We’re wholeheartedly in agreement with David S Wills assessment
Kudos to Pat Thomas, and to all of the people at powerHouse Books
The new Ginsberg compendium, Material Wealth, is a unique and overwhelmingly stimulating experience that encourages a different way of reading and a continual return to feast again. It’s a book that you’re all going to know that you want, (nay, need), to have around, to dip in and out of, again and again, look at the pictures, look at the captions, linger, peruse.
This is not a dull chronology (tho’ there is a chronology). It is, assuredly, (and doesn’t intend to be), not “another biography”. There is something radically new and exciting going on here (mining new from the old). It is so much more than just the sum and sequence of its amazing gathering of unapologetically heterogeneous parts.
The visual experience is the primary experience here but properly contextualized, suitably annotated. Text and visual – and design – working seamlessly together (which often means surprisingly, provocatively, together). The sheer variety of different types of image, (photo, letter, drawing, advertising poster, typed manuscript, scribbled note, black-and-white, color), allow for a continual rejuvenation of the parade, (impossible to reproduce in this forum, (you need to have the specific personal experience of your own reading) but maybe a few random page-spreads will give some basic idea):
Pat Thomas comes with a pedigree – Listen, Whitey! The Sights & Sounds of Black Power 1965–1975 , Did It! Jerry Rubin: An American Revolutionary, his most recent wonderful smorgasbord for Ernie Kovacs, Ernie in Kovacsland…
For Allen (and for Allen’s music) he has been one-man heroic – compiling the 3-CD box-set The Last Word on First Blues and the 2-CD set Songs of Innocence and Experience
One of the most compelling reasons for buying this book (as if there aren’t enough reasons already!) is the attention given over here to Allen and music. Thomas provides a comprehensive chapter on this topic. He also includes (in facsimile reproduction) an entire Ginsberg notebook, “First Thoughts, Best Thoughts – notes to self naked and authentic, October 1974 to June 1975”, containing, not just unseen poems (“unseen poems”!), but also musings on Allen’s hero, Bob Dylan (Allen’s analysis of Dylan’s “Idiot Wind“).
We’ll be drawing from Material Wealth (its wealth of material) , shamelessly, in future postings.
We strongly recommend you go out immediately and buy this book!