{"id":2513,"date":"2021-07-27T19:28:17","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T19:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/07\/27\/for-the-kerouac-file\/"},"modified":"2021-07-27T19:28:17","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T19:28:17","slug":"for-the-kerouac-file","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/07\/27\/for-the-kerouac-file\/","title":{"rendered":"For the Kerouac File"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black Like Kerouac<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

I was awfully na\u00efve once, but never so na\u00efve as Kerouac\/Paradise, who understands so little about the lives of black Americans that he wishes he \u201cwere a Negro [because] the best the white world could offer was not enough ecstasy, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.\u201d It is passages like that\u2014about, for instance, the \u201chappy, true-heart ecstatic Negroes of America\u201d\u2014that inspired me to pull from the shelf another book that expresses much the same desire. It did so, however, with greater honesty and courage than On the Road. It also conveys more pleasure, in large part because it makes far fewer claims for itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was Really the Blues<\/em>, the autobiography of an endearing oddball named Milton \u201cMezz\u201d Mezzrow. Born in Chicago in 1899 to Russian Jewish parents, Mezzrow fell under the spell of Bix Beiderbecke, Sidney Bechet, and other early jazz musicians. He learned to play the clarinet, recorded with many of these better known musicians, including Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, and\u2014here\u2019s where things get fun\u2014decided he too wanted to be black. Mezzrow determined that he \u201cwas going to be a Negro musician, hipping the world about the blues the way only Negroes can.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Like Kerouac I was awfully na\u00efve once, but never so na\u00efve as Kerouac\/Paradise, who understands so little about the lives of black Americans that he wishes he \u201cwere a Negro [because] the best the white world could offer was not enough ecstasy, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.\u201d It is … Continue reading “For the Kerouac File”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202,40,203,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kerouac-and-friends","category-literary-matters","category-questers-and-other-oddballs","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513","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=2513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}