{"id":9863,"date":"2012-03-12T12:25:42","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T12:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/12\/happy-birthday-to-the-king-of-the-beats-the-saint-of-the-slackers\/"},"modified":"2012-03-12T12:25:42","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T12:25:42","slug":"happy-birthday-to-the-king-of-the-beats-the-saint-of-the-slackers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/12\/happy-birthday-to-the-king-of-the-beats-the-saint-of-the-slackers\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to the King of the Beats, the Saint of the Slackers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c016302c18b88970d-pi\" style=\"float: left;\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c016763b63360970b-pi\" style=\"float: left;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Kerouac\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c016763b63360970b\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c016763b63360970b-320wi\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;\" title=\"Kerouac\" \/><\/a>At any given time I am reading about 20 books. Yesterday afternoon, while reducing the whole of an Arturo Fuente &#39;Curly Head&#39; to smoke and ashes, I enjoyed Chapter Seven, &quot;Beats, Nonconformists, Playboys, and Delinquents&quot; of Tom Lutz&#39;s <em>Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America<\/em> (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006).&#0160; The chapter in question contains a penetrating discussion of Jack Kerouac&#39;s particular mode of slacking off.&#0160; It is marred by only one inaccuracy: Lutz (p. 215)&#0160;confuses Boston College with Boston University.&#0160; Kerouac received a football scholarship to BC, not BU.&#0160; (He chose Columbia, however, fatefully as it turned out: had he gone to BC there would have been no meeting of Ginsberg and Burroughs, and no Beat Generation).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">My chance reading about Jack yesterday was most auspicious in that today, the 12th, is his birthday.&#0160; Had his slackery not led him deep into the bottle, he might have been with us today.&#0160; But he&#39;d be an old coot.&#0160; Today is the 90th anniversary of his birth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Does it matter much whether one gets off the &quot;slaving meat wheel&quot; at 47 or at 90?&#0160; &quot;Safe in heaven dead&quot; is the main thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c016763b638d0970b-pi\" style=\"display: inline;\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c016302c18c6f970d-pi\" style=\"float: left;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Kerouac grave\" border=\"0\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c016302c18c6f970d image-full\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c016302c18c6f970d-800wi\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;\" title=\"Kerouac grave\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At any given time I am reading about 20 books. Yesterday afternoon, while reducing the whole of an Arturo Fuente &#39;Curly Head&#39; to smoke and ashes, I enjoyed Chapter Seven, &quot;Beats, Nonconformists, Playboys, and Delinquents&quot; of Tom Lutz&#39;s Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006).&#0160; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/12\/happy-birthday-to-the-king-of-the-beats-the-saint-of-the-slackers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Happy Birthday to the King of the Beats, the Saint of the Slackers&#8221;<\/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":[202,376],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kerouac-and-friends","category-slow-down"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9863","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=9863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}