Stefanie’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping physical geography, her maps capture regularities and patterns within a literary space. The pieces featured in On the Map focused on Kerouac’s On the Road. The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor. And similarly, the act is near reverential in its approach and the results are stunning graphical displays of the nature of the subject. The literary organism, rhythm textures and sentence drawings are truly gorgeous pieces. It’s not often that I am so thoroughly impressed by the depth of an artist’s work, but somehow, for me, these pieces do it all. I know, who would’ve thought I’d have stumbled upon such incredible work in the gallery across from our hotel in Sheffield! It just goes to show the world is full of surprises.
www.notcot.com/archives/2008/04/stefanie_posave.php
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Clip Job: Jack Kerouac's Personal Favorite Book
Posted by Tony Ortega at 8:07 AM, March 7, 2008
Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives
September 18, 1957, Vol. II, No. 47
Back to the Village
By Jerry Tallmer
Jack Kerouac, the Greenwich Village writer who (with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso), had to go to San Francisco to become a San Francisco writer and get famous, sat in Goody’s Bar, off 10th Street, the other night, in a battered royal-blue polo shirt, his white T-shirt showing beneath, the bright red top of a cigarette package projecting from the pocket on his chest, his strong arms reaching perpetually for the bottle of Schlitz before him on the table, his dark rakish face and glistening black hair more handsome than Cary Grant’s or Wally Reid’s. “Man,” he said, “I can’t make it. I’m cutting out.”
He was talking about the whirl of TV and radio and cocktail parties they’ve had him in, the Viking people, ever since he returned from Europe and Tangiers just a few days ago. He was talking about the publicity, the success, the rave reviews, the terrifying half-hour with Wingate on “Nightbeat,” the girls, the bars, the lion-hunters, the whole bit.
“Some day,” he said, “if I can write it. If anyone could write it. They have a little girl there, sitting by you, while you wait to go on the TV.”
“Just to keep you happy?”
“Just to keep you happy. One of those cute little uptown chicks. If I could write it…” He muzzily flagged the waitress for another beer and told how he and Wingate had gone out on the town after the show. The show itself had come as quite a shock to many of his friends and the general public. Kerouac had clammed up almost totally, giving terse, non-communicative answers and looking like nothing so much as a scared rabbit. One of the few young authors of (inversely) the Big Yes, he had sat there like a stump, saying no.
“What was it, were you scared?”
“Yeah, man, plenty scared. One of my friends told me don’t say anything, nothing that’ll get you in trouble. So I just kept saying no, like a kid dragged in by a cop. That’s the way I thought of it—a kid dragged up before the cops.”
The conversation switched to poetry readings. Could Kerouac go on stage to read some of the San Francisco poetry, his own and Corso’s and Ginsberg’s? “No, not me. I can’t go that. I get stage-fright. Wait till Allen comes back—he’s great. He loves that.”
To what did Kerouac attribute his sudden recognition on the West Coast, after years of the opposite here in the East: “One thing,” he said. “Rexroth. A great man. A great critic. Interested in young people, interested in everything.” But presently, when the subject had drifted to jazz—its decline and fall this past half-decade—Kerouac talked of a California jazz concert which Kenneth Rexroth hadn’t dug at all. “What a square!” Kerouac cheerfully hooted. “What a square!” And then it emerged that, some time since, Rexroth had kicked Kerouac out of his house as an objectionable loafer—just to be an artist, he had said, wasn’t enough. As Kerouac recalled the incident he seemed to derive great pleasure from it, and to hold no slightest grudge against his mentor.
About “On the Road,” the novel now making such a splash, everywhere, Kerouac insists on dismissing it as “my potboiler.” He wrote it six years ago, in 1951, allegedly “to amuse my wife”—the wife he had then, anyway. “I’m a serious artist,” he said, lightly but intently, downing the beer without a break, “a serious artist…like James Joyce. I’ve written eight books since ‘On the Road.’ Viking’s going to start bringing them out.”
“What’s your best one?”
“A book called ‘Dr. Sax,’ a kind of Gothic fairy tale, a myth of puberty, about some kids in New England playing around in this empty place when a shadow suddenly comes out at them, a real shadow. A real shadow,” he said, stressing the image, his black eyes flashing. “Then there’s ‘The Subterraneans.’ That’s about an affair with a colored girl. And then there’s…” But he let it drop as something weird popped back into his head and he said: “Man, man, on that TV they make you up!”
“And what’s happening to you next? Beside the TV and all that?”
“I’m cutting out. They don’t know it, but I’m cutting out. I’m going down to my mother’s in Orlando. Always go back to my mother. Always.” He grinned widely, dangerously, but not altogether freel.
Posted by Tony Ortega at 8:07 AM, March 7, 2008
Clip Job: an excerpt every day from the Voice archives
September 18, 1957, Vol. II, No. 47
Back to the Village
By Jerry Tallmer
Jack Kerouac, the Greenwich Village writer who (with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso), had to go to San Francisco to become a San Francisco writer and get famous, sat in Goody’s Bar, off 10th Street, the other night, in a battered royal-blue polo shirt, his white T-shirt showing beneath, the bright red top of a cigarette package projecting from the pocket on his chest, his strong arms reaching perpetually for the bottle of Schlitz before him on the table, his dark rakish face and glistening black hair more handsome than Cary Grant’s or Wally Reid’s. “Man,” he said, “I can’t make it. I’m cutting out.”
He was talking about the whirl of TV and radio and cocktail parties they’ve had him in, the Viking people, ever since he returned from Europe and Tangiers just a few days ago. He was talking about the publicity, the success, the rave reviews, the terrifying half-hour with Wingate on “Nightbeat,” the girls, the bars, the lion-hunters, the whole bit.
“Some day,” he said, “if I can write it. If anyone could write it. They have a little girl there, sitting by you, while you wait to go on the TV.”
“Just to keep you happy?”
“Just to keep you happy. One of those cute little uptown chicks. If I could write it…” He muzzily flagged the waitress for another beer and told how he and Wingate had gone out on the town after the show. The show itself had come as quite a shock to many of his friends and the general public. Kerouac had clammed up almost totally, giving terse, non-communicative answers and looking like nothing so much as a scared rabbit. One of the few young authors of (inversely) the Big Yes, he had sat there like a stump, saying no.
“What was it, were you scared?”
“Yeah, man, plenty scared. One of my friends told me don’t say anything, nothing that’ll get you in trouble. So I just kept saying no, like a kid dragged in by a cop. That’s the way I thought of it—a kid dragged up before the cops.”
The conversation switched to poetry readings. Could Kerouac go on stage to read some of the San Francisco poetry, his own and Corso’s and Ginsberg’s? “No, not me. I can’t go that. I get stage-fright. Wait till Allen comes back—he’s great. He loves that.”
To what did Kerouac attribute his sudden recognition on the West Coast, after years of the opposite here in the East: “One thing,” he said. “Rexroth. A great man. A great critic. Interested in young people, interested in everything.” But presently, when the subject had drifted to jazz—its decline and fall this past half-decade—Kerouac talked of a California jazz concert which Kenneth Rexroth hadn’t dug at all. “What a square!” Kerouac cheerfully hooted. “What a square!” And then it emerged that, some time since, Rexroth had kicked Kerouac out of his house as an objectionable loafer—just to be an artist, he had said, wasn’t enough. As Kerouac recalled the incident he seemed to derive great pleasure from it, and to hold no slightest grudge against his mentor.
About “On the Road,” the novel now making such a splash, everywhere, Kerouac insists on dismissing it as “my potboiler.” He wrote it six years ago, in 1951, allegedly “to amuse my wife”—the wife he had then, anyway. “I’m a serious artist,” he said, lightly but intently, downing the beer without a break, “a serious artist…like James Joyce. I’ve written eight books since ‘On the Road.’ Viking’s going to start bringing them out.”
“What’s your best one?”
“A book called ‘Dr. Sax,’ a kind of Gothic fairy tale, a myth of puberty, about some kids in New England playing around in this empty place when a shadow suddenly comes out at them, a real shadow. A real shadow,” he said, stressing the image, his black eyes flashing. “Then there’s ‘The Subterraneans.’ That’s about an affair with a colored girl. And then there’s…” But he let it drop as something weird popped back into his head and he said: “Man, man, on that TV they make you up!”
“And what’s happening to you next? Beside the TV and all that?”
“I’m cutting out. They don’t know it, but I’m cutting out. I’m going down to my mother’s in Orlando. Always go back to my mother. Always.” He grinned widely, dangerously, but not altogether freel.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
New Jack Kerouac book to be published
By Chris Hastings and Beth Jones
Last Updated: 12:31am GMT 02/03/2008
A novel co-written by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, two giants of the "Beat Generation" of poets, writers and drug-takers, is to be published for the first time more than 60 years after it was written.
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, written in 1945, was inspired by an actual killing which led to the arrest of both authors.
The novel draws upon the stabbing in 1944 of a homosexual, David Kammerer, by Lucien Carr, a friend of the duo and another Beat leading light.
Carr served two years after admitting manslaughter, claiming Kammerer had been obsessed with him and had become violent.
Carr confessed to Kerouac and Burroughs, who helped him dispose of the knife but did not go to police. Kerouac was arrested as an accessary to the killing in 1944 and was put in a Bronx jail but he was freed after his girlfriend, Edie Parker, stood bail.
Burroughs was arrested but escaped incarceration after his father put up bail.
The book's publication will be a cause célèbre, given the enduring appeal of the authors. It is understood legal wranglings within the Kerouac estate are the reason it has not been published before, although neither writer was keen for that to happen. In a documentary Burroughs described it as "not a distinguished work".
Gerald Nicosia, who wrote Memory Babe, the widely recognised definitive biography of Kerouac, said the pair would find it funny such a juvenile work was seeing the light of day.
"This was one of the first books they wrote… it's probably pretty bad. But I'm not surprised it is being published now because it's a sure-fire way of making money," he said.
Kerouac, considered the father of the Beat Generation, wrote his classic On The Road in 1951 and died at 47 in 1969 of liver cirrhosis. Burroughs, who wrote The Naked Lunch, died in 1997 at 83. Carr died in 2005, aged 79.
Penguin Classics will publish And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks in November.
By Chris Hastings and Beth Jones
Last Updated: 12:31am GMT 02/03/2008
A novel co-written by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, two giants of the "Beat Generation" of poets, writers and drug-takers, is to be published for the first time more than 60 years after it was written.
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, written in 1945, was inspired by an actual killing which led to the arrest of both authors.
The novel draws upon the stabbing in 1944 of a homosexual, David Kammerer, by Lucien Carr, a friend of the duo and another Beat leading light.
Carr served two years after admitting manslaughter, claiming Kammerer had been obsessed with him and had become violent.
Carr confessed to Kerouac and Burroughs, who helped him dispose of the knife but did not go to police. Kerouac was arrested as an accessary to the killing in 1944 and was put in a Bronx jail but he was freed after his girlfriend, Edie Parker, stood bail.
Burroughs was arrested but escaped incarceration after his father put up bail.
The book's publication will be a cause célèbre, given the enduring appeal of the authors. It is understood legal wranglings within the Kerouac estate are the reason it has not been published before, although neither writer was keen for that to happen. In a documentary Burroughs described it as "not a distinguished work".
Gerald Nicosia, who wrote Memory Babe, the widely recognised definitive biography of Kerouac, said the pair would find it funny such a juvenile work was seeing the light of day.
"This was one of the first books they wrote… it's probably pretty bad. But I'm not surprised it is being published now because it's a sure-fire way of making money," he said.
Kerouac, considered the father of the Beat Generation, wrote his classic On The Road in 1951 and died at 47 in 1969 of liver cirrhosis. Burroughs, who wrote The Naked Lunch, died in 1997 at 83. Carr died in 2005, aged 79.
Penguin Classics will publish And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks in November.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
11 Things: Neal Cassady
Tim Sullivan
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Neal Cassady was many people to many people.
He was Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's "On the
Road," the secret hero in Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"
and the driver of Ken Kesey's bus. He was also
John Allen Cassady's father. Following are 11
Things John wanted to relate about his dad.
1. Contrary to popular myth regarding his
reputation, my father did, indeed, have a family,
and he strove to be a good husband, father and
provider.
2. When the Merry Pranksters went on the famous
bus trip to New York, my mother (having no sense
of humor) insisted I go to school instead. She rightly
asked Neal not to glorify that lifestyle every time
he came by.
3. My father's mind was highly evolved, but he never
bragged or put others down.
4. They never intended to create the beat generation,
hippies or the anti-war movement, but I'm glad for the
seeds they planted.
5. No matter how much the Eisenhower and McCarthy
eras were oppressive, that period was a day at the beach
compared with what's going on now.
6. When Dad and Kesey rescued me and my sister from
high school to go see the Grateful Dead, they were in the
principal's office in white jump-suits, crazy hats and Day-Glo
orange Beatle boots. The principal said, "This man claims
to be your father!" We said, "Hey, what's up, Dad?" After
some signatures, they let us go (and it was the best Friday ever).
7. These bikers were about to lower the boom on some
kid for God knows what, and Dad jumped into the fray, saying,
"Here, have some gum!" All the bikers backed off, astonished.
"Here, have some gum," he kept saying in the middle of the circle
until the situation was defused. Kesey just watched in amazement.
8. I was sitting across from Ginsberg in our home around 1965.
He said, "Johnny, do you want to know a secret? The Beatles smoke
pot!" I said, "What's pot?" I'll never forget how crestfallen Ginsberg
looked when the scoop of the century was lost on me.
9. He named me after Kerouac and Ginsberg, but, at the last
minute, he changed "Jack" to "John." Years later, I asked Mom about
this. She said, "I asked him about that at the time, and he said, 'Well,
if you say it fast, it sounds like JackAssady and no one is going to
call my son a jackass all his life!' "
10. Of all the doors my father has opened to me, I would trade
them all to have him back.
11. John Allen Cassady and his sister Jami will be attending
the Third Annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash this weekend.
10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sat.-Sun. The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, S.F.
(415) 399-9626. www.thebeatmuseum.org.
Tim Sullivan
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Neal Cassady was many people to many people.
He was Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's "On the
Road," the secret hero in Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"
and the driver of Ken Kesey's bus. He was also
John Allen Cassady's father. Following are 11
Things John wanted to relate about his dad.
1. Contrary to popular myth regarding his
reputation, my father did, indeed, have a family,
and he strove to be a good husband, father and
provider.
2. When the Merry Pranksters went on the famous
bus trip to New York, my mother (having no sense
of humor) insisted I go to school instead. She rightly
asked Neal not to glorify that lifestyle every time
he came by.
3. My father's mind was highly evolved, but he never
bragged or put others down.
4. They never intended to create the beat generation,
hippies or the anti-war movement, but I'm glad for the
seeds they planted.
5. No matter how much the Eisenhower and McCarthy
eras were oppressive, that period was a day at the beach
compared with what's going on now.
6. When Dad and Kesey rescued me and my sister from
high school to go see the Grateful Dead, they were in the
principal's office in white jump-suits, crazy hats and Day-Glo
orange Beatle boots. The principal said, "This man claims
to be your father!" We said, "Hey, what's up, Dad?" After
some signatures, they let us go (and it was the best Friday ever).
7. These bikers were about to lower the boom on some
kid for God knows what, and Dad jumped into the fray, saying,
"Here, have some gum!" All the bikers backed off, astonished.
"Here, have some gum," he kept saying in the middle of the circle
until the situation was defused. Kesey just watched in amazement.
8. I was sitting across from Ginsberg in our home around 1965.
He said, "Johnny, do you want to know a secret? The Beatles smoke
pot!" I said, "What's pot?" I'll never forget how crestfallen Ginsberg
looked when the scoop of the century was lost on me.
9. He named me after Kerouac and Ginsberg, but, at the last
minute, he changed "Jack" to "John." Years later, I asked Mom about
this. She said, "I asked him about that at the time, and he said, 'Well,
if you say it fast, it sounds like JackAssady and no one is going to
call my son a jackass all his life!' "
10. Of all the doors my father has opened to me, I would trade
them all to have him back.
11. John Allen Cassady and his sister Jami will be attending
the Third Annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash this weekend.
10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sat.-Sun. The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, S.F.
(415) 399-9626. www.thebeatmuseum.org.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Heart Beat (1979)
Director: John Byrum
Average user rating
No reviews
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A minor (low budget) gem, with Nolte ambling ruefully through twenty years of the
American Dream as Neal Cassady, the superman-hero-hobo-lover of Jack Kerouac's
On the Road. Based on the autobiography of Carolyn Cassady (who is played with
calm brilliance by Spacek), the movie centres on her triangular life with two men,
warily sidestepping the hype and narcissism of Beat mythology and the parallel
temptation to indulge in an essay on Literary Genius. Instead, out of an episodic
narrative emerges a quiet contemplation of the vast spaces and suburban dreams
of the postwar period, a glowingly designed, occasionally tacky epic of America
from the Bomb to the Pill.
Director: John Byrum
Average user rating
No reviews
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A minor (low budget) gem, with Nolte ambling ruefully through twenty years of the
American Dream as Neal Cassady, the superman-hero-hobo-lover of Jack Kerouac's
On the Road. Based on the autobiography of Carolyn Cassady (who is played with
calm brilliance by Spacek), the movie centres on her triangular life with two men,
warily sidestepping the hype and narcissism of Beat mythology and the parallel
temptation to indulge in an essay on Literary Genius. Instead, out of an episodic
narrative emerges a quiet contemplation of the vast spaces and suburban dreams
of the postwar period, a glowingly designed, occasionally tacky epic of America
from the Bomb to the Pill.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
RON WHITEHEAD, ROBERT M. ZOSCHKE —-
“THE” BOOK, the Voices, the Movement, the Never-Ending HeartBEAT
Reflections upon the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD. Edited by Ron Whitehead and Robert M. Zoschke. Published in Heaven Books. Louisville, Kentucky, 2007 175 pp, Illustrated, $25 The book is available here( http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/ron-whitehead-robert-m-zoschke-reflections-upon-the-50th-anniversary-of-jack-kerouac’s-on-the-road/)
My contention: The Beat never stopped with the death of Kerouac. Jack left the American road a little early, hit the dead-end waiting for us all, but left the roadmap in book after book, poem after poem, word after word humming down the centerline of every highway leading us on.
You can’t NOT get lost. LOST is the way.
What Kerouac may have never seen in the distance is just how long the road was, just how far many continue to follow it all over America, all over the world.
This one fine book by Ron Whitehead, Leader of the SOUTHERN BEAT BRANCH (Kentucky) world-class performer-poet of substance, sass, sagacity and co-editor, Robert M. Zoschke, wise/true-talkin’ poet with hard and fast lines on Chicago streets and Northern climes, is testament to Time’s tick-tock Beat, Kerouac’s to be-continued connections…essays. photos, artwork, stories and poems. 46 contributors, each with his/her own roadmap to the journey within. With the Ghost of Jack holding a candle to the dark…to get here from there, THIS way…
For openers, venerable Ferlinghetti (High Priest to a life writ to move, follow your own directions) is on the front cover—a picture-poem to Neal & Jack; the back cover, by veteran chronicler of the Beat, Christopher Felver. filmmaker and photographer.
Inside, cover to cover…Anne Waldman, t. kilgore splake, Jerry Kamstra, Carolyn Cassidy, Michael Madsen, Davis Amram, Gerald Nicosia, Frank Messina…to name but a few of the Beat persuasion, who know the words, the way, and the music…
Here’s a little taste of the book, starting with Ron Whitehead, who captures the essence of the Beat goes on…and ending with an excerpt from Rob Zoschke’s piece…how we got to where we are…Norbert Blei
Norb Blei discusses Reflections upon the 50th anniversary…Jack Kerouac’s On the Road with the book’s editors Ron Whitehead and Rob Zoschke. Just click on the image to the left to listen to it, or just here…
“THE” BOOK, the Voices, the Movement, the Never-Ending HeartBEAT
Reflections upon the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD. Edited by Ron Whitehead and Robert M. Zoschke. Published in Heaven Books. Louisville, Kentucky, 2007 175 pp, Illustrated, $25 The book is available here( http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/ron-whitehead-robert-m-zoschke-reflections-upon-the-50th-anniversary-of-jack-kerouac’s-on-the-road/)
My contention: The Beat never stopped with the death of Kerouac. Jack left the American road a little early, hit the dead-end waiting for us all, but left the roadmap in book after book, poem after poem, word after word humming down the centerline of every highway leading us on.
You can’t NOT get lost. LOST is the way.
What Kerouac may have never seen in the distance is just how long the road was, just how far many continue to follow it all over America, all over the world.
This one fine book by Ron Whitehead, Leader of the SOUTHERN BEAT BRANCH (Kentucky) world-class performer-poet of substance, sass, sagacity and co-editor, Robert M. Zoschke, wise/true-talkin’ poet with hard and fast lines on Chicago streets and Northern climes, is testament to Time’s tick-tock Beat, Kerouac’s to be-continued connections…essays. photos, artwork, stories and poems. 46 contributors, each with his/her own roadmap to the journey within. With the Ghost of Jack holding a candle to the dark…to get here from there, THIS way…
For openers, venerable Ferlinghetti (High Priest to a life writ to move, follow your own directions) is on the front cover—a picture-poem to Neal & Jack; the back cover, by veteran chronicler of the Beat, Christopher Felver. filmmaker and photographer.
Inside, cover to cover…Anne Waldman, t. kilgore splake, Jerry Kamstra, Carolyn Cassidy, Michael Madsen, Davis Amram, Gerald Nicosia, Frank Messina…to name but a few of the Beat persuasion, who know the words, the way, and the music…
Here’s a little taste of the book, starting with Ron Whitehead, who captures the essence of the Beat goes on…and ending with an excerpt from Rob Zoschke’s piece…how we got to where we are…Norbert Blei
Norb Blei discusses Reflections upon the 50th anniversary…Jack Kerouac’s On the Road with the book’s editors Ron Whitehead and Rob Zoschke. Just click on the image to the left to listen to it, or just here…
Cassady Day
by Levi Asher February 4, 2008 1:35 am
Neal Cassady, the real-life model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On The Road, died forty years ago today,
on February 4, 1968. There was recently much celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of On The Road,
and it provides a sad perspective to put these anniversaries together and realize that On The Road gave Neal Cassady
exactly one decade of literary "fame" before he died at the age of 42.
This anniversary seemed like a good occasion for me to email Carolyn Cassady a few wide-ranging questions,
which she was kind enough to answer from her home in London:
Levi: So much has changed in the world since February 4th, 1968. Or has it? If Neal has been looking down on us all for
all these years, what do you think he would say about the state of the world in 2008?
Carolyn: If Neal were watching us since the time he departed this planet, I think he would feel as I do that it is in a very sad state. He was such a loving person, and there is so little evidence of that in the affairs of the world. Acquiring money and/or power at any cost appears to be the religion and goal. Every time there's an "improvement" in products, they're much worse. Selfishness.
Levi: I know that you and Neal were interested together in the teachings of spiritual leader Edgar Cayce (by the way, I had a piano teacher as a kid who was a Caycean, so I know a little about it). Have you remained involved with this movement, and what do you think about it today?
Carolyn:Neal and I used the Cayce connection as the springboard for further studies in occult lore. We didn't continue after the first few years with just that. We explored all the scriptures from early Eastern systems, the Theosophists, Max Heindel, etc etc., and I became interested in Astrology. I am poor at interpretation, but I get a little. Otherwise, the teachings of that accumulated search and the present-day Truth movements, like Unity satisfy my needs nicely, and I try to live by the wisdom of the ages as best I can.
Levi: How do you feel about today's literature? What books have you recently enjoyed reading, and are there any newer writers you like, or any newer or older writers you can't stand?
Carolyn: I'm not an authority on today's literature. I read very few novels; I like biographies, documentaries and maybe historical novels. I have read more English writers since moving here, and I havaen't read any more American ones. I have enjoyed Julian Barnes, Jude Morgan, Roddy Doyle, Peter Ackroyd to name a few. I do read reviews in literary magazines so remain interested in trends.
Levi: Can you think of any surprising truth or fact about Neal Cassady (or about the times you spent with Neal and Jack Kerouac and the rest of the gang) that the world does not yet know?
Carolyn: My dear, my book is full of surprising truths about the lads, but not enough people read it or read it carefully. So there are still masses of myths and misinformation everywhere.
Levi: Is the date of February 4, 2008 going to be an especially significant one for you and your children? And do you have any thoughts you'd like to share on this 40th anniversary?
Carolyn: I remember February 4 with affection both for Neal and for Anne Murphy, who's birthday it is. I understand the Beat Museum in San Francisco is celebrating Neal's birthday on the 8th, but I am not included in that in any way -- except Neal's children will be there. I always think of Neal with gratitude for teaching me so much wisdom about life; I feel privileged to have known him, and I miss him always. He was a unique individual in spades.
* * * * *
by Levi Asher February 4, 2008 1:35 am
Neal Cassady, the real-life model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On The Road, died forty years ago today,
on February 4, 1968. There was recently much celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of On The Road,
and it provides a sad perspective to put these anniversaries together and realize that On The Road gave Neal Cassady
exactly one decade of literary "fame" before he died at the age of 42.
This anniversary seemed like a good occasion for me to email Carolyn Cassady a few wide-ranging questions,
which she was kind enough to answer from her home in London:
Levi: So much has changed in the world since February 4th, 1968. Or has it? If Neal has been looking down on us all for
all these years, what do you think he would say about the state of the world in 2008?
Carolyn: If Neal were watching us since the time he departed this planet, I think he would feel as I do that it is in a very sad state. He was such a loving person, and there is so little evidence of that in the affairs of the world. Acquiring money and/or power at any cost appears to be the religion and goal. Every time there's an "improvement" in products, they're much worse. Selfishness.
Levi: I know that you and Neal were interested together in the teachings of spiritual leader Edgar Cayce (by the way, I had a piano teacher as a kid who was a Caycean, so I know a little about it). Have you remained involved with this movement, and what do you think about it today?
Carolyn:Neal and I used the Cayce connection as the springboard for further studies in occult lore. We didn't continue after the first few years with just that. We explored all the scriptures from early Eastern systems, the Theosophists, Max Heindel, etc etc., and I became interested in Astrology. I am poor at interpretation, but I get a little. Otherwise, the teachings of that accumulated search and the present-day Truth movements, like Unity satisfy my needs nicely, and I try to live by the wisdom of the ages as best I can.
Levi: How do you feel about today's literature? What books have you recently enjoyed reading, and are there any newer writers you like, or any newer or older writers you can't stand?
Carolyn: I'm not an authority on today's literature. I read very few novels; I like biographies, documentaries and maybe historical novels. I have read more English writers since moving here, and I havaen't read any more American ones. I have enjoyed Julian Barnes, Jude Morgan, Roddy Doyle, Peter Ackroyd to name a few. I do read reviews in literary magazines so remain interested in trends.
Levi: Can you think of any surprising truth or fact about Neal Cassady (or about the times you spent with Neal and Jack Kerouac and the rest of the gang) that the world does not yet know?
Carolyn: My dear, my book is full of surprising truths about the lads, but not enough people read it or read it carefully. So there are still masses of myths and misinformation everywhere.
Levi: Is the date of February 4, 2008 going to be an especially significant one for you and your children? And do you have any thoughts you'd like to share on this 40th anniversary?
Carolyn: I remember February 4 with affection both for Neal and for Anne Murphy, who's birthday it is. I understand the Beat Museum in San Francisco is celebrating Neal's birthday on the 8th, but I am not included in that in any way -- except Neal's children will be there. I always think of Neal with gratitude for teaching me so much wisdom about life; I feel privileged to have known him, and I miss him always. He was a unique individual in spades.
* * * * *
Friday, February 1, 2008
O C T O B E R 1 9 5 7
A review of Jack Kerouac's On the Road
by Phoebe Lou Adams
JACK KEROUAC'S second novel, On the Road (Viking, $3.95), concerns the adventures of the narrator,
Sal Paradise, a war veteran who is studying on the G.I. bill and writing a book between drinks, and his
younger friend, Dean Moriarty late of reform school. Neither of these boys can sit still. They race back
and forth from New York to San Francisco, they charge from one party to another, they tour jazz joints,
and Dean complicates the pattern by continually getting married. At odd moments they devote a little
thought to finding Dean's father, a confirmed drunk who is presumably bumming around somewhere
west of the Mississippi.
Dean is the more important character. Mr. Kerouac makes considerable play with his disorderly childhood,
his hitch in the reform school, and his rootlessness, but his activities seem less a search for stability than
a determined pursuit of euphoria. Dope, liquor, girls, jazz, and fast cars, in that order, are Dean's ladder
to nirvana, and so much time is spent on them that it is hard to keep track of any larger pattern behind
all the scuttling about.
The trouble is a matter of repetition. Everything Mr. Kerouac has to tell about Dean has been told in the
first third of the book, and what comes later is a series of variations on the same theme. It's a good theme --
the inability of a young man of enormous energy, considerable intelligence, and a kind of muddled talent
for absorbing experience to find any congenial place for himself in organized society -- but the variations
are all so much alike that they begin to cancel each other out.
Return to Flashback: Kerouac and the Beats.
However, the novel contains a great deal of excellent writing. Mr. Kerouac has a distinctive style, part
severe simplicity, part hep-cat jargon, part baroque fireworks. He uses each of these elements with a sure
touch, works innumerable combinations and contrasts with them, and never slackens the speed of his narrative,
which proceeds, like Dean at the wheel, at a steady hundred and ten miles an hour.
The book is most readable. It disappoints because it constantly promises a revelation or a conclusion of real
importance and general applicability, and cannot deliver any such conclusion because Dean is more convincing
as an eccentric than as a representative of any segment of humanity.
Copyright © 1957 by Phoebe Lou Adams. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; October 1957; Ladder to Nirvana; Volume 200, No. 4; pages 178 - 180.
A review of Jack Kerouac's On the Road
by Phoebe Lou Adams
JACK KEROUAC'S second novel, On the Road (Viking, $3.95), concerns the adventures of the narrator,
Sal Paradise, a war veteran who is studying on the G.I. bill and writing a book between drinks, and his
younger friend, Dean Moriarty late of reform school. Neither of these boys can sit still. They race back
and forth from New York to San Francisco, they charge from one party to another, they tour jazz joints,
and Dean complicates the pattern by continually getting married. At odd moments they devote a little
thought to finding Dean's father, a confirmed drunk who is presumably bumming around somewhere
west of the Mississippi.
Dean is the more important character. Mr. Kerouac makes considerable play with his disorderly childhood,
his hitch in the reform school, and his rootlessness, but his activities seem less a search for stability than
a determined pursuit of euphoria. Dope, liquor, girls, jazz, and fast cars, in that order, are Dean's ladder
to nirvana, and so much time is spent on them that it is hard to keep track of any larger pattern behind
all the scuttling about.
The trouble is a matter of repetition. Everything Mr. Kerouac has to tell about Dean has been told in the
first third of the book, and what comes later is a series of variations on the same theme. It's a good theme --
the inability of a young man of enormous energy, considerable intelligence, and a kind of muddled talent
for absorbing experience to find any congenial place for himself in organized society -- but the variations
are all so much alike that they begin to cancel each other out.
Return to Flashback: Kerouac and the Beats.
However, the novel contains a great deal of excellent writing. Mr. Kerouac has a distinctive style, part
severe simplicity, part hep-cat jargon, part baroque fireworks. He uses each of these elements with a sure
touch, works innumerable combinations and contrasts with them, and never slackens the speed of his narrative,
which proceeds, like Dean at the wheel, at a steady hundred and ten miles an hour.
The book is most readable. It disappoints because it constantly promises a revelation or a conclusion of real
importance and general applicability, and cannot deliver any such conclusion because Dean is more convincing
as an eccentric than as a representative of any segment of humanity.
Copyright © 1957 by Phoebe Lou Adams. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; October 1957; Ladder to Nirvana; Volume 200, No. 4; pages 178 - 180.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
Sábado, 1 de Dezembro, 22 horas
Festa de encerramento: Sábado, 1 de Dezembro, a partir das 22 horas. Entrada: 3 euros. Espaço Avenida, Avenida da Liberdade, 211, Lisboa.
CONCERTO: Tó Trips (Dead Combo, ex-Lulu Blind) apresenta Memory Strings e convida Tiago Gomes.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Catálogo
O catálogo da exposição já está disponível: pode ser descarregado (download), em formato "pdf" (3,3 MB), a partir do "site" de Mariana Viegas. No Sábado, dia 1 de Dezembro, há festa de encerramento.
Click to download the exhibition catalog (3.3 MB)
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Viagens
Teatro do Vestido, Carta-Oceano, de 31 de Outubro a 01 de Dezembro de 2007, de quarta a sá�bados, 22h, Pavilhã�o 27 - Hospital Jú�lio de Matos,� Av. do Brasil nº� 53
"Carta-Oceano, a partir da vida e obra do poeta Blaise Cendrars, �um manifesto, de quem parte e de quem n�ão vai a lado nenhum. �Uma celebraçã��o da viagem e do estar �à espera, do tempo que passou, das cartas que n�ão chegam no mundo que se tornou espesso demais para transitar".
Joana Craveiro estará, até dia 1 de Dezembro, no Pavilhão 27 do Hospital Júlio de Matos (Lisboa), com o Teatro do Vestido.
Paulo Brighenti expõe na Galeria Pedro Oliveira, no Porto, até 15 de Dezembro.
João Paulo Serafim apresenta a sua "Colecção de Fragmentos", até 20 de Dezembro, no Atelier EA+, em Ponta Delgada, Açores.
André Almeida e Sousa expõe na galeria Alecrim 50, Rua do Alecrim, 48-50, Lisboa. Até 28 de Dezembro.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
algumas fotografias
Victor d'Andrade, Richard Zenith e as suas preciosas colaborações. A Joana Craveiro também contribuiu para um belo fim de tarde, mas não tenho imagens.
24 de Novembro
Richard Zenith. Poeta
Victor d'Andrade. Actor
Não consegui desenhar a Joana Craveiro, actriz e encenadora. Foi pena porque gostei muito.
www.diariografico.com
Monday, November 26, 2007
Pelas estradas fora
ON THE ROAD
Here we go while morning life hums
In the sunlight’s golden ocean,
And upon our faces a freshness comes,
A freshness whose soul is motion.
Up the hills, up! Down to the vales!
Now in the plains more slow!
Now in swift turns the shaken cart reels.
Soundless in sand now we go!
But we must come to some village or town,
And our eyes show sorrow at it.
Could we for ever and ever go on
In the sun and air that we hit;
On an infinite road, at a mighty pace,
With endless and free commotion,
With the sun ever round us and on our face
A freshness whose soul is motion!
26-10-1908
Alexander Search (Fernando Pessoa) in Richard Zenith (org.), Fernando Pessoa - Poesia Inglesa, Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim, 2007, volume VI da colecção "Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa", onde o poema tem tradução de Luísa Freire
No Sábado, dia 24 de Novembro, o Projecto On the Road recebeu, no Espaço Avenida, Richard Zenith, Victor d'Andrade e Joana Craveiro.
Richard Zenith (poeta), leu e contextualizou excertos de The Road (1907), de Jack London e de On the Road (1957), de Jack Kerouac e o poema de Fernando Pessoa (sob o pré-heterónimo Alexander Search) On the Road (1908). Leituras em inglês, entre as fotografias de carcaças de automóveis, de Manuel Duarte.
Victor d'Andrade (actor) leu e encenou, na sala ocupada pelos trabalhos de João Paulo Serafim, textos de Allen Ginsberg: permanecem os vestígios do seu percurso pelo poema Death to Van Gogh's Ear (1957), ditado pela voz gravada de Ginsberg.
Sob os trabalhos de Paulo Brighenti, Joana Craveiro (encenadora e actriz), leu e encenou excertos de Off the Road: My Years With Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg (1990), de Carolyn Cassady.
Em breve, serão colocadas "online" imagens das leituras de Sábado.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Sábado, 24 Novembro, 17 horas
Jack Kerouac, "The bottoms of my shoes..."
LEITURA DE TEXTOS DA BEAT GENERATION
24 de NOVEMBRO às 17H | ESPAÇO AVENIDA, Avenida da Liberdade, 211, 1º - Lisboa
JOANA CRAVEIRO (encenadora, actriz)
VICTOR D'ANDRADE (actor)
RICHARD ZENITH (poeta)
project on the road: remembering kerouac
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
"Road Movies" na Cinemateca (Dezembro)
"Pull my daisy / tip my cup / all my doors are open / Cut my thoughts / for coconuts / all my eggs are broken / Jack my Arden / gate my shades / woe my road is spoken / Silk my garden / rose my days / now my prayers awaken"
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Pull My Daisy (19??)
ROAD MOVIES: LEMBRANDO JACK KEROUAC
Dezembro, na Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema,
Rua Barata Salgueiro, 39, Lisboa
(Colaboração entre o Projecto On the Road: Remembering Jack Kerouac e a Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema)
Pull My Daisy, 1959
REAL.: Robert Frank e Alfred Leslie
4-12-07 19:30
Candy Mountain, 1988
REAL.: Robert Frank e Rudy Wurlitzer
4-12-07 19:30
Sans Toit ni Loi, 1985
REAL.: Agnès Varda
17-12-07 22:00
Route One USA, 1989
REAL.: Robert Kramer
18-12-07 19:30
My Own Private Idaho, 1991
REAL.: Gus Van Saint
18-12-07 21:30
Continuação do ciclo iniciado em Novembro .
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Rodando
Um único e magnífico parágrafo, de vários quarteirões, rodando, como a própria estrada.
Allen Ginsberg
Friday, November 9, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Off the road
Monday, November 5, 2007
"...but this could never be like Kansas"
National Geographic Road Maps from 1956 (Kansas)True cross-country interstates like Interstate 80 did not yet exist when Kerouac made the trek he describes in On The Road in the 1950s. National Geographic Road Maps from 1956 reveal the complex and intricate system of roads Kerouac navigated.
Bridget Scott, The Tenor of the Times - Jack Kerouac and the Era of the 1960s. Os "links" não fazem parte do texto original
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Horizontalidade
medium.jpg)
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Scrolls
Hans Namuth, Pollock Painting, 1950, fotografia (gelatina e prata), National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Publicada na "Life", em 1951Hans Namuth e Paul Falkenberg, Jackson Pollock, 1951 ( excerto , em loop; som não síncrono)
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Dentro de uma hora, Dean e eu chegávamos ao novo apartamento da minha tia em Long Island, e ela achava-se em complicadas negociações com uns pintores que eram amigos da família, discutindo o preço, enquanto nós subíamos as escadas vindos de São Francisco.
- Sal, o Dean pode cá ficar alguns dias e depois tem de ir-se embora, compreendes? - preveniu-me a minha tia.
Terminara a viagem. À noite, Dean e eu fomos dar um passeio por entre os gasómetros e pontes férreas e luzes de nevoeiro de Long Island. Lembro-me dele debaixo de um candeeiro de rua.
- Quando passámos pelo outro candeeiro eu ia dizer-te mais uma coisa, Sal, mas agora vou continuar entre parêntesis com um novo raciocínio e, quando passarmos ao seguinte, eu regresso ao assunto original, concordas?
Certamente que concordava. Estávamos tão habituados a viajar que tínhamos de andar por toda Long Island, mas não havia mais terra, só o oceano Atlântico, e era esse o nosso limite. Demos as mãos e concordámos que seríamos amigos para sempre.
Jack Kerouac, Pela Estrada Fora, Lisboa, Relógio d'Água, 1999, pág. 323
Friday, October 26, 2007
Road movie #1
Uma viagem de autoconhecimento, sob o efeito alucinatório de um tornado. O regresso a casa da tia Em é definitivo ("And I'm not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all!"): a viagem é só um episódio.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
PROJECTO On the Road. Remembering Kerouac. http://rememberingjackkerouac.blogspot.com/
CONCEITO O passado dia 5 de Setembro marcou 50 anos desde que foi publicado On the Road, o mais famoso livro de Jack Kerouac. A efeméride juntou 13 artistas portugueses que apresentam uma exposição conjunta. A proposta dos artistas percorre várias disciplinas do desenho à fotografia, do video ao som, com cada artista a propor uma leitura sobre o livro, o universo de Kerouac e/ou de toda a beat generation, deixando em aberto possíveis leituras para outras zonas da criação.
ACTIVIDADES PARALELAS - Ciclo de cinema na Cinemateca : "Road Movie" de 5 a 30 de Novembro - Leituras de textos da Beat Generation no Espaço da exposição: data a confirmar- Concerto de encerramento a 1 de Dezembro com Tó Trips (Dead Combo, ex-Lulu Blind)
LOCAIS Avenida da Liberdade, n.º 211, 2º Andar, em Lisboa. (EXPOSIÇÃO) Rua Barata Salgueiro, nº 39. (CINEMATECA)
DATA Inauguração: 9 de Novembro. Encerramento: 1 de Dezembro.
HORÁRIO De quarta a sexta das 17h às 20h, Sábado das 15h às 20h.
ARTISTAS PARTICIPANTES
André Almeida e Sousa
Nasceu em S.Miguel em 1974. Vive em Lisboa. Concluiu o curso completo de Pintura no Arco onde é Professor. Expõe individualmente desde 2000 em Lisboa, Braga e São Miguel, Açores. Prémio Artca em 2006. A sua obra está representada entre outras nas colecções do Arco e do Museu Carlos Machado, em São Miguel.
Bruno Sequeira
Lisboa, 1966. Curso Avançado de Fotografia Maumaus entre 93-95. Bolseiro da Fundação Oriente em 97. Entre 1994 e 2005 foi professor de fotografia na Escolas: Maumaus, António Arroio e Ar.Co, em 2006 fundou o Atelier deLisboa. Expõe individualmente desde 96. Presente nas colecções PLMJ, Museu da Imagem e CPF entre outras.
Eduardo Salavisa.
Nasceu em Lisboa onde vive e trabalha. Licenciou-se em 1980 em Design de Equipamento na Escola de Belas Artes de Lisboa. As suas pinturas e desenhos foram expostos em diversas ocasiões. Desde há algum tempo que vem desenvolvendo o seu projecto pessoal Diários Gráficos. É ainda professor no ensino secundário na Escola Secundária Pedro Nunes, em Lisboa.
João Grama
Lisboa, 1975. Frequenta o último ano do curso avançado de Fotografia do Arco. Fotografa e escreve regularmente para a imprensa, destacando as colaborações actuais com o Expresso, Publico e com o extinto suplemento DNA.
João Paulo Serafim
Paris, 1974. Vive em Lisboa. Estudou Artes Plásticas no Arco, tendo igualmente aí completado o plano de estudos de fotografia. Em 2005 participou na Master Class do programa Gulbenkian Criatividade e Criação Artística. Expõe regularmente desde 1998. A sua obra está representada nas colecções do BES, do CAM, do Banco Privado entre outras.
José António Leitão
Luanda, 1962. Vive e trabalha em Parede. Mestre em História da Arte (F.C.S.H.-U.N.L., 1990). Professor do Departamento de História e Teoria da Arte do Ar.Co-Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual, desde 1992. Leccionou História da Arte nos Maumaus-Centro de Contaminação Visual (1995-96) e no Museu Nacional do Azulejo (1998-99). Publicou diversos textos sobre Lisboa, em periódicos e obras colectivas.
José Pedro Cortes
Porto, 1976. Vive e trabalha em Lisboa. Frequentou o Ar.co, realizou o Master of Arts Photography no Kent Institut of Art & Design (UK) e Master Class do Programa Gulbenkian de Criatividade e Criação Artística. Exposições individuais no Museu da Imagem, Centro Português de Fotografia, White Space Gallery (Londres) e muito recentemente em Lisboa, na Jorge Shirley. Em 2006 publicou o seu primeiro livro "Silence" pela Pierre Von Kleist Editions.
Manuel Duarte
Nasceu em Lisboa em 1971. Frequentou o Curso intensivo de Fotografia na ETIC e no IADE, tendo sido um dos participantes na Master Class do programa Gulbenkian Criatividade e Criação Artística.
Margarida Gouveia
Torres Vedras, 1977. Iniciou a sua formação artística na Academia de Artes Visuais de Macau. Em 2000 licenciou-se em Design Visual pelo Instituto de Arte e Design em Lisboa e entrou para o Curso Básico de Fotografia no Ar.Co.. Como bolseira da Kodak, frequentou o curso Avançado que concluiu em 2004. Foi bolseira da Fundação Oriente em 2003.
Mariana Viegas
Lisboa 1969. Estudos de Fotografia e Artes Plásticas no Ar.Co em Lisboa. Em 2005/06 foi bolseira da Fundação Gulbenkian e da Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento no Location One, em Nova Iorque. Participou em diversas exposições em Portugal, Paris e Nova Iorque. A sua última exposição individual, Fuga, foi apresentada recentemente na Agencia de Arte Vera Cortes em Lisboa.
Martim Dias Ramos
Lisboa, 1983. Frequentou o curso básico de Fotografia no Arco. Estagiou no Jornal Público em 2006. Desde Janeiro de 2007 é fotógrafo freelance do colectivo Kameraphoto.
Paulo Brighenti
Lisboa, 1968. Frequentou o curso de Pintura e de Artes Plásticas do Arco, onde é professor. Realizou variadíssimas exposições individuais e colectivas em Lisboa, Porto e Londres. A sua obra está presente nas colecções da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Arpad-Szenes, Museu do Chiado, entre outras. Em 2002 recebeu o prémio revelação da Fundação Arpad-Szenes.
Paulo Pascoal
Lisboa, 1969. Participou em várias exposições colectivas, como na Colecção da FLAD, na Fundação de Serralves, e realizou ainda várias exposições individuais. Foi o vencedor da V Bienal de Fotografia de Vila Franca de Xira. Em 2003 participou da Exposição "Sem Limites" na CAV em Coimbra. As suas obras fazem parte das colecções da Ar.Co, Lisboa, da Câmara Municipal de Vila Franca de Xira, da FLAD e da PLMJ - Sociedade de Advogados em Lisboa.
CONCEITO O passado dia 5 de Setembro marcou 50 anos desde que foi publicado On the Road, o mais famoso livro de Jack Kerouac. A efeméride juntou 13 artistas portugueses que apresentam uma exposição conjunta. A proposta dos artistas percorre várias disciplinas do desenho à fotografia, do video ao som, com cada artista a propor uma leitura sobre o livro, o universo de Kerouac e/ou de toda a beat generation, deixando em aberto possíveis leituras para outras zonas da criação.
ACTIVIDADES PARALELAS - Ciclo de cinema na Cinemateca : "Road Movie" de 5 a 30 de Novembro - Leituras de textos da Beat Generation no Espaço da exposição: data a confirmar- Concerto de encerramento a 1 de Dezembro com Tó Trips (Dead Combo, ex-Lulu Blind)
LOCAIS Avenida da Liberdade, n.º 211, 2º Andar, em Lisboa. (EXPOSIÇÃO) Rua Barata Salgueiro, nº 39. (CINEMATECA)
DATA Inauguração: 9 de Novembro. Encerramento: 1 de Dezembro.
HORÁRIO De quarta a sexta das 17h às 20h, Sábado das 15h às 20h.
ARTISTAS PARTICIPANTES
André Almeida e Sousa
Nasceu em S.Miguel em 1974. Vive em Lisboa. Concluiu o curso completo de Pintura no Arco onde é Professor. Expõe individualmente desde 2000 em Lisboa, Braga e São Miguel, Açores. Prémio Artca em 2006. A sua obra está representada entre outras nas colecções do Arco e do Museu Carlos Machado, em São Miguel.
Bruno Sequeira
Lisboa, 1966. Curso Avançado de Fotografia Maumaus entre 93-95. Bolseiro da Fundação Oriente em 97. Entre 1994 e 2005 foi professor de fotografia na Escolas: Maumaus, António Arroio e Ar.Co, em 2006 fundou o Atelier deLisboa. Expõe individualmente desde 96. Presente nas colecções PLMJ, Museu da Imagem e CPF entre outras.
Eduardo Salavisa.
Nasceu em Lisboa onde vive e trabalha. Licenciou-se em 1980 em Design de Equipamento na Escola de Belas Artes de Lisboa. As suas pinturas e desenhos foram expostos em diversas ocasiões. Desde há algum tempo que vem desenvolvendo o seu projecto pessoal Diários Gráficos. É ainda professor no ensino secundário na Escola Secundária Pedro Nunes, em Lisboa.
João Grama
Lisboa, 1975. Frequenta o último ano do curso avançado de Fotografia do Arco. Fotografa e escreve regularmente para a imprensa, destacando as colaborações actuais com o Expresso, Publico e com o extinto suplemento DNA.
João Paulo Serafim
Paris, 1974. Vive em Lisboa. Estudou Artes Plásticas no Arco, tendo igualmente aí completado o plano de estudos de fotografia. Em 2005 participou na Master Class do programa Gulbenkian Criatividade e Criação Artística. Expõe regularmente desde 1998. A sua obra está representada nas colecções do BES, do CAM, do Banco Privado entre outras.
José António Leitão
Luanda, 1962. Vive e trabalha em Parede. Mestre em História da Arte (F.C.S.H.-U.N.L., 1990). Professor do Departamento de História e Teoria da Arte do Ar.Co-Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual, desde 1992. Leccionou História da Arte nos Maumaus-Centro de Contaminação Visual (1995-96) e no Museu Nacional do Azulejo (1998-99). Publicou diversos textos sobre Lisboa, em periódicos e obras colectivas.
José Pedro Cortes
Porto, 1976. Vive e trabalha em Lisboa. Frequentou o Ar.co, realizou o Master of Arts Photography no Kent Institut of Art & Design (UK) e Master Class do Programa Gulbenkian de Criatividade e Criação Artística. Exposições individuais no Museu da Imagem, Centro Português de Fotografia, White Space Gallery (Londres) e muito recentemente em Lisboa, na Jorge Shirley. Em 2006 publicou o seu primeiro livro "Silence" pela Pierre Von Kleist Editions.
Manuel Duarte
Nasceu em Lisboa em 1971. Frequentou o Curso intensivo de Fotografia na ETIC e no IADE, tendo sido um dos participantes na Master Class do programa Gulbenkian Criatividade e Criação Artística.
Margarida Gouveia
Torres Vedras, 1977. Iniciou a sua formação artística na Academia de Artes Visuais de Macau. Em 2000 licenciou-se em Design Visual pelo Instituto de Arte e Design em Lisboa e entrou para o Curso Básico de Fotografia no Ar.Co.. Como bolseira da Kodak, frequentou o curso Avançado que concluiu em 2004. Foi bolseira da Fundação Oriente em 2003.
Mariana Viegas
Lisboa 1969. Estudos de Fotografia e Artes Plásticas no Ar.Co em Lisboa. Em 2005/06 foi bolseira da Fundação Gulbenkian e da Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento no Location One, em Nova Iorque. Participou em diversas exposições em Portugal, Paris e Nova Iorque. A sua última exposição individual, Fuga, foi apresentada recentemente na Agencia de Arte Vera Cortes em Lisboa.
Martim Dias Ramos
Lisboa, 1983. Frequentou o curso básico de Fotografia no Arco. Estagiou no Jornal Público em 2006. Desde Janeiro de 2007 é fotógrafo freelance do colectivo Kameraphoto.
Paulo Brighenti
Lisboa, 1968. Frequentou o curso de Pintura e de Artes Plásticas do Arco, onde é professor. Realizou variadíssimas exposições individuais e colectivas em Lisboa, Porto e Londres. A sua obra está presente nas colecções da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Arpad-Szenes, Museu do Chiado, entre outras. Em 2002 recebeu o prémio revelação da Fundação Arpad-Szenes.
Paulo Pascoal
Lisboa, 1969. Participou em várias exposições colectivas, como na Colecção da FLAD, na Fundação de Serralves, e realizou ainda várias exposições individuais. Foi o vencedor da V Bienal de Fotografia de Vila Franca de Xira. Em 2003 participou da Exposição "Sem Limites" na CAV em Coimbra. As suas obras fazem parte das colecções da Ar.Co, Lisboa, da Câmara Municipal de Vila Franca de Xira, da FLAD e da PLMJ - Sociedade de Advogados em Lisboa.
chicagotribune.com
BOOK TOUR
Revisiting sites from 'On the Road'
50 years later, could Sal and Dean find their haunts?
By Christopher Reynolds
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Jack Kerouac slept where?Fifty years ago, the Beat Generation
writer's novel, "On the Road," hit bookstores, its story told in
breathless, jazz-inflected cadences, its plot lifted from the author's
life. The plot follows two friends and their assorted pals on four
cross-country road trips, their adventures packed with enough fast
chatter to make Aaron Sorkin's head spin, enough drink and drugs
and casual sex to satisfy a platoon of rock stars, enough discovery and
enthusiasm and motion and exclamation points and careening overloaded
sentences to give any reader a pang of wanderlust.But have you looked at
those pages lately? If you do and you're over 30, Sal Paradise and Dean
Moriarty (Kerouac's names for himself and his mercurial friend Neal Cassady)
may seem more desperate and doomed than you remember. And the North
America they're exploring may seem far away indeed. (For details, consult
the blog, littourature.blogspot.com.)As you check this 21st-century charting
of Sal's travels, remember that it was 1948 and 1949 when Kerouac and
Cassady made the trips that dominate "On the Road," 1951 when Kerouac
wrote the bulk of the book and 1957 when Viking published it. Cassady died
at 41 in 1968, Kerouac at 47 in 1969. In both deaths, alcohol was implicated.
As for the road then and the road now:• In 1957, Greyhound ruled the roads,
and the interstate highway system was in its infancy. There were 40 McDonald's
restaurants, fewer than 75 Holiday Inns, and there was one San Francisco bookshop
called City Lights, run by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.Now, Greyhound and its
parent company have been through bankruptcy twice in the last 20 years.
The interstate highway system has grown to more than 45,000 miles, allowing
for faster trips and less local color. There are more than 30,000 McDonald's
locations and 1,384 Holiday Inns worldwide. There's still one City Lights, now
54 years old, on Columbus Avenue, still run by Ferlinghetti.• In the book,
Moriarty takes a girlfriend to Hector's, a cafeteria near 50th Street in
Manhattan's Times Square, for "beautiful big glazed cakes and cream puffs,"
and Paradise adds that Hector's "has always been a big symbol of New York
for Dean." Later, Sal and Dean dig the jazz at Birdland, a club on Broadway
near 52nd Street. Later still, Sal and Dean eat franks and beans in a Riker's
coffee shop on Seventh Avenue.Now, Hector's is no more. Birdland closed in
1965 (although another club with that name does business now on West 44th
Street). Riker's is gone, too. (But the company behind that chain, Restaurant
Associates Corp., has endured and evolved.)• In the book, Sal Paradise takes
a bus to Chicago and gets a room at the Y.Now, the Chicago YMCA doesn't
accept short-term overnight guests and hasn't for at least a decade, a
spokeswoman says. The YMCA's Lawson House, which goes back to 1931
in central Chicago, houses about 600 residents, most of them working poor,
formerly homeless and the mentally ill, who pay $375 a month and up.• In
the book, Sal reaches Cheyenne, Wyo., during Wild West Week, is appalled by
the sight of fat businessmen in boots and 10-gallon hats, their wives outfitted
as cowgirls. "In my first shot at the West I was seeing to what absurd devices
it had fallen to keep its proud tradition," he says. He winds up sleeping in the
bus station.Now, Cheyenne still throws its annual party. But for 111 years it
has been called Frontier Days. This year's bill in July included a rodeo, art and
air shows, pancake breakfasts, a carnival and concerts by Bon Jovi and Reba
McEntire. The old bus station has been leveled, and the old train depot next
door is a museum.• In the book, Sal stays with friends in Denver, decides not
to take a job hauling produce at the Camargo market and gets cornered into
attending an opera (Beethoven's "Fidelio") in nearby Central City. The rest
of the time, he knocks around bars and pool halls on Larimer Street and Lower
Downtown, including the Windsor Hotel, "once Denver's great Gold Rush hotel,"
says Sal; it's said to have historic bullet holes in the walls.Now, Larimer and LoDo
have been renovated. The Denargo Market, a 29-acre area north of downtown, has
been proposed for redevelopment. In Central City, the 1878 opera house is up to four productions every summer. The Windsor was leveled in 1959. Meanwhile, a Denver
developer has put up Jack Kerouac Lofts (60 units on Huron Street near Union
Station, most priced at $300,000 to $400,000).• In the book, Sal and his Bay
Area friend, Remi, spend an outlandish $50 on a disastrous dinner for five at
"a swank restaurant" called Alfred's in San Francisco's North Beach. Now, Alfred's
has moved a few blocks from Broadway to 659 Merchant St. A 30-ounce
porterhouse costs $40.• In the book, Sausalito is a "little fishing village." Now, just
try to find a room on a Saturday night for less than $150.• In the book, • Sal and
his girlfriend, Terry, meet on the way to Los Angeles and eat "in a cafeteria downtown
which was decorated to look like a grotto, with metal tits spurting everywhere and
great impersonal stone buttockses belonging to deities and soapy Neptune. People
ate lugubrious meals around the waterfalls, their faces green with marine sorrow.
"Now, one Clifton's Cafeteria remains, the Brookdale at 648 S. Broadway, and it did
have a 20-foot waterfall, along with a faux redwood forest and chapel that are still there. But Sal was probably talking about another Clifton's -- the late, lamented Pacific Seas at 618 S. Olive St., which had 12 waterfalls and all manner of Polynesian flourishes. It closed in June 1960.• In the book, Sal and Dean wander Mexico City "in a frenzy and a dream. We ate beautiful steaks for forty-eight cents in a strange tiled Mexican cafeteria with generations of marimba musicians."Sal never mentions a name for that eatery, but it sounds a lot like Sanborns' La Casa de los Azulejos, a city landmark (and cafeteria and department store) that dates to the 16th century. Famed for its tile work and murals, the building has included a restaurant since about 1919.• In 1957, "On the Road" (hardcover edition, $3.95) was released in the first week of September to a rapturous review from The New York Times. That same week, Ford rolled out the Edsel, priced at about $2,500 and up. No rapture.Now, Kerouac's original 120-foot-long typescript scroll for the book is on tour, having sold at auction in 2001 for $2.4 million. Lately, rare-book dealers have been offering first-edition copies of "On the Road" for as much as $8,000. You sometimes can buy an Edsel for less.
BOOK TOUR
Revisiting sites from 'On the Road'
50 years later, could Sal and Dean find their haunts?
By Christopher Reynolds
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Jack Kerouac slept where?Fifty years ago, the Beat Generation
writer's novel, "On the Road," hit bookstores, its story told in
breathless, jazz-inflected cadences, its plot lifted from the author's
life. The plot follows two friends and their assorted pals on four
cross-country road trips, their adventures packed with enough fast
chatter to make Aaron Sorkin's head spin, enough drink and drugs
and casual sex to satisfy a platoon of rock stars, enough discovery and
enthusiasm and motion and exclamation points and careening overloaded
sentences to give any reader a pang of wanderlust.But have you looked at
those pages lately? If you do and you're over 30, Sal Paradise and Dean
Moriarty (Kerouac's names for himself and his mercurial friend Neal Cassady)
may seem more desperate and doomed than you remember. And the North
America they're exploring may seem far away indeed. (For details, consult
the blog, littourature.blogspot.com.)As you check this 21st-century charting
of Sal's travels, remember that it was 1948 and 1949 when Kerouac and
Cassady made the trips that dominate "On the Road," 1951 when Kerouac
wrote the bulk of the book and 1957 when Viking published it. Cassady died
at 41 in 1968, Kerouac at 47 in 1969. In both deaths, alcohol was implicated.
As for the road then and the road now:• In 1957, Greyhound ruled the roads,
and the interstate highway system was in its infancy. There were 40 McDonald's
restaurants, fewer than 75 Holiday Inns, and there was one San Francisco bookshop
called City Lights, run by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.Now, Greyhound and its
parent company have been through bankruptcy twice in the last 20 years.
The interstate highway system has grown to more than 45,000 miles, allowing
for faster trips and less local color. There are more than 30,000 McDonald's
locations and 1,384 Holiday Inns worldwide. There's still one City Lights, now
54 years old, on Columbus Avenue, still run by Ferlinghetti.• In the book,
Moriarty takes a girlfriend to Hector's, a cafeteria near 50th Street in
Manhattan's Times Square, for "beautiful big glazed cakes and cream puffs,"
and Paradise adds that Hector's "has always been a big symbol of New York
for Dean." Later, Sal and Dean dig the jazz at Birdland, a club on Broadway
near 52nd Street. Later still, Sal and Dean eat franks and beans in a Riker's
coffee shop on Seventh Avenue.Now, Hector's is no more. Birdland closed in
1965 (although another club with that name does business now on West 44th
Street). Riker's is gone, too. (But the company behind that chain, Restaurant
Associates Corp., has endured and evolved.)• In the book, Sal Paradise takes
a bus to Chicago and gets a room at the Y.Now, the Chicago YMCA doesn't
accept short-term overnight guests and hasn't for at least a decade, a
spokeswoman says. The YMCA's Lawson House, which goes back to 1931
in central Chicago, houses about 600 residents, most of them working poor,
formerly homeless and the mentally ill, who pay $375 a month and up.• In
the book, Sal reaches Cheyenne, Wyo., during Wild West Week, is appalled by
the sight of fat businessmen in boots and 10-gallon hats, their wives outfitted
as cowgirls. "In my first shot at the West I was seeing to what absurd devices
it had fallen to keep its proud tradition," he says. He winds up sleeping in the
bus station.Now, Cheyenne still throws its annual party. But for 111 years it
has been called Frontier Days. This year's bill in July included a rodeo, art and
air shows, pancake breakfasts, a carnival and concerts by Bon Jovi and Reba
McEntire. The old bus station has been leveled, and the old train depot next
door is a museum.• In the book, Sal stays with friends in Denver, decides not
to take a job hauling produce at the Camargo market and gets cornered into
attending an opera (Beethoven's "Fidelio") in nearby Central City. The rest
of the time, he knocks around bars and pool halls on Larimer Street and Lower
Downtown, including the Windsor Hotel, "once Denver's great Gold Rush hotel,"
says Sal; it's said to have historic bullet holes in the walls.Now, Larimer and LoDo
have been renovated. The Denargo Market, a 29-acre area north of downtown, has
been proposed for redevelopment. In Central City, the 1878 opera house is up to four productions every summer. The Windsor was leveled in 1959. Meanwhile, a Denver
developer has put up Jack Kerouac Lofts (60 units on Huron Street near Union
Station, most priced at $300,000 to $400,000).• In the book, Sal and his Bay
Area friend, Remi, spend an outlandish $50 on a disastrous dinner for five at
"a swank restaurant" called Alfred's in San Francisco's North Beach. Now, Alfred's
has moved a few blocks from Broadway to 659 Merchant St. A 30-ounce
porterhouse costs $40.• In the book, Sausalito is a "little fishing village." Now, just
try to find a room on a Saturday night for less than $150.• In the book, • Sal and
his girlfriend, Terry, meet on the way to Los Angeles and eat "in a cafeteria downtown
which was decorated to look like a grotto, with metal tits spurting everywhere and
great impersonal stone buttockses belonging to deities and soapy Neptune. People
ate lugubrious meals around the waterfalls, their faces green with marine sorrow.
"Now, one Clifton's Cafeteria remains, the Brookdale at 648 S. Broadway, and it did
have a 20-foot waterfall, along with a faux redwood forest and chapel that are still there. But Sal was probably talking about another Clifton's -- the late, lamented Pacific Seas at 618 S. Olive St., which had 12 waterfalls and all manner of Polynesian flourishes. It closed in June 1960.• In the book, Sal and Dean wander Mexico City "in a frenzy and a dream. We ate beautiful steaks for forty-eight cents in a strange tiled Mexican cafeteria with generations of marimba musicians."Sal never mentions a name for that eatery, but it sounds a lot like Sanborns' La Casa de los Azulejos, a city landmark (and cafeteria and department store) that dates to the 16th century. Famed for its tile work and murals, the building has included a restaurant since about 1919.• In 1957, "On the Road" (hardcover edition, $3.95) was released in the first week of September to a rapturous review from The New York Times. That same week, Ford rolled out the Edsel, priced at about $2,500 and up. No rapture.Now, Kerouac's original 120-foot-long typescript scroll for the book is on tour, having sold at auction in 2001 for $2.4 million. Lately, rare-book dealers have been offering first-edition copies of "On the Road" for as much as $8,000. You sometimes can buy an Edsel for less.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Sal Paradise at 50
'Over the past few weeks critics have taken another look at Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and this time their descriptions of it are very different.
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 2, 2007
A few decades ago, before TV commercials became obsessively concerned with prostate problems, Jack Kerouac wrote a book called “On the Road.” It was greeted rapturously by many as a burst of rollicking, joyous American energy. People quoted the famous lines: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn.”
In the Times review that launched the book, Gilbert Millstein raved that “On the Road” was a frenzied search for affirmation, a book that rejected the ennui, pessimism and cynicism of the Lost Generation. The heroes of the book savored everything, enjoyed everything, took pleasure in everything.
But, of course, all this was before the great geriatric pall settled over the world, before it became illegal to be cheerful.
“On the Road” turned 50 last month, and over the past few weeks a line of critics have taken another look at the book, and this time their descriptions of it, whether they like it or not, are very different.
“Above all else, the story is about loss,” George Mouratidis, one of the editors of a new edition, told The Age in Melbourne.
“It’s a book about death and the search for something meaningful to hold on to — the famous search for ‘IT,’ a truth larger than the self, which, of course, is never found,” wrote Meghan O’Rourke in Slate.
“Kerouac was this deep, lonely, melancholy man,” Hilary Holladay of the University of Massachusetts told The Philadelphia Inquirer. ”And if you read the book closely, you see that sense of loss and sorrow swelling on every page.”
“In truth, ‘On the Road’ is a book of broken dreams and failed plans,” wrote Ted Gioia in The Weekly Standard.
In Book Forum, David Ulin noted that “even the most frantic of Kerouac’s writings were really the sagas of a solitary seeker: poor, sad Jack, adrift in a world without mercy when he’d rather be ‘safe in Heaven dead.’ ”
According to these and other essays, “On the Road” is the book you want to read if you find Sylvia Plath too upbeat.
And of course they’re not wrong. There was a traditionalist, darker side to Kerouac, as John Leland emphasizes in his book “Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They’re Not What You Think).”
But reading through the anniversary commemorations, you feel the gravitational pull of the great Boomer Narcissus. All cultural artifacts have to be interpreted through whatever experiences the Baby Boomer generation is going through at that moment.
So a book formerly known for its youthful exuberance now becomes a book of gloomy middle-aged disillusion. (In 20 years, “The Cat in the Hat” will be read as a commentary on unreliable home health care workers.)
And there’s something else going on, something to do with the great taming professionalism of American culture. “On the Road” has been semi-incorporated into modern culture, but only parts have survived.
Students are taught “On the Road” in class, then must write tightly organized, double-spaced term papers on it, and if they don’t get an A, it hurts their admissions prospects. The book is still talked about, but often by professional intellectuals in panel discussions and career-building journal articles.
The effect is that some of the book comes through fine — the longing, the nostalgia for home, the darker pessimism.
But the real secret of the book was its discharge of youthful energy, the stupid, reckless energy that saves “On the Road” from being a dreadful novel. The delightful, moronic, unreflective fizz appears whenever the characters are happiest, when they are chasing girls or urinating from a swerving flatbed truck while going 70 miles an hour.
Those parts haven’t survived. They run afoul of the new gentility, the rules laid down by the health experts, childcare experts, guidance counselors, safety advisers, admissions officers, virtuecrats and employers to regulate the lives of the young. They seem dangerous, childish and embarrassing in the world of professionalized adolescence and professionalized intellect.
If Sal Paradise were alive today, he’d be a product of the new rules. He’d be a grad student with an interest in power yoga, on the road to the M.L.A. convention with a documentary about a politically engaged Manitoban dance troupe that he hopes will win a MacArthur grant. He’d be driving a Prius, going a conscientious 55, wearing a seat belt and calling Mom from the Comfort Inns.
The only thing we know for sure is that this ethos won’t last. Someday some hypermanic kid will produce a moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey that will spark the overdue rebellion among all the over-pressured SAT grinds, and us grumpy midlife critics will get to witness a new Kerouac, and the greatest pent-up young-life crisis in the history of the world.
Sal Paradise at 50
'Over the past few weeks critics have taken another look at Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and this time their descriptions of it are very different.
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 2, 2007
A few decades ago, before TV commercials became obsessively concerned with prostate problems, Jack Kerouac wrote a book called “On the Road.” It was greeted rapturously by many as a burst of rollicking, joyous American energy. People quoted the famous lines: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn.”
In the Times review that launched the book, Gilbert Millstein raved that “On the Road” was a frenzied search for affirmation, a book that rejected the ennui, pessimism and cynicism of the Lost Generation. The heroes of the book savored everything, enjoyed everything, took pleasure in everything.
But, of course, all this was before the great geriatric pall settled over the world, before it became illegal to be cheerful.
“On the Road” turned 50 last month, and over the past few weeks a line of critics have taken another look at the book, and this time their descriptions of it, whether they like it or not, are very different.
“Above all else, the story is about loss,” George Mouratidis, one of the editors of a new edition, told The Age in Melbourne.
“It’s a book about death and the search for something meaningful to hold on to — the famous search for ‘IT,’ a truth larger than the self, which, of course, is never found,” wrote Meghan O’Rourke in Slate.
“Kerouac was this deep, lonely, melancholy man,” Hilary Holladay of the University of Massachusetts told The Philadelphia Inquirer. ”And if you read the book closely, you see that sense of loss and sorrow swelling on every page.”
“In truth, ‘On the Road’ is a book of broken dreams and failed plans,” wrote Ted Gioia in The Weekly Standard.
In Book Forum, David Ulin noted that “even the most frantic of Kerouac’s writings were really the sagas of a solitary seeker: poor, sad Jack, adrift in a world without mercy when he’d rather be ‘safe in Heaven dead.’ ”
According to these and other essays, “On the Road” is the book you want to read if you find Sylvia Plath too upbeat.
And of course they’re not wrong. There was a traditionalist, darker side to Kerouac, as John Leland emphasizes in his book “Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They’re Not What You Think).”
But reading through the anniversary commemorations, you feel the gravitational pull of the great Boomer Narcissus. All cultural artifacts have to be interpreted through whatever experiences the Baby Boomer generation is going through at that moment.
So a book formerly known for its youthful exuberance now becomes a book of gloomy middle-aged disillusion. (In 20 years, “The Cat in the Hat” will be read as a commentary on unreliable home health care workers.)
And there’s something else going on, something to do with the great taming professionalism of American culture. “On the Road” has been semi-incorporated into modern culture, but only parts have survived.
Students are taught “On the Road” in class, then must write tightly organized, double-spaced term papers on it, and if they don’t get an A, it hurts their admissions prospects. The book is still talked about, but often by professional intellectuals in panel discussions and career-building journal articles.
The effect is that some of the book comes through fine — the longing, the nostalgia for home, the darker pessimism.
But the real secret of the book was its discharge of youthful energy, the stupid, reckless energy that saves “On the Road” from being a dreadful novel. The delightful, moronic, unreflective fizz appears whenever the characters are happiest, when they are chasing girls or urinating from a swerving flatbed truck while going 70 miles an hour.
Those parts haven’t survived. They run afoul of the new gentility, the rules laid down by the health experts, childcare experts, guidance counselors, safety advisers, admissions officers, virtuecrats and employers to regulate the lives of the young. They seem dangerous, childish and embarrassing in the world of professionalized adolescence and professionalized intellect.
If Sal Paradise were alive today, he’d be a product of the new rules. He’d be a grad student with an interest in power yoga, on the road to the M.L.A. convention with a documentary about a politically engaged Manitoban dance troupe that he hopes will win a MacArthur grant. He’d be driving a Prius, going a conscientious 55, wearing a seat belt and calling Mom from the Comfort Inns.
The only thing we know for sure is that this ethos won’t last. Someday some hypermanic kid will produce a moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey that will spark the overdue rebellion among all the over-pressured SAT grinds, and us grumpy midlife critics will get to witness a new Kerouac, and the greatest pent-up young-life crisis in the history of the world.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
THE LAST TIME I
COMITTED SUICIDE. 1997.
filme inspirado numa carta enviado por Neal Cassady
a Jack Kerouac. Mais informações em
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119502/
COMITTED SUICIDE. 1997.
filme inspirado numa carta enviado por Neal Cassady
a Jack Kerouac. Mais informações em
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119502/
Jack Kerouac Exhibition at The New York Public Library Coincides with 50th Anniversary of On the RoadBeatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road on View from November 9, 2007 through March 16, 2008; Includes Famous Scroll Manuscript Typed on 120 Feet of Paper
Entry for September 21, 1939; page 1 from: Jack Kerouac, “:--Journal--: Fall, 1939.” Holograph manuscript, signed, September 21-25, 1939. The New York Public Library, Berg Collection, Jack Kerouac Archive. © and reproduced courtesy of John G. Sampas, legal representative of the estates of Jack and Stella Kerouac.
Diaries, manuscripts, snapshots, and personal items of Jack Kerouac, the visionary author whose pioneering work helped to established the Beat Movement in the United States, will be on display in Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road, an exhibition on view at The New York Public Library November 9, 2007 through March 16, 2008. The exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of Kerouac's landmark novel, On the Road, which has captured the imagination of several generations and established its author as a major figure in American literature. The exhibition will be drawn almost exclusively from the contents of the Jack Kerouac Archive, housed in the Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, and will display many unpublished Kerouac materials as well as typescript and manuscript drafts of On the Road. A major highlight of the exhibition will be the famous "scroll" typescript, on loan from James Irsay, owner of the National Football League's Indianapolis Colts, of which the first sixty feet will be unrolled in a specially-designed set of interlocking display cases. The scroll itself will be on display from November 9, 2007 through February 22, 2008; the exhibition continues through March 16, 2008. The exhibition will be located in the D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Admission is free.
A host of literary and physical artifacts displayed in the exhibition will bring to life Kerouac's career as a writer, from his earliest journals to typescript and manuscript drafts of his novels, short stories, essays, and poetry to diaries, journals and correspondence. Kerouac was an assiduous diarist and journal keeper. In a 1939 journal entry, recorded upon arriving in New York to attend the Horace Mann School for Boys, he wrote, "I wish to say that this journal is a continual refreshing resource for my castle, which surrounds me; it keeps me aloof from teeming humanity; it keeps me in contact with myself. By that I mean that a continual flow of ideas from my turbulent mind find their way into these pages invariably." His journals, diaries, and correspondence reveal a mind consumed with the goal of finding a way to give his experience of life on and off the road its most effective creative expression, and the drafts of his fiction, poetry, and essays record the history of those efforts. Kerouac's minutely detailed fantasy baseball and horse racing materials, which he created as a boy and played with throughout his life, will also be on display. In addition, the exhibition will include photographs of Kerouac, his family and friends, as well as objects that Kerouac treasured throughout his life, such as the crutches he used following a football injury while playing for Columbia University, and items memorably described in his writings, such as his harmonicas, his Buddhist bells, and his railroad track lantern.
Other sections of the exhibition will be devoted to Kerouac's youth and passion for sports; his early literary influences, such as William Blake, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Wolfe, illustrated by the Berg's rare editions and manuscripts, as well as by books from Kerouac's library; and his spirituality, which drew from both Buddhism and Roman Catholicism. Most of Kerouac's principal novels, such as The Town and the City (1950), On the Road (1957), Maggie Cassidy (1959), and Big Sur (1962), will be displayed in early drafts or rare editions, as will a representative sampling of his unpublished poetry. The richness of the Beat movement will be documented in a major section that will display a few selections from the Berg Collection's newly acquired William S. Burroughs Archive, as well as manuscripts, rare publications, and drawings by and photographs of Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and other Beat notables. This section will also include a few examples of the media-driven "Beatnik" phenomenon, through the lurid cover art of pulp paperbacks.
A companion volume to the exhibition, written by curator Isaac Gewirtz, will look at Kerouac's life and works through the lens of the journals, diaries, and other materials in the Kerouac Archive, much of which has not previously been available to scholars. This hardcover book will be extensively illustrated in 4-color with items from the archive, including not only manuscripts and typescripts, but also Kerouac's paintings and drawings and selected items relating to his fantasy baseball games. In addition, the Donnell Library Center will organize a complementary film series.
Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road is on view November 9, 2007 through March 16, 2008 in the D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. Exhibition hours are Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. beginning September 9; closed Mondays; Sunday, November 11; Thursday, November 22; Sunday, December 9; Tuesday, December 25; and Tuesday, January 1. Admission is free. For more information, call 212-869-8089 or visit http://www.nypl.org/.
Support for The New York Public Library's Exhibitions Program has been provided by Celeste Bartos, Mahnaz I. and Adam Bartos, Jonathan Altman, and Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.
About The New York Public Library The New York Public Library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of the private libraries of John Jacob Astor and James Lenox with the Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free and open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, as well as to its services. It comprises four research centers - The Humanities and Social Sciences Library; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and the Science, Industry and Business Library - and 86 Branch Libraries in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Research and circulating collections combined total more than 50 million items, including materials for the visually impaired. In addition, each year the Library presents thousands of exhibitions and public programs, which include classes in technology, literacy, and English as a second language. The New York Public Library serves over 15 million patrons who come through its doors annually and another 21 million users internationally, who access collections and services through the NYPL website, http://www.nypl.org/.
About The New York Public Library The New York Public Library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of the private libraries of John Jacob Astor and James Lenox with the Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free and open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, as well as to its services. It comprises four research centers - The Humanities and Social Sciences Library; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and the Science, Industry and Business Library - and 86 Branch Libraries in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Research and circulating collections combined total more than 50 million items, including materials for the visually impaired. In addition, each year the Library presents thousands of exhibitions and public programs, which include classes in technology, literacy, and English as a second language. The New York Public Library serves over 15 million patrons who come through its doors annually and another 21 million users internationally, who access collections and services through the NYPL website, http://www.nypl.org/.
About the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature was assembled and presented to The New York Public Library by Dr. Albert A. Berg, famous New York surgeon and trustee of the Library, in memory of his brother, Dr. Henry W. Berg. Both men found relaxation from their medical careers in collecting the works and memorabilia of English and American writers. The original collection, which numbered 3,500 items, has grown through acquisitions and gifts to include some 35,000 printed items and 115,000 manuscripts, covering the entire range of English and American literature.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
The Jack Kerouac I Knew
In a forthcoming book, Jack Kerouac’s agent
reflects on the four years he spent shopping On the Road.
by Sterling Lord -- Publishers Weekly, 8/27/2007.
It was autumn of 1951, and I had been warned that Jack would be coming in.
Two weeks earlier, Bob Giroux, of Harcourt, Brace, had called me. Giroux had edited The Town and the City, Jack’s first and conventional novel. Jack had just been in to see him, and he needed a literary agent. Giroux thought I would be the right man. He added that Jack had a new manuscript typed on a 120-foot scroll of architectural tracing paper. That would be my problem to deal with.
When Jack did appear at my office—a below-ground-level room on East 36th Street just off Park Avenue—he had a manuscript wrapped in newspaper which he extracted from a weather-beaten rucksack. He called it The Beat Generation, and he had already taken Bob Giroux’s advice and retyped it on regular typing paper.
Jack was wearing a light-colored weather-resistant jacket with a lightweight checkered shirt underneath. He was handsome, striking-looking and unique in appearance—”diamond in the rough” was the phrase that came to mind. He was courteous, respectful, but we didn’t talk at length, and he was leaving the product of years of work (and three weeks of typing) in my hands. He told me Giroux had rejected it.
As we started working together, I came to respect him. I was impressed with Jack’s commitment to serious writing. I felt that his was a fresh, distinctive voice that should be heard. For more than four years I could not find an editor or a publisher who felt the same way. During that time, discouraged by my lack of success, Jack wrote me (it was June 28, 1955) that he wanted to “pull my manuscripts back and forget publishing.” I thought I knew Jack well, so I ignored his request and continued submitting. Twelve days later, he changed his mind and we went on merrily together.
The rejections of two editors both highly regarded and employed by major publishing houses with literary reputations were typical of the reactions. Surprisingly, each of these editors was approximately Jack’s age, which in my mind should have increased the likelihood of their responding positively to the manuscript. The most striking rejection was the following: “Kerouac does have enormous talent of a very special kind. But this is not a well made novel, nor a saleable one nor even, I think, a good one. His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly expresses the feverish travels, geographically and mentally, of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so.”
That was six months after the following rejection came in from another publisher: “I know this will be discouraging news for you and Jack Kerouac, for you’ve both waited so long and patiently. Our response to Kerouac’s work was singular almost to a man, in that there was genuine admiration for his vigorous prose, his capacity to create a living sense of America, of life in this country, and the force and originality of his conception. But there were serious objections to the people and situations he writes about, whether they would be of compelling interest to many readers.... [A]ll I might suggest is that he should strive for a clearer vision of the novel itself.”
After almost four years of trying to sell Jack’s manuscript—now called On the Road—to a U.S. publisher, I sold a piece of his to the Paris Review. A few months later, I sold one piece of the manuscript, and then another, to New World Writing. Shortly after the second story appeared in New World Writing, I had a call from Keith Jennison, a young Viking editor. He, Malcolm Cowley and Tom Guinzburg were the strong Kerouac fans at Viking, and of course Malcolm Cowley had had the original scroll.
“Dammit, Sterling,” Keith said, “we can’t let that manuscript go unpublished any longer.” He made me an offer of $900 against royalties. I said no, and I got him up to $1,000 and closed the deal. Jack took the good news in stride. It was as if he knew it would eventually be published, and that it was happening now was merely a confirmation of his belief.
Shortly after the contract was signed, Helen Taylor, a fine senior editor, began working with Jack in editing the manuscript, while the lawyers expressed their concerns about names and likenesses of some of the book’s characters. Her editing was extremely sensitive: she made cuts and changes without in any way impeding the flow of Jack’s prose. This turned out to be the last time any manuscript of Jack’s was edited. I sold a subsequent novel, The Subterraneans, to another publisher, whose initial editing was totally insensitive. (We caught it before publication.) Thereafter, at Jack’s request, I would include in each contract the following clause: “The publisher may not change a word of the manuscript nor alter the punctuation” or some variation thereof.
A year later, during July and August 1957—the book had not yet been published—I began to feel the growing wave of enthusiasm for it. Half a dozen times, in early afternoon, I had calls from one publishing person after another, and they were all the same: “Sterling, I just had lunch with (blank) of Viking, and all he (or she) could talk about was the Kerouac novel.” It didn’t make any difference which Viking editor they had lunched with, the comment was the same. It was the book they were all excited about.
September 5, 1957, On the Road was published with an electrifying New York Times review by Gilbert Millstein, an extremely perceptive and talented writer himself and a man of great integrity. He was filling in for the regular New York Times reviewer, Orville Prescott, who was on vacation. The review had enormous impact.
I will never forget those days. The press wanted Jack in New York immediately. I phoned him in Florida and left word. He called back shortly asking if he could borrow $25 for a bus ticket back to New York. ( It was only years later that I learned he had also contacted his friend Joyce Glassman asking for $30.) At that time Joyce’s apartment was Jack’s headquarters when he came to New York. And using our money he managed to get to New York immediately.
Once the book was out, he was taken in hand by Pat McManus, Viking’s head publicist. But shortly after publication, around 11:15 one morning Viking phoned—“Where was Jack? He was about to miss appointments.” I thought I knew where. I hailed a taxi to take me to 65 W. 65th St., Joyce’s apartment. When I arrived, Jack was lying on his back on the living room floor. He was overwhelmed, shocked by the swift change from obscurity to smothering adulation. He couldn’t deal with it.
The shock of Jack’s sudden fame caused all sorts of problems for him. I felt he was basically shy, and any time he came to New York City, he had to fortify himself with drink. Initially I tried to help Jack battle his drinking problem, including taking him to a doctor who thought he could help. The doctor turned out to be totally ineffective.
But I began to realize that, fond as I was of him, I was only his literary agent, not his life agent.
Almost 12 years after On the Road was published, one night when I was sound asleep in my New York City apartment, the phone rang. It was 4:30 in the morning of October 21, 1969. The call was from Stella, Jack’s wife. She was choked up with emotion as she told me that Jack had just died. I expressed my sorrow and had the presence of mind to tell her I was in the process that very week of negotiating a film sale of On the Road to JGL Productions Inc. at Warner Brothers. It was too much for her to address and with a short gasp she hung up. But she was alert enough to call the St. Petersburg bank, who was the trustee of Jack’s estate, so that by the time I reached my office at 9:30 that morning, the bank was on the phone assuring me of my right to go ahead, in general, to continue functioning as Jack’s agent. And of course I told the bank that Jack had on his own initiative on March 4, 1958, signed a note appointing me his literary executor.
A few days later, I was on a plane to Boston en route to the funeral at Lowell, Mass. It was a Friday morning, and I wasn’t flying alone. The night before, my friend the writer Jimmy Breslin had phoned and hearing of my next day plans, he said, “No one should go alone to a funeral,” and he promptly arranged to fly with me. Since he didn’t know Kerouac, although they had by coincidence lived near each other in the Queens town of Richmond Hill, he asked me a good deal about Jack during the flight, including how he died at the young age of 47. As nearly as I knew, from what I had heard from family and friends, Jack had had nothing to eat—he drank constantly—for the last four or five days of his life, and I told Jimmy so.
“That’s impossible,” Jimmy said, speaking with the authority of a man who had seen it all, in that area at least. “You’ve got to eat something around 10 or 11 in the morning. You can’t avoid it.” And he promised to find out at the wake. He did; Jack had been taking bennies.
As the plane came on to its final approach at Logan Airport, Jimmy turned to ask me how I planned to get from Logan to Lowell. “Rent a car,” I said, but that wasn’t good enough for such an occasion, in Jimmy’s view.
At the time Jimmy was probably the best known journalist/columnist in the United States, and he certainly was well-known in the Irish community of Boston. So when we reached a phone booth in the airport, Jimmy thumbed through the yellow pages until he found the largest ad for a limousine service with an Irish proprietor. It was around 9 a.m., and the owner of that particular service was still in bed. But hearing it was really Jimmy Breslin on the phone, he jumped out of bed with no thought of assigning another driver for the trip and was at our disposal in twenty minutes. All that Irish brogue up and back between Jimmy and the owner/driver did a great deal to mollify the pain of Jack’s death for me.
I can still see the scene around the grave. The sunlight filtering through the trees, the leaves brown after shedding their fall colors. John Clellon Holmes, Allen Ginsberg full of sadness, Edie Parker (Jack’s first wife), members of the Sampas family and a group of working press, some of whom came up to Jimmy Breslin, who didn’t get out of the car we’d hired to bring us up from Boston. “No,” he said to the journalists who asked him questions, “it’s not my day, it’s his,” as he pointed to the fresh grave containing Jack’s body.
Long after all this had happened, I called Bob Giroux, then retired. “I did not reject On the Road,” Bob told me. “I never read it. I merely told him, 'Jack, don’t you realize that the way authors present manuscripts now, they put them on 8½×11-inch white paper.’ ” At that point, Bob rolled up the scroll and handed it back to Jack.
Today—2007—50 years after original publication, On the Road is still read, taught and assigned in high schools and colleges all over the U.S. It sells 100,000 copies each year in the United States and Canada. It has also been published successfully in 32 foreign countries.
Copyright © 2007 by Sterling Lord
In a forthcoming book, Jack Kerouac’s agent
reflects on the four years he spent shopping On the Road.
by Sterling Lord -- Publishers Weekly, 8/27/2007.
It was autumn of 1951, and I had been warned that Jack would be coming in.
Two weeks earlier, Bob Giroux, of Harcourt, Brace, had called me. Giroux had edited The Town and the City, Jack’s first and conventional novel. Jack had just been in to see him, and he needed a literary agent. Giroux thought I would be the right man. He added that Jack had a new manuscript typed on a 120-foot scroll of architectural tracing paper. That would be my problem to deal with.
When Jack did appear at my office—a below-ground-level room on East 36th Street just off Park Avenue—he had a manuscript wrapped in newspaper which he extracted from a weather-beaten rucksack. He called it The Beat Generation, and he had already taken Bob Giroux’s advice and retyped it on regular typing paper.
Jack was wearing a light-colored weather-resistant jacket with a lightweight checkered shirt underneath. He was handsome, striking-looking and unique in appearance—”diamond in the rough” was the phrase that came to mind. He was courteous, respectful, but we didn’t talk at length, and he was leaving the product of years of work (and three weeks of typing) in my hands. He told me Giroux had rejected it.
As we started working together, I came to respect him. I was impressed with Jack’s commitment to serious writing. I felt that his was a fresh, distinctive voice that should be heard. For more than four years I could not find an editor or a publisher who felt the same way. During that time, discouraged by my lack of success, Jack wrote me (it was June 28, 1955) that he wanted to “pull my manuscripts back and forget publishing.” I thought I knew Jack well, so I ignored his request and continued submitting. Twelve days later, he changed his mind and we went on merrily together.
The rejections of two editors both highly regarded and employed by major publishing houses with literary reputations were typical of the reactions. Surprisingly, each of these editors was approximately Jack’s age, which in my mind should have increased the likelihood of their responding positively to the manuscript. The most striking rejection was the following: “Kerouac does have enormous talent of a very special kind. But this is not a well made novel, nor a saleable one nor even, I think, a good one. His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly expresses the feverish travels, geographically and mentally, of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so.”
That was six months after the following rejection came in from another publisher: “I know this will be discouraging news for you and Jack Kerouac, for you’ve both waited so long and patiently. Our response to Kerouac’s work was singular almost to a man, in that there was genuine admiration for his vigorous prose, his capacity to create a living sense of America, of life in this country, and the force and originality of his conception. But there were serious objections to the people and situations he writes about, whether they would be of compelling interest to many readers.... [A]ll I might suggest is that he should strive for a clearer vision of the novel itself.”
After almost four years of trying to sell Jack’s manuscript—now called On the Road—to a U.S. publisher, I sold a piece of his to the Paris Review. A few months later, I sold one piece of the manuscript, and then another, to New World Writing. Shortly after the second story appeared in New World Writing, I had a call from Keith Jennison, a young Viking editor. He, Malcolm Cowley and Tom Guinzburg were the strong Kerouac fans at Viking, and of course Malcolm Cowley had had the original scroll.
“Dammit, Sterling,” Keith said, “we can’t let that manuscript go unpublished any longer.” He made me an offer of $900 against royalties. I said no, and I got him up to $1,000 and closed the deal. Jack took the good news in stride. It was as if he knew it would eventually be published, and that it was happening now was merely a confirmation of his belief.
Shortly after the contract was signed, Helen Taylor, a fine senior editor, began working with Jack in editing the manuscript, while the lawyers expressed their concerns about names and likenesses of some of the book’s characters. Her editing was extremely sensitive: she made cuts and changes without in any way impeding the flow of Jack’s prose. This turned out to be the last time any manuscript of Jack’s was edited. I sold a subsequent novel, The Subterraneans, to another publisher, whose initial editing was totally insensitive. (We caught it before publication.) Thereafter, at Jack’s request, I would include in each contract the following clause: “The publisher may not change a word of the manuscript nor alter the punctuation” or some variation thereof.
A year later, during July and August 1957—the book had not yet been published—I began to feel the growing wave of enthusiasm for it. Half a dozen times, in early afternoon, I had calls from one publishing person after another, and they were all the same: “Sterling, I just had lunch with (blank) of Viking, and all he (or she) could talk about was the Kerouac novel.” It didn’t make any difference which Viking editor they had lunched with, the comment was the same. It was the book they were all excited about.
September 5, 1957, On the Road was published with an electrifying New York Times review by Gilbert Millstein, an extremely perceptive and talented writer himself and a man of great integrity. He was filling in for the regular New York Times reviewer, Orville Prescott, who was on vacation. The review had enormous impact.
I will never forget those days. The press wanted Jack in New York immediately. I phoned him in Florida and left word. He called back shortly asking if he could borrow $25 for a bus ticket back to New York. ( It was only years later that I learned he had also contacted his friend Joyce Glassman asking for $30.) At that time Joyce’s apartment was Jack’s headquarters when he came to New York. And using our money he managed to get to New York immediately.
Once the book was out, he was taken in hand by Pat McManus, Viking’s head publicist. But shortly after publication, around 11:15 one morning Viking phoned—“Where was Jack? He was about to miss appointments.” I thought I knew where. I hailed a taxi to take me to 65 W. 65th St., Joyce’s apartment. When I arrived, Jack was lying on his back on the living room floor. He was overwhelmed, shocked by the swift change from obscurity to smothering adulation. He couldn’t deal with it.
The shock of Jack’s sudden fame caused all sorts of problems for him. I felt he was basically shy, and any time he came to New York City, he had to fortify himself with drink. Initially I tried to help Jack battle his drinking problem, including taking him to a doctor who thought he could help. The doctor turned out to be totally ineffective.
But I began to realize that, fond as I was of him, I was only his literary agent, not his life agent.
Almost 12 years after On the Road was published, one night when I was sound asleep in my New York City apartment, the phone rang. It was 4:30 in the morning of October 21, 1969. The call was from Stella, Jack’s wife. She was choked up with emotion as she told me that Jack had just died. I expressed my sorrow and had the presence of mind to tell her I was in the process that very week of negotiating a film sale of On the Road to JGL Productions Inc. at Warner Brothers. It was too much for her to address and with a short gasp she hung up. But she was alert enough to call the St. Petersburg bank, who was the trustee of Jack’s estate, so that by the time I reached my office at 9:30 that morning, the bank was on the phone assuring me of my right to go ahead, in general, to continue functioning as Jack’s agent. And of course I told the bank that Jack had on his own initiative on March 4, 1958, signed a note appointing me his literary executor.
A few days later, I was on a plane to Boston en route to the funeral at Lowell, Mass. It was a Friday morning, and I wasn’t flying alone. The night before, my friend the writer Jimmy Breslin had phoned and hearing of my next day plans, he said, “No one should go alone to a funeral,” and he promptly arranged to fly with me. Since he didn’t know Kerouac, although they had by coincidence lived near each other in the Queens town of Richmond Hill, he asked me a good deal about Jack during the flight, including how he died at the young age of 47. As nearly as I knew, from what I had heard from family and friends, Jack had had nothing to eat—he drank constantly—for the last four or five days of his life, and I told Jimmy so.
“That’s impossible,” Jimmy said, speaking with the authority of a man who had seen it all, in that area at least. “You’ve got to eat something around 10 or 11 in the morning. You can’t avoid it.” And he promised to find out at the wake. He did; Jack had been taking bennies.
As the plane came on to its final approach at Logan Airport, Jimmy turned to ask me how I planned to get from Logan to Lowell. “Rent a car,” I said, but that wasn’t good enough for such an occasion, in Jimmy’s view.
At the time Jimmy was probably the best known journalist/columnist in the United States, and he certainly was well-known in the Irish community of Boston. So when we reached a phone booth in the airport, Jimmy thumbed through the yellow pages until he found the largest ad for a limousine service with an Irish proprietor. It was around 9 a.m., and the owner of that particular service was still in bed. But hearing it was really Jimmy Breslin on the phone, he jumped out of bed with no thought of assigning another driver for the trip and was at our disposal in twenty minutes. All that Irish brogue up and back between Jimmy and the owner/driver did a great deal to mollify the pain of Jack’s death for me.
I can still see the scene around the grave. The sunlight filtering through the trees, the leaves brown after shedding their fall colors. John Clellon Holmes, Allen Ginsberg full of sadness, Edie Parker (Jack’s first wife), members of the Sampas family and a group of working press, some of whom came up to Jimmy Breslin, who didn’t get out of the car we’d hired to bring us up from Boston. “No,” he said to the journalists who asked him questions, “it’s not my day, it’s his,” as he pointed to the fresh grave containing Jack’s body.
Long after all this had happened, I called Bob Giroux, then retired. “I did not reject On the Road,” Bob told me. “I never read it. I merely told him, 'Jack, don’t you realize that the way authors present manuscripts now, they put them on 8½×11-inch white paper.’ ” At that point, Bob rolled up the scroll and handed it back to Jack.
Today—2007—50 years after original publication, On the Road is still read, taught and assigned in high schools and colleges all over the U.S. It sells 100,000 copies each year in the United States and Canada. It has also been published successfully in 32 foreign countries.
Copyright © 2007 by Sterling Lord
Tribute To Jack Kerouac
Memory Babe An artistic project by Arnaud Contreras
and Alain Dister
The 23 of september 2007, an artistic installation by Arnaud Contreras
will celebrate in Paris, France, the 50th year of publication of On the Road,
the mythical book by Jack Kerouac.
During the afternoon and all night long, we will organize Memory Babe,
A Tribute To Jack Kerouac, an artistic installation including films, music,
photography, films, lectures, text and...You Tube, Myspace, to enlight
this great american writer, at the Cabaret Pirate, in front of the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
You can Participate to this Tribute to Jack Kerouac by:
- sending to Jack a postcard, a letter, a poem, a picture, from all around
the world ( adress: « To Jack Kerouac » / À 360 / 5, avenue Milleret de Brou / 75016 / Paris / France )
- filming a video on the road, where you're, everywhere in the world,
upload it on youtube (or any other site) and send us the adress of your video.
This video will be inclued in Jack's channel (http://www.youtube.com/tribute2kerouac)
and projected during the installation.
- adding Jack to your myspace friend
- sending a poem, a picture, a song, a mail to Jack : jackkerouac@a360.org
All your contributions, videos, mails, letters, will be displayed in the installation during the night and will be online.
More on : www.arnaudcontreras.com and on : http://myspace.com/tribute2kerouac
Memory Babe An artistic project by Arnaud Contreras
and Alain Dister
The 23 of september 2007, an artistic installation by Arnaud Contreras
will celebrate in Paris, France, the 50th year of publication of On the Road,
the mythical book by Jack Kerouac.
During the afternoon and all night long, we will organize Memory Babe,
A Tribute To Jack Kerouac, an artistic installation including films, music,
photography, films, lectures, text and...You Tube, Myspace, to enlight
this great american writer, at the Cabaret Pirate, in front of the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
You can Participate to this Tribute to Jack Kerouac by:
- sending to Jack a postcard, a letter, a poem, a picture, from all around
the world ( adress: « To Jack Kerouac » / À 360 / 5, avenue Milleret de Brou / 75016 / Paris / France )
- filming a video on the road, where you're, everywhere in the world,
upload it on youtube (or any other site) and send us the adress of your video.
This video will be inclued in Jack's channel (http://www.youtube.com/tribute2kerouac)
and projected during the installation.
- adding Jack to your myspace friend
- sending a poem, a picture, a song, a mail to Jack : jackkerouac@a360.org
All your contributions, videos, mails, letters, will be displayed in the installation during the night and will be online.
More on : www.arnaudcontreras.com and on : http://myspace.com/tribute2kerouac
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Russell Brand is to retrace beat generation author Jack Kerouac’s footsteps across America for a new BBC show.
The comic will recreate the road trip Kerouac took in his seminal autobiographical novel On The Road, the book that captured the new mood of free thinking among America’s youth in the Fifties, and is written in a stream-of-conscious style.
Now 32-year-old Brand wants to recapture that spirit when he recreates the journey with his Radio 2 co-host Matt Morgan.‘We'll go to places of significance, take long car journeys and, you know, just hang out,’ Brand said.
A film version of On The Road, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, is also in the pipeline, and is set to be released in 2009.
The comic will recreate the road trip Kerouac took in his seminal autobiographical novel On The Road, the book that captured the new mood of free thinking among America’s youth in the Fifties, and is written in a stream-of-conscious style.
Now 32-year-old Brand wants to recapture that spirit when he recreates the journey with his Radio 2 co-host Matt Morgan.‘We'll go to places of significance, take long car journeys and, you know, just hang out,’ Brand said.
A film version of On The Road, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, is also in the pipeline, and is set to be released in 2009.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Easy Rider: Road Trips through America
Yancey Richardson GalleryChelsea
535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor, 646-230-9610
July 11 - September 8, 2007
Opening: Wednesday, July 11, 6:00PM - 8:00PM
Web Site
Show Map
The Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present
our summer exhibition Easy Rider: Road Trips through
America which pays homage to the tradition of road
trips in American photography. Highway culture has
long been a quintessential part of American identity.
Easy Rider explores the common themes of social
commentary, cultural geography and photographic
biography produced by the marriage between the road
and photography. Included are photographs and videos
dating from 1935 to 2006 by Jeff Brouws, Tim Davis,
William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Robert Frank, Lee
Friedlander, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Gohlke, Ernst Haas,
Todd Hido, Jodie Vicenta Jacobson, Lisa Kereszi, Justine
Kurland, William Lamson, Dorothea Lange, Danny Lyon,
Nathan Lyons, Christian Patterson, Mike Smith, Ed Ruscha,
Lise Sarfati, Vicki Sambunaris, Stephen Shore, Rosalind
Solomon, Alec Soth, Mark Steinmetz, Joel Sternfeld, and
Garry Winogrand and others.
The road allowed Farm Security Administration photographers
Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans to document the plight
of Americans suffering floods and dustbowls during the
Great Depression. Similarly bleak, Robert Frank's mid
1950s road trips yielded a portrait of the nation at odds
with the projected optimism of the era and culminated
in The Americans, a landmark publication, which influenced
generations of later photographers.
The open road as a symbol of freedom is exemplified in
Allen Ginsberg's 1964 shot of Neal Cassady at the wheel
of Ken Kesey's Merry Prankster bus; Cassady's incessant
cross-country journeys were a primary inspiration for Jack
Kerouac's definitive Beat generation novel On the Road.
Having spent four years riding with the motorcycle gang
the Outlaws, Danny Lyons produced the book The Bikeriders,
which emblazoned motorcycle counterculture onto the
American psyche and inspired the film Easy Rider.
Subsequent generations of photographers continued to take
to the road in order to explore the cultural landscape.
Traveling on a 1969 Guggenheim to study the effect of the
media on public events, Garry Winogrand recorded America's
restlessness through its political rallies, peace demonstrations
and space shuttle launches. In the 1970s Mitch Epstein looked
at recreation across America while Joel Sternfeld's wryly-funny
photographs often showed man at odds with nature. Alec Soth
followed the watery artery of the Mississippi River to make
pictures of the dreams; both lost and fiercely held, of those he
encountered. More recently, Tim Davis traveled the country to
seek out the presence of politics in today's life; in St. Louis he
found a wall mural of the United States depicted as one grotesquely
stretched red state.
Several photographers have looked closely at the details and
detritus of American culture for clues to its soul. William Eggleston's
photograph of an elegantly wallpapered restaurant wall plastered
over with the business cards of its patrons shows commercial
aspirations trumping style. On the bare chipboard walls of Reverend
and Margaret's Bedroom, Soth memorializes a moving display of
family photographs while Lisa Kereszi's discovery of a biker bar's
photographic collage of women flashing their breasts reveals the
misogynist underbelly of road-worshipping motorcycle culture.
Many photographers have constructed a kind of biography of
roads traveled, places visited and people encountered, often
including themselves and family m embers. In 1962, Ed Ruscha
photographed isolated gas stations along Route 66 filling half the
picture frame with the street at his feet. Lee Friedlander frequently
incorporated himself into his car images, staring into the camera
through the windshield or via the side view mirror. In his witty
series America and Me, recent Bard graduate William Lamson
photographed himself interacting with elements of the roadside
landscape, always hiding his face but freely revealing the shutter
release. Poolside at a roadside inn, Stephen Shore incorporated his
young wife Ginger into a minimalist composition of color and light.
Accustomed to working on the road, Justine Kurland adjusted to
motherhood by photographing her young son living with her in a
camper van on an extended road trip.
Jeff Brouws has made a career of photographing along highways,
evolving from cataloguing the relics of small town roadside architecture
to documenting the negative impact of thruways in the 21st century.
His 2004 image of a rusting red car upended in a field presents a
pessimistic view of contemporary road culture: the car as a dinosaur
on the road to nowhere.
Yancey Richardson GalleryChelsea
535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor, 646-230-9610
July 11 - September 8, 2007
Opening: Wednesday, July 11, 6:00PM - 8:00PM
Web Site
Show Map
The Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present
our summer exhibition Easy Rider: Road Trips through
America which pays homage to the tradition of road
trips in American photography. Highway culture has
long been a quintessential part of American identity.
Easy Rider explores the common themes of social
commentary, cultural geography and photographic
biography produced by the marriage between the road
and photography. Included are photographs and videos
dating from 1935 to 2006 by Jeff Brouws, Tim Davis,
William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Robert Frank, Lee
Friedlander, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Gohlke, Ernst Haas,
Todd Hido, Jodie Vicenta Jacobson, Lisa Kereszi, Justine
Kurland, William Lamson, Dorothea Lange, Danny Lyon,
Nathan Lyons, Christian Patterson, Mike Smith, Ed Ruscha,
Lise Sarfati, Vicki Sambunaris, Stephen Shore, Rosalind
Solomon, Alec Soth, Mark Steinmetz, Joel Sternfeld, and
Garry Winogrand and others.
The road allowed Farm Security Administration photographers
Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans to document the plight
of Americans suffering floods and dustbowls during the
Great Depression. Similarly bleak, Robert Frank's mid
1950s road trips yielded a portrait of the nation at odds
with the projected optimism of the era and culminated
in The Americans, a landmark publication, which influenced
generations of later photographers.
The open road as a symbol of freedom is exemplified in
Allen Ginsberg's 1964 shot of Neal Cassady at the wheel
of Ken Kesey's Merry Prankster bus; Cassady's incessant
cross-country journeys were a primary inspiration for Jack
Kerouac's definitive Beat generation novel On the Road.
Having spent four years riding with the motorcycle gang
the Outlaws, Danny Lyons produced the book The Bikeriders,
which emblazoned motorcycle counterculture onto the
American psyche and inspired the film Easy Rider.
Subsequent generations of photographers continued to take
to the road in order to explore the cultural landscape.
Traveling on a 1969 Guggenheim to study the effect of the
media on public events, Garry Winogrand recorded America's
restlessness through its political rallies, peace demonstrations
and space shuttle launches. In the 1970s Mitch Epstein looked
at recreation across America while Joel Sternfeld's wryly-funny
photographs often showed man at odds with nature. Alec Soth
followed the watery artery of the Mississippi River to make
pictures of the dreams; both lost and fiercely held, of those he
encountered. More recently, Tim Davis traveled the country to
seek out the presence of politics in today's life; in St. Louis he
found a wall mural of the United States depicted as one grotesquely
stretched red state.
Several photographers have looked closely at the details and
detritus of American culture for clues to its soul. William Eggleston's
photograph of an elegantly wallpapered restaurant wall plastered
over with the business cards of its patrons shows commercial
aspirations trumping style. On the bare chipboard walls of Reverend
and Margaret's Bedroom, Soth memorializes a moving display of
family photographs while Lisa Kereszi's discovery of a biker bar's
photographic collage of women flashing their breasts reveals the
misogynist underbelly of road-worshipping motorcycle culture.
Many photographers have constructed a kind of biography of
roads traveled, places visited and people encountered, often
including themselves and family m embers. In 1962, Ed Ruscha
photographed isolated gas stations along Route 66 filling half the
picture frame with the street at his feet. Lee Friedlander frequently
incorporated himself into his car images, staring into the camera
through the windshield or via the side view mirror. In his witty
series America and Me, recent Bard graduate William Lamson
photographed himself interacting with elements of the roadside
landscape, always hiding his face but freely revealing the shutter
release. Poolside at a roadside inn, Stephen Shore incorporated his
young wife Ginger into a minimalist composition of color and light.
Accustomed to working on the road, Justine Kurland adjusted to
motherhood by photographing her young son living with her in a
camper van on an extended road trip.
Jeff Brouws has made a career of photographing along highways,
evolving from cataloguing the relics of small town roadside architecture
to documenting the negative impact of thruways in the 21st century.
His 2004 image of a rusting red car upended in a field presents a
pessimistic view of contemporary road culture: the car as a dinosaur
on the road to nowhere.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Having taken meticulous notes and planned the novel duringhis cross-country travels, JACK KEROUAC wrote the first draftof On the Road in a three-week burst of creativity, tapingsheets of paper together so they could run through histypewriter uninterrupted. After a cross-country exhibitiontour, the original scroll has returned to Lowell’s BoottCotton Mills Museum, where its display will be part of "ONTHE ROAD IN LOWELL,” a festival of readings, musical performances,and art exhibits (see www.ontheroadinlowell.org) planned aroundthe 50th anniversary of On the Road. The Beat Generation isreborn at Lowell National Historical Park, 115 John St,Lowell June 15–September 14 [reception June 15: 6-9 pm]
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Hogan's Beat Fever Jack Kerouac inspires outerwear
debut Thursday, May 24, 2007
Hogan's Jack Kerouac bomber jacket
(NEW YORK) Hogan will unveil its first-ever outerwear
piece on Tuesday, when the Tod’s Group-owned brand
debuts the Jack Kerouac Project, a capsule collection of
six leather goods pieces inspired by the Beat novelist, writer,
poet, and artist, which will be available exclusively at
Paris retailer Colette for one month. In addition to the
$1,590 bomber style jacket, the collection consists of two
styles of shoes (a $295 high top sneaker and a $475
working boot) and three bags (a travel bag, book bag, and
back pack priced from $950 to $1,290). Colette will celebrate
the launch by showcasing a series of photographs influenced
by Kerouac’s novel On the Road in its iconic rue Saint-Honoré
store windows. Following its debut at Colette, the collection
will be available in all Hogan stores worldwide beginning in July.
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