title: American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation
author:  Jonah Raskin 
description: When shy, soft-spoken 29-year-old Allen Ginsberg appeared before an audience at San Franciscos Six Gallery on the evening of October 7, 1955, he was virtually unknown, but the unpublished poem he (with mounting fervor) read would propel him to fame with the suddenness and inevitability of Byron. By the time of Ginsbergs death in 1997, "Howl" had sold 800,00 copies, and the incendiary, visionary poem is now the subject of Sonoma State professor Raskins thorough, accessible history. The strength of Raskins book is the balance it strikes between the personal drama of the poems composition and reception and the unfolding background of its historical circumstance. For instance, Raskin sketches the larger generational tensions "Howl" records against the young Ginsbergs personal struggles both with the poetic conservatism of his father Louis and the narrow liberalism of his Columbia professor Lionel Trilling. Unlike such misfits as Kerouac and Burroughs, Ginsbergs artistic radicalization was slow, deliberate and marked with false starts and hesitations, a series of titanic struggles toward form (tempered by worldly ambition) that Raskin records with careful attention. Another feature of Raskins book-which judiciously uses newly released journals, letters and psychiatric reports-is his refusal to either worship or pathologize Ginsberg. He reminds us that "Howl"s singular achievements-and nearly universal appeal-are fundamentally human.<br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  Quiet, Please  
  
  
    
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  # Quiet, Please
  
  
  ### Kevin Scott
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Louise Pryor and the Online Distributed
  Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
  
  
  
  
  
  {Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If November 1961.
  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on
  this publication was renewed.}
  
  
  
  
  
  Groverzb knew what he wanted—peace and quiet. He was willing to  
  scream his head off for it!
  
  
  QUIET PLEASE
  
  By KEVIN SCOTT
  
  The big man eased the piano off his back and stood looking at Groverzb.
  
  “You ain't gonna like it here.” He mopped his face. “Boy, will I ever be glad
  to get off this cockeyed planet.”
  
  Groverzb pushed at his spectacles, sniffed, and said, “Quite.”
  
  The big man said, “Ain't no native here over three feet tall. And they got
  some crazy kind of communica