MikeDunnAuthor

Today in Labor History March 25, 1957: U.S. Customs seized copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on obscenity grounds. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and City Lights manager, Shigeyoshi Murao, were arrested on obscenity charges for publishing and distributing the poem. Howl was inspired, in part, by a terrifying peyote vision Ginsberg had in which the façade of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, in San Francisco, appeared as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon. The obscenity charges stemmed from homophobic responses to his explicit references to homosexuality. Ginsberg’s first experience with LSD, as well as Kerouac’s and Burroughs’s, was with acid provided by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, one-time husband of and long-time collaborator with Margaret Mead. You can read more about Bateson and Mead’s early experimentation with, and promotion of, psychedelics (and their collaboration with the CIA) in the recent book, “Tripping on Utopia.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #poetry #howl #lgbtq #allenginsburg #homophobia #lawrenceferlinghetti #citylights #obscenity #censorship #bannedbooks #kerouac #mkultra #cia #williamburoughs #lsd #peyote #margaretmead #gregorybateson #psycheldelics #books #writer #author #poet @bookstadon

3:59pmWeb
Show threadTim Gasperak10h ago
@MikeDunnAuthor I'd like to point out that there's no proof that Bateson was directly involved with MKUltra, and not even in Breen’s book – despite Breen’s many attempts to find it or suggest it. Bateson’s supposed involvement has always amounted to implication by association and innuendo. There’s no question that Bateson was interested in exploring clinical aspects of psychedelics, but that’s a far cry from suggesting that Bateson was involved in the coercive, illicit experiments on unsuspecting subjects.
Show threadMikeDunnAuthor10h ago

@gasperak

Valid point. I'll correct that.