{"id":12319,"date":"2009-10-21T16:24:44","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T16:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/10\/21\/sweet-gone-jack-forty-years-down-the-road\/"},"modified":"2009-10-21T16:24:44","modified_gmt":"2009-10-21T16:24:44","slug":"sweet-gone-jack-forty-years-down-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/10\/21\/sweet-gone-jack-forty-years-down-the-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Gone Jack Forty Years Down the Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"STELLA%20KEROUAC\"<\/a> <\/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.  The date was 21 October 1969. Today is the 40th anniversary of his release from the wheel of the quivering meat conception and the granting of his wish:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . .
. . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel
and safe in heaven dead. (Mexico City Blues<\/em>, 1959, 211th Chorus)
<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I own eight Kerouac biographies and there are a couple I don't own.  The best of them, Gerald Nicosia's Memory Babe<\/em> (Grove Press, 1983), ends like this:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

The night of Sunday October 19, he couldn't sleep and lay outside on his cot to watch the stars.  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's old shop: "The Spotlight Print."  Just getting out of bed Stella heard groans in the bathroom and found him on his knees, vomiting blood.  He told her he didn't want to go to the hospital, but he cooperated when the ambulance attendants arrived.  As they were leaving, he said, "Stella, I hurt," which shocked her because it was the first time she had ever heard him complain.  Then he shocked her even more by saying, for the second time since they had married, "Stella, I love you."<\/font><\/p>\n

Less than a day later, on the morning of October 21, after twenty-six blood transfusions, Jean Louis Kerouac died in St. Anthony's Hospital of hemorrhaging esophageal varices, the classic drunkard's death.<\/font><\/p>\n

On Dizzy Gillespie's birthday. (p. 697)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He was 47.  I was 19.  On a restroom wall at my college, I scribbled, "Kerouac lives."  A day or two later a reply appeared, "Read the newspapers."<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Kerouac was a big ball of affects ever threatening to dissolve in that sovereign soul-solvent, alcohol. One day he did, and died.  The date was 21 October 1969. Today is the 40th anniversary of his release from the wheel of the quivering meat conception and the granting of his wish: The wheel of the … Continue reading “Sweet Gone Jack Forty Years Down the Road”<\/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-12319","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\/12319","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=12319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}