Way, way back in the mists of time, somewhere in the mid-nineties, I was a young man. My literary education started when a neighbor gave me the Complete Edgar Allen Poe and completely blew my 9 years old mind (I know exactly when this was, because this same neighbor took me to see Back To The Future at the Court St. Theater in Saginaw, MI in the autumn of 1985). This was the beginning of a chain reaction of love affairs with the authors of my youth - I can draw a direct line from Edgar Allen Poe - Jim Morrison - Arthur Rimbaud/French Symbolists - The Beats.
Finding good books was like finding the portal to another universe back then. This was pre-internet, and Saginaw only had one crappy bookstore, which really didn't offer much beyond whatever was popular at the time. So in order to find these books, you had to work for them. I would drive down to Ann Arbor, specifically to hit the used book and record stores (the same challenge held true for music too - we didn't have any good record stores either). I never had much money, and it was always an adventure trying to stretch my meager finances into as many books and records as possible while still having enough to get home on. Those few purchases then, were not to be taken lightly. You might spend the entire day rushing down back alley shortcuts, trying to get into as many stores as possible, and with list pre-written (sometimes weeks in advance) would pore over the shelves and racks, trying to find that one big fish you'd been hearing about but never had the chance to read or hear. This list keeping process was ongoing, and would be kept as sacred information culled from older kids, then trusted professors and my cherished NME and Melody Maker imports from the UK.
It was on one of these trips that I finally got my hands on Howl by Allen Ginsberg. I had already picked up On The Road, experiencing the obligatory life-altering that said novel incurs in any young man who reads it. I knew from doing my research that you can't have Kerouac without having Ginsberg, and so my next purchase was the aforementioned Howl. And wow, it didn't disappoint. From the very first line (one of the greatest first lines in history) "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked" I was hooked. Man, was I hooked. From that point forward I dove headlong into Beat Lit and Beat Culture. From there I got into the secondary names, like Corso and Burroughs, and even had the opportunity to meet Gary Snyder and hear him do a reading. From there I found Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, and Thomas Wolfe. But I will never forget the thrill of that moment, hunched between the stacks, feeling those words burn from that page on a rainy afternoon in Ann Arbor.
So now comes Howl, the film, starring James Franco as Ginsberg. From all accounts, it is good, having made the festival rounds to solid reviews. It hits the US September 24, and I am dying to see it. Give it a shot, then pick up the book it's named for. You won't be sorry.
