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Title: Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals, 1960-1964 by Joanne Kyger ISBN: 1-55643-337-9 Publisher: North Atlantic Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Sei Shonagon updated
Comment: This book reminds me of Sei Shonagon, but the cast of characters is often well-known Beat writers. Kyger was married to Beat saint Gary Snyder at the time, but she is iconoclastic in regards to presenting him here. The arc of the book is their love story -- beginning with a shy and rather impressed Kyger and ending with a rather loud and irreverent Kyger. Early on she worships Snyder, but then he knocks her down and splits her head open on a wood table when she refuses to do the dishes. He is surly throughout the book, and given to bad moods, and kicks her at least twice.

Kyger gets it all down.

Beat saint Allen Ginsberg grabs his food at the communal dining hour and shoves his face full without waiting for others to be served. Orlovsky is shoving drugs in his face every moment that he can.

This is a funny book that knocks out stereotypes left and right. In one or two sentences she undoes the career of Paul Blackburn, for instance. And all the while she is musing on the possibility of a female literature, and what it might consist of -- something for which she had no clear legacy in American but the Japanese writers of the Heian period such as Sei Shonagon appear to have given her the inspiration needed.

This is a very good book for those who are tired of the Beats self-sanctification, and want a bit of humorous and unsparing insight into their world.