Kerouac

[Danton]

Not communist though certainly leftist and fundementally revolutionary, I think it's not totally out of place to celebrate here. The Beat generation...If we have threads about Harry fuckin Potter why not?

Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg are the main protaganists, each one revolutionary in their own right, I'm sure many of our U.S friends have read "On the road" And although in his later years Jack become something of a right wing monster and Oedipus complex inflicted freak - his literary achievements are unquestionable and his prose affects every new generation that discover it as does the chemicall fuelled cut and paste madness of Burroughs.... So what's everyone's opinion?

[canikickit]

I've never read Kerouac. My brother has "On the Road" though, I'll have to get my hands on that. I think it would be a suitable book for me to bring to Amsterdam. (I also intend to bring "The Great Shark Hunt" and a book of Chekov's short stories).

I did read a book called "Bukowski and the Beats", which detailed Bukowski's realationship with some of the other guys, such as Kerouac and Ginsberg, and of course, Burroughs.
But I felt it was a little crap, I'd have to know a little bit more about them, and to have read some of their works to truly appreciate that book.

I haven't read any of those guys works actually, although I think there is a Ginsberg poem in "Hell's Angels", which I didn't enjoy, if I recall correctly.

So, no, I've nothing to add. :)

Although I do know that my good man, Abstractmentality, has read some of their work.

[iwwobblie]

Burroughs was actually a political conservative.

[canikickit]

I don't really think that matters when it comes to matters artistic, do you iwwobblie?

Unless the writings (or whatever artisic endeavor) is actually speaking on a political matter, it shouldn't detract from the art.

I can still enjoy Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries despite the fact that it was used as Nazi propaganda and is a natioalistic tribute to the almighty power of Germany.

[iwwobblie]

I only mention it because Danton called them leftist and revolutionary in his post.
However,Ginsburg was very leftist.I'm not sure about Kerouac.

[Danton]

I meant leftist in the sense of avant guard, leftfield, non conservative, the writing not their politics...Revolutionary in that they revolutionized modern writing. This is a non-political thread...

CANI; I can see where your coming from, some of their stuff is inpenetrable paticularly Burrough's.. His "Soft machine" Is possibly one of the worst thing's I've ever read - incoherence for the sake of it. "Naked lunch" and "Junk" though are both fascinating studies of drug use. Kerouac wise, the "Subterraneans" & "Dharma bums" are both accessible as is "On the road".

You mentioned "The great shark hunt" & "Hells Angels", After reading some of the Beats work, you can really apprieciate where Hunter is coming from and the writers who informed much of his Gonzo style - he reluctantly admits to their insipiration, preffering to cite Scott Fitzgerald and Hemmingway...

[abstractmentality]

Ah, the beats. Yes, good stuff.

Although i must say i have yet to finish a book by Burroughs. I read about 2/3's of Naked Lunch and decided that i needed to stop due to my forgetting of what the rest of the book was about. I got within about 20 pages of finishing Cities of the Red Night, and stopped because i got completely lost.

On the Road was an inpiration, to say the least. "The mad ones are the only ones for me" (a horrible paraphrase). The dharma bums was also great. Weird though, when i read Desolation angels after dharma bums, i got a completely different feeling from his experience on the mountain top. desolation angels was a book i was scared to finish, although i did. the overall tone of kerouac had developed and changed so much from on the road to desolation angels, representative, in a sense, development in all people. that parallel to my own life scared me. One of the best books i have ever read in the fiction genre.

Ginsburg is also, of course, one of the greats. I really do enjoy reading his poetry. One of my favorite poems of his would be "Kiss Ass," for its simplicity, humor, and statement. his and burrough's homo-erotica is also enjoyable to read. some get utterly disgusted with it, but i see it more as them simply being honest and showing what so many people are scarred to show.

[Danton]

Indeed, this is what I meant by "revolutionary". In the conservative fifties they touched on subjects that were still very much taboo....Drugs, homosexualism, pacifism, ...Below you can hear Kerouac and some of his mad Haiku's etc...


http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~gallaher/k_speaks/...ouacspeaks.html (http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~gallaher/k_speaks/kerouacspeaks.html)

[Rastafari]

"Howl"
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madnes, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, whos poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

one of the few things I've ever taken time to memorize.
The Great Shark Hunt is Excellent
On the Road took less than a month to write

[abstractmentality]

On the Road was also writen on one long scroll :)

The lack of editing was also key to Kerouac. I remember reading Desolation Angels, towards the end of it, he used the word "shovel", but spelled it "shoevl" which immediatley was followed with "(you cant blame me for spelling "shovel" wrong)." One of those points where i burst out laughing.

Took a visit to San Francisco's City Lights book store on saturday. Went to the third floor of the store and saw, again, all of the poetry and novels and stories, amazing. The friend i went with got her fair share of stories from me about what some of them contained. Its amazing walking up those stairs with pictures of Ginsburg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassidy, etc, lining the walls. If any of you are in the bay area, i would highly suggest it. Its on the corner of Columbus and Broadway (their is a tiny alley like street called Jack Kerouac street, but its not major enough to be found on most maps, if any). They also have great leftist literature on the bottom floor.

I have the Jack Kerouac 3 cd box set of of him reading excerpts of his novels, poetry, or speeches, mostly all over smooth jazz sounds. A great listen.

[Rastafari]

City Lights is pretty famous. In North Beach, isn't it?

You live in SF?

I'm headin' out that way in 3 years to Berkeley, god Willing

[abstractmentality]

Ah, Rastafari!

City Lights is in SF, but im not sure where this north beach is. perhaps northbeach is a sub-division of sf, im not sure.

No, i do not live in San Francisco, but i do live and go to college in Davis. Davis is about an hour and 10 minutes driving distance from SF, or about 15 minutes from Sacramento. I actually drove to berkeley, met a friend of mine that goes to UCB and we jumped on the BART into SF (SF is fucking hell to drive in). It is a bit of a walk from the bart station, but its worth it to not have to drive and then pay ridiculous parking costs.

How old are you? Yes, if you are ever in the Bay Area, let me know. As i said, im a little more inland, but im still here. UCB is a great school; i wished i had worked harder in high school so that i could have gotten in there. The architecture is great there, and some of the professors are wonderful, or so i hear. I think Michael Parenti lives in berkeley. A friend of mine just graduated from their with a poli sci degree and i think will be going there for law school in a year (he took a year off because he thought he was going to Indonesia but that fell through).

Listened to Kerouac read some of his haikus last night and fell in love again.

[Rastafari]

The Bay area is truly great.

Anyway, I happen to be 17 and a sophomore right now, so in two years, its quite a possibility (given that I do homework right now, anyway)

[Lefty]

Rastafari- I'm 15, but I'm also a sophomore aiming for Berkeley. It would be damn cool to go there and already know some people.

[Rastafari]

what college you go to, man?

[Sasafrás]

I got really interested in the Beat Generation when I was about 14. They're all very interesting. I love Ginsburg's "Howl" and I have read the first 50 or so pages of Burroughs' "Junky" ("Junkie"?). That was when I was in 9th grade though, and I'm in college now. About 4 years ago. I really don't remember it. I also have a copy of "Naked Lunch" but I haven't read it yet. I checked out "On the Road" a few years ago, I believe, but I didn't have time to read it. :(

But, the Beats are cool.. Very interesting era.

~ Sassy

[Rastafari]

Sassy, its not what you've read, its how many you have in your library and can act like you've read!!!


but seriously, Naked Lunch is a hard read unless your high-but normal enough to read. gOod Luck, Sassy Frassy Shayla Boom-Bassie!

[Sasafrás]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2003, 01:45 AM
Sassy, its not what you've read, its how many you have in your library and can act like you've read!!!


but seriously, Naked Lunch is a hard read unless your high-but normal enough to read. gOod Luck, Sassy Frassy Shayla Boom-Bassie!
:D You're a cool cat! That's a cute name...

[Rastafari]

I wanted to add Sassy Frassy Ass in there, but that would have been going WAY to far :blink: ...

[Alejandro C]

the beats, the beats. if there is one thing i can always be proud of my country for it is its art- namely writing and music. in that sense the beats were really a very american phenomenon. its always amazed me that those people were able to come together to really form a movement. those great writers all just came together by chance at columbia and managed to keep in touch all those long years. here's how i'd break down the three main characters-
kerouac- kerouac is the america that i love. he found his place in the world during the 50's as he traveled in his 'great triangle' -newyork,mexico city,sanfrancisco, seeing everything, and talking to everyone and somehow managing to meet to most interesting people and remember all of their stories. kerouac's greatest works in my mind are dharma bums, desolation angels, and some of the dharma. i don't think most of the people on this board would really like keroauc. his style is very... calm. he never gets angry and so never got into any politics. another thing about him that people here might not like was that he was a very religious man. Catholocism and Buddhism got him through his whole life. he was also very critical of his peers, he was the only beat that i know of that criticized other beats- and he was the so-called leader or king of the beats. Kerouac as a writer though is unsurpassed in America. None of his comntemporaries were as good as he was and no one before or after was as good either.
burroughs- burroughs is my favorite beat. if kerouac was the beats greatest writer burroughs was their greatest artists. his books are incredible. someone once asked me to describe naked lunch to them and i did it in this way- 'burroughs goes about the book like a scientist, he is describing his world in a way that is designed to confuse you. it would be like if you asked me to describe that coffee table and i took measurements of the coffee table and broke the whole thing down into mathematical equations and then left out the numbers and gave you pieces of the equation- you don't really know what you're reading but somehow you understand that its the truth' my favorite book of burrough's is the Wild Boys, which i believe was actually based on the roaming gangs of kids during the paris commune. burrough's is the most original of the beats but also the hardest to grasp. i would recommend his books to anyone but i would also recommend that you don't try to understand them, just try to enjoy them.
ginsberg- in my opinion ginsberg was the more boring of the three main beats. he seems to be the most normal- he did things that were normal for his time including adopting the hard left politics of the 60's and the drugs that came with them. Ginsberg seems the admire the things that a lot of us do including Che. on the day he died, ginsberg wrote Eulogy Che Guevara. Ginsberg is more responsible for the popularity of the beats than any of the other three writers. he actively promoted all of his peers and his poem 'howl' was the first real breakthrough for the beats. I've got ginsberg's collected poems and read them every once in awhile. he was a very talented poet and his best works in my opinions are 'howl and other poems' which was published in the 60's by city lights and you can buy it for $5 at any book store.


if you want to read more about the beats i would recommend - the birth of the beat generation- by steven watson. the beats led the most interesting lives of any other literary figures (with the exceptions of rimbaud and baudelaire) and that book will not only hold your attention all the way through but also get you very interested in reading their books.

[Borincano]

I just heard about Kerouac two days ago in on HBO. The documentary film was actually about the filmmaker's grandmother (A Sicilian gypsy told her that she would die at 96, so on her 96th birthday he wanted to hear and film about her life, but it came out to be that she's still living at 104.) and one of her daughters actually could've married Kerouac, but didn't because she didn't want a Bohemian life. Anyway, see the flim "Nine Good Teeth," it's pretty interesting.

[abstractmentality]

Great post Alejandro C. I think you summed it up very well. Loved the description of Burroughs, that is absolutley classic.

One part in Naked Lunch i thought especially funny was the following:

The lavatory has been locked for three hours solid.... I think they are using it for an operating room....
NURSE: "i cant find her pulse, doctor."
DR. BENWAY: "maybe she got it up her snatch in a finger stall."
NURSE: "adrenaline, doctor?"
DR. BENWAY: "the night porter shot it all up for kicks." he looks around and picks up one of those rubber vacuum cups at the end of a stick they use to unstop toilets.... He advances on the patient.... "make an incision, Doctor Limpf," he says to his appalled assistan.... "i'm going to massage the heart."
Dr. Limpf shrugs and begins the incision. Dr. Benway washes the suction cup by swishing it around in the toilet bowl....
NURSE: "Shouldnt it be sterilized, doctor?"
DR. BENWAY: "very likely but there's no time."


When i read that i couldnt help but laugh.

[Lefty]

I meant sophomore in high school. Damn, You're 17 and and a sophomore in college? How did you manage that?

[Danton]

Last week or sometime similar, I got a PM from Elijahcraig, who is currently caged - he is a fan of the beatniks also and pointed out the influence the works of James Joyce had on their particular strain of prose... So I thought I'd just pop that into the mix, I would also suggest Jack London...

[Lefty]

William Blake and Tom Wolfe were also big influences on Kerouac, Ginsberg and the like. If I'm correct, Blake's use of different word rythms particularly interested Ginsberg.

[Alejandro C]

Ginsberg claims that he heard Blake talking to him.

i remember the story something like this: Ginsberg was laying on his bed and reading blake and jack off of course (apparently he always did this while reading poetry) he was reading the sick rose and all of the sudden he understood what the poem was about. he had read it a thousand times but this time he hears blake's voice from the other room telling him what it was about.
ginsberg says that this moment was a peak in his life, maybe the most important thing to ever happen to him. he has a similar peak while walking through frisco he sees this huge building and thinks it is a biblical monster, this inspires him to write howl. the monster or machine god is moloch.

two heavy influences on all the beats that have also influenced me are Rimbaud and Antonin Artaud. strangly the first time i hear the name Artaud i thought the guy was saying Rimbaud but a contraction. ART(hur rimb)AUD.
in my opinion two of the greatest writers because they have the same gift that burroughs had, and ginsberg to a lesser extent, insanity.
insanity is genious.
insanity is the only original thought.

one of the key places for the beats- city of lights bookstore- publishes an Artaud anthology that will blow you away

www.citylights.com

a brilliant rimbaud biography is done in english by graham robb
or his best translation is the complete works by wyatt mason

[Alejandro C]

also ginsberg was heavily influenced in poetic style by william carlos williams. he was interested in blakes word rhythms but he uses line breaks and construction like williams

[Rastafari]

William Carlos Williams is one of the best poets of all time. I put him up there with Uncle Walt.

[Sasafrás]

I've read one William Carlos Williams poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow." It was.... interesting.. :unsure: To say the least...

"THE RED WHEELBARROW"

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

[Rastafari]

haha
I memorized that one too.

I have a great memory!


but anyways, thats one of his best I think

[Lefty]

Burroughs is too, too crazy for me. Insanity of some kind or another is what made Ginsberg good, but it made Burroughs to damn incoherent to read.

[Alejandro C]

burroughs... his books aren't incoherent. the thing is... when you're reading them you know exactly what is going on at that moment in the story. you may not know how it fits in, what was before, or what comes after. but you know what's happening now. that's the important thing. burroughs is insanity/ is genious.


the highest form is no form.



when you read him don't try to make sense of it. let it make sense to you.

[Danton]

That's an insightful way to look at Burrough's cut and paste style, like freeform Jazz though, it requires real effort to get into and at times verges on high pretence... I had to literally force myself through the last pages of "Soft machine" - exasperated and utterly confused I was releived to put the torrid little ***** down for good - promising to never hurt myself with it's ugly and rank contents again....

[Lefty]

If an author can disgust you that much, but still compel you to read his book, it is a sign of genius.

[Alejandro C]

no brother, the way i see it the attraction is in the disgust. its a very pure and strange thing to love horrible art. but that seems to be the only art i like now a days. i'm writing somewhat of a book or short story i don't know which and i got some lines in it that might help explain. right before this me and my friends are freestyling while listening to some jams and smoking some herb-




by this time we’re passing around some smoke and feeling the music. it’s just like a family.

but there’s no piano just hip-hop beats
and the sound of tires on the street.
I’ve never freestyled before so
I decide to sound like rimbaud.

yo,
when I was young I remember
drinking wine in December
finding a girl and thinking of murder
and grabing an icepick to hurt her
my name was Lucifer
and hers was beauty
my dead little cutie
then I got myself some guns
and started to hate having fun
I flicked lice at nuns
one day I woke with a bandage on my head
and I found that my family was dead
except for my sister
my bullets must have missed her
and just yesterday was our reunion
it was also her first communion
she went to filthy church everyday
she did for real
and the priest always begged her to stay
after with him to kneel
and pray
yesterday she was sick
to her stomach at the thought of it
her head was spinning like a drunken boat
at the idea of taking jesus deep into her throat
and drinking him and not spitting out
swirling it around in her mouth
that night dreams enterted her mind
jesus coming up from behind
turning her around
then taking her to the ground
then she sees white
vaguely yellow
wakes sweating in the night
with drool on her pillow
she feels some wetness other places on her bed
but come to find out she had just bled
in her bed the only thing that slept was a mouse
cause she spent her holy night in the outhouse







that's supposed to be my character's freestyle though i would never be so pretentious to say that i could do that. it is a summary of a poem of rimbaud's called first communion. if you read Rimbaud it would some up perfectly for you what the art of Bill Burroughs means to me. here's part of a poem of his called My Little loves-

with strange moons
and ripe spheres,
knock your knees together,
my ugly little dears


My dry jets of sputum,
fester between
your round breasts,
my ugly, red-headed dear...


my little loves:
i hate you.
i hope your ugly tits blossom
with painful sores

your shoulders dislocate,
my loves.
stars brand your hobbled hips
while you do your worst.

and yet, for these sides of beef,
i made the lines above:
hips i should have broken,
i filled with acts of love.




that's an excert he wrote in perfect french verse at the age of 17 i believe. maybe i'll reproduce the whole thing in a new thread. but the point is you love something because it is so ugly. that's what burrough's writing is to me. its not genioius and then also its obscene and terrible, but rather the insanity and ugliness are its genious. i love burroughs for being a beast.
without that his writing would be nothing to me. he is the only heir to the Rimbaud genious. I thought Artaud might have it, but i'm not convinced yet.

[Lefty]

Reading Burroughs is kinda like watching a car wreck or going to rotten.com. You can't look away and are outwardly disgusted, but are inwardly fascinated.

[XredrevolutionX]

I think it´s a general problem that many of former revolutionary get conservative when they get old. Look Joschka Fischer in Germany for example.

I´ve only read "allein auf einem Berggipfel" from Kerouac I don´t know the title in english something like "alone on the top of a mountain" it´s a great book, if you read between the lines you can see how social critic the book is!

[Alejandro C]

I think you're talking about Desolation Angels, does it talk about burroughs and ginsberg in it? he's on a mountain for half then goes down into the city?

kerouac was never radical, he was never even left. he was apolitical. he was a buddhist.

he was very critical of his friends towards the time Angels was written, the time 'the beats' really came on to the scene

[The Feral Underclass]

Kerouac is by far my beatnik...."on the road" was such a magical book....he wrote it in two weeks, pumped up on speed and coffee...when you read it, sometimes he drifts off in these endless descriptive monologues and you can't help wonder where he was in his drug fuelled mind at the moment. he drifts off into another world, it's fantastic.

Someone mentioned Burroughs as a conservative...what bullshit....read "wild boys", that isnt the writing of a conservative....the guy was a smack addict for 50 odd years. he didnt go for t-parties and talk about the good old days...the man invented a generation for fuck sake....

I didnt read all the posts so I dont know whether it has been mentioned, but Neal Cassidy played a huge part on Kerouacs "spontaneous prose" method. Cassidy influenced Kerouac arguably more than anyone else.

My favourite "on the road" quote:

But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because 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 that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

[iwwobblie]

Burroughs was a political conservative,but his writing and lifestyle were anything but conservative.

[FatFreeMilk]

There is a play going on at school right now called "up the down staircase", and I guess it's based on "on the road" . I missed third period to go watch the teaser and it looks like it's gonna be really good. Maybe I should read the book now :rolleyes:

[Danton]

Are you in the play FFM?

An exert of Dr Thompson's ode to Jack..

"Four dogs went to the wilderness - only three came back
Two dogs died from guinea worm - the other died from you - Jack Kerouac"

"He ran over dogs, just think of it"

[Alejandro C]

Danton-

i just heard that last week. i've always wondered about thompson and kerouac. it seems pretty clear that kerouac was a big influence on thompson but every thing thompson says about kerouac seems to show that he really didn't like kerouac. i never really understood. i think thompson probably thinks kerouac betrayed the beats? i know in hunter's last book it has a picture of neal cassady from ginsberg. kerouac did turn his back on both those people later in life. maybe thompson just admires kerouac like shwarzaneger admires hitler, just for his power right? anyway what you got for me to clear up my smoky memories drifting out of the time fog of Hunter and Jack

[Danton]

Alejandro,

I haven't really much to add to what you said, it seems Hunter acknowledges a kind of grudging respect toward Jack but always cites Scott Fiztgerald or Hemmingway as his main influences... It may be a kind of juvenile jealousy or as you said a response to Jack's betrayal (of sorts) of the other beats and his general descent into madness..

Then again who knows what goes on in that thoroughly warped mind of his? I can't recall, did they ever actually meet?

[Alejandro C]

i would be very surprised if they didn't meet. hunter was around many of the same people jack was friends with in the middle 60's. though that was when jack went back to new york.... maybe they just missed eachother. for some reason i don't think they would've gotten along well if they met. kerouac was so quiet by then and calm whereas hunter... well you know

[Alejandro C]

i just had a weird moment. i was reading the jacket copy for fear and loathing and just now realize that GONZO journalism is just kerouac journalism. i wonder why it took me so long to put those two together. i need more smart pills. hunter was writing about gonzo being you just put it all down and don't edit it don't change it around, just publish it like it is. EXACTLY what kerouac was doing and telling other people to do.

'record the whole thing, as it happened, then send in the notebook for publication- without editing. that way, i felt, the eye & mind of the journalist would be funtioning as a camera. the writing would be selective & necessarily interpretive-but once the image was written, the words would be final.' -hunter


'not a word of this book was changed after i had finished writing it in three sessions from dusk to dawn at the typewriter like a long letter to a friend. this i believe to be the only possible literature of the future. uniterrupted and unrevised full confesions about what actually happened in real life....[] bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual american form [] composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better [] writer-director of earthly movies sponsored & angeled in heaven' -keroauc

it seems the only difference being that hunter thought himself to be a journalist and kerouac thought himself to be a genius and a writer. i thought it was even more strange that both refered to the movie aspect too. all the kerouac quotes were from a very short essay on spontaneuos prose, i'm guessing hunter was subconsiously mimicking it for his writing but trying to make it his own.