Memoirs of a beatnik Book

A schizophrenic book, with two distinct personalities: hardcore smut and bohemian memoir. It starts out on the smutty side--the first three chapters are basically quick set-ups for sex scenes--and the sex is written about in classic porno style (lots of lines like "I took his huge, throbbing cock into my hungry, wet pussy."). Fun to read, though I didn't find it erotic enough to actually get my blood moving. What kept me reading was the other side of the story, those glimpses of bohemian life, of life as lived by someone with no real interest in making even a somewhat comfortable living. Poverty and squalor, free-spirited artists, fags and outcasts. The account is hardly cohesive, and could be more eloquent in its delivery, but it feels real, and it covers a truly fascinating time period--the start of the American counterculture movement, a decade before the 60s (di Prima guesses that there are maybe another 400 or so bohemian types in the entire United States during this period, and I believe her). I'm currently reading di Prima's more "proper" memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, written several decades later, and compared to this it feels like an old lady's whine-fest. Memoirs of a Beatnik might be sort of juvenile, with it's hormone-driven sex-obsession and it's wide-eyed naivete, but frankly, it's all the better for it.