[asveikau]

Ginsberg's association with NAMBLA is indeed odd and unfortunate, as it taints a lot of his more respectable work. Here is what wikipedia quotes a friend of his as saying:

> But, in fact, he was a pedophile. He did not belong to [NAMBLA] out of some mad, abstract conviction that its voice had to be heard. He meant it. I take this from what Allen said directly to me, not from some inference I made. He was exceptionally aggressive about his right to [f*ck] children and his constant pursuit of underage boys

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg#Association_w...

In the same way that it's hard to like a Woody Allen film or Michael Jackson song -- you can recognize the quality of the art but then realize they may have a monstrous side.

[jmpman]

Except that we are talking about celebrating the publishing of Howl. Does Howl advocate child rape, or does he keep that out of his works like Michael Jackson doesn’t advocate relationships with children in Thriller and Woody Allen doesn’t advocate for marrying underage relatives in Manhattan.

I expect Allen Ginsburg’s Howl is about as depraved as the man.

[asveikau]

> Does Howl advocate child rape,

There is a lot in there of which I am not intimately familiar but I don't believe it does. It seems to me that contemporary claims of depravity of Howl centered around depiction of consensual homosexual acts, or drugs, or simple use of swearing, all of which are less shocking today than they were in the 50s. If you can find a specific example do tell.

> Woody Allen doesn’t advocate for marrying underage relatives in Manhattan

There is a creepy relationship with an underage girl (played by Mariel Hemingway) in that film. The amount of seeming autobiographical material in his work of the time make this hard to dismiss.