The Puritan and The Profligate

Via Sullivan, Keljeck (nice blog template) posts the full transcript of an interview between John Lofton and Allen Ginsberg, as printed in a 1990 issue of Harper’s Bazaar (though itself apparently a reprint!):

LOFTON: When you say you suppose this could have applied to you, does this mean you don’t know if you are mad?

GINSBERG: Well, who does? I mean everybody is a little mad.

LOFTON: But I’m asking you.

GINSBERG: You are perhaps taking this a little too literally. There are several kinds of madness: divine madness—

LOFTON: But I’m talking about this in the sense you spoke of in your 1949 poem “Bop Lyrics,” when you wrote: “I’m so lucky to be nutty.”

GINSBERG: You’re misinterpreting the way I’m using the word.

LOFTON: No. I’m asking you a question. I’m not interpreting anything.

GINSBERG: I’m afraid that your linguistic presupposition is that “nutty” as you define it means insanity rather than inspiration. You are interpreting, though you say you aren’t, by choosing one definition and excluding another. So I think you’ll have to admit you are interpreting.

LOFTON: Actually, I don’t admit that.

GINSBERG: You don’t want to admit nuttin’! But you want me to admit something. Come on. Come off it. Don’t be a prig.

It’s not too long (maybe three to five minutes of reading in full), but it’s really engaging because many of their remarks are so unctuous, and many others quite dazzling. I like, for instance, the way Ginsberg includes in the passage above the clause “though you say you aren’t”, as a way of acknowleding that he understand Lofton’s first attempt to rebuff the former’s charge of misinterpretation. It’s a good rhetorical device and worth remembering. There are, of course, contentful insights to be had throughout the interview, as well.