A Blue Hand: The Beats in India

This is what Allen Ginsberg had to determine, one day when in his New York apartment, he heard the words of Blake spoken aloud, as if from nowhere and everywhere. What followed was his gyrating attempt to reconcile, integrate, manage, or at least explain this. What also followed was fame as the author of his subsequent poetic masterpiece, Howl; his visit to India's holy places and personages; and what became a lifelong pilgrimage of offbeat but unquestionable religious devotion. It isn't all about Mr. Ginsberg--not by a long shot. It's also not just about the "beats" and their milieu, as the author provides enough current events, background information, and setting descriptions to tell the reader about the totality containing the lives of these voyagers. It isn't all fun and games, as the gimmicky subtitle of the paperback might suggest; I much prefer the shorter and more subdued one that appeared on the hardback edition--"The Beats in India." The book is beautifully written, and there are truly poignant passages, moments, and realizations in store. This is not sensationalistic pop journalism, but the serious (though informal) treatment of an emerging literary tradition; the nascent upswell that later became a torrent of Westerners seeking spiritual understanding via their treks to India and surrounding nations; and the process through which Allen Ginsberg--and others--sought communion with the divine. This is an excellent, thoughtful read.

A Blue Hand is something of a minor miracle: it somehow manages to cover the history of the main characters in roughly 100 pages- before we get to India. The writing is musical and flawless and the biook serves as perfect introductory, background text to the work of the BEATS. It is, in manay ways, a perfect course in 200 pages. I can't recommend it highly enough.

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 and New York City. I feel that I learned quite a lot about the historical period and cultural zeigeist. What's more, Ms. Baker's prose is quite lyrical. For example, I liked lines such as "A woman married in a red-and-gold Benarsi silk sari is a well-married woman. The rooftops of Benares are dotted with cross-legged old men at spinning wheels who, like latter-day Rumpelstiltskins, spin skeins of gold thread onto skeins of white silk." Her literary roots and appreciation are revealed in her judicious use of quotes from writers of the era. I highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy good prose!

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 that gave the Beats an overblown image, those who supported them, those who read Jack Kerouac's On the Road and wanted to be the next Sal Paradise beatified instead of demonized their idols, and the true personalities of the Beats were hidden behind a wall of media and hype. In the past few decades a large number of biographies and autobiographies about and by the Beats making one think is Deborah Baker's A Blue Hand: The Beats in India really necessary? I must say that, yes, it is necessary because it sheds light on a subject, which, of course, has been written on before, that is usually only given a chapter or a few footnotes in comparison to the Beats and sex or the Beats and Drugs: The Beats and spirituality/religion. Although the book is titled A Blue Hand: The Beats in India, it might be more properly titled: A Blue Hand: Allen Ginsberg and The Beats in India because most of the book is centered upon the balding, heavily bearded poet who changed the American literary scene with his poem Howl in 1957 with the hoopla it caused along with the obscenity trial following its publication. Instead of being described as an icon or a demon, Ginsberg is shown as a man who is trapped in the memories of his mother, who died after going insane, and his Jewish upbringing which he is unable to extricate from his mind and being. After having God read aloud to him a poem by William Blake and others deities coming to him in various stages of chemically induced transcendence, Ginsberg becomes obsessed with finding a teacher whom can help him obtain Enlightenment, so therefore India becomes his Mecca and along with his longtime, and eventually lifetime lover and partner, Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg goes to India to search for his guru. However, things do not go as Ginsberg hoped. He wanted to find Enlightenment on his terms, i.e. being able to find it quickly and through the copious use of drugs. A number of the self-styled gurus he encounters are obviously charlatans who are trying to make a quick buck off of white folks and those whom possess true knowledge are bemused by the presence of the American poet with his thick glasses and beard because what he seemingly seeks is not true enlightenment, but release from personal demons and an easy reason to delve into questionable substances. Ginsberg is an Orientalist who has exoticized a country and its people to help him seek things that he believes that he cannot find in his own culture. Instead of enlightenment, wha