Allen Ginsberg

ALLEN GINSBERG

Interview excerpts and photos by Gregory Ego.

Why do you think there’s a revival of interest in the ‘50s Beat Generation and its literature?

Allen Ginsberg: The literature and mythology of the Beat generation [runs] counter to the current hyper-technological, homogenized, money-obsessed, security/fear-based, militaristic gross-out. It specialized in the analysis of the technological Police State; the refreshing insight into ecological sanity; the revival of the Whitmanic notion of American friendship and affection as the basis of democracy; respect for individuality; disrespect for the law where “the law is an ass,” pertaining to psychedelics, marijuana and the handling of heroin not as a medical thing but as a basis for some sort of Police State structure.

All of these themes make the original Beat ethos quite user-friendly, compared to the destructiveness of the supposed “straight” world that can go nuts, killing one hundred fifty thousand people in Iraq for the sake of oil that’ll pollute the planet. These themes are perennial values in a decade without values in America—a nation sustained by abuse of the earth’s resources and consuming disproportionate amounts of raw materials and creating a disproportionate amount of garbage and possessing a disproportionate amount of military power for such a small nation.

What do you think of the War on Drugs?

AG: I think it’s a fraud, and it’s a conscious fraud. The government has been entangled in the sale of hard drugs all along: mainly the transportation of heroin from the Golden Triangle from the ‘60s on, at least.

The tradition goes on through Central America, where you see marijuana and cocaine being used to pay for arms. That’s been gone into at great length with [Senator, now Presidential contender, John] Kerry’s Senate subcommittee; so, that’s pretty well established—even in the mainstream. And the government, simultaneously appointing a War on Drug, has been secretly dealing drugs or using drug money for its own nefarious purposes, secret and illegal, off-the-shelf CIA/NSA operations.

So, the War on Drugs doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s a completely chaotic and evil, sinister, outright criminal enterprise by the government. It’s not a War on Drugs: it seems almost an effort to spread drugs.

What emboldened you to start speaking out in public against drug laws in the ‘50s?

AG: What emboldened me was meeting [Herbert] Huncke and hearing about his situation as a junkie and realizing he was in trouble and the police were hounding him like Nazis hounding a Jew, something parallel. He had this addiction, there was no doctor that could cure him. He had a medical condition and he was being hounded by the police with guns. It didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t like you read in the paper, he wasn’t a dope fiend in that sense. He was just a guy in trouble. And a brilliant and sympathetic guy.

I went on a boat to New Orleans in 1945 or ’46 and the Puerto Rican messman/roommate turned me on to some grass and told me where I could find some in Harlem on 111^th street. The difference between the government party line on marijuana and my direct experience of it was the difference between a world of abstract fantasy—the government’s—and my own concrete realization—an experience that was not only sort of innocuous, but also I had surprisingly funny perceptions.

Like what?

I can remember the first time I got really high in Manhattan. We got in a car and couldn’t find our way around the block practically. But we wound up going into a small café, and I ordered a black-and-white sundae. And it was this extremely cold, sweet, vanilla white ice cream covered by thick, hot, black, syrupy chocolate and it was amazingly good! My taste buds never realized the common black-and-white sundae: the humor of that combination, the polarity of it, the commonality, the commonness—this is the all-American creation, this completely yin-yang or polar opposite, artistic creation! And then all of a sudden I think of the government idea that marijuana drives you mad like a frothing dog until you take an axe and kill somebody. Instead they give me ice cream!

[Originally appeared in High Times, February 1992.]