Splicetoday

Writing
Dec 23, 2008, 06:42AM

The Interview As Art

Allen Ginsberg sits down with former Washington Times columnist John Lofton for what is surely one of the weirder and more interesting interviews you've read in quite a while.

Delicious:

LOFTON: But I am interested in this question of your possible madness. It's not a gratuitous question. There is a history of madness in your family.

GINSBERG: Very much so.

LOFTON: Your mom died in 1956 in a mental institution. Before that. in 1949, when you were twenty-three. you spent eight months in the Columbia Psychiatric Institute. What was this psychiatric disability and why did you spend just eight months in this institute?

GINSBERG: Well, I had a sort of visionary experience in which I heard William Blake's voice. It was probably an auditory hallucination, but it was a very rich experience.

LOFTON: This happened while you were masturbating, right?

GINSBERG: Yes, but after.

LOFTON: I want to ask you about this psychiatric disability.

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