Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son

(Paperback, New edition)

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Beginning in 1944 when Allen Ginsberg was a precocious, rebellious college student, this collection of letters charts his ascension as a revolutionary icon in poetry. The correspondence with his father is filled with affection, respect and a healthy dose of argumentative zeal. They debate every major political and artistic issue that faced America over three decades of extraordinary change - from Korea, the Beat generation and Cuba through civil rights and the counter-culture to Vietnam and Watergate. This correspondence also illuminates the defining moments that shaped Allen's art - his experimentation with LSD, his homosexuality, his various love affairs and obsessions and his travels around the globe. We see the crucial process of a poet's widening experience of the world and how these experiences are translated into his art. Moreover, these letters reveal Louis, a published poet himself, to be a major influence in Allen and to have played an important part in Allen's poetic and intellectual accomplishments.

Author Bio

Michael Schumacher wrote the acclaimed biography of Allen Ginsberg, DHARMA LION, and is also the author of the biographies of Eric Clapton, Phil Ochs, and Francis Ford Coppola. He's been researching FAMILY BUSINESS since 1994, when Ginsberg first agreed to the project.