Kerouac, a mad texter?

If Jack's tortured liver had survived, he would've been 91 on March 12, 2013. When he was writing  On the Road, he was a fast, proficient typist. Perhaps he added too much benzedrine in his Ovaltine, but he  was a catalyst in shifting attitudes and approaches to writing. Writing is about words and Kerouac enjoyed playing with them to capture the moments as he lived and viewed them. Sometimes he was silly and often he did not pursue grand concepts which the stuffed literary shirts consider a necessity to being  considered a great writer.

His interesting novel Pic in which he tries to capture the sounds and dialect of a ten-year old black male was panned as being stereotypical by many, but I view it as a valiant effort to capture what he was hearing. I wonder if he would've been panned had he chosen as a white man to capture the dialect of a ten-year old southern white boy?




 One of the cheapest dismissals of Kerouac came from one of the  pissy-ass blowhards of all time-  Truman Capote

 "That's not writing, that's typing."

I've digressed enough. Kerouac's drunken fingers would've put him in texter's hell and placed him permanently in the word police solitary confinement wing.

Thx Jack- your books, good, weak, or ugly were edifying.

Did I mention that his buddy Neal Cassady claimed that jack  "feared the wheel" (driving).

Pick away folks!

4/10/13

when Ted Berrigan of the Paris Review asked during a 1968 interview,

 “How come you never write about Jesus?” Kerouac’s reply: “I’ve never written about Jesus? … You’re an insane phony … All I write about is Jesus.”

5/29/13

 I guess money was the sole reason the Sampas family (if they still control the Kerouac estate) released The Sea is my Brother,  a very rough draft  Kerouac penned in his early 20's about some fellows going to sea. The brief debates about Marxism and Socialism were amusing, but I spent more time wondering is that character partially Ginsberg, or Lucien Carr etc. Kerouac didn't meet Cassady until after this draft was penned circa 1942. Also, I guess John Clellan Holmes was mixed in to the Prof Bill Everhart character. 
It was a short book  that was too long, and women on the side was a Kerouac staple from his roughest drafts to his best works.

8/27/13

My buddy Barrie,  a longtime Kerouc fan, emailed  the link to a story about the real life  passing of the "Terry, the Mexican girl,"  from On the road.

 11/30/13

Kerouac scored the winning TD for Lowell High  in 1938. Just keeping it light on a fat weekend.

12/15/13

I thought of Kerouac & Cassady while watching some youtube clips of interviews of Robert Mitchum replies to questions about  his hobo days. "Man, the goal was to keep moving."

5/24/13
Jack replied to my thread before I typed

Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

8/17/14

From Jack's standard novel: The Town and the City

I've drank with his brother in a thousand bars 

9/6/14

Yesterday was the 57th anniversary of the publication of On the Road. Jack was 35 at the time  and most of his "barnstorming" was behind him

10/23/14

Oct 21 1969. Kerouac died . the liver conked out. Here's a link to his his last interview. He was for legalizing pot.

 Gimme a pack of marijuana!'

12/13/14

Cassady  wrote this long before he laid across a railroad track to die.
 The time has come, everybody lie down so you won't get hurt when the sun bursts.” 
― Neal Cassady, The First Third

3/6/15

 "You can't fight City Hall. It keeps changing its name." I need to verify haven't read this article from Kerouac in 1969 "After Me, The Deluge"

8/7/15

Kerouac quoted in a Chrysler commercial. Suppose it should've happened sooner but he had a fear of the wheel and was more comfortable as a passenger

12/6/15

Turning to Kerouac for what's important:

“Artist or no-artist, I can't pass up a piece of fried chicken when I see one.”  Jack Kerouac, Visions of Gerard

12/25/16

excerpt from #kerouac on xmas eve just after midnight in Lowell, MA : kerouac short story

  “In the general uproar of gifts and unwinding of wrappers it was always a delight to me to step out on the porch or even go up the street a ways at 1:00 in the morning and listen to the silent hum of heaven diamond stars"

2/11/17

digging back to Kerouac's brooding in the novel Tristessa

“I play games with her fabulous eyes and she longs to be in a monastery” 

3/12/17

Ti Jean  boozed too much to make it to 95.   If he were breathing and texting, I bet he would've typed leave me alone. Or maybe he'd be near a kitchen.

"I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove.-Kerouac "

7/4/17

Hypothetical #Kerouac tweet to the #Capote: F U Tru

9/2/17

The spitters would probably get arrested today, but here's an interesting image on #Lowell , MA from #Kerouac 's "Visions of Gerard".

 "men smoking cigars stand by the rail spitting in the waters that reflect the drizzle hopelessness of 1926.” 

3/12/18

would #kerouac have dug HBD Jack

10/20/18

#kerouac was hitting the bottle hard in 1960 but well aware of some things: "It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on. "  Basically beat ain't always beatnik.

10/17/20

  “Some's bastards, some's ain't. That's the score.” #kerouac On the Road

Musing about the Beat writers

of which I include Neal Cassady. I read an interview with Carolyn Cassady,http://victoriamixon.com/2010/02/17/gobsmacked-the-carolyn-cassady-interview/
 one of Neal's wives, in which she had kinds words for Neal and Jack Kerouac.


I finally saw  a utube clip from French Tv of a not completely drunk Kerouac doing an interview.

Got to wondering about Mardou Fox (alene lee) the black/cherokee love interest of leo Percepeid (jack kerouac) in the book Subterraneans and found this photo of her sitting next to William burroughs. Ol bill didn't spent much time with the ladies.

I think she later hooked up with Lucien Carr. Enough name-dropping today. Burroughs is the character Frank Carmody in the book. Btw, George Peppard as Kerouac and Leslie Caron as Mardou are curious choices for the movie, but Jim Hutton as the allen Ginsberg character (adam moorad) and Arte Johnson as Gore Vidal (Arial) are the true head-scratchers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054351/

3/1/13

  I recall attending a talk by Charles Plymell, a poet and associate of the Beats, in the early 1990's at 8X10 club on Cross St in Baltimore, He mingled with the crowd, and I bought him a beer and asked a few questions about Kerouac and Burroughs, He said in many ways Kerouac was a regular guy, and he nearly chuckled when I asked about Burroughs nasal twang, which he blamed on Missouri air.

He suggested that the Herbert Hunckes of NYC were a dime a dozen.

5/18/13

  It seems I've neglected Allan Ginsberg.  I never dug his politics even when I was younger and left leaning. I liked a few lines in Howl,  but I viewed him as mostly cock and bull.

6/19/13

 I'll add Gregory Corso to the list of Beat  affiliated authors that I didn't dig.  Gary Snyder was decent.

10/6/13

Two weeks late on the news of Carolyn Cassady's death on 9/22/13. Her friend Estelle Cimino, co-owner of the Beat Museum in San Francisco, confirmed the death to the Associated Press. No cause of death was given.

12/26/13

Thanks to my nephew for an interesting  chat yesterday on Kerouac. Jack has his arm  around Neal.

4/14/14

Interesting casting decision in the movie Kill your Darlings . Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allan Ginsberg's mom leaps out at me. kill your darlings  I think Kerouac married the gal who bailed him out of jail.

6/1/14

Kerouac espoused  the Catholic beatttitudes and was not a beatnik.  Ginsberg  saw it as :

  “The point of beat is that you get beaten down to a certain nakedness where you are actually able to see the world in a visionary way,”

It wasn't  Maynard Krebs pounding a bongo drum. banging a congo drum

7/31/14

I've been trying to get through the 2012 release of the movie "On the road" and doubt if I will. Maybe I should hunt around for the "the Subterraneans " released in the 1950's . I mentioned the cast in my  original post. Anyway Kerouac was a Catholic Boy. Here'a snippet from  "Visions of Gerard:

"His life.... ended when he was nine and the nuns of St. Louis de France Parochial School were at his bedside to take down his dying words because they'd heard his astonishing revelations of heaven

10/4/14

Re-read sections of Howl and think less of it. Ginsberg's, a one time ad-man in NYC,  description of Burroughs is quite a positive spin on Burroughs' move to Mexico after shooting his wife

 who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit

3/31/15

This has been my sense of  Kammerer, and i haven't seen the movie Kill your darings. caleb carr on kammererr

  Every time Lucien Carr moved, and it was several times, Kammerer followed

4/12/15

Gary Snyder on Kerouac: link

 My second favorite novel, which is a better novel, is The Subterraneans. It's the perfect little French novel with a beginning a middle and an end. A nicely structured Flaubertian piece of prose which shows his craftsmanship

4/30/15

Drunk Kerouac joking on the William Buckley Tv show when asked about the war in Vietnam:

"a plot to get Jeeps into the country."

7/21/15

I never thought that Ginsberg was as talented as Kerouac & Burroughs , but his tribute to Bernie Sanders may have been his nadir. BTW, I'm aware that Ginsberg thought  artistic "comparisons are odious." And he couldn't resist this line : Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops. Ginsberg 1986 tribute to Sanders

Plus politics, regardless of your slant, tends to drag a poem down.

5/19/16

Caught up with Beat , a 2000 flick starring Keifer Sutherland as Burroughs and Courtney Love as Joan Vollmer.  Movie was slow and the casting felt odd. Kyle Secor as David Kammerer was interesting. Also, didn't hear  much of that Missouri Twang from the Burroughs and Kammerer characters.

7/26/16

going back to a link I posted last year. Allan Ginsberg's socialist ode to then Mayor Sanders

Isn’t this poem socialist? It doesn’t belong to me anymore.

5/21/17

After viewing a few clips of the " #TheSubterraneans " movie on youtube, I get why #Kerouac shied away from Hollywood. Rumor has it that he turned down  project in which he would be super-imposed over a #BennyGoodman recording session. It  would have been more interesting to have seen him sitting aside #CharlieParker.

6/10/17

Found this quote from #garysnyder on #jackkerouac and thought YEP!

"total absence in Jack of anything elite, or yuppie, or academic, or intellectual, or any of that posturing at all that we associate with learned people, middle-class white people"

01/26/21

 I came across this item while reading a history of Prague and laughed. #AllenGinsberg, an avid lefty, was crowned King of May in Prague in 1965 then the communists kicked him out.

2/24/21

RIP Lawrence #Ferlinghetti  ,who passed away at the age of 101 yesterday. Ginsberg and Kerouac read their works frequently in the 1950s at his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. I admired his patronage of the Arts but didn't dig most of his poetry.

02/11/22

Once a commie always a commie: In the early 1980s goofy, commie sympathizer #AllenGinsberg stated this about #BernieSanders and his Vermont groupies: "Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops." 

Forty years later, Sanders doubled down on his argument that Americans should see Ukraine through Russia's eyes.

May 7, 2023

Plymell (88) is still breathing. In his WikiP profile , no mention of Kerouac- Jack would likely laugh. Plymell, too.

May 25, 2023

RIP Caleb Carr, military historian, novelist, and son of Lucien Carr. In an interview, Caleb once noted that Jack Kerouac was a very nice guy but not a children person.

Skin pops

 Chafed , I remonstrate aloud to a Lit Prof in 1980 about the classic allusions that required footnotes in most of T S Eliot's poetry, and now I'm offering poems with references to more recent writers.

I offer brief pre-notes:

In the late 90's , I awoke  thinking that Jim Carroll,  NYC Catholic boy, hoopster, & junkie poet had died and wrote down some lines which I edit from time to time. He died 9/11/09.

Jim Carroll’s passing Chelstea

Syringe

              Between board and rim

Gimmick

             Between sermon and hymn

Trespass

              Into extreme unction

Slide

            Chair to floor

Death

            Foreseen in final work

Minutes

             Twenty from Chelsea to Inwood

______________________________________________
I took  a class on America in the 1950's  in 1981 and was turned on to Jack Kerouac (nicknamed Memory Babe before the booze took over). My feelings for his works go up and down and  have never reached the apex they did when I was in my early 20's. Hey jack, sorry,  but I have edited.

 

    beaten Kerouac

   Memory Babe lost Mary

but never Mommy.

crawling in bars grumbling to die

Lucien carved Kam

Jack went on the lam

Married for bail

Got out of jail

 never said I do to Mardou

 Neal zooms cars

the Gerard appeal

proxy brothers and Florida bars

It wasn’t Tokay to beat it

After the surge of the road

And the brief Harlem Howl

Town or city, slum or slum

too drunk for whores 

sat or I won’t 

“too white” hick who found his way to Pic

                                                   And stumbled off the hippie bus for good

Neal, flat across the tracks              

Billy, heroin or boys shag

Allan, where are the fellas

Jack, TV slurs and slacks

Liver finally blows in Fla

Laid low in Unwell, Mass

_________________________________________________
I was watching  Patti Smith cover a Bob Dylan tune "Changing of the Guard" and inked some lines. Tom Verlaine  borrowed the last name from a French poet. 

Patti strands Verlaine 

Sweatin gray hair sticks 

receiving  Benediction inside of society

standing barefoot

on the 25^th floor

Privilege earned and lust

Knees to the sun for fiends

“free’ money for

the citizen ship

Was that a crow pissing in the river

Or horses in the hall?

Poets on the mend

Behind torn curtains
_________________________



I offer a snippy ditty for Hunter S Thompson. My opinion of HST wanes as I learn more about him.

No free rides on a Harley

Hell’s boys felt your smear

Others, your loathing and fear

Pointing a pen or a gun

Against everyone

Then yourself

______________________

Soiree time in the early 20th century

 

T Spoons

Eliot's strings, rings, and things

fine, fine

where’s the wine

Sir, sir

No nectar

Only tea

I see, I see

Earnest- he, he

Chose not to be

More tea?

Let’s sugar

F Scott snaps, dines

Ivy flaps on plate

Ice chutes

Rips roots


Wright outside

Was Richard right
a little uptight
cells to sells
Paris swells
blurb. verve
Roxie, MS curve
moxie, not verve

Goofin on Neal
dust bowl to Denver
go, go, go nights
speed thru red lights
trains, chicks , talks, kicks
pool hall tea sticks
trippin Kesey
slappin back Kerouac
stole time  so easy
across tracks, grateful, dead

Too
stick stuck right shoe
wet leaves tumble
flags flap rumble
sky peeks purple blue




Lex Market Xmas season 1987
hooker stiff walks sore
chuckles to corner store
smokes til bike kid
drops the alley lid

black chicks, purple hair
old guys, just stare
we goof, gab, guzzle
taking in the puzzle

2015
bring in the year
bang on my ear
he died she died
I ran i cried

Row home Alley

not his window
not his wife
teen calls out
need a shirt
gotta go
i'm up next

ignore him
pitch the ball

Goofin
ISIL
ISIS
missile
crisis

Ouch, Ginsberg
“I see the lame minds of a generation ruined by
badness, grieving hysterical, spoiled
texting themselves through the clean streets at noon
whining for an instant fix,

Sill Label 4

current sea shifts
rubel fee drifts
just hit to play
then must delay

Ry Goodbye , too hip
borrowed a Ford
to see ol Gord
as his poetic brain
slips down the drain
maybe a Leafs cup
before time is up

what he was seen

with the Queen

Knot O2
 sarin dip ity
 ass mad strikes today
 makes Syrians pay
 yellow vomit in your city
 knived nerves fray

Trash way
who's that squattin
between the two shadows
staining the breezeway walls
panties up, she's done
she calls
I ain't shittin
here
Would Bawdy Le care
or sneer

Wife and kids
Sun's up, empty whisky jar,
queried on my family
Gabe, can't you see
 that's my car

sept 9, 2016 log

Fighting distractions in another attempt to capture the sights and sounds of Baltimore mid 1980's with a major focus on Fells Point, SoBo, Sowebo, and Midtown.   I change the characters, but versions of this memory dull but don't fade: "On my way along Charles St to Howeirds Bar and Middle Eastern music draws me into the UD Café and the sight of a Turkish waitress  swinging her hips and tongue-rolling a cherry stem  while serving Greek food."......

oct 8 log

..........What the hell, I swallow the dime of tan hash, order a double cheeseburger , and enjoy the chill of the AC.

dec 2 log

working on yet another 1980's Bmore story "a priest with an effeminate voice is presiding over a rehearsal wedding and my dad looks at me and says you were right. I finger point for him to face the altar. As soon as practice is over, he says "I remember those stories you told me about priests and altar boys, and I nod while thinking, (a hell of a time for you to acknowledge Balzac’s tales) then laughing at how he shrugged off my recollections a few months ago and how he’s interpreting them now.

 april 22, 2018

Testalls
balls in a sack
pack the bearing
no caring
rack em up
swing em
fisted,gifted lifted
no sharing

June 13, 2018

Scribbling some notes for future use. An old drinking buddy of mine used to tell of the thrill of getting one dance with  #hedylamarr at a USO function raising money for World War 2 bonds. At the time I doubt if he knew that the #austrian -born starlet co-authored a patent on radio waves.  Some ideas in that patent were later incorporated into blue tooth technology. After WW2, my buddy became a plumber and occasionally wore a T-shirt with the words, your shit is my bread and butter."

july 21, 2018

still working on my Baltimore 1980's downtown stories: "Stumble  a block to Howweirds deli side for a sausage and egg sandwich and  fountain soda around 10AM, and Bunky pulls up a chair and chats me up about my daytime appearance throwing off the clocks in this hood. I'm slow on the uptake while he slides me a folded up magazine item and relates how he found Big Dale face down dead in an apartment building he owns.

May 30, 2020

Old time expressions: sneak thieves are checkin the alleys for unlocked doors from Jim Carroll's "city drops into the night". 

 Chinchorro Bank, was known as "Sleep-robbing reef" because of the dangers it posed to seafarers.

Nov 30, 2021

Since my college days, I've had a like/dislike thing for T S Eliot, and I found this while reading a book review on the great poet. T S Eliot's first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, would occasionally show up at his poetry readings carrying a sign that stated “I Am The Wife He Abandoned.”

August 6, 2022

It's alleged that Stallone named his character Rambo after the French poet Rimbaud. Maybe he was thinking of these lines “In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me."

Bad Blood”― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell  

Jan 29, 2023 : RIP Tom Verlaine

May 7, 2023: Listening to Days by Television with Tom V on lead guitar and singing.

sept, 9,2023: short story notes:  your car is halfway on my sister’s lawn.

May 2, 2024: from my notes on Change from a dream: In my 20s I made brief ventures into the local music scene reciting my lyrics. The first day I could get the Lancettes together, the bassist played surf music while the guitarist ventured into Led Zep, and the drummer Lance thought he was playing behind Captain Beefheart. That brief session felt like an eternity, but a few days later we did a fun, free gig on a Sunday afternoon bill in a room in the UMBC Fine Arts building.