His quest would lead him to the gurus and ashrams of India, to its streets and heady opium dens. It is a journey that Deborah Baker tells through journals, letters, memoirs and other documents collected for “A Blue Hand: The Beats in India.”
Ginsberg’s friends in New York insisted that he travel to the East and explore the subcontinent.
“From that moment, Irwin Allen Ginsberg became a divining rod in the headlong and holy pursuit of God,” Baker writes.
She weaves an intricate, if somewhat tedious, description of Ginsberg’s travels through India and his quest for meaning.
Ginsberg arrives in India to discover that almost everyone has a guru and is on his own spiritual path. Suddenly, he feels out of place, and so do his ideals of remaining loyal to the Harlem vision of laboring for the working class of never reading poetry for profit.
— Danica Coto,
The Associated Press
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