http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/magazine/15WTWT.html
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore: “When the picture was taken, I was thinking, Are these the best minds of our generation? ‘Howl’ starts with that phrase. I’d say it was a bit of a satirical question. I am the only one in the picture still alive, because I work out all the time. They didn’t work out except raising the elbow or rolling joints. … I think they [the Beats] would have said that I was a jovial bookstore owner—not really a poet. I hadn’t published anything yet. I just wanted to be considered a poet. I did get my wish. My book of poems, ‘A Coney Island of the Mind,’ sold about a million copies. That’s more than ‘Howl’ sold.”