Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Memoirs of a Beatnik by Diane Di Prima, Diana Di Prima ISBN: 0-14-023539-6 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (8 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Depends on what yr looking for -
Comment: I should begin this review by stating that it is biased. I do not like Diane Di Prima's writing. I do not like Diane Di Prima. I spoke to her on the phone for about an hour and you know what? I still don't like her. I wish I did. I wish I could sit and read and enjoy the works of a woman who managed to pull off what no other woman really did as a woman of the beat generation. Most women of the beat generation are associated with it because, though they may be talented, they were married to Kerouac or Cassady or were some great feminine ideal or something like that. Not Di Prima. As she tells it, she had to give up most of her femininity in order to take her place as a Beat Gen author. That deserves respect.
That said, "Memoirs of a Beatnik" was written to make money. Sex sells. If you are searching for the truth you won't find it here really. But it is worth reading. The reader must take into account the fact that it is not about truth, but about the exploitation of an image of a generation. I found it to be pretty insghtful as far as what people expected of a beatnik book (as this was already covered by another reviewer I will not go into the differences between beatnik and Beat, but suffice it to say, in my opinion, yes, this is a beatnik book). This is what people thought the beat lifestyle was about. This is what caused them to hire Beatniks for entertainment at parties. I think it is definitely worth reading if only to look at the whole thing through that sort of a light - what beatnik as an image meant. And most of all, we should not critisize Di Prima for wanting to make money. She saw how to do and she did. That's all right in my book. Overall she is a woman to be respected, even if I don't like her poetry and find her to be a rude and abrasive person (both of which are traits that I think made her able to succeed).
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting
Comment: This book has been both torn apart and praised but I seem to view it as something other than what most others do and in that I find entertainment and an intersting (if somewhat oversexed) version of her life. But that is the crux of the matter...it is entertaining and well written. Keep this in mind and you will enjoy it.
Rating: 4
Summary: beatnik, not beat
Comment: a recent article on diane diprima in the chicago tribune (4/19/2000) called di prima's "memoirs of a beatnik" - "a sort of insider's Beat exploitation book Di Prima wrote in 1968 for Maurice Girodias' Olympia Press in Paris because she needed money badly--and quickly." It goes on to state that "It is mostly accurate, [di prima] said, except for the sex parts."
with that said, i doubt the book aspires to make any type of high-brow feminist or literary statement. the fact that is does make any such statement can be attributed to the time in which it was written. it is basically an account of a young woman venturing out on her own in times when young women did not do such things. young women lived at home, maybe went away to college, met a nice suitable young man, and got married. maybe had a job as a typist in the meantime. sex was not something young women from nice families experimented with.
this is not to say the book does not have its merits. it is artfully written, intelligent, and poetic. it's a great look at the obstacles women faced when they decided to do their own thing, especially when that differed from society's norms. it's a peek inside the counterculture that was growing larger and larger thanks to a certain jack kerouac. all of this raises the book above being just plain old erotica. as a fan of beat writing and culture, i enjoyed the book very much.
of course, the drawback to this book is that someone reading this book without knowledge of the context in which it was published will come away from it with a view of the beats that is as cartoonish and two-dimensional as the rest of society's view was of them at the time. "oh wow, look, the beats were always having sex." - "oh yeah, man, that's what they were about. coffee, sex, and alcohol. (and bongos and poetry and black berets)"
maybe that's why the title of this book is "memoirs of a beatnik," and not "memoirs of a beat." major difference.
 |
Title: Recollections of My Life As a Woman: The New York Years by Diane Di Prima ISBN: 0140231587 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 26 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams ISBN: 0872860175 Publisher: City Lights Books Pub. Date: July, 1991 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
 |
Title: Myra Breckinridge/Myron (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Gore Vidal ISBN: 0141180285 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
 |
Title: Beebo Brinker by Ann Bannon ISBN: 1573441252 Publisher: Cleis Press Pub. Date: 10 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
 |
Title: The Hearts of Men : American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment by Barbara Ehrenreich ISBN: 0385176155 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 March, 1987 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
