|
by: Deborah Baker
List Price: $25.95Amazon.com's Price: $17.13 You Save: $8.82 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9781594201585
ISBN: 1594201587
Label: Penguin Press HC, The
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: April 10, 2008
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Sales Rank: 192428
Studio: Penguin Press HC, The
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A literary exploration of the Beats' encounter with India in the 1960s, a journey that inspired and influenced generations of Americans and Indians alike
In 1961, Allen Ginsberg left New York by boat for Bombay, India. He brought with him his troubled lover, Peter Orlovsky, and a plan to meet up with poets Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger. He left behind not only fellow Beats Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs, but also the relentless notoriety that followed his publication of Howl, the epic work that branded him the voice of a generation.
Drawing from extensive research in India, undiscovered letters, journals, and memoirs, acclaimed biographer Deborah Baker has woven a many layered literary mystery out of Ginsberg's odyssey. A Blue Hand follows him and his companions as they travel from the ashrams of the Himalayan foothills to Delhi opium dens and the burning pyres of Benares. They encounter an India of charlatans and saints, a country of spectacular beauty and spiritual promise and of devastating poverty and political unease. In Calcutta, Ginsberg discovers a circle of hungry young writers whose outrageousness and genius are uncannily reminiscent of his own past. Finally, Ginsberg searches for Hope Savage, the mysterious and beautiful girl whose path, before she disappeared, had crossed his own in Greenwich Village, San Francisco, and Paris.
In their restless, comic and oftimes tortured search for meaning, the Beats looked to India for answers while India looked to the West. A Blue Hand is the story of their search for God, for love, and for peace in the shadow of the atomic bomb. It is also a story of India-its gods and its poets, its politics and its place in the American imagination.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Fascinating portrait of interesting times
I read in the New York Times that Deborah Baker was Barack Obama's editor for his memoir, so I was curious to see if she was as good a writer as she was an editor. I'm happy to report that she is an excellent writer. I was thoroughly engrossed by A BLUE HAND. To be honest, I was never a big fan of the Beats in general, but Ms. Baker's book reads like a novel and I find her portraits of the characters to be multi-layered and complex. I especially like the complex portrait she also paints of India ... Read More
Rating:  - I wish there were more pictures
Strange book. It left me with the feeling that if I really wanted to find out what that time was like for the major characters I'd need to do my own research. I thought Allen Ginsberg was represented as a rather pathetic, emotionally damaged, spiritually immature person. This may have been true, but how could anyone writing about him today possibly know that? Rambling and at times incoherent, the book disappointed.
Rating:  - A Jewish Poet in India
During the 1970s there were the punks, during the 1960s there were the hippies, and during the 1950s, and beyond, the Beatniks were the epitome of America's counterculture. Normally from respectable, if not wealthy families, and highly educated to boot, the Beatniks frightened conservative, Eisenhower era America with there drug use, displays of both hetero and homo sexualities, and willingness to embrace other counterculture figures as Dr. Timothy Leary. However, it was not only conservative America ... Read More
|
