Ferlinghetti: The Artist in His Time

by Barry Silesky

A portrait of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti is set against the backdrop of the Beat Movement, an avant-garde circle of artists and writers who changed the course of American literature and culture during the 1950s and 1960s

Genres: Biography, Poetry

294 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Ville Verkkapuro]

This has been on my bookshelf for a long time. I bought it after seeing the news that Ferlinghetti had died. He looked at me, smiling, outside of his bookstore City Lights on Columbus Street in San Francisco. Many things caught my attention: he was 101, very uncommon for a man. He was a beat, a poet and a novelist, but most of all a patron and a supporter, an inspiration and a figure that shone a light for others, build stages and communities. I visited City Lights last spring and felt the vibe, it was everywhere, I bought Ferlinghetti's book and felt like I got his spirit with me. I also bought a bumber sticker that said "HOWL if you love City Lights bookstore" or something like that, to commemorate the history of that very special place. And all of San Francisco had that spirit: the freedom, inspiration, rebelliousness. The freedom to be who you are and fight the men in suits that want us to repress and hate each other.
Reading this book on a train from Paris to Milano was a perfect place as it had a lot about Ferlinghetti living in Paris and travelling in Italy, by train, I truly felt once again he was with me. As a biography this was nothing special, but not bad either. Just a man and his life, a quite serene and chill way of living it, being there for others. Building that neighbourhood! I'm envious and I want to do it too, sooner or later: build my neighbourhood, community, with books and music and coffee. Third spaces keep disappearing you know and they are very important, places beyond home and work. That's where the magic happens, that's where we become one.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is extremely detailed. Too detailed. Seems like minute but minute. I was in high school in the sixties and I remember posters with Ferlinghetti’s poems. I generally enjoyed reading about the man. He isn’t the wild radical I imagined. But the book did seem to go on and on.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I was taking the bus to somewhere else in San Francisco one day in 2002 I saw the City Lights Bookstore and I told my wife, "We are getting off here!" And thus we spent an enjoyable afternoon browsing in Ferlinghetti's bookstore. At this writing he is still alive (2016) and still owns that fabulous bookstore in North Beach. He is one of literature's amazing characters. This author, Barry Silesky, calls him "bookseller, enabler, novelist, painter, playwright, poet, publisher, spokesman...his position is hard to assess except alphabetically." He was of another world, the world of the so-called "Beat Generation". His long life - he's in his 90s now - made this an interesting book to read.

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book brought back a lot of memories about San Francisco when I was growing up. Although I was pretty young when "The Beat" craze came into vogue, I do remember it especially the poetry. Not knowing that much about Lawrence Ferlinghetti the person, this was a fascinating story about his early life and how he got to San Francisco and, more importantly, how he started the "City Lights" bookstore and was part of the San Francisco Literary Renaissance. Coinciding with read this book I saw an art exhibition showing his paintings and some of his writings, which really rounded out the whole experience of reading this biography.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good biography of the poet/painter Lawrence Ferlinghetti who founded the famous City Lights bookstore and publishing house in San Francisco in 1953. Amazingly enough, as an independent store, it's still around today and I just visited it a couple of weeks ago.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of a Beats reading binge - I found this poet by accident and bought a few books as he seemed to be important and though I have read Kerouac and Ginsberg I didn't know who this was. When I googled for biographical or authobiographical work this is one of the ones that came up, and was I think referred to as the best one to get. It is a solid, informative, well written work with a good selection of photographs (essential to any biography I believe) and gave me a good solid baackground to have in mind when I then read a photographic bio thing on Ginsberg. Worth reading I think because he was a quiet Beat poet but an important part of the groups operations in that through him, his business accumen and ownership of a bookstore, a lot of Beat poets were published than might have been although through Ginsberg's efforts they might have so that is conjecture only. From this I need to now find a collection of his poems, the main ones being -from this bio- A Coney Island of the mind, Pictures of the gone world and The secret meaning of things. As a reader rather than an impartial commentator the only thing that irked a bit was that the author obviously really liked Ferlinghetti and this interfered at times with his version or interpretation of events - generally very generous, which is nice - but in his words about Ferlinghetti's wife there was some unnecessary negativity and in a few cases open dislike, almost spiteful - not good.