A memoir by Bill Berkson
November 6, 2018 • 6 x 9 • 280 pages • 978-1-56689-529-3
Frank O’Hara, Marilyn Monroe, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg—champagne-soaked postwar Manhattan and bohemian 1960s San Francisco come alive in Berkson’s memoirs.
Bill Berkson was a poet, art critic, and joyful participant in the best of postwar and bohemian American culture. Since When gathers the ephemera of a life well lived, a collage of bold-face names, parties, exhibitions, and literary history from a man who could write “of [Truman Capote's Black and White] ball, which I attended as my mother’s escort, I have little recollection” and reminisce about imagining himself as a character from Tolstoy while tripping on acid at Woodstock. Gentle, witty, and eternally generous, this is Bill, and a particular moment in American history, at its best.
About the Author
Bill Berkson was a poet, critic, teacher, and curator. He collaborated with many artists and writers, including Alex Katz, Philip Guston, and Frank O’Hara, and his criticism appeared in ARTnews, Art in America, and elsewhere. Formerly a professor of liberal arts at the San Francisco Art Institute, he was born in New York in 1939. He died in June 2016.