Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Eighteen, Section Two. The Poet as Creator of the Beat Generation.

   The Poet as Creator of the Beat Generation by Dave Jaffe. Section Two


      Herbert Hunke was a thief, a male prostitute, and dealt drugs. Ginsberg met him in New York City in 1945 and Hunke remained close to Allen for most of his life. In fact, Hunke's stealing once nearly put Ginsberg in prison.
    Hunke's life highlights the other side of the Beat Generation. It's all detailed in Bill Morgan's excellent book on Ginsberg called 'I Celebrate Myself'. Many of the Beats around Ginsberg were substance abusers, crooks and disturbed people.
     "Their women are whores," one of my sisters said after reading 'On The Road' by Jack Kerouac. There's no doubt that many of the male Beats treated women terribly. And Ginsberg himself didn't pay much attention to women whether they were talented or not. Perhaps my sister was too judgemental. Yet many of the Beats were just bad people.
     I once described Gregory Corso the beat poet as 'A nice man'. Corso was nice when he met Peggy Guggenheim, the famous art collector. Yet Corso was a criminal when he was young and when he was old. He was also constantly drunk.
     William Burroughs the author of 'Naked Lunch' was a junkie for a long time. He shot and killed Joan Adams the woman he was living with. His son also named William but more popularly called 'Billie', died at a young age of alcoholism. Lucien Carr was a young very handsome man when Ginsberg first met him in 1945. Carr killed another man who came onto him, namely David Kammerer. Allen at one time loved Carr and remained friendly with him all his life.
    Neal Cassady was constantly on the move. His personality and his writing and driving inspired both Ginsberg and Kerouac. He was one of the stars of Kerouac's 'On The Road', and Tom Wolfe's 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test', the definitive book on the hippie movement. Yet Cassady was a speed freak who was addicted to amphetemines. He died in 1968, probably due to his addictions.
     Jack Kerouac descended into alcoholism in his thirties and died in 1969 due to his constant drinking. By the time he died, Kerouac had become a virulent anti-Semite, just like his mother. He cursed Jews and called Ginsberg 'a kike'.
   Allen had to break off contact with this very conservative abuser.
    Most tragic of all was Allen's long time companion Peter Orlovsky. "All families are dysfunctional", Vancouver resident Al Fossen once said. Yet Orlovsky's family was extremely so. Peter became a substance abuser and an alcoholic. Orlovsky had many nervous breakdowns and was in mental hospitals many times. Ginsberg continually refused to see the tragedies his friendship and love caused Orlovsky.
    Allen's main spiritual mentor, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche also caused Allen many problems. He died of alcoholism in his late 40's.
    Mental problems also plagued Allen Ginsberg for some of his youth. He at one time went into a mental hospital. And his mother, born Naomi Levy became a paranoid-schizophrenic.
     "All revolutions fail," wrote George Orwell. "But they fail in different ways." The changes wrought by Ginsberg and his Beat cohorts amounted to a cultural revolution. In some ways the Beats didn't fail. Casual dress, casual drug use and casual sex have swept large parts of the western world. Yet many of the Beats and their friends paid a high price for leading their cultural revolution.
    Allen Ginsberg was an exceptional man. His friends were not as moral as they might have been. This was the other side of the Beat Revolution.