SOURCE: Gaydos, Jeff. “The ‘New’ Ginsberg: Still Full of Life.” Detroit News (18 January 1987): 9B.

In the following essay, Gaydos reviews the anniversary edition of “Howl” and comments on the simultaneous release of Ginsberg's collection, White Shroud, Poems 1980-1985.

The “beat generation” has been caricatured and romanticized as much or more than most quirky ripples in the flow of human behavior. And as with most “movements” that become diluted as they get washed through the American mainstream, it's tough to keep a perspective on its value to American life.

You find a set of bongo drums in the attic, think of black turtlenecks, goatees and poetry set to jazz, and you have it. That was the beat generation. White kids discovering marijuana. Cheap wine and bebop.

But it's a fact that the beats jolted something. They did it with their music, with their literature, and with their energy.

Jack...