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Screaming with Joy: The Life of Allen Ginsberg
The first fully illustrated tribute to Allen Ginsberg--the best-known American poet of the post-war generation, mother of the Beats, and walking embodiment of Western counterculture.
Ginsberg's poetry, influenced by the writings of Walt Whitman and the spontaneous prose of his friend Jack Kerouac, is open, forthright, didactic, and written fast without revision. Much of his writing has a raw, confessional quality appropriate to his roles as one of the first gay spokespeople and a leading anti-Vietnam War activist.
From the publication of his first book, Howl and Other Poems , in 1956, Ginsberg became known as the champion of counterculture sexual freedom, pacifism, drug experimentation, opposition to censorship and authority, and acceptance of Eastern religions. The youngest of the Beat writers, Ginsberg was a lover to both William Burroughs and Kerouac and acted as the prophet and public face of the group--serving as Kerouac's unofficial agent for On the Road and helping Burroughs bring The Naked Lunch to the attention of publishers.
Screaming with Joy , overflowing with more than 150 photographs and illustrations, is a passionate documentary of Ginsberg's zealous life. His untimely death in 1997 silenced a voice that expanded the capacity of our language, and his cultural icon status makes his work and life of even greater interest today.
Ginsberg's poetry, influenced by the writings of Walt Whitman and the spontaneous prose of his friend Jack Kerouac, is open, forthright, didactic, and written fast without revision. Much of his writing has a raw, confessional quality appropriate to his roles as one of the first gay spokespeople and a leading anti-Vietnam War activist.
From the publication of his first book, Howl and Other Poems , in 1956, Ginsberg became known as the champion of counterculture sexual freedom, pacifism, drug experimentation, opposition to censorship and authority, and acceptance of Eastern religions. The youngest of the Beat writers, Ginsberg was a lover to both William Burroughs and Kerouac and acted as the prophet and public face of the group--serving as Kerouac's unofficial agent for On the Road and helping Burroughs bring The Naked Lunch to the attention of publishers.
Screaming with Joy , overflowing with more than 150 photographs and illustrations, is a passionate documentary of Ginsberg's zealous life. His untimely death in 1997 silenced a voice that expanded the capacity of our language, and his cultural icon status makes his work and life of even greater interest today.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published October 19, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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August 3, 2022Seems like a relatively high-level chronology of Ginsberg’s life. What a guy! Weird font and layout choices? Generally interesting book.
June 27, 2020
Allen Ginsberg - a massive figure in American life, literature, history. I just read a book about him, "Screaming with Joy: the life of Allen Ginsberg". It was amazing, a terrific read. I am richer for having read this book about the time before mine and my time and the significance of speaking up. Good stuff.
November 5, 2019
Really makes me want to try some psychedelics, Ginsberg was so highly intelligent and lived a very free life!
July 15, 2024
reading this book is like taking an art history class and then feeling superior every time you go to a museum and recognize a piece or artist from said class. except in this case the museum is the five new names that were thrown at me every page and the class is just my joy for consuming media. like this man really met everyone!!! bob dylan, patti smith, lou reed, joan baez, mick jagger, the pixies, the beatles, philip glass, beck, peggy guggenheim, basquiat, andy warhol, christopher isherwood (who wrote the last book i logged). crossovers went insane.
anyways the person who chose the fonts and layout of this book needs to take a graphic design class bc why was this so visually hard to read
anyways the person who chose the fonts and layout of this book needs to take a graphic design class bc why was this so visually hard to read
March 24, 2021
Best book about Ginsberg that I ve read so far.
From his student years in Columbia to his performances with Dylan on tour, talks about his success but also his controversies with pedophilia and Buddhism, mentions his homosexual and even heterosexual affairs, shows a great variety of HD photographs and it is indeed well structured and written.
From his student years in Columbia to his performances with Dylan on tour, talks about his success but also his controversies with pedophilia and Buddhism, mentions his homosexual and even heterosexual affairs, shows a great variety of HD photographs and it is indeed well structured and written.
October 26, 2018
Interesting
Want to read
March 1, 2023811.54 Cav
April 8, 2024
Learned a lot reading this book, some good, some bad. A well balanced and thoughtful account of the life of one of America’s greatest.
October 6, 2010
My least fave of all the Ginsberg bios.
March 19, 2014
A heavily illustrated biographical overview of Ginsberg's life.
April 14, 2017
I am on a Beats biographical reading binge at the moment - this bio has photographs on every page which is great when your intake of information isn't so much dependent on pictures as hugely enriched by them. The writing is quick, journalistic, more potted history than analytical or thorough - like a quick journey through his life picking out all the interesting bits of which there were, predictably, many. I really enjoyed it. I think the author is a bit biased towards Ginsberg but that is preferable to the opposite. Some things were glossed over which didn't need so much further detail perhaps as a more impartial (?) take but it didn't happen often enough to undermine seriously the value of the work. The role of the women in this bio both in turns of events described and events depicted in the photographs was not more I guess than would be expected but it was disappointing and definitely coloured his representation as someone out to fight for the everyman of his times - literally in this case. Ginsbergs ego was huge but he comes across in the end as both a complex and a single minded man who did more good than bad, and who was honest to the end - including self-doubt when underneath he was deluding himself over something and had a suspicion that might be the case but couldn't quite make the final step - but thats not a failing the rest of us can say is uniquely his.
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