{"id":11197,"date":"2010-10-21T09:23:42","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T09:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/10\/21\/kerouac-october-quotation-21-sweet-gone-jack-41-years-down-the-road\/"},"modified":"2010-10-21T09:23:42","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T09:23:42","slug":"kerouac-october-quotation-21-sweet-gone-jack-41-years-down-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/10\/21\/kerouac-october-quotation-21-sweet-gone-jack-41-years-down-the-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Kerouac October Quotation #21: Sweet Gone Jack 41 Years Down the Road"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0133f53e0174970b-pi\" style=\"float: left;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Kerouacs\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c0133f53e0174970b\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0133f53e0174970b-320wi\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;\" title=\"Kerouacs\" \/><\/a> Jack Kerouac was a big ball of affects ever threatening to dissolve in that sovereign soul-solvent, alcohol. One day he did, and died.&#0160; The date was 21 October 1969. Today is the 41st anniversary of his release from the wheel of the quivering meat conception and the granting of his wish:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin-right: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . .<br \/>. . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel <br \/>and safe in heaven dead. (<em>Mexico City Blues<\/em>, 1959, 211th Chorus)<br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin-right: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">I own eight Kerouac biographies and there are a couple I don&#39;t own.&#0160; The best of them, Gerald Nicosia&#39;s <em>Memory Babe<\/em> (Grove Press, 1983), ends like this:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin-right: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">The night of Sunday October 19, he couldn&#39;t sleep and lay outside on his cot to watch the stars.&#0160; The next morning after eating some tuna, he sat down in front of the TV, notebook in hand, to plan a new novel; it was to be titled after his father&#39;s old shop: &quot;The Spotlight Print.&quot;&#0160; Just getting out of bed Stella [Sampas, his third wife pictured above] heard groans in the bathroom and found him on his knees, vomiting blood.&#0160; He told her he didn&#39;t want to go to the hospital, but he cooperated when the ambulance attendants arrived.&#0160; As they were leaving, he said, &quot;Stella, I hurt,&quot; which shocked her because it was the first time she had ever heard him complain.&#0160; Then he shocked her even more by saying, for the second time since they had married, &quot;Stella, I love you.&quot;<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin-right: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">Less than a day later, on the morning of October 21, after twenty-six blood transfusions, Jean Louis Kerouac died in St. Anthony&#39;s Hospital of hemorrhaging esophageal varices, the classic drunkard&#39;s death.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin-right: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">On Dizzy Gillespie&#39;s birthday. (p. 697)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify; margin-right: 0px;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">He was 47.&#0160; I was 19.&#0160; On a restroom wall at my college, I scribbled, &quot;Kerouac lives.&quot;&#0160; A day or two later a reply appeared, &quot;Read the newspapers.&quot;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jack Kerouac was a big ball of affects ever threatening to dissolve in that sovereign soul-solvent, alcohol. One day he did, and died.&#0160; The date was 21 October 1969. Today is the 41st anniversary of his release from the wheel of the quivering meat conception and the granting of his wish: The wheel of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/10\/21\/kerouac-october-quotation-21-sweet-gone-jack-41-years-down-the-road\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Kerouac October Quotation #21: Sweet Gone Jack 41 Years Down the Road&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kerouac-and-friends","category-literary-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}