Saturday Links

The many lives of Katherine Mansfield, Allen Ginsberg’s stuff, Charles Williams’s weird novels, visiting Zora Neale Hurston’s hometown, and more.

Katherine Mansfield. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Good morning! Are you a packrat? Allen Ginsberg was. He apparently kept every note and letter he wrote and everything else that had anything to do with his life: “He also kept track of his troublemaking, first when he was kicked out of Cuba (for opposing their policies on homosexuality), then from Prague, where he was kicked out after being crowned ‘King of May.’ He saved photos of himself with poets and dissidents. They are not identified, but it would make sense that future Czech Republic president Václav Havel, a friend, was among them. Among the keepsakes are letters to the American Nazi Party (‘I heard you want to kill me, can we meet and discuss it?!?’) and a record of his phone call with Henry Kissinger from 1971 in which he failed to stop the Vietnam War.”