Mission Statement: to do very little, for very few, for not very long. Disappointing the easily pleased since 1819. Not as good as it used to be from Day One. History is Bunk - PT Barnum. Artificially Intelligent before it was fashionable. Fat camp for the mind! Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost. The Shock of the Old! Often bettered, never imitated.
looks like too much fun...wait a minute, who ever heard of too much fun...
ReplyDeleteA half hour oughta be more than enough, but count me in. I was 16 once.
ReplyDeleteJack went on the road with Neal in the late 'forties, when he was mid-twenties. Not only was he far from being a teen rebel, their post-war music soundtrack was a very strange place. A decade away from rock n' roll and hard bop, the radio dominated by crooners, novelty songs and big bands. In the context of the times, what they did - and what Kerouac wrote - was extraordinary and wonderful. His prose style may not have dated well, but his books changed lives - mine included (first read him at thirteen). That's as good as a book can get.
DeleteI enjoyed reading Kerouac a lot, and that was mostly in January 1976! Thanks for working on a soundtrack, of sorts.
DeleteD in California
Oh, he absolutely changed mine too -- I hitchhiked down to Lowell from up north to look for his grave when I was 16 or so (no, I didn't find it because he wasn't buried in Lowell, and there are a LOT of cemeteries in that Catholic city besides). I truly did love the guy. But some of the saddest things I ever read about were the circumstances of his death, and I've never felt the same about his life and work since.
DeleteKerouac 'n' Roll?
ReplyDeleteI was 13 and we spent that year in Berkeley, far away in every way imaginable from South Louisiana and my friend Robert gave it to me to read and I was gobsmacked, straight up.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first hardback books I owned was a novel "for kids" called High Road Home, by William Corbin. This must have been when I was ten or so. I remember it had a great effect on me - the travels across the USA by a young boy in search of his father - but for many decades I couldn't remember the title accurately ("Long" Road Home), nor the author. So yesterday I hunted deep into the internet, trying as many search terms as I thought useful, and eventually tracked it down on a book auction site, and from there I hopped over to Anna's Archive and picked it up as a pdf. I'm really looking forward to reading this again. It's a proto-On The Road, and not written down for kids. If you're interested, here it be, along with the superior UK cover design I remembered so well (if not the words!):
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/7QSDHYaMxRk
This affected me as much as Kerouac did later, the freedom of traveling, and, in hindsight, the search for a missing father. My own lived in the same house, but I didn't understand he was missing, too.
damn. looking forward to it
ReplyDeleteProgress report: first three minutes almost done!
ReplyDeleteit's a process
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