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28th out of 78 books
—
51 voters
Memoirs of a Beatnik
Long regarded as an underground classic for its gritty and unabashedly erotic portrayal of the Beat years, Memoirs of a Beatnik is a moving account of a powerful woman artist coming of age sensually and intellectually in a movement dominated by a small confederacy of men, many of whom she lived with and loved. Filled with anecdotes about her adventures in New York City, Di...more
Paperback, 208 pages
Published
August 1st 1998
by Penguin Books
(first published 1969)
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What I learned from this book: What “beatnik” referred to; and what all the cool, upper-middle-class white kids were doing with each other in the late 1940's and 50's after they were kicked out their private liberal art college. I read this novel when I was 16 (and I was not a naive 16 year-old either!) yet thanks to Diane di Prima I learned about the creative possibilities when it came to sex. This is a very graphic novel-- the better your imagination the better it will be. So switch off that T...more
A schizophrenic book, with two distinct personalities: hardcore smut and bohemian memoir. It starts out on the smutty side--the first three chapters are basically quick set-ups for sex scenes--and the sex is written about in classic porno style (lots of lines like "I took his huge, throbbing cock into my hungry, wet pussy."). Fun to read, though I didn't find it erotic enough to actually get my blood moving. What kept me reading was the other side of the story, those glimpses of bohemian life, o...more
This book is 80% hyped up erotica (which becomes fairly predictable after the first couple chapters, boring even) and 20% reality. It is worth reading for that 20%, the glimpse through the keyhole of how the Beat artists, poets, writers and actors lived in 1950s New York City, in all its splendid grittiness. There are intriguing paragraphs about foraging for wood to burn in dumpy West-side apartments, subsisting on vats of oatmeal, stale bread and endless cups of sweet, milky coffee, sleeping fo...more
I have to say that although my initial opinion of this book was not high; I ended up enjoying this book a great deal. The sex scenes end up being almost a joke and later I found out it was because the publisher made her put in more and more and more sex. (Read the notes at the end) She desperately needed the money so she did what the publisher wanted. Minus the gratuitous sex, this book is actually a pretty interesting account of what was happening in 1950's and 60's New York. It seems to mostly...more
I stumbled upon this title while wending my way through wikipedia. It was great. A 200+ page orgy. Very well written sex scenes, which is no small feat. Typical beat stuff, I thought, and I love that stuff: food, sex, poverty, crumby New York apartments. It made me feel more alive, or made me wish I felt as alive as Diane Diprima in the 1950s.
When I picked up this book at my community college's book sale, I didn't know what I was going to put my mind through, and, quite frankly, I am glad that I didn't. I opened up the first few pages of this book knowing what little I remembered from the brief introduction I had from American Literature class and Kerouac's classic On the Road (the unedited version mind you). Although learning that much of the sex in the book was included at the rather pressuring suggestions of the publishers, I was...more
What I wanted was to know what it was like for a woman to be part of such an amazing scene and time, what I got was a lot of unsavory descriptions of casual sex with multiple partners. I had no idea I'd become such a prude.
Jul 03, 2010
Tim Boroughs
is currently reading it
I should have done more research before I bought this book. I was after a behind the scenes cultural history of the Beats and not really the porno novel that this is. In between the graphic accounts of incest and orgies there are some worthwhile observations and insights into the lives of young bohemians living in New York in the 1950's though. It's all rendered quite well however, but not what I was wanting which was something a bit more along the lines of Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters. Alth...more
I've never read 50 Shades of Grey, but this is what I imagine it to be like. Except well-written and without the S&M. And the word "bucked" is used entirely too often.
According to this book, all beatniks ever did was have sex with every single person they came across (no pun intended). There is a sex scene in literally every single chapter. She winds up getting pregnant at the end. Spoiler alert: that's what happens when you have sex all the time.
And I have to read this book for school. It'...more
According to this book, all beatniks ever did was have sex with every single person they came across (no pun intended). There is a sex scene in literally every single chapter. She winds up getting pregnant at the end. Spoiler alert: that's what happens when you have sex all the time.
And I have to read this book for school. It'...more
This is such a pornographic book, but wonderfully written. I read it aloud to my current husband when we were in that first or second year of lust over the phone. I actually got to see Diane Di Prima at ALA in San Francisco, 2001. She was really cool. She did a very nice reading. At this same time I was reading _Recollections of My Life as a Woman_. I told her, I really enjoyed the book. I'll do a review on that one, also. It's very wise and brilliant. Anyway she wanted to sign that one, but it...more
Memoirs of a Beatnik by Diane di Prima was not what I expected it to be, it was far better. For some reason – classic hipster – I thought it would be reminiscent of Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsburg.
It was not.
It was it’s own completely unique, beautiful voice, it was a thunderous epiphany of a female and passion, it was cacophonous melancholy and life, it was Diane di Prima.
And she lived. SHE LIVED! She truly dangled her female figure over New York City and absorbed its creative, innovative vision...more
It was not.
It was it’s own completely unique, beautiful voice, it was a thunderous epiphany of a female and passion, it was cacophonous melancholy and life, it was Diane di Prima.
And she lived. SHE LIVED! She truly dangled her female figure over New York City and absorbed its creative, innovative vision...more
Aug 12, 2007
Michael Alexander
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who went through a beat phase, pseudobohemians, horny degenerates, anthropologists
Kind of awesome. Absolutely LOADED with high-detail explicit polyeverything sex, but in a way that irks me a whole lot less than Henry Miller (because it's not ragingly sexist, funny that) or even Anais Nin (because it's not as oooh and aahhh about the whole thing). It's also (mostly, except for a couple of really awful incidents) really quite hot, and an interesting look at the whole having-sex-with-your-friends-in-the-bushes impulse that artsy types tend to get sometimes.
Note that Di Prima wro...more
Note that Di Prima wro...more
I was really happy to read a book by a FEMALE beatnik, and although I liked it, I was disappointed in that I hoping she would turn out to be a genius. I was amused by the way in which she freely and frequently talked about sex every chance she got and then some, because I always appreciate sex-positiveness wherever it seems relevant. I was also kind of disappointed that she wasn't as literary (is that the right word for "writes a lot of books"?) as most of her male contemporaries.
What a strange book! Part straightforward pulp pornography, part autotelic exercise, this book plays with readers' expectations of what it means to read a book as radically as Andy Warhol plays with ideas of duration and attention in his film 'Blow Job'. Profound questions about gender, sexuality, leftist politics, and feminism are evoked through wonderfully cheesy purple prose. An oddly haunting and wonderful memoir, albeit completely ridiculous.
Sometimes evocative, mostly just depressingly bad. There's an unpleasant whiff of internalized misogyny in di Prima's digressions about birth control, sex, and unconventional domestic arrangements. Her work as a poet and writer are left totally vague during the years she spent in Manhattan. Kerouac and Ginsberg are trotted out like caricatures.
This fictionalized autobiography could have been so interesting. A female poet's perspective on the proto-beatnik scene of 1950's New York is a rarity; I...more
This fictionalized autobiography could have been so interesting. A female poet's perspective on the proto-beatnik scene of 1950's New York is a rarity; I...more
Feb 12, 2010
Elizabeth
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
groovy chics and flamboyant cads
Shelves:
2010
diane diprima is a true bohemian. poet, artist, mother of 5, she really encapsulates a free-spirited lifestyle that is truly hard to attain. in the idyllic 60s without AIDs, without the violence of too many people using drugs, NYC has never seemed so small town. the descriptions of northern california are drool worthy for anyone who has lived here post 80s. not to say there were not a different set of struggles to overcome during that period yet, i could not help but be a little wistful for an e...more
Nov 06, 2009
John Senner
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Twentieth century history
Diana di Prima eventually became a writer/poet but in this book she remembers her life before all that, still a teenager, as a 1950s beatnik. There is sex in every chapter as she bounces between Manhattan lofts, rat-infested apartments, backs of stores, park benches, and country farms. culminating in a night with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginzberg and a few others in the same bed. Tons-o-fun.
i chose this at random from one of the four boxes of books c brought to my house (i wonder if i will now feel compelled to read all of her books as well as all of mine?). i enjoyed it much more than i've enjoyed memoirs written by the male beat writers, possibly because it's less filled with male fantasy shit (except for the gratuitous sex, which is revealed in the afterward as having been pushed in by publishers) and more with general countercultural idealism. and reading closely told misadvent...more
I had complicated reactions to this book while reading it. The first few chapters are *really* off-putting and, I think, unrealistic. Some of the sex she describes is just gross. I suspect a lot of it is exaggerated from what actually happened (the afterword in my edition implies it is, that she was pressured by her publisher to do so). As someone born in the '80s, it's hard to read about all the unsafe sex in this book and not be horrified by it. By the end, though, I came to appreciate the boo...more
I love Diane DiPrima, and so I can't help it that I gave this book 4 stars when if it were anyone else it wouldn't be. She is so beautiful. I do want to comment though that this book IS more than just sex. When I first started it I was tired of reading about sex after I've overloaded myself with women's literature after a break-up. She does start off with lots of sexual encounters and you think that's what the entire book will be, but it's not. It gets better. The one thing she doesn't go into m...more
I read this when I was a teen. I picked it up for curiosity, I kept reading for the outrageous sex scenes. In the end I was entertained and found out that beatniks did more than sip coffee and read poetry. Overall it did make me reconsider the beat generation. Good or bad it was multi dimensional.
Jul 06, 2007
Emily
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
poetry people, wanna be beatniks, those who like reading about graphic sex
Shelves:
booksofthepast
I read this entire book standing up in a bookstore in Glasgow, Scotland. I remember then thinking that while I was kind of annoyed with the slavish attention to and detailing of sexual events, I really enjoyed that fact that a book by a woman who was part of the Beat Generation was put on display right next to a book of Ginsberg's poetry. This woman was tough, brilliant, and just as out there are the rest of her comrades, despite not having a penis. Having read some of her poetry, which I loved...more
I had high hopes for this book, but I am sadly disappointed with it. Apparently being a female Beatnik meant having as much sex with as many different people in as many different ways as you possibly can. This book is basically porn that's been gussied up a little and called 'Beat'.
I am pretty sure that this book is meant to be porn for anyone not quite sure. If you read di Prima's memoir you will find out that at one point she wrote pornography as a means of making a living. She was a single divorced mother for a few years and in need of money.
5 stars because I love reading Diane di Prima's books and I love the Beat Generation writings anyway. However, between this and "Recollections", I would choose "Recollections" over this. Still, I found this to be a really cool book and enjoyed it immensely!
The first half of the book was straight-up smut, though nicely written smut. Apparently this was due to the demand of the publisher. The second half was an interesting reflection of the beatnik lifestyle back in the 1950s, with large groups of young people living in poverty as they made their art. It ended with a rather impressive orgy involving Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
Sep 19, 2007
Silvia Chenault
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
fearless women
Shelves:
non-fiction,
memoir
Unbelievable. DiPrima is so honest. She is so real. DiPrima is.
This is shocking from beginning to end. No frills. No name dropping. No glorified lifestyles. She is one of the purest messengers I have read yet. I had no clue it contained so much sex, so at first, being the messed up catholic girl I am, I was put off. But I kept reading, out of sheer curiosity and I wanted to stretch my boundaries and comfort level. DiPrima does this, but without forcing you to. She doesn't force anything. She is...more
This is shocking from beginning to end. No frills. No name dropping. No glorified lifestyles. She is one of the purest messengers I have read yet. I had no clue it contained so much sex, so at first, being the messed up catholic girl I am, I was put off. But I kept reading, out of sheer curiosity and I wanted to stretch my boundaries and comfort level. DiPrima does this, but without forcing you to. She doesn't force anything. She is...more
Disappointing!
I really expected her to show us what is was like to be part of such an inspirational movement, time, city... It's a shame she only writes a few words about it in the last third of the book.
I really expected her to show us what is was like to be part of such an inspirational movement, time, city... It's a shame she only writes a few words about it in the last third of the book.
I really enjoyed this book, but I have to say that all I can think about when I think of the title is Gregory Corso in "What Happend to Kerouac" saying that Diane Di Prima is not a beat.
I think what is most important reading this book is reading it in the context of when it was written. By today's standards it is alternately pompous, annoying, and bordering on romance novel-bad writing. But if you take it for the groundbreaking bad assitude that it was in the 50s, its a much better work of art.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Literary Pixie: Memoirs of a Beatnik Discussion | 1 | 3 | Mar 12, 2013 05:19am | |
| Is it porn? | 4 | 16 | Aug 26, 2012 12:06pm |
