Who is Allen Ginsberg?
Allen Ginsberg is known for his poems, his homosexuality, his book Howl, his political views, and his FBI file, among many other things. Born on 3 June 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, Ginsberg couldn’t have had parents who were more different. His father, Louis Ginsberg, taught high school, while his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, was a nudist, paranoid schizophrenic, and — what was worse in those days — a Communist. Naomi Ginsberg had a great affect, for better or worse, on her son. When Allen Ginsberg was about nine years old, he began to care for his mother while she spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Her paranoia was great enough that she both refused to believe that Allen was her son and claimed that the FBI had implanted mind control devices in her brain. Allen Ginsberg followed the advice of a psychiatrist when he was 21 years old and authorized his mother’s lobotomy. He felt guilty about this for long after her death in 1956. When Allen Ginsberg was in high school, he seemed
