Gordon Ball reading from ’66 Frames
August 28, 2018 by David
Filed under AuthorsVoices
’66 Frames – Gordon Ball – Coffee House Press – 9781566890823 – paperback – 320 pages – $15.95
Allen Ginsberg, who helped Ball with some of the research for his book, once remarked on Ball’s vantage point:
From city and country communes, underground and avant garde film and photography,
Gordon Ball has been marvelously placed as participant and observer of many
extraordinary art situations.
’66 Frames: A Memoir (Coffee House Press, l999, introduction by Jonas Mekas), is an account of one year in Ball’s life thirty-five years ago, working in avant garde film, immersed in New York’s counterculture. Its readers have responded with enthusiasm, as these comments suggest:
This book made me want to take acid and have sex with lots of people. It also made me want to stay up all night in the company of my genius friends in the mid-sixties in New York’s Lower East Side. It also made me grateful for not being twenty and living in a war-wracked, generation-torn, paranoid world. Gordon Ball writes with compassion and nostalgia about a unique and nearly indescribable epoch.
–Andrei Codrescu
’66 Frames is a beautifully written book which captures the spirit of those times better than any other book I know.
–Filmmaker Stan Brakhage
Gordon Ball’s own website includes a gallery of his photographs of Ginsberg and others.
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Last month, I read both “East Hill Farm” and “’66 Frames” as research for my book on my wife, Rosebud (Denise’s older sister), who passed away three years ago. Both volumes are heavily-tagged with post-it notes, reflecting the shared experiences they had during the 60s. Awesome writing and quite inspiring. Highly recommend!