Books: Odd Man In: Allen Ginsberg in America

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Orlovsky spent more than three years in the Orient seeking enlightenment. Countries like Cuba, Czechoslovakia and India, feeling unease about his four-letter talk and freewheeling ways, asked him to leave. Ginsberg learned enough to decide that strong drugs were not necessary for him. But with Talmudic thoroughness, he compiled a most impressive file and bibliography on marijuana, and has since arduously campaigned for its legalization. As a pacifist, he has crusaded for an immediate end to the war in Viet Nam. As a lecturer and reader, he is in constant demand at progressive campuses across the nation, where he is apt to deliver a formal talk in the university auditorium, then forgather with a more committed group for a symposium where he sets a tone of informality by occasionally taking off all his clothes and encouraging his interlocutors to do likewise. This may or may not be accompanied by the chanting of a mantra or two. His earnings from such activities currently run to a minimum of $30,000 a year, most of which he gives away to needy young writers and film makers. His own pad in New York's East Village serves as a communal hangout for the hung-up.

Jane Kramer, a young New Yorker writer, has apparently followed him everywhere, recording his words whenever possible. But, as if purposely profiling her subject rather than attempting to present a full portrait study, Miss Kramer carefully avoids making any critical judgments on the quality of his work. Perhaps she is right in doing so, for personality rather than poetry is certainly Ginsberg's bag.

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