Since When - Paperback

by Bill Berkson (Author)

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.

Author Biography

Bill Berkson (New York, 1939) was a poet, critic, teacher, and curator who became active in the art and literary worlds in his early twenties. 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.