Material Wealth by Pat Thomas
When I was researching Dharma Lion, my biography of Allen Ginsberg, I had occasion to go through the famous poet/activist’s extensive archives, which included his books, manuscripts, drawings, journals, published interviews, photographs, letters and collections of books and articles, including his massive gathering of newspaper and magazine articles called the Faded Yellow Press Clippings. It was a gargantuan undertaking and placed me on a career path that took years to do.
Even so, I didn’t see everything, largely because materials were still being gathered and archived. The man was a natural at it, gathering the background materials of not only himself but of his friends and their times. When, in his poem, “America,” he wrote that it occurred to him that he was America, he wasn’t writing hyperbolically: he represented a certain portion of the country, and he was busy chronicling it.
I felt blessed. Here I was, researching and writing about my times, through the eyes of one of its best-known practitioners. He was leading as well as following, and he took nothing for granted. I wished others had had my opportunities and could see how literature—and history—were created.
Little did I realize that some of the sharing was being done—and so eloquently.
Pat Thomas, a workaholic if ever I saw one, was editing a book with some of Ginsberg’s best memories. Thomas had previously edited and written about the Black Panthers and Jerry Rubin, and over the years he had compiled collections by great singers and bands. He knew the times and he knew the material. Above all else, he knew how to separate the wheat from the chaff.
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In Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg, Thomas, along with Peter Hale, organizer of the estate, boil a lot of material into 256 oversized pages, plus an insert added as an addendum. What to include and exclude were highly debatable, as Thomas points out in his introduction, and there is little doubt that if you assigned the compilation task to 10 different people, you’d get 10 different books. There would be overlap, especially in the photos, but there would be a difference in focus.
But make no mistake: Thomas has loaded as much as can meet the eye onto every page. There are journal entries, drawings. photographs, ticket stubs, posters, lists, personal notes and so on, exploding off every page. The chapters are divided into chronological pieces, each bit of memorabilia adding to the others, each acting like a mosaic piece to create a picture of the man and his tines.
And what a picture it is! I had seen many of the entries, of course, but there was enough in new material to keep me turning the pages. I had seen the detailed description of Ginsberg’s first reaction, recorded before the album had been released, of “Idiot Wind,” Bob Dylan’s great song from Blood on the Tracks. Some of the photos are familiar, but others were new to me. I was very happy with a note he received from Norman Mailer. I paused and smiled how, in one letter, Carl Solomon was pleased at how “Howl” was dedicated to him, while he disowned any claims made in another message. I remembered much in his scribblings about the Chicago Democratic National Convention in 1968.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. Pick up this book and go through it, front to back or haphazardly. No matter how you do it, you will find a treasure-trove that brings the life and times of one of our great recorders and poets.
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