Grove Press, 496 pages, hardcover, $27.00

What strikes me most about this collection of talks Allen Ginsberg gave to his students at Naropa University is how deeply he cared about his contemporaries/friends and their literary legacies. For the most part, what he says is lucid and insightful and could only be gleaned from his mind. This collection is very, very long though, and much of it goes on for too long.

To be honest, I skimmed a lot of this book. I found some of what he says to be a bit eyebrow-raising (his assessment of John Clellon Holmes’ Go; the genius he sees in some of the work of William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso that doesn’t merit such adulation) but regardless, his takes are thoughtful and first-hand — he was there, after all. Worth picking up, though probably not worth reading through entirely. Pick and choose; there are 49 chapters here.