When renowned Beat Generation spokesman Allen Ginsberg passed away in 1997, Bill Morgan had already been going through the poet’s personal papers, journals and photographs for more than a decade. Morgan was Ginsberg’s personal archivist and bibliographer—hired to organize his many thousands of documents for posterity—but also his friend.
Together, those roles put Morgan in a uniquely beneficial place from which to write I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg (2006). It is the first biography since the poet’s death at age 70, and undoubtedly the most personal. Ginsberg kept diary-like journals his entire life, rarely missing a day, tens of thousands of pages, leaving seemingly nothing out.
Biographer Drew on Ginsberg's Personal Papers, Journals, Letters
Unlike many biographies, the author did not draw primarily on interviews with those close to the subject. I Celebrate Myself derives almost entirely from Ginsberg’s journals and letters, and since Morgan had, for years, been putting them into chronological order, he was not only quite familiar with the various texts, but used his experience to format the biography: one chapter for each year of Ginsberg’s life.
An introverted, intellectual Jewish boy from New Jersey, Allen Ginsberg was thrust into the limelight in 1957 with the obscenity trial over his renowned poem, Howl. Interestingly, Ginsberg and friends were on an extended European excursion during the trial…it took him weeks to get updates and the eventual “not obscene” verdict for publishers City Lights Books of San Francisco.
Morgan presents this period from Ginsberg’s point-of-view, thousands of miles away, where his concerns were directed more at where their next meal would come from and whether he could find a gay lover for the evening. It’s an example of what separates this biography from the others, in that it is almost as if Ginsberg is telling this story. The effect is one of having one less wall between reader and subject, and it is one of the major strengths of I Celebrate Myself.
Because of the deeply personal nature of Ginsberg’s journal entries, readers who are aware of the bisexual beatnik’s experimental bent when it came to drugs and especially sex, can draw the accurate conclusion that this biography is relatively no-holds-barred. Although Morgan does not often quote directly Ginsberg’s journal entries, even the paraphrasing is sometimes not for the sexually squeamish.
Ginsberg Biography Reveals His Beat Connections, Poetry Timeline
Among the many other intriguing revelations here are Ginsberg’s angle on friendships with Kerouac (they were often at odds), Burroughs (who loved Allen) and Cassady (whom Allen loved). Yet another helpful structural technique is the author’s placement of poem titles in the margins alongside the chronological text, allowing the reader to see what Ginsberg the poet was working at any given time.
Because Bill Morgan’s I Celebrate Myself is based in Ginsberg’s own thoughts, nearly an autobiography, it will likely come to be seen as the single authoritative biography on the life of Allen Ginsberg, and therefore a must for students of the Beat Generation of writers and Ginsberg himself.
Morgan, Bill. I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg, 2006 Viking Press, 701 pgs.
Dale Van Every - Dale Van Every is a freelance and fiction writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his Masters Degree in English Literature from ...
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