, Paul, your arguments fall at the first fence.
Or by “real world” do you mean the more-real-than-real world of Platonic ideals?
It strikes me that peoiple who insist on ascribing absolute greatness to things are rather insecure about the position of “their” cultural touchstones in the world, and want to turn them into something more eternal to preserve them for ever free from criticism or the dirt of reality - but, as Ginsberg’s prime inspiration might say, by binding to themselves their joy, they do its winged life destroy.
| 18 November, 2008, 1:54 pm |
Great artists (add sic to taste) are generally people you wouldn’t want to be in a room with.
On this basis, Ginsberg is clearly a genius.
Being a bad person and making bad art are, generally, independent variables. Even the worst Marxist aesthetics don’t confuse the failings of the corpse with the failings of the corpus.
| 18 November, 2008, 2:24 pm |
Good reply, Joe. I was looking at the “objectively great” statement and wondering how to explain that aesthetic values are not the same as 2+2=4 or that two sides of an isosceles triangle are equal or historical facts like a date when an event happened. They are always subjective, however much the greatness of a work of art seems like a plain fact to you.
However, with aesthetic judgements you can be as astounded and as taken aback and as angry when someone denies the value of something you value as when they deny objective truths. A friend of mine tells me, “Shakespeare is overrated.” “Have you read any?” “No.” And of course I want to punch him.
| 18 November, 2008, 3:21 pm |
Had I read most works of criticism on Shakespeare (Kermode, Shapiro, Greenblatt etc) but nothing by Shakespeare himself would I be entitled to view him as over-rated I wonder?
| 18 November, 2008, 4:15 pm |
joe muggs and KB Player, thank you for supporting me here.
A friend of mine tells me, “Shakespeare is overrated.” “Have you read any?” “No.” And of course I want to punch him.
This is obviously very different from the case I gave of James Joyce. I did not say that he was overrated or that Odysseywas in any way bad. What I did was explain why I had not read the book and that was due to recommendations of people who I thought highly of as opposed to the great and good university professors who lauded the book. Now, if those people I relied upon were uneducated illiterates then I accept that is my fault, but they were not,they were studying English as undergraduates at a very decent British University.
Regarding Shakespeare, personally I detested reading his plays but that is possibly because the only ones I did read, I had to study as part of school set work. Despite the fact that I did not like studying his plays, I do not feel I am in a position to say that he is “overrated.” I do feel that I am in a position to say that I have no desire to read any more of his plays or see any performed.
Regarding Ginsberg, I posed the following question:
Was Ginsberg a poetic genius and someone whose work is deserved of study and criticism by in the English departments of the worlds great universities, or is he someone that deserves no better than to be forgotten and his books of poetry to remain gathering dust in library bookshelves, only to be used by doctoral students in sociology departments researching an obscure subject such as twentieth century literary perverts?
The more I think about this question, the more I am coming to the conclusion that the former is the correct answer. It is not just what he said in his poems but the period - the mid 20th century -that he wrote them- must be considered together.
The Beat Generation stuck two fingers up at society and were proud to do so. Ginsberg’s poetry is a fantastic example of this phenomenon.
| 18 November, 2008, 4:23 pm |
Graham,
You ask
Had I read most works of criticism on Shakespeare (Kermode, Shapiro, Greenblatt etc) but nothing by Shakespeare himself would I be entitled to view him as over-rated I wonder?
In my opinion, much would depend if you had good grounds to agree with the opinions of the critics in question. i.e Have you read other authors that they have praised and agreed with that appraisal and other books that they have criticised and agreed with that criticism. If so, you are in a stronger position to argue, based on the views of someone you respect, that you viewed Shakespeare as overrated. But I still think making that leap does not follow logically. It would be far better for you to claim, as I did with Ulysses (and not Odysseyas I incorrectly wrote in my previous posting) that the reason that you have not read Shakespeare is due to critics that you respect feel that his work is overrated.
| 18 November, 2008, 6:33 pm |
But surely Mikey we would need something to compare Shakespeare with? And when you get down to it there isn’t really anyone who can be put in the same category is there? I think possibly of all prose writers that Joyce may also have no competition - unless of course anyone would like to give us an example of somebody who writes better than Joyce does in Ulysses?
| 18 November, 2008, 7:05 pm |
“Had I read most works of criticism on Shakespeare ” - Graham, you would never have had any time to read anything else.
As for Ulysses, perhaps I’ll give it another go. I don’t like prose that makes you work so hard for so long a stretch.
| 18 November, 2008, 7:25 pm |
“The more I think about this question, the more I am coming to the conclusion that the former is the correct answer. It is not just what he said in his poems but the period - the mid 20th century -that he wrote them- must be considered together.
The Beat Generation stuck two fingers up at society and were proud to do so. Ginsberg’s poetry is a fantastic example of this phenomenon.”
You seem to be back where you started Mikey. Reading something not because it’s intrinsically good but because it’s historically significant or important or for reasons of social history. That wouldn’t get me reading Ginsberg. Someone whose judgement I respected telling me he was a marvellous, brilliant poet might get me reading him.
| 18 November, 2008, 8:17 pm |
I don’t like prose that makes you work so hard for so long a stretch.
Nor do I. I find Henry James for instance tedious in the extreme. But Ulysses never struck me that way (and let’s face it language is the real hero of that particular novel)and Joyce’s language is life-affirming and the secret to reading it is not to approach it with awe or as a “duty” but to be carried away by the language; letting it provoke you and tease you and even annoy you even as it inspires you to lift yourself above the everyday.
| 18 November, 2008, 9:05 pm |
I like early and mid Henry James, but find The Golden Bowl and The Ambassadors like wading through treacle.
Evidently you have to read Ulysses like Paradise Lost. But then Paradise Lost is shorter and there’s a lot more happening.
| 19 November, 2008, 12:49 am |
Graham and KB Player
On the subject of Ulysses, I was just with someone who is completing his PhD at Oxford. By any definition this person would be viewed as an intelligent person. Thinking of this thread, I asked him about Ulysses. He informed me that he had read it, but only because it had been a set text for him as well.In his opinion, it is a brilliant book but he had to struggle through it. He would not read it again but was pleased that he has read it and certainly does not regret reading it. He argued that it was a book that separates the men from the boys. I still do not feel compelled to read the book.
Graham,
Regarding Shakespeare, I note your question, but I do not feel qualified to answer it.
KB Player,
On the subject of Ginsberg, I obviously had read a number of his poems. Unfortunately, I do not know if he is a brilliant poet or not as I have not read enough contemporary poetry to be able to form a judgement. I have warmed to his poetry because of the importance of it which as you say may not be a valid reason.
I have considered a different subject and that is modern art. When I first saw the art work of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, I simply did not think it was art and had no appreciation of it all, but after a while it grew on me and began to like it when I appreciated the originality of it at the time it was painted.
So maybe, like artwork, for me poetry must be considered not just in isolation but also for when it was written. Maybe also the same with books. I simply do not know. I was never an English major.
| 19 November, 2008, 7:51 am |
I would like to offer a chunk of Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ if it is permitted to copy from another site (given below). After all, I’m drawing attention to him, the site and publications.One should read more, whole sections or the whole poem, as the poetic inspirations and effects are cumulative.Illumiated visions rise and fall, assonance and alliteration are grilliantly and originally handled - I meant to write brilliantly but grilliantly sounds quite appropriate. Maybe you need a sip or two of brandy while reading.
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
| 19 November, 2008, 8:23 am |
P.S. on Ulysses. I will probably not read it out of cowardice, of which I feel ashamed. I have no doubt from passages I’ve read, that it belongs with the greatest novels. Joyce only has to put two or three words together for you to know that you are plugged into the most vital sources of language. He was a passionate writer and that should help. If I had the courage I would read it for the sound patterns and intelligible sense and not worry about understanding and esoteric references. Understanding often comes later of its own accord (as I know from the music of Stockhausen and others) To be avoided, acadameic study, unless you have an inspired teacher. Alas, I’m getting older and read the literature of four languages, so I’m obliged to limit my reading and be picky and choosy. To those of you who are younger I suggest ‘have a go.’
| 19 November, 2008, 4:12 pm |
I prefer Proust and Genet as prosodists to Joyce, but maybe that’s more of a tribute to the translators of the editions I’ve read - which is yet another illustration of why trying to rank “great art” in some pathetic Top Of The Pops heirarchy is ridiculous. The number of factors that make a decision about a work’s worth are so complex that it’s not just comparing apples and oranges, it’s comparing apples to the colour orange.
| 19 November, 2008, 4:43 pm |
My 4-pennorth’
Ulysses is breathtaking and invigorating, it soars and swoops, it is a pleasure and delight.
Finnegan’s Wake, however…is less immediately appealing than the (I think now former) pub of that name in Neasden. Maybe some time I will get round to getting stuck into it.
| 19 November, 2008, 5:17 pm |
Ulysses is a funny one: great work of art; certainly not easy to read. I read it because I had to. I’m glad I did – it’s great; and to be in the company of the talent of Joyce for all that time - fantastic. I sometimes go back to it – re-reading certain sections. But the whole thing again? Not yet.
Yep, Ulysses is a funny one. It does separate the men from the boys; it also separates the pseuds from the genuine lovers of literature. Given its iconic status, both in terms of literature and difficulty, I have long noticed a trend among certain type of people to bang on interminably what a great work of art it is.
Fair enough, you might think. But it’s the tone that’s so interesting: arrogance and anger in equal measure, all the tics present in Paul’s overreaction – far in excess of the original comment made by Mikey.
‘it’s not up for debate’, says Paul. Why not? Surely that is what brings literature to life?
‘Certainly not with the likes of you’ he continues. Oh, dear. Not an intellectually impregnable argument is it?
Where does this come from?
It comes, as things so often do, with the urge to appear clever. Ulysses is perfect for this, or so people think. If you love, and I mean love, Ulysses, you get literature, right? Thus those that don’t, don’t. Geddit?
The funniest thing is that I really wouldn’t be surprised if Paul himself has never read it. He merely uses it as a totem of his own (supposed) intellectualism.
Sad, really.
| 19 November, 2008, 5:54 pm |
David,
Thank you very much for your comment and support. I often go to people’s houses and when I do, if I get the chance I always browse at their bookshelves. There are two things I look for 1. What books have they got, and 2. What books have they actually read. Time and time again, I notice that some people have a whole collection of classic literature on their bookshelves but looking at the state they are in, one would probably accurately deduce that these books have never been opened. I mean really, how can Homer’s The Iliad compete with a the John Grisham novel on the shelf below?
| 19 November, 2008, 10:27 pm |
I always had the vague idea that Ginsberg was an embarrassing and hopelessly dated relic from a particular cultural and chronological window, but hadn’t ever read a line of his. Larkin on the other hand remains a genius.
| 19 November, 2008, 11:56 pm |
“I always had the vague idea that Ginsberg was an embarrassing and hopelessly dated relic from a particular cultural and chronological window, but hadn’t ever read a line of his.”
Glad to have your well informed opinion on Ginsberg.
“Larkin on the other hand remains a genius.”
And have you ever read a line of Larkin’s? Or is that another vague idea?
| 20 November, 2008, 9:06 am |
“…trying to rank “great art” in some pathetic Top Of The Pops heirarchy is ridiculous.” Joe Muggs
I couldn’t sympathise more with your view. ‘Great art’ is one of those terms I find difficult to avoid and use it with a feeling of helplessness - above all, it sounds pompous. ‘Great’ is perhaps a substitute for a word that doesn’t exist. I have tried to substitute it with ’significant,’ ‘articulate,’ without getting very far. When I play three pieces by different composers at the piano and a listener says, “I really like that piece by Brahns,’ I am happy, but if they say that the piece by Brahms is better(ie. greater) than the one by Schumann, all my pleasure is spoiled, because each piece has something so particular to say that one should forget all such antique dealer evaluations. I have resigned myself to using the word ‘great’ and try to see what is meant by it in particular instances.
Can you deny greatness in the most literal sense to Shakespeare for his incomparably vast and penetrating vision? Much depends also on one’s changing point of view. When I listen to Beethoven I think he rises to greater heights than any other composer, for specific reasons which I won’t go into here. But then I find that Schumann and Schoenberg offer something that Beethoven doesn’t.
I use the word ‘great’ for artists who have responded (in my view) in the most vital way to their historical hour and and taken their material as far as it can go - as James Joyce did in Ulysses. (I judge from passages I have read and recitations I have heard). I don’t subscribe to a top of the pops hierarchy of great artists.
But you, Joe, do create a hierarchy of sorts between Proust, Genet and Joyce, using the word ‘prefer,’ thereby reducing the evaluation of artists to personal likes and dislikes.
Perhaps I can be excused for saying Shakespeare is great because I have been overwhelmed by the richness and depth of his vision. I use the term ‘very great’ for Dickens because I feel he is often under-rated.
‘Great art’ sounds pompous, but a ‘great novel’, pronounced with enthusiasm, doesn’t
| 20 November, 2008, 9:20 am |
P.S. re likes and dislikes.
“I like Geroge Clooney.” “I don’t.”" George Clooney is what he is irrespective of our likes and dislikes
| 20 November, 2008, 9:47 am |
P.S. 2
I admire Allen Ginsberg despite my self. I can’t say I like him.
| 20 November, 2008, 2:37 pm |
““I like Geroge Clooney.” “I don’t.”” George Clooney is what he is irrespective of our likes and dislikes”
Well no, he’s not. If not enough people liked him and too many disliked him he wouldn’t be an A list Hollywood star and heart-throb. He wouldn’t appear in movies. He would, aesthetically speaking, cease to exist.
| 20 November, 2008, 7:28 pm |
If he WAS a degenerate what exactly should be done with his work?
| 20 November, 2008, 9:35 pm |
“The funniest thing is that I really wouldn’t be surprised if Paul himself has never read it. He merely uses it as a totem of his own (supposed) intellectualism.”
I’ve read Ulysses many times. And loved it every time. And?
Mikey: “I find your comments arrogant and rude. Your gratuitous use of vulgar language and insults does not impress me. You put your own opinion on a book as something that is not up for debate. Since when are your opinions the definitive opinion?”
Oh, do get yourself a spine Mikey. You know, some things get people fired up. Your drearily middle-class rejection of Joyce - your sneering studenty attitude to something unquestionably great - fired me up. So sue me.
The greatness of Ulysses isn’t up for debate.
End of, as they say.
| 20 November, 2008, 11:41 pm |
“Larkin on the other hand remains a genius.”
And have you ever read a line of Larkin’s? Or is that another vague idea?
Yes, of course I have, and his collected letters and his biography. On the other hand I’ve never read Dan Brown, Mills & Boon or Mein Kampf, but still feel qualified to state that they’re piss, as is Ginsberg. You don’t need a degree in meteorology to know that it’s likely to rain, either.
| 20 November, 2008, 11:46 pm |
““I like Geroge Clooney.” “I don’t.”” George Clooney is what he is irrespective of our likes and dislikes” Felix
“Well no, he’s not. If not enough people liked him and too many disliked him he wouldn’t be an A list Hollywood star and heart-throb. He wouldn’t appear in movies. He would, aesthetically speaking, cease to exist.” KB Player
Well. I was talking about the already established actor, as we were talking about established writers, Ginsberg, Joyce et al about whom people like to express their opinions
Often, in the past, the best artists were those who were not liked. Then the commercial vultures descend and make a million dollar investment out of a Rembrandt painting.
But you have let the cat out of the bag about commercial culture. Actors have to catch an audience and money, as does the television, even if what they produce is rubbish rather than quality. Doing something for its own sake and being good at it is no longer a guarantee of success. You seem to be equating ‘aesthetic’ with the movie industry. Clooney’s films could be much better than they are.
The likes of the majority are no gaurantee of quality and intelligence.
| 20 November, 2008, 11:58 pm |
The likes of the majority are no gaurantee of quality and intelligence.
But then again given the Chapman brothers nor are the likes of the self-imposed asthetic vanguard.
| 21 November, 2008, 12:16 am |
Paul,
Your personal arrogance knows no bounds. I am still waiting for you to tell me why you think you are so great.
| 21 November, 2008, 1:16 am |
Graham, you ask
If he WAS a degenerate what exactly should be done with his work?
Just because he was a degenerate, assuming that is a fair description,it does not mean his poems are bad. They could be excellent. Maybe, given his support for NAMBLA, Ginsberg would have approved of Garry Glitter. Irrespective of his crimes, it would be a shame if some of Gary Glitter’s songs were completely forgotten. I am leaning towards a similar attitude to Ginsberg. I have been thinking about his poems quite a bit in the last week,and I am certainly leaning towards supporting his poetry.
| 21 November, 2008, 10:17 am |
The likes of the majority are no gaurantee of quality and intelligence.
***But then again given the Chapman brothers nor are the likes of the self-imposed asthetic vanguard.
I think we just have to make up our own minds, preferably based on immersion and experience.
Thank-you for drawing my attention to the Chapman brothers. I had to google them. This site is educative for me, isolated in provincial Verona. It has brought me back to Allen Ginsberg, whom I prefered to ignore when I was younger. The Chapman B’s interest me as a phenomenon. But I’m looking at my watch and have to go. Maybe I can add something later, thread permitting
| 21 November, 2008, 1:42 pm |
Yes, of course I have, and his collected letters and his biography.
Why the “of course”? From your first statement it was reasonable for me to assume that you pronounce on books without reading them first. That you were one of those annoying people who say, “Well, I don’t know anything about this subject, but . . .” WELL WHY DID YOU OPEN YOUR GOB THEN?*
*(Capitals in tribute to Kingsley Amis, who would use exasperated capitals when people made self-evidently silly remarks. You’ve no doubt read his letters, where he does that passim/.
| 21 November, 2008, 1:45 pm |
“where he does that passim/.”
That / should be ).
No preview button bum.
| 21 November, 2008, 2:07 pm |
Finnegan’s Wake, however…is less immediately appealing than the (I think now former) pub of that name in Neasden. Maybe some time I will get round to getting stuck into it.
I have been staring at “A shorter Finnegans wake” (ed A Burgess) which, along with a reader guide which is much longer than the actual novel and two other books of criticism occupies (and has occupied for as long as I can remember) the shelf space to the immediate right of me as I sit at this computer.
No. I don’t think I can do it….
| 21 November, 2008, 2:37 pm |
Graham,
No. I don’t think I can do it….
I know the feeling. I have a copy behind me of Arthur J.Dommen’s The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Now I have used this as a reference, but read it all? I have nightmares at the thought. Paul Bogdanor thinks I am a wimp for not doing so as I am interested in the Vietnam war. Using a similar argument to what was used by someone else to me about Ulysses, reading Dommen’s mammoth volume that is meticulous and detailed, he informed me, separates the men from the boys.
| 21 November, 2008, 2:49 pm |
Well up against Braudel’s “Perspective of the World” Civilization and Capitalism 15Th-18th Century, (Vol. 3) Even “The Wake” starts to look attractive.
| 21 November, 2008, 3:21 pm |
“Separates the men from the boys” sounds like the mission statement of a brothel.
| 21 November, 2008, 7:31 pm |
Or indeed of HP itself.
| 23 November, 2008, 8:19 pm |
You’ve no doubt read his letters, where he does that passim/.
Yes but ow leggo my.
Anyway Ginsberg needs to decide whether he wants to be a serious poet or merely an example of contemporary bum.
| 23 November, 2008, 11:12 pm |
Wardytron says:
Ginsberg needs to decide whether he wants to be a serious poet or merely an example of contemporary bum.
In response, I should say that Ginsberg is not really in a position to make that decision as he is no longer alive.
I don’t really know what I think of Ginsberg. It is less shocking now to write about the physical reality of sex than it was when he was writing. I mean, a little googling, and you can see fisting on the internet, whenever you want.
Whether he was funny, clever, original and moving about fucking… dunno.