Garrulous Ginsberg

Two recent articles on Ginsberg Ron Silliman links to remind me how much the Beat movement was about talking, writing as transcribing of talking, talk itself—that intensely personal and potentially self-absorbed bond–as holy. Kerouac’s transcription of the Cassady tape in Visions of Cody. Ginsberg “acknowledg[ing] every person who approached him on the street,” stopping to explain Whitman on electricity to a student while the Hopkins greybeards wait. Talk vs. prairie/immigrant loneliness.