The Single By R.E.M. That Came Out This Year & Should've Been A Hit!

'Nuff said! -Ed

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.)

Reading (Braille) Is Fundamental!

Some well meaning advocates for the disabled recently informed me that seeing-impaired persons really don't need to read braille books since they can just listen to them on audiocassette and/or compact disc. They meant well, but, as I'm looking into getting some braille books (novels & non-fiction)for the collection, I don't agree. And neither does William M. Raeder, former president of the National Braille Press :

Braille is the only means by which blind people can truly read the written language. It is certainly true that for easy reading materials such as novels, audio intake using the recorded human voice, or the electronically synthesized mimicking of the human voice, is not only satisfactory but sometimes preferred by blind people, just as it is by sighted people. By the same token, just as sighted people have by no means given up the written language in favor of audio only, so blind people should not be expected to give up their written language.

You can read Mr. Raeder's compelling arguement (which can also be cited for recommending reading to sighted people) further here . The NBR makes a good case too.


(A student using Braille.)

-Ed

Related links: How Useful is Braille? ; Why Is Braille Important?

"Ginsberg & Beat Fellows" & Gordon Ball

(Gordon Ball at the library's Meeting Room on Tuesday, October 7th.)

Beat historian, underground filmmaker and author Gordon Ball came to speak at the Greenwich Library on Tuesday night, October 7th, in the Meeting Room. Mr. Ball, who currently teaches English at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, read from his memoirs '66 Frames (1999), Dark Hill (2006) and Scenes From East Hill Farm: Seasons With Allen Ginsberg (2007), and showed a slide presentation of his program on the Beats, Ginsberg & Beat Fellows: Writings & Photographs by Gordon Ball , coincidentally the title of that night's program.

Mr. Ball read from his books about his first meeting with Ginsberg, how the poet talked him into overseeing his farm in upstate New York and how he met such Beat (and Beat-related figures) as Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Creeley , Peter Oslosky and Anne Waldman . Ginsberg had hoped the farm he bought in 1968 would be a haven for his fellow artists to "cleanse" themselves (like Corso and Oslosky, who had major chemical dependence problems) and held out the ultimately futile dream that old friend Jack Kerouac (already a full-blown alcoholic by that time)would come by for that purpose. Needless to say, that never happened.


(Gordon Ball and friends at Ginsberg's East Hill Farm, appx. 1969.)

Below is a picture from Mr. Ball's Beat Fellows presentation: a picture he took of Ginsberg and fellow Beat (and all-around scary guy) Herbert Huncke :


More of Mr. Ball's pictures can be found on his web site here . If you click on a photo, you'll see both a larger image and a description of the picture and what led up to that particular moment. (Lots of good stuff!) This picture below taken by Mr. Ball is a favorite of mine:


Mr. Ball graciously gave us a copy of his '66 Frames memoir and expressed hope that a longer version of Scenes From East Hill Farm (which he's completed) will see the light of day soon. -Ed

See also: Bill Morgan's I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg (which can be found here and Mr. Morgan's collection, The Letters of Allen Ginsberg .

The 2008 HOWL! Festival (Part Two)

Above, you can see the "temperance" arch where festival personnel encoraged people attending to partake in giving "spontaneous" poems and commentaries. Nearly every one I heard dealt with the joys of alcolhol. ("Oh Miller! Oh Budweiser! Oh Heiniken!" ). Go figure. -Ed

Related link: www.slamchops.com (one of the festival vendors)

The 2008 HOWL! Festival (Part One)

I managed to attend the 2008 HOWL Festival last Sunday (09/07/08) in Tompkins Square Park. Above, you can see people watching one of the bands that were playing that day. -Ed

Related links: howlfestival.com

Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan Are Related To Each Other?!? (No, Really!)

When I first read Philip Jose Farmer's Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (a "biography" of Doc, based on the 181 pulp novels by "Kenneth Robeson"/Lester Dent) in 1975, there was a chapter and family tree linking Doc to "cousins" like Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu (the family "black sheep" ?), Philip Marlowe, The Shadow, Captain Nemo and James Bond 007, among others.






Farmer had originally posited this idea in his similar "fictional biography", 1972's Tarzan Alive (yes, Tarzan, AKA Lord Greystoke, is a member). In a nutshell, a meteor crashed in Wold Newton, England, in 1795, and its radiation somehow affected the people and their eventual descendants genetically. The descendants of the people of Wold Newton (according to Farmer) developed various above-average intellect and skills and the drive to do good (or evil) deeds.


Here's Farmer discussing how he "met" the real Tarzan when doing research for Tarzan Alive :








It's a goofy idea, but a fun one. Farmer himself wrote some short stories & novels such as 1976's The Adventures of the Peerless Peer, which teamed up Holmes & Tarzan (here called "Lord Greystoke" to keep the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate licenseholders happy) in 1916 Africa, and 1991's Escape To Loki, a WWI-set "prequel" to the Doc Savage novels, in which he continued to link all these characters to each other.



PJF fan and writer Win Scott Eckert took it upon himself to expand upon Farmer's "family tree" of fictional adventure characters and began a site devoted to the "Wold Newton Universe", which you can find here . Well, Eckert published a collection of essays by him, Farmer & others in 2005 called Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe, which I just got via the library & will start reading ASAP.


In addition to the aformentioned characters, Eckert, Farmer & others link other fictional icons (like Zorro, Charlie Chan and even Henry Higgins -!- from Pygmalion/My Fair Lady) to said "family". Looks like a good read. Can I find 'em or what? -Ed

Related links: The Secret History of the Wold Newton Universe ; The Lester Dent Museum ; The Official Tarzan Web Site