Last Exit to Brooklyn should explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years.
Interpretation
Ginsberg emphasizes the enduring impact of 'Last Exit to Brooklyn' and its potential to shock and provoke thought long after its release.
In this quote, Allen Ginsberg expresses his belief that 'Last Exit to Brooklyn' is a powerful and transformative work of literature that should impact its readers profoundly. He envisions the book as a provocative force, serving as a critique of American society, and believes that its relevance will persist for generations, provoking reactions similar to 'a rusty hellish bombshell'. Ginsberg's desire for the book to be read and appreciated a century later reflects his view of its significance in challenging societal norms and igniting discussions about its themes.
In practice
In a literature class discussing impactful novels, this quote can highlight the lasting significance of controversial books.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
Marijuana is a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural aesthetic perceptions. I apprehended the structure of certain pieces of jazz and classical music in a new manner under the influence of marijuana, and these apprehensions have remained valid in years of normal consciousness.
Many seek and never see, anyone can tell them why. O they weep and O they cry and never take until they try unless they try it in their sleep and never some until they die. I ask many, they ask me. This is a great mystery.
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?
Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath, As I lay my body down Between the ache of breath and breath, Golden slumber in the bone.
Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.
In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.
I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.
Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.
Every good book should be entertaining. A good book will be more; it must not be less. Entertainment…is like a qualifying examination. If a fiction can’t provide that, we may be excused from inquiring into its higher qualities.
Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterward live finely
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