THE LETTERS OF ALLEN GINSBERG
Edited by Bill Morgan
468 pp. Da Capo Press. $30

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF ALLEN GINSBERG AND GARY SNYDER
Edited by Bill Morgan
Illustrated. 321 pp. Counterpoint. $28
By JAMES CAMPBELL
Published: The New York Times Book review, January 9, 2009


In June 1958, Allen Ginsberg wrote to Jack Kerouac about a series of catastrophes that had befallen members of their circle on the West Coast. Neal Cassady was in the San Bruno county jail, awaiting trial for having offered marijuana to a pair of undercover policemen. A woman friend — “little doomed Connie” — had fallen in with “some evil teaheads or something” and been strangled, according to an outside source, “Tuesday AM by a . . . seaman who confessed that PM.” Al Sublette, who features in Kerouac’s novel “Big Sur” under the name Mal Damlette, was also in prison — “I heard for a burglary.” All the news from out West, much of it conveyed by Cassady’s “haggard” wife Carolyn, with whom Ginsberg had been on unfriendly terms since she disturbed him in bed with Neal, “sounds evil . . . except letters from Gary.”
In a note to Cassady himself two weeks later, Ginsberg admitted being at a loss to offer practical help. “I wrote Gary Snyder, he’s the only one with a strong sense . . . to . . . find what need be done.”

The graph of Ginsberg’s emotional life rose and fell alarmingly over the years (he died in 1997, at 70). The early correspondence in “The Letters of Allen Ginsberg” reflects a multifaceted distress: at his mother’s “severe nervous breakdowns,” related fears for his own mental health, and a comprehensive sexual anxiety. In 1949, having fallen in with some petty criminals, he was arrested for harboring stolen goods and subsequently committed to the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where he met the future dedicatee of “Howl,” Carl Solomon.
The full piece at NYT.