Nobody ever told me to read Ginsberg's Howl. I just did. It was on my bookshelf next to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind. It was okay. Nothing spectacular, nothing mind-expanding. Just pretty good. While growing up, I never knew any strange older university kid who would share wonderful things gleaned from brilliant minds. Well, there was my brother. But the knowledge he shared with me regarded other things. These books were my dad's. I think if he had shared them with me like they were a secret that none of my friends knew about, I might have appreciated them more. It also would have helped if my dad had any social and/or paternal skills. When someone you respect shares a delicious brilliant secret with you, you devour it. You suck it down raw like an oyster. But when you find the same work on its own, you read with objectivity. These maxims are only true when you are younger. After college, everything is approached subjectively. But if you hand an eager teen something really cool, and tell them with sincere authority (because teens can smell deception) that it is the coolest thing they've ever experienced in their short lives. They'll believe you. They'll read it, memorize it, quote it. But if they find it on the shelf and just read it... then they'll experience it within their own interpretation of the universe. I'm glad that that is how I experienced it. Or perhaps I just don't appreciate it.