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When I Was CoolWhen I Was Cool is Sam Kashner's autobiographical account of his experience as the first student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poeticshttp://www.naropa.edu/w&p/, which was founded by Allen Ginsberg in honor of his late friend, Jack Kerouac. As he describes in his book, Kashner was a disgruntled Long Island teenager in the 1970s who was obsessed with the poetry and prose of the Beat generation of the 1950s. Kashner's book provides an intriguing glimpse into the lives and creative processes of his teachers at the Jack Kerouac School, including Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Curso. Among the various and curious details of life with the Beats, Kashner describes several of Ginsberg's unfished poems that he asks Kashner to finish. He also recalls the lively conversations at his teachers' dinner parties, which touched on their methodologies, as well as American Literature in general. Kashner also chronicles the lingering effects of heroin and other drugs on Burroughs and Corso, as well as Burroughs' alcoholism. Kashner's book was published by http://www.harpercollins.comHarperCollins in 2004 and was reviewed favorably by the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com the same year.
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