Black Looks: Race and Representation.

• Position: Brief Article

The title is obscure, referring to Ginsberg's Buddhist name, the subtitle misleading, since this biography is more complimentary than critical. But from there on, the book moves along. Schumacher does a competent, for-the-most-part unobtrusive job of telling Ginsberg's story - and such a story it is. This leader of the Beats, this pathbreaker of political poetry, this courageous critic of U.S. policy foreign and domestic, this for-decades-most-open of homosexuals in America, Ginsberg is here on display, and he bears up well under scrutiny. The long biography occasionally bogs down when tracking Ginsberg's numerous trips overseas, but it comes alive when chronicling Ginsberg's creative process...