When I Was Cool

FROM THE PUBLISHER

As a restless kid on Long Island, Sam Kashner lapped up the beauty and madness of the Beats, living vicariously through the novels, poems, and stories of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. Their words were revolutionary, and they turned their very lives into art. Kashner didn't want to just study the Beats, he wanted to be one of them. So when he heard that Ginsberg had founded an unconventional writing program in Boulder, Colorado, he convinced his parents that college could wait, and became the first certificate student of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

In one motion, Kashner stepped out of a sheltered suburban life and plunged into the chaotic world of his idols. What he discovered was both everything and not at all what he expected. The Beats were facing their twilight years and feeling it in their joints and in their minds. Some of them, like Ginsberg and Burroughs, had achieved international fame, while others, like Gregory Corso, had not, and were coming to the realization that they might never receive the recognition they deserved. In his new role as student, secretary, and psychiatrist, Sam Kashner was caught up in the hilarity of the hijinks and the cross fire of old arguments, finding himself in hot tubs with Ginsberg and on field trips to the marijuana ranch cultivated by Burroughs and his ill-fated son, Billy.

When I Was Cool is also a very personal journey of a young man coming of age on the Beat slope of Mount Parnassus ("the Lower East Side" of the Rockies), a kind of Holden Caulfield for the postmodern era.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

… When I Was Cool is much more captivating than the standard tales-told-out-of-school reminiscence. And if it does not fully establish Mr. Kashner as the eloquent writer that he wanted to be, it makes up in self-knowledge what it lacks in flair. Mr. Kashner now freely acknowledges trading on the kinds of unrequited crushes that made the Kerouac School go round. — Janet Maslin

The Washington Post

… poets don't count for much in the larger picture of the real world. Nobody cares much what they do at all. At some point Kashner must learn to live in that real world. How all that transpires is a lovely, affectionate, touching story. — Carolyn See

Publishers Weekly

With characteristic modesty, writer Kashner opens his memoir with a caveat to readers: this isn't an encyclopedic history of the beat generation. Rather, it's his own story of how it felt to leave home and learn to be a poet by hanging out with the great beat poets, albeit in their more gentled phase (past their road-tripping days, but still full of "crazy wisdom"). It was 1976 when Kashner, a fresh college dropout, decided to follow his dream and apply to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a yet-to-be-accredited division of the Buddhist Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo. As their first (and for a while only) student, Kashner's assignments included finishing and typing Allen Ginsberg's poems; preventing Gregory Corso from scoring heroin; cleaning the home of their guru, Rinpoche; and mediating between William Burroughs Sr. and Jr., not to mention attending the odd lecture. Kashner undertook all this weirdness with fretful earnestness-e.g., forever worrying that Ginsberg would attempt to seduce him, that Corso would shoot up and he'd be branded a failure, that the school wouldn't get accredited and his parents would regret letting him go there, and that his lack of poetry expertise would be discovered by his teachers. Were this just the saga of an innocent in beat bohemia, Kashner's chronicle would be merely amusing, but his genuine love for his crazy-wise mentors makes this a curiously affecting coming-of-age story. 8-page b&w photo insert not seen by PW. Agent, Nat Sobel. (Dec.) Forecast: A word-of-mouth campaign could help Kashner's book get momentum, fueled by a three-city author tour. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This memoir by the first student at the Naropa Institute's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is the story of a young Long Islander who fled to Boulder, CO, in 1976 not just to study the Beats but to become one. The book includes irreverent portraits of the unorthodox faculty, which included Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, William Burroughs, Anne Waldman, and Gregory Corso. Surprisingly, Corso emerges as one of the school's most positive figures in spite of his heroin abuse and disruptive antics. The late Allen Ginsberg, always fiercely loyal to his friends, would have been upset by Kashner's descriptions of Burroughs, Waldman, Diane di Prima, and the poet Antler. To be fair, however, Kashner (The Bad and the Beautiful: Hollyood in the Fifties) also mocks himself, and his reflections display affection as well as malice. Ironically, his education at Naropa seems to have been effective, as it shattered his illusions and taught him to think for himself. Highly recommended.-William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews