Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg

by Michael Schumacher

Overview

With the sweep of an epic novel, Michael Schumacher tells the story of Allen Ginsberg and his times, with fascinating portraits of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William Burroughs, among others, along with many rarely seen photographs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452951577
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	07/15/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	824
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Michael Schumacher has written extensively about Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation. His articles, reviews, and essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country. He is editor of Family Business, a collection of letters between Allen and Louis Ginsberg, and The Essential Ginsberg, a volume of the best of Ginsberg’s poems, essays, songs, letters, journal entries, interviews, and photographs. He lives in Wisconsin.

Editorial Reviews

It's not very critical in the sense of evaluating the great Beat poet's literary achievements. Nor is it critical in the sense of disapproving of its subject--indeed, it's quite the reverse. But it is one whale of a sourcebook for the events of the poet's life and its intersections with the lives of others, especially other writers, beginning with Allen's father, Louis Ginsberg, a gifted minor poet in his own right. After Louis come the entire circle of the Beats, most of the San Francisco renaissance poets, the anti-Vietnam War literati, some of the better-known 1960s rock stars and gay liberationists, and finally, the controversial Tibetan Buddhist leader Chogyam Trungpa, whom Schumacher avers replaced Jack Kerouac as Ginsberg's most influential associate. Writing with Ginsberg's full cooperation, Schumacher has produced a biography that is definitely critical in the sense of being indispensable to the history of post-World War II U.S. culture. That the book suffers from some clumsy prose and more detail than all but Ginsberg's most ardent students could care to know takes little away from its monumentality.

Ray Olson

"Given access to Ginsberg’s private archives and having interviewed more than 100 people in 10 years of research, Schumacher weaves a monumental cultural biography."—Publishers Weekly

"The man, the poet visionary who created the beat generation single-mindedly out of the whole cloth of his dharma brothers is here embodied whole."—Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"Michael Schumacher’s critical biography of Allen Ginsberg is a brilliant study of the poet, his work, and his times. Clear, candid, cogent, and complete, Schumacher has produced a marvelously balanced portrait, accessible to all lovers of American poetry."—Ann Charters, author of Kerouac: A Biography and The Portable Beat Reader

"Dharma Lion is a thorough, detailed, painstaking, monumental, comprehensive, encyclopedic account of the life of our Poet Laureate, Allen Ginsberg."—Timothy Leary

"Allen Ginsberg is our magnanimous mountain, generous giant of living American poetry. He deserves a book as expansive and embracing as this."—John Tytell, author of Naked Angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation

"Strong, wonderfully absorbing life of Beat bard Allen Ginsberg that breaks new ground in its critical analyses of the poet’s work. Schumacher goes over the events in Ginsberg’s life with an intelligence that bonds us to the emotionally battered poet. Rings the doorbell on your heart, your brain, and your love of great verse."—Kirkus Reviews

"Sensory and engrossing. [Schumacher’s] life of Ginsberg is a broad landscape replete with idiosyncratic detail (rooted in a complete study of the Ginsberg archives, as well as interview transcripts) that demands close examination and, largely, holds up to such scrutiny."—The Arts Fuse

From the Publisher