The literary star was known for co-founding a publishing house that worked with the likes of Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, William S Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg
and spoken word.
By Jonah Raskin |
SONOMA COUNTY, Calif He was a poet, a painter, a publisher, and a bookstore owner who helped to give birth to the writers of the Beat Generation, especially to the raucous work of Allen Ginsberg. Lawrence Ferlinghetti founded City Lights Books in 1953, along with fellow New Yorker, Peter Martin, who soon departed from San Francisco and returned to the East. Ferlinghetti died on February 23, 2021, at the age of 101. His
Coney Island of the Mind has sold more than a million copies since it was first published in 1958.
Two years earlier, he published Ginsberg’s
The Unfulfilled Promise of Julian Bond
How could someone so telegenic, so witty, and skilled in politics have missed out on higher office?
James Palmer/AP/Shutterstock
Three years before he died at 75 in 2015, Julian Bond sat down for an interview on his life and work. Asked how he would like to be remembered, Bond replied, with his characteristic alloy of amiable candor and laconic wit:
I want a double-sided headstone. On one side, I want it to say, “Race Man” and that means a man who doesn’t dislike other races, but who’s proud of his own and wants to lift it up. The other side is going to say, “Easily Amused.”