Picture the set of a late night talk show, circa 1983.
Allen Ginsberg is fat, bearded, and sitting in the interview chair. Long hair grows in unruly patches from the side of his otherwise bald head. His eyebrows sprout from his brow like wild hawthorn in bloom. He’s wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt with a hole in it. His fingers are stained from nicotine resin.
Ginsberg wanted to talk about the generation gap, and what he was saying about the challenges youth had to face actually made a lot of sense.
But nobody could take him seriously. He simply didn’t appear to be a credible expert.
Ginsberg, a former marketing researcher, certainly looked the part of legendary poet (which he actually was). But nobody was listening …
