In 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem "Howl,"
and Jack Kerouac's seminal book On the Road, Allen Ginsberg decided it
was time to teach a course on the literary history of the Beat
Generation. Through the creation of this course, which he ended up
teaching five times, first at the Naropa Institute and later at Brooklyn
College, Ginsberg saw an opportunity to present the history of Beat
Literature in his own inimitable way. Compiled and edited by renowned
Beat scholar Bill Morgan, and with an introduction by Anne Waldman, The
Best Minds of My Generation presents the lectures in edited form,
complete with notes, and paints a portrait of the Beats as Ginsberg knew
them: friends, confidantes, literary mentors, and fellow
revolutionaries.
Ginsberg was seminal to the creation of a public perception of Beat
writers and knew all of the major figures personally, making him
uniquely qualified to be the historian of the movement. In The Best
Minds of My Generation, Ginsberg shares anecdotes of meeting Kerouac,
Burroughs, and other writers for the first time, explains his own
poetics, elucidates the importance of music to Beat writing, discusses
visual influences and the cut-up method, and paints a portrait of a
group who were leading a literary revolution. For Beat aficionados and
neophytes alike, The Best Minds of My Generation is a personal yet
critical look at one of the most important literary movements of the
twentieth century.
