Web Only – Ginsberg

Pitt alumnus Bill Morgan touted his recent biography of poet Allen Ginsberg at noon last… Pitt alumnus Bill Morgan touted his recent biography of poet Allen Ginsberg at noon last Friday in The Book Center. The book, “I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg,” was released earlier this year on the 50th anniversary of the release of Ginsberg’s “Howl.”

This meet and speak session was especially nostalgic for Morgan, since it was at Pitt where he began the work that culminated in “I Celebrate Myself.”

While working on his master’s thesis at Pitt’s Graduate School of Library Science in the early 1970s, Professor Philip Imroth persuaded the young Morgan to compile a biography of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Morgan recalled how rather than agreeing to do a telephone interview, Ferlinghetti allowed him to stay at his San Francisco apartment for a few weeks and go through his papers.

Ferlinghetti introduced Morgan to Ginsberg, since the latter had a penchant for saving just about everything, including many papers pertaining to Ferlinghetti. Lighting up, the author said that Ginsberg was such a dedicated packrat that he kept all his grade school report cards, not to mention all his cancelled checks dating back to the 1940s.

Through befriending Ginsberg by way of his biography on Ferlinghetti, Morgan began a subsequent biography on him after graduate school. His work resulted in the present biography, as well as being asked to edit “Howl on a Trial,” a study of the obscenity hearings that followed the publishing of Ginsberg’s first book.

Morgan spoke of the enduring debt of current writers to Ginsberg, noting that both William S. Burroughs’s books and Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” profited from “Howl’s” trial. Commenting on how it is currently illegal to broadcast “Howl” on public radio or television these days, the author ended by highlighting the fact that freedom of speech in the United States has undergone a regression since Ginsberg’s time, hence imparting a greater importance to his subject.