May

20

A Howler!

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

May 20, 2008 |

The other day I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said HOWL If You <Heart> City Lights Books. They don’t sell them over the internet, you have to go to the store itself to buy one, but it was a hilarious reminder of how a bookstore–especially City Lights Books which was the first place to publish Alan Ginsberg’s poem Howl and was prosecuted for it–aren’t just places that sell books. They’re communities, fostering new writers and supporting established ones. It’s sad that truly independent bookstores are becoming rarer and rarer. The more big chains try to emulate the independents in the most superficial ways (see You’ve Got Nerve Part 1 and Part 2) the more valuable true indepents become. I don’t know if it’s true, but

I once heard a story that, at the first reading of Howl, when Ginsberg said, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” fellow poet Frank O’Hara turned to his friends and whispered, “Goodness, do you suppose he means us?”


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