![]() I worked hard in school and I never got into trouble. I tried to be the kind of person my parents expected me to be. Terrified of blow-ups, I did my best to fit in. ![]() Life in my household was always tense and sulky, and, now and then, explosive. And up to that moment that's exactly who I was: a typical lower-middle-class kid, whose parents (devout believers in the holy trinity of rank commercialism, status seeking and sexual prudery) worked long hours for little pay, with three kids and my mother's mother to care for. In 1965, in a bookstore in Brookline, M.A., in the late afternoon of an ordinary school day, I discovered my inner Beat poet.Īnyone who might have seen me turning the pages of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind would have mistaken me for an unremarkable 13-year-old in a winter coat and unbuckled galoshes, with a book bag slung over his side. How?Īlan Shapiro's most recent book is Broadway Baby. ![]() Your purchase helps support NPR programming. ![]() Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title A Coney Island of the Mind Subtitle Poems Author Lawrence Ferlinghetti ![]()
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