Allen Ginsberg’s Self-Recording Sessions

In September, 1965, the poet Allen Ginsberg had a series of vivid, sweaty dreams about literary celebrity. Accompanied by his fellow-poet Gary Snyder and a young woman named Martine Algier, Ginsberg was touring the Pacific Northwest in a Volkswagen camper van he’d bought himself with a Guggenheim grant, stopping to hike, climb, and camp along the way. He slept under the forest canopy in a saffron-colored sleeping bag and recorded his dreams in his journal, published in 2020 as “The Fall of America Journals.” The first dream took place at a friend’s apartment in New York City: lying with Jean Genet on a couch, Ginsberg talked loudly about his personal life as a roomful of people—journalists, former classmates, literati, extended family—looked on, sipping on martinis and hanging on Ginsberg’s every word.