Finishing Touches

March 15, 2010
The title of this not-so-rough guide to the mid-century social circle, of which Allen Ginsberg was the center, is taken from the poet's “Footnote to Howl.” For Morgan, Ginsberg was the “locomotive” for the group of journeyers, addicts, loiterers, and seekers that came to be known, in Jack Kerouac's term, as “beats” and who would act as catalyst for the late 1950s beatniks as well as the social movements of the 1960s. As Morgan points out, this was a boys' club—the combustible William Burroughs, murderer Lucien Carr, the charismatic bisexual Neal Cassady, the incorrigible Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, and others more on the fringe, like Ken Kesey—and a white one at that. In part, such could be explained by the zeitgeist, in which even (largely gay) revolutionaries were unconscious participant-prisoners. The infamous and essential On the Road
manuscript consisted of attached papers fed through Kerouac's typewriter like a roll of paper in an early word processor printer, and bravely promoted by agent Sterling Lord, represents for Morgan (in a bit of a stretch) how far ahead of their time the beats were. Although Ginsberg biographer Morgan cannot deliver a firsthand account of the beat history, readers do gain some immediacy regarding the legendary lives and loves of this motley crew that changed the world.