Since When

by Bill Berkson

Bill Berkson was a poet, art critic, bon vivant, and joyful participant in the best of postwar and bohemian American culture. Since When gathers the ephemera of a life well-lived, a collage of bold-face names, parties, exhibitions, and literary history from a man who could write "of [Truman Capote's Black and White] ball, which I attended as my mother's escort, I have little recollection" and reminisce about imagining himself as a character from Tolstoy while tripping on acid at Woodstock. Gentle, witty, and eternally generous, this is Bill, and a particular moment in American history, at its best.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

Published November 6, 2018

Reviews

[Spiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...my mother in her last year asked me for the first time ever to read her some of my poems, and at the end of one bedside reading said: 'You take ordinary things and make something beautiful out of them.'"
In this memoir, Bill Berkson does just the opposite: he takes his extraordinary life, and makes it seem like a matter of course; as if we all could have spent a life in the whirling vortex of the cultural height of the American Century, been Frank O'Hara's buddy, have hung out with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Morton Feldman, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, gone to parties with Judy Garland, Greta Garbo, and Truman Capote, stayed at Merle Oberon's house, had an affair with Bianca Perez-Mora Macias a couple of years before she married Mick Jagger...had we had an upbringing on the Upper East Side, had we looked like a young All-American Greek God, had we had but the aesthetic sensibility, the personablity, and the talent.
This is a splendid testament to a great life, lived greatly.

[Jeff Buddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of odds and ends, essays, and remembrances by poet Bill Berkson is most certainly a treat. Bill was a contemporary of Frank O'Hara, Anne Waldman, Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett (among others).

I think it works as a memoir. Bill's forthright charm and intelligence comes through on every page. His was an enviable life, rubbing shoulders with celebrities like Judy Garland one moment and Willem DeKooning the next.

Only Bill Berkson could have attended both Truman Capote's famed 'Black and White Ball' and Woodstock. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not familiar with the author but he led a well connected life in the late 20th Century art and poetry scene and his reminiscences are well worth reading if you are interested in that period. How many people could claim to have attended both Truman Capote's Black Ball and the Woodstock rock festival, although neither is explained in much detail. The best part of the book is beginning autobiography of life, the middle portion contains vignettes of poets and the final is interviews aand reminiscences and ruminations.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable, if impressionistic, collection of short memoir-like essays written over the course of 50+ years. One sense that Berkson was never one to persist on a project once his attention was drawn elsewhere. He liked the elegance and delicacy of gliding over the surface like a figure skater. This book never coheres into a gripping read, but it paints a cheerful picture of the 1950s-1960s world of NYC art and poetry and all its inebriated sophisticates.

[Kevin O'Rourke · Rating 4 out of 5]

See my review of Since When in Ploughshares

http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/sin...