Cheap Memoirs of a Beatnik (Book) (Diane Di Prima, Diana Di Prima) Price

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Customer Reviews of Memoirs of a Beatnik

Depends on what yr looking for -
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).

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All About Sex
I think it's funny that people have complained this book is all about sex. The Beats were all about sex, with drugs, art and music thrown in. (Writing is included in art.) I took a workshop with Ginsberg when he was near 70, not what you'd call buff, more decrepit, and I was second in line to meet with him, but I must have seemed impatient, because the first thing he said to me was, "You know I'm gay." I was in my early 30s, an attractive woman, a writer, but all he could think I wanted from him was sex. So, I think di Prima is right on to spend so much of this book on sex. Casual sex was a lot less likely in the fifties and sixties. To the Beats, sex was intrinsic to the new world they wanted to create. That said, it would have been nice to hear more about her poetry.

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An exceedingly important book from the era
This book is important because it is arguably THE book that defined the role of the female beatnik during the 50s and 60s - free spirit, roaming, finding your own path, etcetera. Even though I have read it through a couple of times though, I must say that the actual structure of the book is lacking something. I would have liked to have read more about her mental interactions with people rather than simply her physical ones - After all, the Beat generation was so much more than simply the birth of the free love movement. Big thumbs up to di Prima for being so blaringly honest, though.