A Last Anecdote

By Paul Berman

The last time I saw Ginsberg was in Paris at the Hôtel de ville--City Hall--in March 1996. The mayor of Paris was going to award medals of achievement to Ginsberg and a number of other American cultural figures. Ginsberg saw me in the audience and came over to chat. We admired the paintings on the columns and ceiling--huge golden portraits of fleshy nudes, pornographic paintings (from a puritanical, American point of view), impossible to imagine in any American government building.

The mayor's assistant went to the microphone and began the ceremony. But though Ginsberg and I were standing at the front of the crowd, directly in front of the mike, Ginsberg kept up his commentary and chatter in full voice, quite as if the mayor's assistant hadn't begun to speak. After a while I warned Ginsberg that, at any moment, the mayor's assistant was going to call him up to receive his medal, and perhaps he ought to prepare himself.

But Ginsberg talked on in full voice and waved his hands animatedly, and when the mayor's assistant did call him up, he simply walked to the mike to receive the medal, turned to face the crowd and, instead of making a few courteous remarks, pulled a pocket camera out of his jacket and carefully, slowly photographed the crowd. An odd way to accept a prize. But his behavior matched his whim. He was entirely himself. No one was ever more natural. There were never any secrets with Allen Ginsberg--none that bore on his inner personality, anyway.