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In the
past few decades, a large number of biographies and autobiographies
about and by the Beat Generation have been published, each
describing rather well-worn topics: the Beats and sex or the
Beats and drugs. However, Deborah Baker's A Blue Hand
sheds light on a subject which is usually relegated to a chapter
or a few footnotes: the Beats and spirituality and religion.
Although
the book is subtitled The Beats in India, it might
be more properly called: 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." 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 who can help him obtain Enlightenment;
therefore, India becomes his Mecca and along with his longtime
friend (and eventual life 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, finding 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 white folks, and those who possess true knowledge are
bemused by the presence of the American poet 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 made exotic a country and its people
in order to help him seek things that he believes that he
cannot find in his own culture. Instead of enlightenment,
what he truly finds in India is a group of poets like him,
mostly highly educated and from well off families, who seek
to leave their own county to find philosophies that they believe
their own country and its "backward" ways lack. It is a meeting
of Orientalist and Occidentalist—a meeting that results
in disappointment.
With
Ginsberg as the center of her book, Baker does an impressive
job sketching how other Beats fit around him. Although arguably
the most famous, Jack Kerouac seems to be the biggest homebody,
reluctant to leave his mother; William S. Burroughs—with
his decades of drug use, love of firearms, and considerable
talent and intellect—comes off as a collected psychotic;
and Gary Snyder, who went to Japan to find his enlightenment
through Zen Buddhism, seems to be the polar opposite of Ginsberg—a
man who is willing to take the time to truly learn the religion
he studies while becoming enmeshed within his adopted society.
Through
Baker's thorough research of both primary and secondary materials,
A Blue Hand becomes a literary biography that details
the thoughts and feelings of not only the Beats but the women
in their lives and the teachers and Indian poets they encounter.
The abundance of names and the biographical style, in which
the Beats seem more like characters than real people, is a
bit disorienting. If one is not familiar with some of the
lesser known beats and the slew of Indian poets Ginsberg meets,
one can be quite at a loss while reading this book. While
there is a semblance of endnotes at the end of the book telling
where Baker found her information, footnotes would have been
a major help to distinguish who was who in the book. Besides
that, the book gets a bit repetitive at times, mentioning
Ginsberg's poetry spouting God several times, but those are
small matters which do not cast a shadow over the whole of
the book. The narrative draws readers into the "story" and
makes for an enjoyable read.
(May,
2008)
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