The "New" Novel By Burroughs and Kerouac!

In August, 1944, Lucien Carr, a young Columbia University student, murdered David Kammerer, a older man who had been stalking him, due to circumstances still being debated. (Self-defense? Premeditated murder?) Somehow, as recounted here, Carr managed to involve both Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs in helping him try (unsuccessfully) to cover up the killing. (More details here .) (It should be noted that Carr was instrumental in introducing Kerouac, Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, the three principal figures of the "Beat Movement", to each other.)


(Burroughs and Kerouac.)

A year later, Burroughs & Kerouac, having (barely) escaped prison for their part in the killing, decided to collaborate on a mystery novel loosely based on the Carr-Kemmerer incident. For various reasons, the book was never published during the principals' lifetimes. Now however, as noted in this article, the novel, And The Hippos Were Broiled In Their Tanks will finally be published on November 1st. An excerpt of it can be read here . Should be interesting. -Ed

(And how did Burroughs & Kerouac come up with that bizarre title? Wikipedia explains all.)

Jack Kerouac: King Of The Beats

From Google Video. A 72 minute podcast of a documentary on the author of On The Road . Enjoy. -Ed

Jazz Composer & Beat Figure David Amram to appear at Greenwich Library April 4th

After a short hiatus, Greenwich Library's Beat Generation Discussion Series returns Friday, April 4th at 2:00 pm, with special guest speaker David Amram. Mr. Amram is an accomplished Jazz and Classical musician/composer who's worked with the likes of Leonard Bernstein and Charles Mingus. He also composed the title song and theme music for the 1959 experimental film Pull My Daisy written by and starring Beat author Jack Kerouac . Mr. Amram is also the author of three books about his life and career, the most recent of which is Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat (Paradigm; 2007), that he'll read from.

Below is a video of a 2002 performance of Mr. Amram and his band:



Mr. Amram has his own web site, which you can find here . He will also discuss his work 50 years ago with Jack Kerouac when they created the first jazz poetry readings ever presented in New York City in 1957, as well as reading from his second book Offbeat: Collaborating with Jack Kerouac (Thunders' Mouth Press; 2002). Mr. Amram will also demonstrate some of the instruments from around the world which he has learned to play.




The program will begin at 2:00 pm in the Meeting Room, open to all.

-Ed

Links to Reviews of Kerouac's Works

In my never ending quest to spread the wonderfulness of the works of Jack Kerouac, I've discovered some online links from such sources as the NY Times , as well as ones like Empty Mirror . There also a source for sites on Kerouac as well. -Ed


(Below: Kerouac's originally suggested layout design for the cover of On The Road)

Upcoming Film on Kerouac's Big Sur

Big Sur (1962) is one of Jack Kerouac's most heartbreaking novels. Almost a cry for help from the author, the book chronicles Kerouac's literary alter ego Jack Duluoz & his attempt to recover from a nervous breakdown by retreating to the popular California mountain area. It's also the topic of a forthcoming documentary taken from a line in chapter three of the novel.

One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur is the title & this blog heard about the directly from the producers, www.kerouacfilms.com . Below is a description of the film from their site:

He was called the vibrant new voice of his generation -- the avatar of the Beat movement. In 1957, on the heels of the triumphant debut of his groundbreaking novel, On The Road, Jack Kerouac was a literary rock star, lionized by his fans and devotees. But along with sudden fame and media hype came his unraveling, and, by 1960, Kerouac was a jaded cynic, disaffected from the Beat culture he helped create and tortured by self-doubt, addiction and depression.

Desperate for spiritual salvation and solitude, as well as a place to dry out, he secretly retreats to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s rustic cabin in the Big Sur woods. But his plan is foiled by his own inner demons, and what ensues that summer becomes the basis for Kerouac’s gritty, yet lyrically told, semi-autobiographical novel, Big Sur.


One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur, takes the viewer back to Ferlinghetti’s cabin and to the Beat haunts of San Francisco and New York City for an unflinching, cinematic look at the compelling events the book is based on. The story unfolds in several synchronous ways: through the narrative arc of Kerouac’s prose, told in voice-over by actor and Kerouac interpreter, John
Ventimiglia (of HBO’s The Sopranos); through first-hand accounts and recollections of Kerouac’s contemporaries, whom many of the characters in the book are based on such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Carolyn Cassady, Joyce Johnson and Michael McClure; by the interpretations and reflections of writers, poets, actors and musicians who have been deeply influenced by

Kerouac’s unique gifts like Tom Waits, Sam Shepard, Robert Hunter, Patti Smith, Aram Saroyan, Donal Logue and S.E. Hinton; and by stunning, High Definition visual imagery set to original music composed and performed by recording artist, Jay Farrar of Son Volt, with additional performance by Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie.



I'll see about getting more info on the film (release dates, etc.) and update this post shortly. -Ed

Report on Beats At Columbia University

(Left: Philosophy Hall at Columbia University.)

Last Friday (2/8/08) afternoon, I managed to attend the fourth annual celebration of Columbia University's Beats, which were a series of events held at the campus under the umbrella title On The Road Turns 50! As the proceedings began late in the afternoon (after 3:30pm), I wasn't able to stay for all of them. But I did manage to get in two of the events.



After 3:30pm, in room 301 of Philosophy Hall (pictured above), a round table discussion, On the Road: Then and Now began. Scheduled speakers included Professor Regina Weinreich from the School of Visual Arts (whose Kerouac's Spontaneous Poetics is carried by the library), NY Times reporter John Leland (author of the recent Why Kerouac Matters, which we also carry in the library), jazz musician David Amram, and former Kerouac girlfriend and a noted author in her own right Joyce Johnson (Minor Characters and Door Wide Open are her two memoirs about her experiences with Kerouac and the Beats). The moderator was Penny Vlagopoulos from Columbia (see her profile here ) who worked on & wrote an introduction for last fall's publication of On the Road: The Original Scroll .


David Amram



John Leland


Books by Joyce Johnson

As expected, the discussion turned on the subject of how big an impact On the Road had at both its time of publication in 1957 and the present day. John Leland noted that Road is really about the character of Sal Paradise (Kerouac) not Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) and how Sal, not Dean, changes by the book's end. Mr. Leland also noted that the Beats were the first generation of writers on television and the last generation not shaped by TV and/or popular culture. Both Mr. Leland and Ms. Johnson noted that by the time Road was published in 1957, Kerouac, who had finished the final draft six years before, felt it was an "old book" and that his voice was stronger in his later works (Doctor Sax; The Dharma Bums; Big Sur) , but that the publishers wanted another Road novel instead.


Regina Weinreich

Regina Weinreich noted that the book was basically "Huck Finn in a car", with the characters' reacting to events as they drove along the country and David Amram pointed out that Kerouac had a great ear for conversation which he was able to repeat in his books and that Kerouac always encourged other writers & artists as well.

Afterwards, I got to attend the exhibit The Author as Artist which showed drawings of the Beats as they saw themselves. Not bad.

Overall, a terrific program. Thanks to Wynnkie Delmhorst for telling me about this event. -Ed

Beats At Columbia University

Tomorrow (Friday, February 8), Columbia University will be holding a series of programs honoring it's "prodigal sons" (as their promotional copy says) Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Howl: A Celebration of Columbia 's Beats will run from 3:30 to 10:00 PM. Details & schedules can be accessed here , if anybody is interested. If I don't get lost on the subway (it's happened before), I'll be attending. (School of Visual Arts Professor Regina Weinreich, who spoke here last October on the work of William S. Burroughs, is one of the featured guests.) -Ed


(Left to right: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, circa 1945, at Columbia U.)

Related link: Literary Kicks.

Beat Odds 'n' Ends

* The pulp magazines that were popular (and a popular influence on) Jack Kerouac & his fellow Beats get a historical review here.

* There's a new collection of old pulp stories & novels that's just come out: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps , edited by Otto Penzler.

NPR has an online article about the book, which features works by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Carroll John Daly, Leslie Charteris & others. Recommended, but beware, there's a lot to read!



* There's also s site devoted to women who took part in the Beat Movement:
More Than Minor Characters.





* A previously published collection of interviews with William S. Burroughs & his artistic accomplice Brion Gysin has just been reprinted. And for those with further interest in Mr. Burroughs', um, unique way of looking at things, check this site out.



* Finally, here's my pick for the most insane pulp magazine character concept I've ever come across: The Spider! The stories I've read of this character are packed with so much action that the author must've been high on a bender or something! If you get a chance, just follow the links listed on the site I've linked to & read the plot descriptions. The titles of each installment practically give it away! Kerouac and/or Burroughs must've come across this series at one time! Who knows what must've gone through their minds reading this stuff!
Update: A major publisher has begun reprinting Spider novels! And a less major one has also jumped on the bandwagon!

-Ed

The Book That Turned Me Onto Jack Kerouac (No, Not That One!)

I submitted this review for Greenwich Library's Staff Picks feature:

Published shortly after the success of the author’s groundbreaking classic On the Road, but written years earlier in Mexico (when Kerouac hung out –and got high- with William S. Burroughs), Doctor Sax is a touching account of one young boy’s flight into fantasy and his subsequent path to adulthood. Young Jacky Duluoz (Kerouac’s literary alter ego), a French Canadian boy growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts in the early 1930s, escapes from the pressures of family & school into a world where vampires, werewolves & other creatures of the night converge and only the mysterious “Doctor Sax”, a combination of the Shadow & the Wizard of Oz, can stop them. But the boy’s growing perception of his actual surroundings may be young Jacky’s real solution. Written in an even more audacious style than his other books (one section is detailed as stage directions for a play), Kerouac uses a variety of influences from his childhood (Walter B. Gibson’s aforementioned pulp magazine character, “The Shadow”; L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” books, the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft; radio thrillers & others) to craft a touching tale of a boy’s leaving behind the things in his past to embrace approaching adulthood & maturity.

I'll have more to say about why this particular book got to me, as well as how it reintroduced Kerouac and his fellow Beats to me, in a future post. Meanwhile, I wanted to note this mention of the 2CD set that came out in 2003 which I picked up first before reading the book. (Sadly, the set is currently out-of-print.) And here's a link to recent reprintings of one of the central influences on both the book and Kerouac himself. -Ed

Embedded Video

Enjoy my first attempt at embedding a video. This is Jack Kerouac, nervous & slightly drunk, reading from On The Road and (I think) Visions of Cody on The Steve Allen Show in 1959. -Ed

Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac On The Road

Last night's viewing of the exhibition Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac On The Road at the New York Public Library was like discovering the Holy Grail for anybody even remotely interested in the works & influences of Jack Kerouac. The exhibit is housed on the first floor of the museum (click on the links in the previous sentence for dates & times) in the Gottesman Hall, just next to the library's gift shop. Inside the cavernous hall are, enclosed in glass cases, dozens of written journal entries, correspondence, various drafts & outlines for novels, essays, photos, unpublished short stories, drawings & paintings and even fantasy baseball rosters all by Kerouac and/or his friends. There's even a CD player on the wall where you can listen to Kerouac's favorite classical music works, which he'd listen to while writing. There are photos of fellow Beats Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Gary Snyder and Neil Cassidy, plus various bri-a-brac like Kerouac's first typewriter as well as a kind of Zen Buddist-like scroll with a haiku composed by Kerouac & Snyder. You'll also see (despite the dim light) photos of the various residences Kerouac, Ginsberg & the others stayed in during the 50s & 60s.

But it was The Scroll that really held the attention of the guests.

Begun in April, 1951, Kerouac began writing the work that would make him famous (or infamous, at least when it was finally published six years later after several revisions), the Beat classic On The Road. Kerouac composed the first draft on his typewriter using 12 ten foot long rolls of architectural tracing paper, forming one long continous scroll so as not to disturb the author's train of thought. Afterwards, and after many excisions & additions, Kerouac would transfer the text of the scroll onto standard sheets of paper so it could be submitted in manuscript form to publishers.

To actually see & read this amazing example of Kerouac's creative process is something else! You can "get" the sense of spontaneous thought Kerouac projected as he wrote without stopping to pause for a moment. (Corrections, such as spelling & paragraph breaks, were made after he completed the scroll.) As a testament to the creative imagination of an artist, the Original Scroll is required viewing.

(Those unable to view the Scroll at the library but want to see it are encouraged to seek out a copy of On The Road: The Original Scroll, edited by Howard Cunnell, which Viking published this past September. The library carries three copies of it. Recommended.)

The exhibit is broken up into eight sections ("On The Road:The Scroll & Its Successors"; "Fiction, Poetry & Prose"; "Confession, Reflection & Judgement") and is well worth the time.

Oh, I managed to run into Bill Morgan & his wife Jean at the exhibit. Mr. Morgan will be giving a talk on Beat poet Gregory Corso tomorrow (Saturday, November 10) at 2:00 pm in the library's Meeting Room. Professor Regina Weinreich from the School of Visual Arts, who spoke here last month on William S. Burroughs, also attented. Unfortunately, the man responsible for putting together this great exhibition, Dr. Isaac Gewirtz, was nowhere to be seen. I managed to pick up a copy of his Beatific Soul companion book in the gift shop with the hops of getting him to sign it AND offer my personal congratulations, but no luck. I did get a glimpse of Beat figure & jazz musician David Amram, as well as meeting Beat scholars like William Gargan & Gordon Ball. (Jean Morgan tried to find John Tyrell, author of the Beat retrospective Naked Angels -also carried by us- for me to meet, but to no avail.)

The Morgans both expressed their appreciation with their reception here last May when Bill spoke about Allen Ginsberg & are looking forward to coming to the library on Saturday. (Bill's biography of Ginsberg from last year, I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg, is now in paperback. Also, Bill co-edited the just-released You'll Be Okay: My Life With Jack Kerouac, a posthumouslypublished memoir by Edie Parker Kerouac, the author's first wife. Need I add Greenwich Library has copies of these too?)

Aside from not seeing Dr. Gewirtz again, my one real regret about last night is that I wish I had been allowwed to take pictures (the hall's dim lighting not withstanding)! Oh well....

-Ed

Follow Up On Kerouac Exhibition

Unless anybody objects, I'll discuss my going to tonight's Kerouac Exhibition viewing/reception in my next post. Personally I think it's great that I got invited to such an event by such a important institution like NYPL. I hope fellow staffers get similar invites to such things in the future.

Meanwhile, here's the NY Times with an article on the exhibition. My mantra has always been "the art, not the artist":

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-kerouac.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

-Ed