Category: Kerouac and Friends
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Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats
Still 'jacking off' in December? Well, when I find something relevant I snag it for my files. The bit about Jack's saintly & sickly older brother Gerard in this chapter of a book by Barry Miles caught my eye re: my response to Vito C. , so here it is, below the fold.
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Jack Kerouac: Religious Writer?
Beatific October, Kerouac month hereabouts, is at its sad redbrick end once again, but I can't let her slip away without one more substantial Kerouac entry. So raise your glass with me on this eve of All Saint's Day as I say a prayer for Jack's soul which, I fear, is still in need of…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Route 66 and Kerouac’s Favorite Song
Jack Kerouac in a letter from 17 January 1962: "Everybody is making money off my ideas, like those "Route 66" TV producers, everybody except me . . . ." (Selected Letters 1957-1969, ed. Charters, Viking 1999, p. 326; see also p. 461 and pp. 301-302.) Here is the Nelson Riddle theme music from the TV series. …
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Jack Kerouac on Robert Lax
During his years of unsuccess, when he was actually at his purest and best, an "unpublished freak," as he describes himself in a late summer 1954 letter to Robert Giroux, living for his art alone, Kerouac contemplated entering a monastery: "I've become extremely religious and may go to a monastery before even before you do."…
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Visions of Tom: Jack Kerouac’s Monastic Elder Brother
Thomas Merton's "spontaneous prose" is to be found in the seven volumes of his journals. That's where you will find the real Merton in all his depth and complexity, his faith, his doubts, his inner (and outer) conflicts, and his endless self-examination. I never tire of re-reading them. This essay by Angus Stuart delineates…
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Kerouac No Role Model
Lest I lead astray any young and impressionable readers, I am duty-bound to point out that my annual October focus on Kerouac is by no means to be taken as an endorsement of him as someone to be imitated. Far from it! He failed utterly to live up to the Christian precepts that he learned…
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Kerouac’s Beat(ific) Visions and the Cross
A good essay by Joshua Hren at First Things. What Hren says is complemented by this entry of mine from 31 October 2010: The despairing section X of Book Thirteen of Vanity of Duluoz which I quoted yesterday is followed immediately by this: Yet I saw the cross just then when I closed my eyes after writing all this. …
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Divine Light, Sex, Alcohol, and Kerouac
If there is divine light, sexual indulgence prevents it from streaming in. Herein lies the best argument for continence. The sex monkey may not be as destructive of the body as the booze monkey, but he is more destructive of the spirit. You may dismiss what I am saying here either by denying that there…
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Withdrawn from Circulation
The very best books, or so it seems, are usually the ones that get withdrawn from circulation in local public libraries, while the trash remains on the shelves. The librarians' bad judgment, however, redounds to my benefit as I am able to purchase fine books for fifty cents a pop. A while back, the literary…
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Big Sur, Kerouac, and Being on the Edge
Dwight Green writes, I had forgotten about your focus on the Beats in October (more of a remembrance of Kerouac, if I remember right) until I saw your recent post introducing it for this year. A couple of years ago I drove to the Big Sur area and was unable to do much hiking…
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BEATific October Again
It's October again, my favorite month, and Kerouac month in my personal literary liturgy. And no better way to kick off Kerouac month than with 'sweet gone Jack' reading from "October in Railroad Earth" from Lonesome Traveler, 1960. Steve Allen provides the wonderful piano accompaniment. I have the Grove Press Black Cat 1970 paperback edition. I…
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For the Kerouac File
Black Like Kerouac I was awfully naïve once, but never so naïve as Kerouac/Paradise, who understands so little about the lives of black Americans that he wishes he “were a Negro [because] the best the white world could offer was not enough ecstasy, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.” It is…
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Jack Kerouac: Religious Writer?
Beatific October, Kerouac month hereabouts, is at its sad redbrick end once again, but I can't let her slip away without at least one substantial Kerouac entry. So raise your glass with me on this eve of All Saint's Day as I say a prayer for Jack's soul which, I fear, is still in need…
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Dr. Johnson versus Kerouac
Patrick Kurp makes the case against spontaneous bop prosody. And a strong case it is. The Rolling Stones sang that it's only Rock and Roll, but I like it. I'd say something similar about Sweet Gone Jack's hyper-romantic effusions. It's only rush and gush, flow and go, but I like it, like it, yes I…
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Jack Kerouac Went Home in October
Jack Kerouac quit the mortal coil 50 years ago today, October 21st, securing his release from the samsaric wheel of the quivering meat conception, and the granting of his wish: The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . . . . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe…