=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:55:48 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Zach Hoon <junky@BURROUGHS.NET>
Subject: The horror of ken going furthur
In-Reply-To:
<Pine.A32.3.93.970512134717.18000A-100000@srv1.freenet.calgary.ab.ca>
ahh i
must admit this little thread has made me feel quite young here, not
being
able to remember those glorious 60s, having to read cuckoo's nest in
high
school...hm. so before folx go off the deep end about kesey and his
work,
just let me say that's not what this post is about, never liked his
work,
maybe someday i will but i doubt it...
anyways,
here i agree with adrien, this whole pranksters thing a pathetic
attempt...as
well as the Futher Festival (with the some Greatful Dead
offshoots,
etc), and the fact that good ole Yasgur's farm is going to be a
theme
park by the turn of the century (this is no joke, folks). a good time
for
rememberances if you're of that age group i suppose, but i can't stand
seeing
ppl my age (22) standing there hippie'd to the gills going 'aw man i
was
born 30 yrs late. you got that joint, man?'
Derek
said:
>
who else would have the gall & guts to drive a 1949
>international
harvester acid trip from one side of the country to the
>other...
i did
it myself last summer, albeit not in a harvester, but with a bunch of
us
driving from here (madison, wi) to san francisco, august last year...far
from
sober, amazing...frisbee at three in the morning some iowa wayside i
was
convinced the thing was a large, glowing, hovering nabisco nilla wafer,
and
refused to get back in the car, instead staring at the headlites for a
minute
while my friends were determined and laughably failing to get up on
the
roof of a pavilion...or the red redness of utah mountains, sudden
flatness
of salt...yeah long acid roadtrips may have been groundbreaking 30
years
ago, but i've got friends who do them every year now, for the whole
summer,
and no they're not following phish or the undead dead. we know what
DID
happen but it's irrelevant to us because we concentrate on what CAN
happen.
sick of cultural recycling...Try flying from
Chicago to Prague and
Prague
to Chicago on ecstasy there's something new...(well, kinda)
There
is too much new going on to be stuck in the old. like it or not,
future
is where we're headed. the ideas and concepts laid down by KK and
crew,
AG, Jk, even my dear WSB need to be taken and listened to and
reapplied.
very few things are timeless. ideas that affect society hardly
are,
seeing that society is a fast changing monster. most ppl living
entirely
(remember that word) by philosophies and ways laid down 30 yrs ago
are
clueless and closed to so many things, IMHO.
I
latched onto burroughs real quick because he seemed future-oriented; a
place i
wanted to go, and yet need some sort of intro to. to paraphrase:
'the
future of writing is in space, not time'. i liked that. that got to
me.
with the exception of some of AG's poems, i could give fuck-all for
most of
the other beats...Jk always came across as some guy who had a few
good
roadtrips and times and then drank the very long night away at his
catholic
mother's house in good ole safe Mass. Cassady riding the magic
carpet
that was Ag's infatuation to some sort of glorified chauffer version
of
fame. the first 3rd? more like the last
8th.heh...those who latched on
in the
late 60s, 70s were worse to me, i didn't even bother to find out
much
about them after reading their materials. But without all of them, so
many
things would probably be left unsaid, and the grand story would be
incomplete.
so i take those facts, which _are_ important to me, and apply
it to
what i do. i've read enough WSB. now i need to apply these ideas to
what i
do.
..etc
etc. back to KK and his MPs. There are too many things going on now
that
are rooted in what's going on now; taking our advancements and being
creative,
outrageous, disruptive with them, interrupting a flow and putting
you,
maybe just briefly, into a wild possible future. that's what charms
me:
it's a possible future, not definite.
when you're doing something
past-based,
there is only one possible course of action, one that follows
the
path of those events already taken. altho i admit ther'll probably be
much
spontinaeity involved with KK and the MPs, but it will be based on a
same
philosophy. For those who were around back then, it'll be a wonderful
one,
but based on sentimentality, not new ideas, not any groundbreaking.
and to
say well it _was_ groundbreaking back
in the day; yeah, so was
hooking
up a horse to a buggy.
I admit
to a shortage of things as of late. Raves used to be an outing of
choice:
100s or 1000s of ppl in some huge secret location, dancing to
future.music,
taking care of each other, having surreal, induced
conversations.
It's a younger crowd now, concerned mainly with the drugs
and the
clothes, and being 'underground'. there are huge similarities in
fundamental
philosophies of rave and hippie culture, but the approach is
very
different. but now, all of it seems corrupted.
for
those of you wanting to see/feel something new, with similar outlook,
feeling
to it: 'A Little Furthur' memorial day weekend, and 'Even Furthur'
july
18-21, electric campout festivals, location usually an undisclosed
campgrounds
somewhere in Wisconsin. this event has
been going on for 3 yrs
now,
and gets better every year. and they even use a picture of the
Pranksters
bus on the flyer. i get an indescribeable kick going to these
things,
like the universe just all clicks together for a few days, and
everyone
can be far from beat for a little while.
Pranksters?
I'll stay home and read a book.
Obviously,
i've been meandering here. Apologies, and no offense...
-zach
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:12:45 -0500
Reply-To: race@midusa.net
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: RACE --- <race@MIDUSA.NET>
Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
Zach
Hoon wrote:
>
>
ahh i must admit this little thread has made me feel quite young here, not
>
being able to remember those glorious 60s, having to read cuckoo's nest in
>
high school...hm. so before folx go off the deep end about kesey and his
>
work, just let me say that's not what this post is about, never liked his
>
work, maybe someday i will but i doubt it...
>
anyways, here i agree with adrien, this whole pranksters thing a pathetic
>
attempt...as well as the Futher Festival (with the some Greatful Dead
>
offshoots, etc), and the fact that good ole Yasgur's farm is going to be a
>
theme park by the turn of the century (this is no joke, folks). a good time
>
for rememberances if you're of that age group i suppose, but i can't stand
>
seeing ppl my age (22) standing there hippie'd to the gills going 'aw man i
>
was born 30 yrs late. you got that joint, man?'
>
Derek said:
>
> who else would have the gall & guts to drive a 1949
>
>international harvester acid trip from one side of the country to the
>
>other...
> i
did it myself last summer, albeit not in a harvester, but with a bunch of
> us
driving from here (madison, wi) to san francisco, august last year...far
>
from sober, amazing...frisbee at three in the morning some iowa wayside i
>
was convinced the thing was a large, glowing, hovering nabisco nilla wafer,
>
and refused to get back in the car, instead staring at the headlites for a
>
minute while my friends were determined and laughably failing to get up on
>
the roof of a pavilion...or the red redness of utah mountains, sudden
>
flatness of salt...yeah long acid roadtrips may have been groundbreaking 30
>
years ago, but i've got friends who do them every year now, for the whole
>
summer, and no they're not following phish or the undead dead. we know what
>
DID happen but it's irrelevant to us because we concentrate on what CAN
>
happen. sick of cultural recycling...Try flying from Chicago to Prague and
>
Prague to Chicago on ecstasy there's something new...(well, kinda)
>
There is too much new going on to be stuck in the old. like it or not,
>
future is where we're headed. the ideas and concepts laid down by KK and
>
crew, AG, Jk, even my dear WSB need to be taken and listened to and
>
reapplied. very few things are timeless. ideas that affect society hardly
>
are, seeing that society is a fast changing monster. most ppl living
>
entirely (remember that word) by philosophies and ways laid down 30 yrs ago
>
are clueless and closed to so many things, IMHO.
> I
latched onto burroughs real quick because he seemed future-oriented; a
>
place i wanted to go, and yet need some sort of intro to. to paraphrase:
>
'the future of writing is in space, not time'. i liked that. that got to
>
me. with the exception of some of AG's poems, i could give fuck-all for
>
most of the other beats...Jk always came across as some guy who had a few
>
good roadtrips and times and then drank the very long night away at his
>
catholic mother's house in good ole safe Mass. Cassady riding the magic
>
carpet that was Ag's infatuation to some sort of glorified chauffer version
> of
fame. the first 3rd? more like the last
8th.heh...those who latched on
> in
the late 60s, 70s were worse to me, i didn't even bother to find out
>
much about them after reading their materials. But without all of them, so
>
many things would probably be left unsaid, and the grand story would be
>
incomplete. so i take those facts, which _are_ important to me, and apply
> it
to what i do. i've read enough WSB. now i need to apply these ideas to
>
what i do.
>
..etc etc. back to KK and his MPs. There are too many things going on now
>
that are rooted in what's going on now; taking our advancements and being
>
creative, outrageous, disruptive with them, interrupting a flow and putting
>
you, maybe just briefly, into a wild possible future. that's what charms
>
me: it's a possible future, not definite.
when you're doing something
>
past-based, there is only one possible course of action, one that follows
>
the path of those events already taken. altho i admit ther'll probably be
>
much spontinaeity involved with KK and the MPs, but it will be based on a
>
same philosophy. For those who were around back then, it'll be a wonderful
>
one, but based on sentimentality, not new ideas, not any groundbreaking.
>
and to say well it _was_ groundbreaking
back in the day; yeah, so was
>
hooking up a horse to a buggy.
> I
admit to a shortage of things as of late. Raves used to be an outing of
>
choice: 100s or 1000s of ppl in some huge secret location, dancing to
>
future.music, taking care of each other, having surreal, induced
>
conversations. It's a younger crowd now, concerned mainly with the drugs
>
and the clothes, and being 'underground'. there are huge similarities in
>
fundamental philosophies of rave and hippie culture, but the approach is
>
very different. but now, all of it seems corrupted.
>
for those of you wanting to see/feel something new, with similar outlook,
>
feeling to it: 'A Little Furthur' memorial day weekend, and 'Even Furthur'
>
july 18-21, electric campout festivals, location usually an undisclosed
>
campgrounds somewhere in Wisconsin.
this event has been going on for 3 yrs
>
now, and gets better every year. and they even use a picture of the
>
Pranksters bus on the flyer. i get an indescribeable kick going to these
>
things, like the universe just all clicks together for a few days, and
>
everyone can be far from beat for a little while.
>
Pranksters? I'll stay home and read a book.
>
Obviously, i've been meandering here. Apologies, and no offense...
>
> -zach
You
make the Pranksters sound as dull as Ward and June Cleaver and
Dwight
and Mamie Eisenhower. That's not half
bad. Living in the past
is
silly. a bit of remembrance now and
then is ... perhaps sentimental
but
what the fuck it is fun to be sentimental.
i remember a group i
hung
out with a few years ago that pledged to get together when we were
80 and
drop acid for a big fling. it would be
sentimental. it would be
new
too. it ain't gonna happen i'm almost
certain.
i think
it is stupid to place Kesey or others on a pedestal just as it
is
silly to place oneself there. pedestals
fall, crash and burn.
i ain't
certain the future is all it's cracked up to be. no offense.
it
seems your generation is just as capable of fucking up as the rest of
us.....
:)
rambling
on and on and blah blah blah from kansas plains.
david
rhaesa
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 08:20:50 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Gerald Nicosia
<gnicosia@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Re: Final estate details (for a while)
....
Your a nut case...you couldn't get anyone to buy it you finally sold it to
>U-Lowell
for whatever terms you could get...Sorry, but if you
>want
to listen to the taped interviews, you must have written permission
>from
the subjects...
May 13, 1997
Phil, your reply is full of bull crap
from one end to the other.
No one wanted the largest collection
of Kerouac primary source
material
in the world? 300 interviews with
people who knew Kerouac? Are
you
selling the Brooklyn Bridge too?
I chose to put all that material in
Lowell because I thought that's
where
the most Kerouac scholars would get to see it.
When I put it there,
the
university knew there were no individual permissions (there rarely are
with
ANY archive), and the university promised to make the material
accessible
to the public. They DID MAKE IT
ACCESSIBLE until 1995, when John
Sampas
came to complain to them.
Martha Mayo herself told me that. Later, she added "the woman from
Connecticut,"
but she refuses to name her. Why can't
she name her if she
named
John Sampas?
You deliberately quoted pieces of that
article out of context. It
was
Martha Mayo claiming that "if you want to listen to the taped
interviews,
you must have written permission," not the reporter. Of course
she's
claiming this, it's her excuse for letting Mr. Sampas have his way
about
closing the collection.
When Michigan State University scholar
Shari Krishnan complained
about
being turned away from the MEMORY BABE collection, she received a
phone
call from--guess who?--JOHN SAMPAS!
(Not "the woman from
Connecticut.") Sampas told Ms. Krishnan that she had to go
thru him to see
materials
in the collection, and that there were certain materials he would
not
allow her to see.
I'm a "nut"? I received my MASTER'S DEGREE WITH HIGHEST
DISTINCTION
IN
ENGLISH FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, as a result of which I was
awarded
a FOUR YEAR FELLOWSHIP IN ENGLISH TO UCLA,
Later, I received the
DISTINGUISHED
YOUNG WRITER AWARD FROM THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF ARTS AND
LETTERS
FOR MEMORY BABE. I've been a featured
speaker at FIVE MAJOR KEROUAC
CONFERENCES
IN THREE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.
What exactly are your credentials for
making all these
pronouncements
about Kerouac scholarship? Having
dinner every night with
John
Sampas?
I'm through arguing with you about
Kerouac scholarship. It's a
waste
of my time. I want to speak with
someone who's MY EQUAL.
I.e., please tell Mr. Sampas to send
in the first-string team now.
Best, Gerry Nicosia
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:20:23 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Rodgers
<Rodgers@TRACOR-A4.CCMAIL.VITRO.COM>
Subject: Paul Blake, Jr.
Mr. Nicosia:
Couldn't Mr. Blake pick up a few bucks for
himself by writing a book
about his relationship with his uncle
Jack?
Ron Rodgers
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:03:25 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Zach Hoon <junky@BURROUGHS.NET>
Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
In-Reply-To: <337884ED.3034@midusa.net>
david
rhaesa said:
>i
ain't certain the future is all it's cracked up to be. no offense.
>it
seems your generation is just as capable of fucking up as the rest of
>us.....
:)
oh
definitely. i think we already have; _I_ already have. that's not really
what i
was saying. there seems to be another group of powermad money hungry
kids
welling up, another mid 80s hell. doesn't make so good for the future.
hopefully
they will be beaten down. the future isn't going to be better,
just
different, and new. because it is the future, you know. and besides,
back in
the 60's there was a whole lot more to fuck up with (race issues,
war),
and i don't think, after all was said and done, the fuckups on the
gov't
side tremendous, on the little ppl side (us), close to nil. here i
the
90s, what? i don't even know what to call the major issues. gay lib?
abortion?
aids? this generation/decade seems to be plagued by wackos and
cults:
Oklahoma City, Waco, Dahmer, Heaven's Gate, Atlanta Bomber, World
Trade
Center, Planes blowing up. Can't protest that. can't be a movement or
a march
against that. no one knows what or when things will happen...We had
a 3 day
war that was a bunch of bullshit, not even enough time to get the
pickett
signs made before all the laser guided missles hit the piles of
iraqis
in the sand, in the munitions plants. lets blow up chemical weapons
bunkers
that we _know_ are chemical weapons bunkers and contaminate all of
our
faithful soldiers! maybe one of them will give birth to a kangaroo
that's really
the reincarnation of Jack Kerouac! (ever see 'Tank Gir'? if
not,
don't bother).
So i
have a lot of respect for the protests and marches and _ambition_ of
those
involved in the 60s. not an easy thing to do...i wish for something
to
drive my generation into action, instead of Jenny McCarthy's boobs or
the
next $%&^# Batman movie.
but oh
well. i rant. apaologies.
-zach
i'm all
for it.
-z
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:37:15 -0500
Reply-To: race@midusa.net
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: RACE --- <race@MIDUSA.NET>
Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
Zach
Hoon wrote:
>
>
david rhaesa said:
>
>i ain't certain the future is all it's cracked up to be. no offense.
>
>it seems your generation is just as capable of fucking up as the rest of
>
>us..... :)
>
> oh
definitely. i think we already have; _I_ already have. that's not really
>
what i was saying. there seems to be another group of powermad money hungry
>
kids welling up, another mid 80s hell. doesn't make so good for the future.
>
hopefully they will be beaten down. the future isn't going to be better,
>
just different, and new. because it is the future, you know. and besides,
>
back in the 60's there was a whole lot more to fuck up with (race issues,
>
war), and i don't think, after all was said and done, the fuckups on the
>
gov't side tremendous, on the little ppl side (us), close to nil. here i
>
the 90s, what? i don't even know what to call the major issues. gay lib?
>
abortion? aids? this generation/decade seems to be plagued by wackos and
>
cults: Oklahoma City, Waco, Dahmer, Heaven's Gate, Atlanta Bomber, World
>
Trade Center, Planes blowing up. Can't protest that. can't be a movement or
> a
march against that. no one knows what or when things will happen...We had
> a
3 day war that was a bunch of bullshit, not even enough time to get the
>
pickett signs made before all the laser guided missles hit the piles of
>
iraqis in the sand, in the munitions plants. lets blow up chemical weapons
>
bunkers that we _know_ are chemical weapons bunkers and contaminate all of
>
our faithful soldiers! maybe one of them will give birth to a kangaroo
>
that's really the reincarnation of Jack Kerouac! (ever see 'Tank Gir'? if
>
not, don't bother).
> So
i have a lot of respect for the protests and marches and _ambition_ of
>
those involved in the 60s. not an easy thing to do...i wish for something
> to
drive my generation into action, instead of Jenny McCarthy's boobs or
>
the next $%&^# Batman movie.
>
but oh well. i rant. apaologies.
>
>
-zach
>
i'm all for it.
>
> -z
well
after reading your post i listened to burroughs' words of advice
for
young people about 33 times and re-read your post and thought about
it long
and hard and decided that the sixties have been forgotten
somewhat
if they're only about "movements", that the sixties had their
fair
share of lunatics on both sides of the law-and-order game, but i
was
just a young kid knee-high to a small donkey (burrough/jack ass)
when
that was all going on and i guess i fall in the 'tweener'
generation
that never amounted to much of anything for anyone to
anyplace
at anytime. and so what!!! i think Ken Kesey and his geeser
pals
should drive their bus to eternity and back if they want to and
that
they say in big letters Never trust a Prankster so the younger
generations
myself and the 'tweeners' included who get caught in the
hype of
it all deserve exactly what we get.
anytime you're dealing with
a
prankster or someone with a movement attached to their name "get it in
writing!!!!"
....
time
for my siesta as a casualty of the "tweener" generation, i am
prescribed
to enjoy a siesta or two every day whether the magic bus is
flying
by airplane, train or flatbad pickup truck with Vegas plates.
the
Hall of Fame of the "tweener" generation will include: ????????
help,
fill in the blanks please please oh please .... off to sleep enjoy
y'alls
work-a-day-work and roadtrips and all that jazz/jacuzzi junk.
david
rhaesa
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 09:32:11 -0700
Reply-To: letabor@cruzio.com
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Leon Tabory
<letabor@CRUZIO.COM>
Comments:
To: "The horror of ken going furthur"@cruzio.com
Hey
dude, and yous men and gals and grrrls, women folks, who else
is/ain't
part of me/us, anyone not here now get with it anyone?
I think
there is something going on with us that we can't put our
fingers
quite on, or it comes out a litle garbled or something, fuck off
all of
you others, not me's, and you is them there, or is it something
in
ourselves that we are so uneasy about that we can't fan our fire's
exuberance
without chasing someone out, out of the picture, get out a
here,
you ain't nothin' but a shadow of the past or are you a nobody
nothing
from now. Like directors of a play who are afraid that they have
to
control everybody's actions on the stage? Hey folks see those clowns
hollering
for attention? Please don't give them no never mind, they
ain't
nothin but goofballs, look at me, look at me, don't follow therm,
follow
me, me me me. Oh, that shit again. So what else is new?
When my
weekend comes on Monday, I would like to go over your post in
depth
and detail, for the moment I want to tell you that I like your
post a
lot. Fresh and alive and good energy moving ahead. How can I feel
so good
about it on the verge of 27, oops, 72! I know there are very
good
reasons. Too busy at the moment to look into it. be late for work.
That
alone could disqualify me then, not so much now.
Maybe
it's because I too loved Madison. Spent more time sailing on lake
Mendota,
and in the Rathskeller than in the classrooms, but those were
ok too.
some of them. Here I go again giving my age away. Hey, that's
what it
is. Age discrimination. Pure and simple. Everybody does it, kid.
That's
why I am happy to have a part time very low paying job. Never
missed
a day's work in five years at least. Why else would anyone
complain
about a bunch of guys going on a fun trip, thinking they have
something
to say , too? Are you objecting to anything they said on this
trip?
Are you objecting because they are too proud of threir entry in
the
parade over thirtry years ago, hell, for having started that parade
then?
Love to hear the further, fun and future advancements. As Kesey
was
singing in the Filmore of SF taking his bus to a final resting place
of
honor in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland, "Hip Hip
Hurray,
Hip Hip Hurray" to anyone who is doing a great trip, "Hip Hip
Hurray,
to you too Zach. If you are in the Santa Cruz area, I might know
of a
good rave. I guarantee you no one will ask you to move off the
stage
because of your age, or costume, or local dialect, or temporary
fad.
Leon
Zach
Hoon wrote:
>
>
ahh i must admit this little thread has made me feel quite young here, not
>
being able to remember those glorious 60s, having to read cuckoo's nest in
>
high school...hm. so before folx go off the deep end about kesey and his
>
work, just let me say that's not what this post is about, never liked his
>
work, maybe someday i will but i doubt it...
>
anyways, here i agree with adrien, this whole pranksters thing a pathetic
>
attempt...as well as the Futher Festival (with the some Greatful Dead
>
offshoots, etc), and the fact that good ole Yasgur's farm is going to be a
>
theme park by the turn of the century (this is no joke, folks). a good time
>
for rememberances if you're of that age group i suppose, but i can't stand
>
seeing ppl my age (22) standing there hippie'd to the gills going 'aw man i
>
was born 30 yrs late. you got that joint, man?'
>
Derek said:
>
> who else would have the gall & guts to drive a 1949
>
>international harvester acid trip from one side of the country to the
>
>other...
> i
did it myself last summer, albeit not in a harvester, but with a bunch of
> us
driving from here (madison, wi) to san francisco, august last year...far
>
from sober, amazing...frisbee at three in the morning some iowa wayside i
>
was convinced the thing was a large, glowing, hovering nabisco nilla wafer,
>
and refused to get back in the car, instead staring at the headlites for a
>
minute while my friends were determined and laughably failing to get up on
>
the roof of a pavilion...or the red redness of utah mountains, sudden
>
flatness of salt...yeah long acid roadtrips may have been groundbreaking 30
>
years ago, but i've got friends who do them every year now, for the whole
>
summer, and no they're not following phish or the undead dead. we know what
>
DID happen but it's irrelevant to us because we concentrate on what CAN
>
happen. sick of cultural recycling...Try flying from Chicago to Prague and
>
Prague to Chicago on ecstasy there's something new...(well, kinda)
>
There is too much new going on to be stuck in the old. like it or not,
>
future is where we're headed. the ideas and concepts laid down by KK and
>
crew, AG, Jk, even my dear WSB need to be taken and listened to and
>
reapplied. very few things are timeless. ideas that affect society hardly
>
are, seeing that society is a fast changing monster. most ppl living
>
entirely (remember that word) by philosophies and ways laid down 30 yrs ago
>
are clueless and closed to so many things, IMHO.
> I
latched onto burroughs real quick because he seemed future-oriented; a
>
place i wanted to go, and yet need some sort of intro to. to paraphrase:
>
'the future of writing is in space, not time'. i liked that. that got to
>
me. with the exception of some of AG's poems, i could give fuck-all for
>
most of the other beats...Jk always came across as some guy who had a few
>
good roadtrips and times and then drank the very long night away at his
>
catholic mother's house in good ole safe Mass. Cassady riding the magic
>
carpet that was Ag's infatuation to some sort of glorified chauffer version
> of
fame. the first 3rd? more like the last
8th.heh...those who latched on
> in
the late 60s, 70s were worse to me, i didn't even bother to find out
>
much about them after reading their materials. But without all of them, so
>
many things would probably be left unsaid, and the grand story would be
>
incomplete. so i take those facts, which _are_ important to me, and apply
> it
to what i do. i've read enough WSB. now i need to apply these ideas to
>
what i do.
>
..etc etc. back to KK and his MPs. There are too many things going on now
>
that are rooted in what's going on now; taking our advancements and being
>
creative, outrageous, disruptive with them, interrupting a flow and putting
>
you, maybe just briefly, into a wild possible future. that's what charms
>
me: it's a possible future, not definite.
when you're doing something
>
past-based, there is only one possible course of action, one that follows
>
the path of those events already taken. altho i admit ther'll probably be
>
much spontinaeity involved with KK and the MPs, but it will be based on a
>
same philosophy. For those who were around back then, it'll be a wonderful
>
one, but based on sentimentality, not new ideas, not any groundbreaking.
>
and to say well it _was_ groundbreaking
back in the day; yeah, so was
>
hooking up a horse to a buggy.
> I
admit to a shortage of things as of late. Raves used to be an outing of
>
choice: 100s or 1000s of ppl in some huge secret location, dancing to
>
future.music, taking care of each other, having surreal, induced
>
conversations. It's a younger crowd now, concerned mainly with the drugs
>
and the clothes, and being 'underground'. there are huge similarities in
>
fundamental philosophies of rave and hippie culture, but the approach is
>
very different. but now, all of it seems corrupted.
>
for those of you wanting to see/feel something new, with similar outlook,
>
feeling to it: 'A Little Furthur' memorial day weekend, and 'Even Furthur'
> july
18-21, electric campout festivals, location usually an undisclosed
>
campgrounds somewhere in Wisconsin.
this event has been going on for 3 yrs
>
now, and gets better every year. and they even use a picture of the
>
Pranksters bus on the flyer. i get an indescribeable kick going to these
>
things, like the universe just all clicks together for a few days, and
>
everyone can be far from beat for a little while.
>
Pranksters? I'll stay home and read a book.
>
Obviously, i've been meandering here. Apologies, and no offense...
>
>
-zach
> .-
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:44:12 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: "Gibbons, Jeffrey x85139e1"
<x85139@EXMAIL.USMA.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
Zach,
Just
wondering if you thought that the only reason to have a war is so
protestors
can picket. Granted our intentions in
the Gulf War were
based
mainly for economic security. However,
I think it's naive to
think
that Saddam was going to simply invade Kuwait and that would end
it. His intentions were certainly larger than
just the port of Kuwait.
He
tested the U.S. (and its coalition) to see if we had the guts to
attack,
and he failed the test. Sometimes there
are wars (if you can
call
the battles in 1991 a war) that are necessary.
Sorry to make this
statement
on the "Beat" list, I will try to keep future postings to
strictly
Beat related topics.
Jeff
>----------
>From: Zach Hoon[SMTP:junky@BURROUGHS.NET]
>Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 1997 11:03 AM
>To: Multiple recipients of list BEAT-L
>Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
>
>david
rhaesa said:
>>i
ain't certain the future is all it's cracked up to be. no offense.
>>it
seems your generation is just as capable of fucking up as the rest of
>>us.....
:)
>
>oh
definitely. i think we already have; _I_ already have. that's not really
>what
i was saying. there seems to be another group of powermad money hungry
>kids
welling up, another mid 80s hell. doesn't make so good for the future.
>hopefully
they will be beaten down. the future isn't going to be better,
>just
different, and new. because it is the future, you know. and besides,
>back
in the 60's there was a whole lot more to fuck up with (race issues,
>war),
and i don't think, after all was said and done, the fuckups on the
>gov't
side tremendous, on the little ppl side (us), close to nil. here i
>the
90s, what? i don't even know what to call the major issues. gay lib?
>abortion?
aids? this generation/decade seems to be plagued by wackos and
>cults:
Oklahoma City, Waco, Dahmer, Heaven's Gate, Atlanta Bomber, World
>Trade
Center, Planes blowing up. Can't protest that. can't be a movement or
>a
march against that. no one knows what or when things will happen...We had
>a 3
day war that was a bunch of bullshit, not even enough time to get the
>pickett
signs made before all the laser guided missles hit the piles of
>iraqis
in the sand, in the munitions plants. lets blow up chemical weapons
>bunkers
that we _know_ are chemical weapons bunkers and contaminate all of
>our
faithful soldiers! maybe one of them will give birth to a kangaroo
>that's
really the reincarnation of Jack Kerouac! (ever see 'Tank Gir'? if
>not,
don't bother).
>So
i have a lot of respect for the protests and marches and _ambition_ of
>those
involved in the 60s. not an easy thing to do...i wish for something
>to
drive my generation into action, instead of Jenny McCarthy's boobs or
>the
next $%&^# Batman movie.
>but
oh well. i rant. apaologies.
>
>-zach
>i'm
all for it.
>
>-z
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:47:56 -0500
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: jo grant <jgrant@BOOKZEN.COM>
Subject: Re: Kicks, Joy, Darkness AND A RIP-OFF
In-Reply-To:
<9704128634.AA863460932@Mail.ff.cc.mn.us>
12May97
Wes Lundburg <wlundburg@MAIL.FF.CC.MN.US> wrote
>I
do like the Johhny Depp reading, although I hate to admit it (don't ask me
>why,
I just don't like him).
Have to
point out that the royalties due Jan Kerouac from this Johnny Depp
reading
were never paid to her. Producers of the show state that Jan gave
permission
for the material used by Depp. This is not true. She never gave
permission
for the material to be used. I have asked to see documentation
regarding
Jan giving permission and have not received a reply. Since
permission
from Jan doesn't exist they would have to come up with
permission
from John Sampas and they will not do this.
This is
a case of Jahn Sampas picking up $50,000.00 from Depp for a Jack
Kerouac
coat and giving him permission to use the material and not pay
royalties.
It's my
understanding that the Sampas Estate would also have recieved
royalties,
but since they received the $50,000.00
gave permission to use
the
material royalty free.
Could
the TV Production afford the fee? Of course they could. It was simply
another
case of the estate making sure Jan Keroauc did not get what was
legally
coming to her.
Jahn
Sampas made out. Jan Keroauc got shafted--again.
j grant
BE ON THE WATCH
for
items stolen from the Keroauc Collection
O'Leary Library, U Mass, Lowell
http://www.bookzen.com/kerouac.theft.html
Academic
& Small Press Authors & publishers
display books free at
<http://www.bookzen.com>
302,443
visitors since July 1, 1996
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:49:50 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: "Gibbons, Jeffrey x85139e1"
<x85139@EXMAIL.USMA.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
I
should have added to my last post, drive on Ken Kesey, Bob Dylan,
Furthur
Festival, Bob Weir and Ratdog, Mickey Hart and his Mystery
Box...etc.
etc.
>----------
>From: Zach Hoon[SMTP:junky@BURROUGHS.NET]
>Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 1997 11:03 AM
>To: Multiple recipients of list BEAT-L
>Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
>
>david
rhaesa said:
>>i
ain't certain the future is all it's cracked up to be. no offense.
>>it
seems your generation is just as capable of fucking up as the rest of
>>us.....
:)
>
>oh
definitely. i think we already have; _I_ already have. that's not really
>what
i was saying. there seems to be another group of powermad money hungry
>kids
welling up, another mid 80s hell. doesn't make so good for the future.
>hopefully
they will be beaten down. the future isn't going to be better,
>just
different, and new. because it is the future, you know. and besides,
>back
in the 60's there was a whole lot more to fuck up with (race issues,
>war),
and i don't think, after all was said and done, the fuckups on the
>gov't
side tremendous, on the little ppl side (us), close to nil. here i
>the
90s, what? i don't even know what to call the major issues. gay lib?
>abortion?
aids? this generation/decade seems to be plagued by wackos and
>cults:
Oklahoma City, Waco, Dahmer, Heaven's Gate, Atlanta Bomber, World
>Trade
Center, Planes blowing up. Can't protest that. can't be a movement or
>a
march against that. no one knows what or when things will happen...We had
>a 3
day war that was a bunch of bullshit, not even enough time to get the
>pickett
signs made before all the laser guided missles hit the piles of
>iraqis
in the sand, in the munitions plants. lets blow up chemical weapons
>bunkers
that we _know_ are chemical weapons bunkers and contaminate all of
>our
faithful soldiers! maybe one of them will give birth to a kangaroo
>that's
really the reincarnation of Jack Kerouac! (ever see 'Tank Gir'? if
>not,
don't bother).
>So
i have a lot of respect for the protests and marches and _ambition_ of
>those
involved in the 60s. not an easy thing to do...i wish for something
>to
drive my generation into action, instead of Jenny McCarthy's boobs or
>the
next $%&^# Batman movie.
>but
oh well. i rant. apaologies.
>
>-zach
>i'm
all for it.
>
>-z
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:53:24 EDT
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Joe
<100106.1102@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: no more to say & nothing to weep for
i mentioned earlier last week that there
would
be a documentary in the uk on sunday night /
monday
morning...well there was and it was titled
No More To Say And Nothing To Weep For
i'm guessing that its the same television
programme
that was shown a little earlier in the
states.
i watched it all.
obviously put together after his death, i was
a little
bemused by the fact they didn't once mention
neil cassady
or william burroughs! i'm aware he led an amazingly
fulfilled life, more than can be crammed into
a
one hour documentary, but nc & wsb were
only shown
on photographs!
also who was the guy who said ginsberg was a
little
naive about politics? what happened during that interview?
the interviewer really took the piss out of
ginsberg to belittle
him infront of that firing squad.
anyone else see this documentary have any
thoughts
on this?
also, as an aside, apart from an allen
ginsberg interview
i've nothing regarding beat gen on video so
that was the
first time i'd seen the kerouac / steve allen
show. man,
i wished i'd have heard him read road all the
way thru...
joe,
newcastle united kingdom
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:51:36 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Comments: MAA11719 on camphor (hop 0), Tue, 13 May
1997 12:51:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Randi Jaclyn Friedman
<rfiedma@GROVE.UFL.EDU>
Subject: Re: subscribe me
Comments:
To: SlugBug747@AOL.COM
In-Reply-To:
<970427001803_-831476971@emout02.mail.aol.com>
PLease take me off the list.
rfiedma@grove.ufl.edu
On Sun,
27 Apr 1997 SlugBug747@AOL.COM wrote:
>
Hey can you subscribe me please!
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:15:06 -0500
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Ron Guest
<rguest@SUNSET.BACKBONE.OLEMISS.EDU>
Subject: Fatty??
FATTY??
Are you kidding me? I got a little fast
on the delete key, but I
think
someone called someone else a fatty on here.
Having a great time
reading
the Kerouac Estate Debate..keep it coming..but fatty? We'll take
that up
at recess.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:18:59 -0500
Reply-To: race@midusa.net
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: RACE --- <race@MIDUSA.NET>
Subject: Re: Fatty??
Ron
Guest wrote:
>
>
FATTY?? Are you kidding me? I got a
little fast on the delete key, but I
>
think someone called someone else a fatty on here. Having a great time
>
reading the Kerouac Estate Debate..keep it coming..but fatty? We'll take
>
that up at recess.
expecting
"pants-on-fire" any minute now ...
david
rhaesa
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:24:42 -0500
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: jo grant <jgrant@BOOKZEN.COM>
Subject: Re: A Question for G. Nicosia/not Estate
related!!
In-Reply-To:
<970510213306_811267926@emout15.mail.aol.com>
>In
a message dated 97-05-10 19:47:58 EDT, you write:
>
><<
You might ask Jeffrey Weinberg if book
> misprints
are as valuable as those in stamps and coins. >>
>
>In
the case of the Memory Babe misprint, there is no extra worth attached to
>such
a copy...But you should send the copy to Gerry and ask him to sign it
>for
you anyway.
>Just
don't forget to add return postage....
>JW
>Water
Row Books
JW,
Your
post is interesting. There is no doubt in my mind that sending a book
to
Gerry with return postage would be a safe move.
Back a
few years ago, when I learned the value of a pre-publication edition
of
Catch 22 that I have I mentioned to a publisher friend that I was going
to send
it to Joseph Heller and ask him to sign it. He told me, "Don't do
it!
You'll never see the book again."
I
couldn't imagine that happening. I have no information about Heller being
that
kind of person, but didn't want to take the chance. What do you think?
Is it
risky?
j grant
BE ON THE WATCH
for
items stolen from the Keroauc Collection
O'Leary Library, U Mass, Lowell
http://www.bookzen.com/kerouac.theft.html
Academic
& Small Press Authors & publishers
display books free at
<http://www.bookzen.com>
302,443
visitors since July 1, 1996
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 13:30:53 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Zach Hoon <junky@BURROUGHS.NET>
Subject: Re: The hilarity of ken going to war
In-Reply-To:
<c=US%a=_%p=USGOV%l=EXMAIL10-970513164412Z-61132@exmail.usma.army.mil>
Jeff
said:
>Just
wondering if you thought that the only reason to have a war is so
>protestors
can picket.
War is
unreal to me. it's history. it's televised. it's not going on now
(at
least involving our country, so it's not prominent on the news etc...)
I could
put on the beads and flowers and say : 'there's no reason at all to
have a
war', and ideally, that's what should be. but i'm not an idealistic
person;
this isn't an idealistic world. although the US was probably right
for
hoppin' into the gulf fray, there have been many more noble or
'necessary'
causes of war, IMHO. Coalitions, alliances....bah...i'm not one
for
politics. so the only reason for war is so the soldiers can fight so
the
protesters can protest so the civilians can enjoy their freedom while
making
money from making bullets and missles
so the generals have jobs and
the
president looks pretty and heroic...whatever. i'm indifferent. if it
comes
to a choice i have to make, i'll go to the front and not the border.
don't
ask me why cause i don't know. maybe all the tales of the opium dens
in Nam
(nah just kiddin).
yepyep.
-zach
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 13:46:03 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: PAM <mapaul@PIPELINE.COM>
Subject: Re: New JK books for Fall
At
08:24 AM 5/13/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Gerry
and all:
>
>I
checked the copyright law properly this time before posting. Please ignore
>unless
you're really interested as it gets complicated.
>
>>From
1909 onwards, copyright was provided for 28 years from date of
>publication.
At the end of 28 years you could renew for another 47 years,
>making
75 in all. If you failed to renew, 28 was all you got. HOWEVER, in
>1992
the renewal aspect was significantly changed, and renewal was granted
>AUTOMATICALLY
to all books published after January 1, 1964. Now nearly all
>the
dates you listed in this post fall just before that date, bt you don't
>list
all the dates, so it's possible some of the works may still be
>protected.
Anything published after 1978 of falls under the new Death+50
>rule
(though it may well become Death+70 in the next few years).
>
>As
for your comment about can you sell books not yet assembled to a
>publisher,
of course that's perfectly possible if both sides are willing to
>take
the risk and there's enough money put up front by the publisher. It's a
>bit
like the infamous 'player to be named later' trade.
>
>Best
>
>Nick
W-W
>
>One
of the last things to be published will be the notebooks. if that
includes
all or some is still up in the air. Regards to all, Paul...
>
>>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:46:57 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
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From: Gerald Nicosia
<gnicosia@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Overview, Part 2, Final Statement
To all
the Patient Folks on the Beat-List:
I came on here hoping to initiate an
honest dialogue on the Kerouac
Archive
with John Sampas or one of his official representatives, such as Ann
Charters. What I got instead was Phil Chaput throwing
20 lies a day at me
to
answer, to keep me away from any real discussion of what is being done,
and
what should be done, with the thousands and thousands of papers Kerouac
carefully
saved and filed away all his life.
I assume Mr. Chaput has been put up to
this by Mr. Sampas himself.
Almost
every one of the pieces of "evidence" he's thrown at me were standard
lines
used in the past by Mr. Sampas or his lawyer Mr. Tobia. I had dealt
with
them all years ago, and now, instead of being able to move forward on
this
question, I was forced to rehash the past for the last two weeks.
I'm quitting this futile treadmill
they've stuck me on. I think
I've
exposed enough of Mr. Chaput's lies to throw doubt on the credibility
of all
his future claims--and I'm sure there are going to be hundreds more
before
he's done. Since the demands on my time
right now are a lot more
intense
than the demands on his, he can afford to continue with this game
indefinitely,
and I cannot.
I should also add that I've just been
asked to write my
autobiography
for Gale Research's literary encyclopedia called CONTEMPORARY
AUTHORS--a
10,000 word piece that will take all of what little free time I
have
left these days. For that reason alone,
it will be tough checking my
Beat-List
mail on a timely basis, and so I would ask those of you with
IMPORTANT
QUESTIONS TO JUST EMAIL ME DIRECTLY at GNicosia@earthlink.net.
The best I can hope to do here is TO
GIVE YOU THE OUTLINES OF WHAT I
AM
FIGHTING FOR, AND WHY I AM FIGHTING SO HARD:
SInce all this began with a few
comments of Mr. Anstee's, let me
return
to his most forceful point: that people should hold back getting
involved,
that people shouldn't take sides, that people should allow the
status
quo to continue.
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IS: THERE IS NO
STATUS QUO. MR. SAMPAS IS
CURRENTLY
MAKING MOVE AFTER MOVE, WITH THE INTENTION OF CONTROLLING JACK
KEROUAC
SCHOLARSHIP WELL BEYOND THE TIME OF HIS DEATH.
He is currently
grooming
nephew Jim Sampas to follow in his footsteps.
THERE IS NO STATUS QUO: at present Jan
Kerouac's heir, exhusband
John
Lash, having made a deal with John Sampas, is engaged in a
down-and-dirty
court fight to get me thrown out as Jan Kerouac's literary
executor,
even though she appointed me to do that work in her will. Mr.
Lash is
being abetted (and doubtless encouraged) in this attack by Mr.
Sampas. As evidence, when Tom Staley, Humanities
Research Center Director
at U.
of Texas, Austin, sent an affidavit in my behalf to the probate court
in
Albuquerque (where Lash is fighting me), SAMPAS HIMSELF CALLED THE
UNIVERSITY
OF TEXAS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT STALEY'S INVOLVEMENT.
My legal bills in New Mexico exceed
$60,000. Mr. Lash's bills are
comparable. Before the battle is over, each side will
doubtless have spent
over
$100,000. Why is Mr. Lash spending so
much money to get rid of me as
Jan's
literary executor?--an action that has drawn outcries from the world's
most
important literary organization, PEN. I
quote from the letter of
author
Floyd Salas, President of PEN OAKLAND (PEN USA WEST): "To deny the
clear
intention of Jan Kerouac's statements about her desire to save her
father's
literary estate, and to change the clear instructions of her will,
which
names Gerald Nicosia her literary executor, is to censor the voice of
this
fine American writer, Jan Kerouac, even in her grave."
WHY IS JAN KEROUAC BEING
"CENSORED EVEN IN HER GRAVE"?
Because it
is
necessary to do so if John Sampas is to continue his one-man control of
the
whole field of Kerouac scholarship and, I may add, Kerouac sales..
Is this only what Mr. Anstee calls
"paranoia"?
Let me cite some specific examples:
In 1992, Irish writer Elgie Gillespie
wrote a long article on the
strange
goings-on in the Kerouac Estate. It was
scheduled to be published
in THE
SAN FRANCISCO REVIEW OF BOOKS. Someone
tipped off Mr. Sampas before
publication,
and Sampas phoned SFROB publisher Don Paul, threatening a
lawsuit
if the article was published. Don Paul
immediately killed the
article
and told Ms. Gillespie never to publish it anywhere.
When MEMORY BABE was kicked out of
Viking/Penguin (only weeks after
Mr.
Sampas had made his 6-book deal there for the publication of new Kerouac
texts),
I took my biography to the University of California Press, which
immediately
agreed to reprint it. A month later, U
of C Press publisher Jim
Clark
got a call from Mr. Sampas's agent, Jacob Hoye, instructing him that
Mr.
Sampas would take legal action to stop MEMORY BABE from being
reprinted--claiming
I needed to pay permissions fees all over again (not a
normal
practice) and that Mr. Sampas did not intend to resell me those
permissions. Mr. Hoye made it clear to Mr. Clark that Mr.
Sampas did not
want to
see MEMORY BABE back in print.
When I let it be known I was about
file a tort-action suit against
Mr.
Sampas for "interference with contractual relations," I received a
call
from
Mr. Sampas himself, explaining to me that he was only doing his best to
protect
Jack Kerouac, since my book was "filled with mistakes."
MISTAKES ACCORDING TO JOHN SAMPAS.
Clark republished MEMORY BABE. No suit was filed. But two years
later I
received a letter from Mr. Sampas's agent Sterling Lord, reviving
essentially
the same charges against MEMORY BABE--only this time saying I
had
NEVER paid for the right to quote from MEXICO CITY BLUES. I told Mr.
Lord I
had paid those permissions 15 years ago, and he demanded to see
proof. I told him the permissions had been filed
with Grove Press 15 years
ago,
and that Grove had been resold as a company 4 times since then--they no
longer
had records going back that far. Again,
there was no actual suit.
Mr. Sampas has contacted both the
University of Texas and the
University
of California's Bancroft Library, attempting to restrict access
to
Kerouac materials on deposit there (i.e., scholars would need Sampas's
permission
just to look at them). This is the same
tactic Mr. Sampas used
successfully
with my MEMORY BABE archive in Lowell.
In Sampas's letters to
Tom
Staley at the University of Texas, he specifically demanded information
about
what materials Gerald Nicosia had seen.
Staley refused to divulge
private
library records, and BOTH CALIFORNIA AND TEXAS TOLD MR. SAMPAS TO
KEEP
HIS HANDS OUT OF THEIR COLLECTIONS.
Would that U Mass, Lowell, had
done
the same.
Mr. Sampas had the "FINAL
SAY" on what Kerouac letters, and what
parts
of letters, Ann Charters was allowed to publish in the SELECTED
LETTERS
volume from Viking/Penguin. This is by
her own admission in her
interview
with Dan Barth, which I excerpted in an earlier post.
There is no proof that Mr. Sampas controls
the Lowell Celebrates
Kerouac!
committee, but the two key members of that committee who gave Brad
Parker*
the hardest time, Paul Marion and Roger Brunelle, are both close
associates
of Mr. Sampas. (In an earlier post, I
told how Brad Parker had
attempted
to stage independent Kerouac events in Lowell, had been opposed by
the
Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! committee, and had complained to the National
Park
Service about their interference.)
Mr. Sampas and his nephew Jim were
honored guests at the New York
University
Kerouac Conference in 1995. They sat
behind the same desk with
conference
organizer Helen Kelly. Ms. Kelly
repeatedly refused to invite
Jan and
me to participate in that conference--though both of us had spoken
for
years with a unique voice about Jack Kerouac.
Instead, we were replaced
with
the likes of Andy Clausen, a hod-carrier poet from Oakland (any of you
ever
heard of Mr. Clausen as an expert on Jack Kerouac?). When Jan Kerouac
and I
showed up at the conference anyway, and paid $120 apiece to get in, we
were
almost immediately dragged out by police.
Later, one of the conference
organizers
told me confidentially: "You know, we had to please Mr. Sampas,
or he
wouldn't have given us permission to use Kerouac materials here. We
couldn't
have put on this conference without his cooperation."
Recently, Mr. Sampas has hassled
Steven Turner in England about both
the
content and the format of his book, ANGELHEADED HIPSTER. There were
complaints
to Turner from David Stanford, Sampas's editor at Viking, that
material
about Jack's alcoholism and bisexuality should be removed from the
book. Sampas even objected to the use of a photo
on the back jacket showing
JACK
HOLDING A TEACUP, because, according to Turner, MR. SAMPAS FELT IT
SHOWED
KEROUAC AS A DRINKER! According to Mr.
Turner, Mr. Sampas has also
threatened
legal action against him for what Sampas claims was his illegal
use of
certain Kerouac materials.
When biographer Ellis Amburn sought John
Sampas's help, he was given
a list
of people NOT TO SPEAK TO. Brad Parker,
my friend, was on the TABOO
LIST. Mr. Amburn never contacted me either,
incidentally, though Kerouac
scholars
contact me on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis.
FINALLY, NOT ONE KEROUAC SCHOLAR IN
THE WORLD HAS HAD FREE ACCESS TO
THE
ENTIRE JACK KEROUAC ARCHIVE, AND THE VERY FEW WHO HAVE SEEN EVEN
SIGNIFICANT
PIECES OF IT HAVE BEEN HAND-PICKED BY MR. SAMPAS. (Contrast
this
with Allen Ginsberg, for example, who allowed any serious scholar
complete
access to his own archive, and did not demand proof of political
correctness
first.)
NONE of the above activities by Mr.
Sampas is ILLEGAL. But they
demonstrate
an overweening effort to control Kerouac scholarship by an
individual
who is not a scholar in any sense. They
smack of censorship, and
they
are hugely detrimental to the free flow and free development of ideas
about
Jack Kerouac.
Mr. Anstee asserts that in opposing
this control, I simply want to
control
Kerouac scholarship myself. I ask Mr.
Anstee to produce HIS
EVIDENCE
OF THIS, comparable to the list I have just produced.
I have here produced plenty of
evidence (and there is more I have
not
mentioned) of Mr. Sampas's ongoing control.
A great American writer deserves
better than this.
What can YOU DO ABOUT IT? YOU CAN RAISE YOUR VOICES ABOUT IT, AND
KEEP
RAISING YOUR VOICES, and refuse to be silenced by Mr. Anstee's
dishonest
call for a return to the status quo.
WHAT status quo, Mr. Anstee?
The
ground is being swept out from under my feet, and the feet of every
sincere
Kerouac scholar, even as we speak. ALL
OF YOU ON THE BEAT-LIST, AND
YOUR
FRIENDS, CAN LET MR. SAMPAS KNOW THAT THIS KIND OF HEAVY-HANDED CONTROL
IS NO
LONGER ACCEPTABLE.
Finally, let me dispel once for all
this smokescreen Mr. Chaput has
put out
that the Jack Kerouac Archive is already in the New York Public Library:
Jack Kerouac saved all his childhood
and teenage writings, many of
them in
the form of self-published comic books and newspapers. He also
saved
early unpublished "juvenile" novels, such as THE SEA IS MY BROTHER
and
AND THE
HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS! The
New York Public Library has
NONE OF
THE YOUTHFUL, PRE-PUBLICATION WRITINGS OF JACK KEROUAC.
Jack Kerouac typed almost all his most
important books (with the
exceptions
of DR. SAX, VISIONS OF GERARD and VISIONS OF CODY) on long
scrolls
of paper. ON THE ROAD was typed on
20-foot strips of Japanese art
paper
taped end to end; the others were typed on teletype rolls.
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DOES NOT
OWN A SINGLE ONE OF THESE
SCROLLS. NOR DOES IT OWN ANY OF THE RETYPED VERSIONS
OF THESE BOOKS.
VISIONS OF GERARD, VISIONS OF CODY,
and DR. SAX, undoubtedly three
of
Kerouac's greatest books, were written mostly in pencil. THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC
LIBRARY DOES NOT OWN ANY OF THE DRAFTS OF THOSE BOOKS EITHER.
Kerouac carefully filed all of his
correspondence (including drafts
of his
own letters) since the early 1940's--three decades of correspondence.
WHAT
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY HAS OF THIS IS A FEW DOZEN XEROXED KEROUAC
LETTERS
AND A FEW DOZEN ORIGINAL KEROUAC LETTERS TO MEMBERS OF THE SAMPAS
FAMILY.
Jack Kerouac kept an extensive file of personal photographs of his
family
and his friends. THE NEW YORK PUBLIC
LIBRARY HAS NONE OF THESE PHOTOS.
Jack Kerouac made 100's of private
tapes of himself and his friends
reading
and singing. NONE OF THESE TAPES IS IN
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Jack Kerouac had a personal library of
hundreds of books, many of
them
with marginal annotations that he made in them while reading. THE NEW
YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY HAS NONE OF KEROUAC'S BOOKS.
How is it, then, that the New York Public Library already houses
the
Jack
Kerouac Archive?
Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.
In friendship to all of you,
especially the guy in Fort Wayne who
offered
to buy me a cold beer, I remain (as my Vietnam vet buddies say)
Yours for the duration, Gerry Nicosia
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:00:41 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Levi Asher
<brooklyn@NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Anybody know Andrew Burnett?
Is
anybody here in touch with a Beat aficianado named
Andrew
Burnett? Over a year ago he wrote up a
virtual
tour of
Neal Cassady-era Denver for me, which I put
up on
my pages at http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/Denver/Denver.html --
this
week, to my great surprise, it got a very nice write-up
in the
New Yorker (!) in the section where they review web
sites. Andrew would be thrilled -- but I don't have
a current
email
or snail-mail address for him!
------------------------------------------------------
Levi Asher = brooklyn@netcom.com
Literary Kicks: http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/
(the beat literature web site)
Queensboro Ballads:
http://www.levity.com/brooklyn/
(my fantasy folk-rock album)
###################################
"Tie yourself to a tree with
roots"
-- Bob Dylan
-----------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:05:14 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
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From: Gerald Nicosia
<gnicosia@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Re: Paul Blake, Jr.
At
11:20 AM 5/13/97 -0400, you wrote:
> Mr. Nicosia:
>
> Couldn't Mr. Blake pick up a few bucks
for himself by writing a book
> about his relationship with his uncle
Jack?
>
>
> Ron Rodgers
>
Dear
Ron: May 13, 1997
Paul is a great storyteller like all
the Kerouac's, and I recently
spent a
whole day out in Sacramento with him, listening to him tell Kerouac
family
stories to the BBC film crew. (I put
some of them on audio tape
myself.) The trouble is, he's not a professional
writer; and he's also
desperately
trying to take care of his family of wife and 4 kids. He didn't
get to
park his trailer on the neighbor's land for free. There are actually
a
couple of empty houses on the land that he has to repair, fences to keep
up, and
general caretaker duties he has to do to earn the right to keep his
family
there rent-free.
Certainly Paul has enough material for
a book, but he would need a
good
writer or editor to work with him. If
you've followed my recent posts,
you
know I have more than enough family duties (sick mother, 2 year old
daughter)
and work duties (Vietnam book, 2 Kerouac estate lawsuits,
autobiography
to write for CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS) to use up the 24 hours in a
day. There's no way I could find time to go out
to Sacramento and work with
him on
that book.
It would also have to be somebody he
could trust, because many of
his
revelations will be told in court, if Jan Kerouac's lawsuit ever goes to
trial
in St. Petersburg.
I think we all should help him get
back on his feet, however, and
I'll
suggest something on the Beat-List later today.
Thanks for your concern.
Best, Gerry Nicosia
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:45:12 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
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From: Gerald Nicosia
<gnicosia@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Re: the mysterious Corso
At
01:00 PM 5/13/97 +0300, you wrote:
>Dear
all,
>
>I
am new here and have been following the interesting discussions
>on
this list concerning the Beats for a while now. But whatever happened
>to
Corso?! I am currently working on a
paper on Corso's poetry, and since
>I
know that there are many 'experts' here, I would like to ask you a
>question
concerning his poetry. In the poem
called "Clown" he has the
>following
line:
>
>"And
for God I am ready with a mouthful of penguins."
>
>Does
anyone know or have any idea as to the meaning of the word
>"penguins"? I know that he uses the same expression in
at least a
>couple
of other poems as well, so I'm guessing that it's more than just a
>whimsical
surrealistic image. Perhaps drug
lingo? Also, if anyone knows
>any
academic work that has previously been done on Corso, I'm all ears.
>
>Ilkka
>
Dear
IIkka, May 13, 1997
I don't think I'm telling tales out of
school that Gregory (whom I
like to
think of as a good friend) has had substance abuse problems for a
long
time, both with heroin and alcohol. He
was (and may still be) in a
methadone
program. He has many regrets about
having wasted portions of his
life
and talent, and especially about "not being there for his kids" more.
He is
on the surface a thorny, sarcastic, distrustful sort of guy; but deep
down he
cares about a lot of things, including making this world a better
place,
and certainly about "keeping poetry pure," as he's said to me more
than
once.
There was a woman running around a
couple of years ago doing
interviews
for a biography of Corso, but I never heard any more from her (I
can't
even remember her name!) and I never heard any more about her book either.
Gregory is far more a surrealist than
a symbolist, so you can't
expect
every image in his poem to correlate to some other thing or concept.
"Fried
shoes"--another of his great lines--doesn't represent anything but
the
mind having fun with itself. "A
mouthful of penguins"--in my
view--is
just
another attempt to jar you out of your mundane mindset, make you see
the
world differently--which is traditionally the great mission of poetry,
which
the surrealists just updated a little.
As far as the image recurring
in a
few places, well, Gregory often enjoys quoting himself and will play
with
favorite images like a kid looking at different facets of a favorite
marble.
Best, Gerry Nicosia
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:56:46 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Gerald Nicosia
<gnicosia@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Re: New JK books for Fall
.... in
>1992
the renewal aspect was significantly changed, and renewal was granted
>AUTOMATICALLY
to all books published after January 1, 1964. Now nearly all
>the
dates you listed in this post fall just before that date,
>Best
>
>Nick
W-W
>
Dear Nick, May 13, 1997
The only one of the books I listed
that was published after Jan. 1,
1964
was the second half of OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT, but it was published not as
a book
but as part of a magazine, EVERGREEN REVIEW.
Does that still make it
automatically
renewed? If so, it means that only half
of OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT
is in
public domain.
Sorry if I misled anyone. It was unintentional. As you say,
copyright
law is complicated--it's no wonder lawyers have to specialize in
it to
be any good.
Best, Gerry Nicosia
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 15:00:45 EDT
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Bill Gargan
<WXGBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject: Re: SoRRY (Bill Gargan)
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 12 May 1997 22:34:28 -0500
from
<msackma@MAILHOST.TCS.TULANE.EDU>
Matthew,
just resubscribe from your new address.
I deleted you.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:38:54 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
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From: "s.a. griffin"
<perrotta@CALVIN.USC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Howl to the bard/exploding text
report
=20
>i
think you should consider posting the Howl to the Bard narrative on
>the
Listserv. i imagine some people would
enjoy it. it certainly would
>provide
a change of pace from the Mother-of-All-Estate-Squabbles ....
>
>david
rhaesa
>
>
Here ya
go kids, lost it once on the =91puter thang.
Swallowed the danged
thing
up and wouldn=92t give it back. Ah
well. Anyway, forgive any errors,
mistakes
in reference, it is almost 4 a.m. here on the not so sunny
westcoast
at present and I am left handed.
Thanks again for playing with
me on
Allen=92s behalf. It was a rare
pleasure. Until we meet to sing and
dance,
yours, s.a.
Howl To
The Bard
Allen
Ginsberg Tribute at Beyond Baroque
May 10,
1997
Venice,
Ca.
I was
late getting started as I had been going on in a stone rant earlier on
with
neighborhood pal about poetry and how not to give oneself credit for
reinventing
the wheel as it just is so roll with it.
Was there to cop a
bone to
carry to the reading with me as not to arrive empty headed out of
hand
alas. Much traffic on the 10 West
backed up in looksee museum of
common
rubberneck activity due to multiple late in the day stress breakdown
party
up get down out of control shutdown late in the day early in the
evening
beautiful Saturday pile ups Santa Monica freeway eastbound. Wow!
Put
marbles in mouth and teach me to talk.
So anyway, I=92m doing my best=
to
get
there carrying a head full of words and a heart full of Allen. When I
finally
pulled up to the event, parking was very tough leading me to believe
that
this was going to be a full blown shindig indeed. Finally squeezed
into a
tiny space with my little Korean limo, grabbed copies of exploding
text
and headed towards the light of Baroque.
30 or
so were gathered on the lawn outside around a speaker monitor
listening
to the goings on as I threaded thru the
crowd of good folk
passing
out the exploding text that many thought were programs and I say
sure
why not and keep moving weaving bobbing
boxing my way thru making my
way
inside falling in deeply the tea party full steam. More folks are
standing
in the lobby as there was no room inside the squeezing room only
main
event. The room generally only holds a
max of about 100 or so and at
least
250 plus were assembled attentive as the thing was alive with energy,
love
and spirit. I came in on the Venice
Beat segment of the show as John
Thomas
was at the business of talking about Allen and Neal and about this
and
that and working the crowd with much grace and appreciated wit and
somehow
ended up in the bathroom sitting on the toilet or something when
Fred
the director came over and grabbed me to take me to a seat next to
FranCeye
Dean Smith former old lady of Bukowski mother of Marina
affectionately
known in Buk lit as "old snaggle tooth". A truly fine and
sweet
woman. I felt like I was there to see
the man Frank Sinatra at
Madison
Square Garden the way the room held itself.
There was some recorded
stuff
of Ginsberg and then next in the music WAS FRANK, Frank T. Rios old
time
Venice beatster and east coast wise guy who talked disembodiment of
poets
poetry and disembodied holy past in drugs and words and deed with
Corso
the two somehow simpatico lit brothers of street smart scene and
hipster
beat thing of period past and how he woke up the morning after Allen
had
passed and said to himself that he like every other dumb fuck was
writing
A GINSBERG POEM and this made him self conscious and naked in
thought
so he called Black Ace publisher poet writer man Tony Scibella cross
town
old pal still another component of Venice Beat old time wordsmith rat
pack
and asked if he was doing the same like writing a poem for and about
Ginsberg
and he says I don=92t write poems on dead body and this was=
something
for
Frank to work with. So Frank talked a
bit more and read holy inspired
poem
for Ginsberg and then when finished burned it and placed in sacred
silver
salad bowl shrine sitting on the sidelines.
He took us there
peaceful
like and we felt the grace and beauty and love. To complete the
Venice
segment is Philomene Long raven haired beat angel wife of John
Thomas
and creator director of fantastic film "Venice Beats: An Existential
Comedy"
which I highly recommend and she reads words for Allen in a never
before
voice which seemed to come from the other side that shot thru the
crowd
and filled our centers with sweet cream of vision.
We were
there, flying. Click your heels three times there is no
place like
home. The Wichita Vortex is intoned. There are many Red Wheelbarrows as
well. Whitman and Blake left their footprints on
the night and then left
the
building as cosmic croon doggies of
sing me to sleep inside the common
dream
of human desire. =20
There
goes Jupiter, there goes Mars and here comes Man =91O War! =20
Heard
later that I had missed Keith Antar Mason
of Hitite Empire whom
everyone
said was great and he is.
More
folks jumped up and spoke and read.
Black
Sparrow high priestess of word Wanda Coleman is in the house following
jazzpoet
husband Austin Strauss. She goes on in
a searing rant and roll of
anger,
hatred and brokenhearted ire and the crowd is silent as if standing
in the
middle of the road in shocking glare of headlights or watching an
oncoming
train with your foot caught in the switching track. She finishes
her
prepared work for the eve and then breaks it all down in a slow
deliberate
rap about how when she came into this room pissed but that the
spirit
of the room reached out to her as Allen Ginsberg coming from the back
of the
room arms open for her and he comes toward and she is still fucking
pissed
but Allen wraps her in arms of true devotion and she is letting go
her
anger now being consumed by Allen=92s embrace and she slowly and more
quietly
dissolves into peace and now descends into silent love set free on
everyone
there.
David
Ulin talks about how some critic said that Allen was the poet most
willing
to be mediocre and David says that this is a high compliment and I
agree
that he, Allen, was human and willing to fail and if you can=92t fail
then
what have you got? Shit sandwich
disguised as wisdom.=20
Mike
Lally talked about his actor ego and such and finally walked into short
world
of how to be humble and began to say that Allen always said he was
reminiscent
of Neal C. due to energy and attitude and Lally shot off, "Hey,
fuck
you man, I=92m from New Jersey, I=92m Kerouac, not Cassady!" Large=
guilty
laughter
at common attitude and not so secret shared dreams unfulfilled and
in the
back of the room Neal tossed his hammer and talked endlessly about
Dr.
Feelgood and his =9239 Chevy with no brakes coming down the hill while
tripping
on gassy nebula undiscovered. Lally
went on some more and finally
came to
the point where after years of association with the man due to much
experience
of living he had calmed down and come full circle to where
Ginsberg
began to defer to Michael. He ended up
talking about a fete or
something
of Allen where folks went on and on about Allen this and that
until
finally Allen gets up and basically calls it all fake in amazing
poetic
language even accusing the gold as being "fake".
More
audio of Allen. Pull My Daisy, the
incredible eulogy to Neal about
nipples,
bicep=92d arm and flesh which I was glad to hear as it is one of my
all
time faves.
More
people read. Speak.
Michael
C. Ford, one of the only humans I could never tire of hearing speak
because
of his glib gravely jazzy jazz speak like from the brass bell of
trumpet
he talks about old days late 60=92s flash to Kenneth Rexroth via
Kenneth
Patchen, someone=92s got a gig at San Diego State and Rexroth having
some
trouble with the deal in terms of respect and so there are things to be
done to
restore honor, respect. The students
will mount an event maybe.
Rexroth
says to Ford come to my place tonight for dinner got a surprise for
ya.
Ford shows up and guess who=92s coming to dinner? Ginsberg,=
Ferlinghetti
and
him. In retro he says that of course he
didn=92t know what he had or=
who
was
really with and as the eve goes on Allen isn=92t looking good or=
something
and
someone maybe Michael C. as youth says what=92s the deal and Ginsberg=92=
s
response
is, "New York!" That all his
woes are New York, that whatever it
is is
New York. The weather? New York!
The economy? New York! New York,
New
York, New York! Bad hair day? Fucking A!
New York. . . " and the
event
becomes New York and there is the feel of Times Square Huncke digging
all
beatific winking at the parade.
This
night strange for me. So much death in
recent time. Huncke gone. Jan
K. dead
of Jack attack at young age just like father before her. Clellon
Holmes
and first beat Go!. . . gone. L.A.
bigbeat meat poet Bukowksi
slipped
away to make words for father in possible heaven. Local
friends/poetmakers
gone: J.W. McCullough from Philly/Denver scene found dead
in
flophouse digs of broken heart and mind said wandering funkytown center
of L.A.
in sad drag looking for a fix for breaking heart. Allen J. Friedman
who
whispered poem to me in deathbed meditation and left with his boots on
swinging
to other side. Gone. Bob Flanagan Supermasochist leader of poetry
at
Beyond Baroque who transcended pain of living thru pleasure of pain in
life. Gone.
Kurt Cobain who mistook the hole in his stomach for the tears
in his
head, also gone & Jerry Garcia who took the show with him. . . Gone.
And in
mid-December my mother gone from overload of sad life liver shutdown
I
missed her by minutes in life now she gone and this the day before
Mother=92s
Day and I call you Mother from the pulpit of my life, my living
memorial
to you I am. Now they are all here
with me, now. With the folks
from
the Beat List. The electric voice and
spirit all here now. I have
fasted
for this, waited for this, meditated and come here for this. . . soon
these
voices will rise up with me and sing!
The
night rolls on. 2, 2 =BD hours.=20
1st
break.
I am in
the lobby sitting on the stairs taking my head for a walk when
somebody
taps me on the shoulders and sez, "Did you hear? Corso is dead!
Died
two days ago standing in front of a train!" "What? Don=92t fuck
with
me,
I=92m not up for it." "No, I
just heard. Corso=92s dead!" She
sees=
that I
am
truly shaken because somewhere in the back of my skull there lurks this
same
info like the long shadow of a recent ghost some kinda fucking
doppleganger
and so she leaves me dressed in the not so pretty news as I
despair
on the stair. I search the crowd for
verification/denial and all I
get is
both. It is maddening; mad, not even
funny rumor of death inside of
death
and it is racing towards my stomach and vaulting towards my head past
my
heart. Happy entrails to you, until we
meet again. . . The break is
over. Liza Richardson of radio scene steps up to
the stage takes the
microphone
and declares Corso gone as well. Poet
patron sacred soul Ron
Maxson
who is related to Corso by marriage stands up in the audience to
debate/deny
her story. It is too much. I don=92t think I can deal. I walk
outside
to put some air back into my sails.
Later Ron tells me that he had
heard
the same rumors the past few days and in prep for this event called
back
east to find out truth so to bring it with him here just in case and as
it
happened, thank whatever fucking gods for that! He did.
Like
Mark Twain: "The rumors of my
death have been greatly exaggerated."
While
outside they play a recording of Allen.
I used to believe that really
all
that Allen wanted to be was a rock star.
After hearing this recording I
was
convinced that he was a rock star. I
don=92t know what the hell it was,
but it
rocked, and rocked and rocked! Don=92t
let anyone tell you any
different,
Allen Ginserg was a rock star baby!
Now a
woman gets up to speak of her first meeting with AG like many have and
will
before the night=92s over. She talks
about how she gave him a poem she
wrote
and asked his opinion and he says it has womans blood in it and take
it to
Waldman as she is better equipped to deal with such and she says hey
if it
had cock in it would you dig it then? And Ginsberg sez yeah. She goes
on to
read her piece which blooms like surreal picnic in glorious garden of
everything
still possible. She knew him many years
and the words ring with
long
and short deep feel of it. She gives
us her special place in the sun
and we
are warmed with her safe fire of passion for poet and deeds done.
Then,
an assassin takes the mike. She is
dressed in sheep=92s clothing of
Naropa. She is a Greek bearing gifts of Allen this and
Allen that. Her
assault
is relentless. She cannot run out of
ammunition. She drops bombs,
one
after the other. She burns bridges. She
is loaded with endless hip and
cool. She rapes our tiny village of good
times. She chokes the audience
like a
weak kitten slam dunking our sorry asses into her hellish toilet of
long
winded self reflection as she goes on and on and on. . . 5, 10, 15, 20
minutes
of nothing and nowhere and somehow off
into the realm of NAMBLA
even
and Allen this and that rat a tat tat tat tat and the crowd starts to
leave
first one, then two, then they start for the door in small groups and
as they
exit they ponder out loud like what in the fuck is she going on for
and why
is she doing this to us? What the hell
did we do to her to deserve
this? She has committed the numero uno sin of all
sins as a
performer/speaker
or anything pretending to entertain or inform:
SHE IS
ENDLESSLY
BORING!!!!! She murders any hope that
she will soon be
finished. To be intentionally boring can be and is an
art, but to bore
unintentionally
should be punishable by immediate revocation of poetic
license
never to be returned. To the credit of
those of us left in
attendance,
as much as she uses the good name of Allen Ginsberg, we know she
only
speaks of herself and is certainly not paying any sort of tribute to
the
man. Is she innocent? Is she guilty?
Finally
she is finished. Stick a fucking fork
in her and turn her sorry ass
over.
Forgive
me father Ginsberg.
But
wait! Could it be? Just when you thought it was safe to venture
back
into
tributeville up to the mike comes her accomplice, because in Hollywood,
everything
deserves a lousy sequel. =20
So now
this second hitman for the art mob, this wordy sonofabitch goes on
and on
and on. He is reading an essay. Lucky
him. Not so lucky us. Now
the
people are really filing out. They are
fanning themselves with doubt
and
worry afraid for their own tender hides as they leave their wounded
comrades
bruised and bleeding at yet the tonsils of this second assassin.
The
crowd, once hopeful and 250 or 300 strong, within the span of 45 minutes
and two
speakers, have been roasted down to about 100 of the truly strong of
spirit
=91cause they know that there is magic yet to live. Poetry can be=
ugly
and
nasty, a vile and evil fucker that can kill your spouse and steal your
mind,
but the real spirit of poets and poetry will always prevail and before
ya know
it, in comes Williams Wheelbarrow and there is Whitman=92s Brooklyn
Bridge
which sings electric and a gentle rain begins to fall to douse the
tall
flames lit by the two strangely innocent killers and there is Allen
Ginsberg
with his arms once again around the night whispering in our ear:
"Are
you my angel?" And he kisses the
ignorant heads of the two bombers and
acquits
them of any wrong doing, pats them on their stupid heads and sends
them on
their way as he knows they will have places to go now that they have
finished
with their Wagnerian warblings in the key of nothing flat and
nowhere
sharp.
The 2nd
break.
More
folks leave satisfied that there is nothing any longer worth staying
for. The assassins satisfied that they have done
their job leave as well
and
Gregory Corso is still alive. =20
The
room relaxes.
I tune
up with just a little more weed. Got to
relax. Give it up.
The
break is over.
It is
sad how people never learn that the real music often blows after the
doors
shut and the saxophone man sits down to play his music to the angels
like a
river to the sea where we all float in ecstasy. School=92s out and
school=92s
in let the fat rhythm begin.
Round
3.
FranCeye
gets up and lights the event with her love letter to Allen. She
says
that once she said to Allen, "Thank you." And he said, "You=92re
welcome." And this was all that mattered. That you=92re welcome was some
sort of
mantra, a chant that said it all and as she finished she left
quietly
with, "Thank you Allen. You=92re
welcome." And believe me, we were
cleansed
and the room was free.
Earlier
in the night someone had read Ginsberg=92s America poem and Laurel=
Ann
Bogen
Detective Supremo freaked and almost left because that was what she
was
going to read. Fred and I, mostly Fred,
got down on our knees in mock
worship
to keep her there and stay she did. We
were lucky. A self
confessed
split personality type, she was fueled with the anger of her
displacement
and was a survivor of the holocaust of earlier boring rants by
our
twin killers. She was prime. With arched eyebrow and magic manic grin,
she
read that damned thing the way it should always be read: Mad baby!
Mad! She roared and the music of AG=92s language
which broke new land speed
records
and jailhouse rocks as flowers exploded in a frenzied quilt of color
at
ground zero.=20
Then
fellow Carma Bum Doug Knott read.
Giggling goddess of spoken and
written
word Ellyn Maybe did her thing and sang White Shroud. The Dharma
Lion
stretched his legs across the room and relaxed in the empty seats. We
were
about 3 =BD hours into it now and there were only about 50 devoted=
ones
left.
Exene
Cervenkova asked me during the break if I minded going after her since
she was
being recorded for some Internet thing
and I pulled out my stuff
and
said well I created mine on the Internet so maybe it was relevant but it
didn=92t
really matter to me and she said well I was told that you had been
waiting
a lot longer than me and I said do whatever you like Exene it will
be fine
that whatever she did would be the right thing and she walked away
mumbling
something like I=92m sure it will.
My name
was called as I was sitting outside talking with John Thomas and
Laurel
Ann. I shot up and walked in. Not so stoned but very high. "I come
to you
as the Reverend representative of The Dynasty of Divine Love and
Tolerance." I started.
"Bless the sacred holy noble truth. Welcome to
Temple
Baroque!" A few shouted with
me. My part in the revival had begun.
"Be
with me now!" I intoned, "Be
with me. . . " I hardly knew where
I was
anymore. I was coming apart and reassembling myself
as a cubist comedy in
full
relief. I was hungry and scared and
somehow sacred in the moment. I
announced
that I was sick of writing eulogies for dead poets and that I
really
wasn=92t up to it, so being on this beat list thing where we all=
talked
about
Beats and about who was Beat what was Beat, beat, beat, beet and then
we eat
it and Rinaldo walked in with Italy under his arm and took an empty
seat. I went on about how I took Ginsberg=92s piece "On Burroughs
Work"
presented
it to the list and 7 or 8 of us took turns altering it and blah,
blah,
blah. . . . I pronounced and mispronounced the authors names. I took
a
breath, looked at the paper as if it were something and I spoke, " On The
Work of
Burroughs. . . the method must be purest meat of sharktalk spoor. .
." there was an energy, there was a
movement. My voice didn=92t seem to be
my own,
my body light and filled with all the thoughts and visions that had
come
before. I couldn=92t believe how easy
it was to sing. I was hitting
fastballs
that were creeping past the plate from over the Atlantic as I
placed
them one after the other in the outfield and over the fence. Some
danced
on the foul line safe and I was gone and everyone was there and we
were
dancing the words. I just kept speaking
one word after the other not
really
knowing what was coming next. I reached
the part of "skin holy,
baseball
holy, time holy. . ." and I felt my center shoot up into my throat
as the
words became large and wet with the tears struggling to liberate
themselves
from my throat. Allen wrapped his arms
around me and I pulled
the
humans in and together we shouted, "HOLY!
HOLY! HOLY!" I slipped the
page behind
the others and suddenly I saw the words and knew I dropped a
page
but being cut and paste I shouted "GODDAMMIT!! WHICH WAY DOES YOUR
BEARD
POINT TONIGHT ALLEN? POETS HOLY:"
Then skipped back and picked it up
previous, jumping back on the bus roaring thru
tributetown with everyone
once
again safely on board. We sang and
drank skin holy, Canada holy, U.K.
holy,
Kansas vortex and California holy, holy, holy, beat list members holy!
It is
true, it was true; you could have heard the old proverbial pin drop in
timezone
Saturday night. I finished quietly
firmly and direct, ". . . I
hear
what you say and I now write to the world to do it: rise up! Rise up!
And
claim this world!. . . " and the few left got it, I got it, they got, we
all got
it. Some shouted with me at the end,
"Holy! Holy! Holy!" Then
once
again, quietly I stated, "Don=92t hide the madness." as I ripped up=
the
paper
with the words on it and dropped into Frank Rios=92 sacred silver=
salad
bowl
and left the room. Lewis MacAdams was
waiting to come on and turned to
me and
said, "Nice words." Later I
realized that I had forgotten the last
line,
"A word to the wise guy." But
I hadn=92t been myself really, I had=
been
taken
over and highjacked by the vision and energy of all of those that came
to the
party with me. I was pissed but cut and
paste. . . I did it Sunday,
Mother=92s
Day in memory of my gone Mother at weekly poetry hullabaloo up=
the
street
at The Onyx Caf=E9 and it sang again and vibrated in all the right
places
once again! Holy! Fucking Holy! It lived. It lives.
But
hey, the night=92s not over, no indeedy. =20
Next
was Exene Cervenkova who got up and said that Allen Ginsberg was the
greatest
poet of the 20th Century and she was glad he was gay. She talked
about
back in the heyday of quintessential
punk rock days of X with John
Doe
while living on Ave. 42 in Mt. Washington I believe it was that she
received
a fax one day from AG and she didn=92t know how he got their number
but
nonetheless, there was this fax and seems that Allen wanted her and John
to put
it to music and maybe use it on an album or something. Well, I guess
that
never happened, in fact, Exene says she lost the thing and hopes to
someday
find it again. She and Ginsberg became
buds. She talked about how
he
deferred to her setting up his stage for his readings and asking if
everything
was all right and then showing her poetry of his and asking if
that
was all right and so on. Exene saying
that the man was just being
humble
in her opinion as he had done this thousands of times and who was
she? She closed with words for Allen and then got
off.
Lewis
MacAdams who wrote an incredible sendoff for Allen in The L.A. Weekly,
whose
brilliant JK/Beat documentary will live forever, dressed in coat and
tie and
fine brim looking a bit like a song and dance man straight out of
maybe
St. Louis, came in somewhere about this time and told a story about
how
Ginsberg wanted to make it with him and his old lady at this particular
time
past maybe when he first met the big man can=92t recall the whole=
evening
is of
course filtered thru experience and light haze of medicinal marijuana
which
tugs at the old memory bone from time to time ya know, so anyway Lewis
is
talking here and he says well hey Allen I=92m not into this scene so=
Lewis,
he goes
and crawls into his sleeping bag while Allen and his woman I guess
are
wrestling, going at it, Lewis watching and listening, panting and
groaning
or what have you, doing it until finally I guess Allen reaches over
with
one finger and touches Lewis gently on the forehead and Lewis spurts
immediately. Yowsa!
Guess he=92s not into those scenes, huh? Lewis went
and
talked some more and read leaving us well and happy.
Then
something wonderful happened.
Exene
had brought along Ronnie Blakely who sang in famous Altman flick
"Nashville". She told us of her love for Allen and how
when once time past
Allen
who so wanted to be with Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Review, that
after
he and Orlovsky, their segment of the show had been cut, agreed to
stick
with the show by shuttling luggage to and from the tour buses. It was
heartbreaking
and enlightening to hear her tell it. I
have rarely seen a
person
speak with such real love and reverence.
She said that they never
knew
where they were going because for some reason it was all a secret, but
that
she would stick her luggage out in the hallway late at night and early
in the
morning, Allen and Peter would come by scooping up the luggage to be
placed
on board the bus and on to destination unknown cities. She spoke
lovingly
of relationship of many years and then asked if she could speak or
sing a
song she had written for him. The group
asked her to sing. I cannot
tell
you how lucky we were to be there. She
was our angel, the angel Allen
spoke
of. Her voice was honey, she held Allen
in her music quenched his
thirst
and quelled his fears. She held our
hearts captive with her song and
healed
the wounded night. It rained love. This was the moment of pure
light
that the sax man dreamed as he played his music to the stars. Hale
Bopp. She sang it for us all.
The
night certainly could have ended there.
But there was an open now.
First
one guy went on and on with his hit on America poem called America
revisited. Ouch.
He started reading when I realized that he had a stack of
paper. Ah well, what the fuck ya know. In the now kind and gentle spirit
of it
all, the last dozen or so left, we listened.
Then Nate (no last name)
got up
and jammed on guitar punk like and screamed and sang a fantastic rant
for
Allen. Another home run. Then lastly a guy who got up and said he was
a film
director who had desperately been trying to do a thing on the beats
and
said he wouldn=92t go on too long. . . guess what? He did.
>From
begin to end: just about 4 =BD
hours.=20
The six
of us left all went out to drink and eat.
Holy,
holy, holy. . .love holy! Allen
Ginsberg. . . holy.
End of
story.
xxxooo
S.A.
Griffin
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 15:51:30 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Michael Stutz <stutz@DSL.ORG>
Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
In-Reply-To:
<v03007802af9df8229a77@[206.190.9.125]>
On Tue,
13 May 1997, Zach Hoon wrote:
>
here i the 90s, what? i don't even know what to call the major issues. gay
>
lib? abortion? aids? this generation/decade seems to be plagued by wackos and
>
cults: Oklahoma City, Waco, Dahmer, Heaven's Gate, Atlanta Bomber, World
>
Trade Center, Planes blowing up. Can't protest that. can't be a movement or
> a
march against that.
no
protests, no movements -- the issue is communication. the word of the 90s
is
feedback.
> So
i have a lot of respect for the protests and marches and _ambition_ of
>
those involved in the 60s. not an easy thing to do...i wish for something
> to
drive my generation into action, instead of Jenny McCarthy's boobs or
>
the next $%&^# Batman movie.
Not
_everyone_ in the 60s was a hippie protester. Don't you think there are
a lot
of people driven into action right now? Maybe not picketing, no, but
there
are many more important things to be doing right now.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 13:51:08 -0700
Reply-To: stauffer@pacbell.net
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: James Stauffer
<stauffer@PACBELL.NET>
Subject: Re: The horror! The horror!
AC46
wrote:
>
> I
can't believe that I'm reading things about a Prankster reunion
Well,
of course, you don't have to, but then what did you expect on a
list
principally devoted to old or dead writer?
I was
given tickets to go see Dylan. Since that day I cannot listen
> to
Dylan without partly seeing the old, haggard, out of tune man that I
>
saw at the concert.
But if
you had gone earlier he would have been young, haggard and out of
tune--still
great
but I for one
>
would rather see an unknown group of 20 yr olds who were making valid
>
nineties statements, than make a pilgrimage to see the Pranksters who
>
belonged to a very specific and real "moment" in American history.
No
one's asking you not to check out the 20yr olds. Is this mutually
exclusive.
Did Kesey need to get permission from another generational
zip
code before making this trip, and if so who elected you? If you
aren't
interested, don't bother with it. I assume you and Zach are the
lucky
ones that will never grow old, never bore the kids with stories of
your
glory days, you're going to keep that edge on your blade all the
way
through. Good luck. You should tack this post up on your wall
and
read it every decade or so--just to keep you honest.
J
Stauffer
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 17:00:52 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: "Robert H. Sapp"
<rhs4@CRYSTAL.PALACE.NET>
Subject:
Re: The horror! The horror!
In-Reply-To: <AD25FD42EC@banana.le.ac.uk>
Hello,
It
seems to from this post that the member AC46 is taking an "Age-ist"
view,
though i dont wanna sound like some politically correct person or
anything.
I think
if a bunch of elderly gents wanna act all wild and crazy and how
most
people feel THE YOUNG ARE SPOSED TO ACT, then fuck yeah im all for
it. i
mean, what, are you sposed to shut up when you reach a certain age
and
quit racing around high or not or something?
As far
as Dylan is concerned, most people it seems either like his voice
or not;
sure, he's become a lil' less articulate (!) in singing but
that's
certainly made up for by the feeling i get from his performance;
he
should HAVE to adapt to the prevailing trends anymore than someone
should
HAVE to flee from 'em.
respectfully,
Eric
P.S.
regarding the Pranksters:
Do not
go gentle into that good night
Dose,
dose before they take away your right.
On Tue,
13 May 1997, AC46 wrote:
> I
can't believe that I'm reading things about a Prankster reunion. Why
>
can monumental experiments like that taken by Kesey and the "Neon
>
Revolution" not just be left to history.
> I
was nowhere near to being born in the sixties, but the Beats and
>
"hippies" are my heroes. When I see them revamped and updated it
makes
> me
lose some of the love that I had for them in the first place. A year
>
ago I was given tickets to go see Dylan. Since that day I cannot listen
> to
Dylan without partly seeing the old, haggard, out of tune man that I
>
saw at the concert. That is not to say that I no longer love Dylan's
>
work, but I am just dissapointed by his reluctance to move with the
>
times. In the last few years we have seen Woodstock 2, which in true
>
nineties style went off with a wimper, the return of the beatles, and
>
now Kesey and co. are back, no doubt with Day-Glo paint all over their
>
zimmer frames and taking the bus to the post office every tuesday to
>
collect their pensions.
> I
am not questioning the validity of these aspects of sixties culture, I
> am
merely expressing my dissappointment at the Pranksters for doing it
>
all again in the nineties. Maybe there is not enough in our generation
>
which can be held as representative of the counteculture, but I for one
>
would rather see an unknown group of 20 yr olds who were making valid
>
nineties statements, than make a pilgrimage to see the Pranksters who
>
belonged to a very specific and real "moment" in American history.
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 22:52:09 +0200
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Rinaldo Rasa <rinaldo@GPNET.IT>
Subject: Teardrops, photographed by Robert Frank.
In-Reply-To:
<Pine.OSF.3.95.970513125048.31530A-100000@camphor>
PRANKSTERS DON'T TEARS FLOWERS
NIGGHTIME
lontano, molti anni sono passati,
noi stiamo diventano cose,
fiori, flowers, le nostre cellule
cerebrali,
our brain cells, diminished,
diminuiscono, praksters are own
flowers,
la finestra di Robert Frank's photo,
guarda,
look at,
grandma's doilies,
blur windows glass,
un'auto aspetta sul courtyard,
boys, go!, it's 15th august,
l'auto corre, the grass on both side
of the highway,
go! Padua, Bologna, Florence, Rome,
Naples,
Siracusa, Francofonte, Taormina,
l'Etna smokin'
in the old times, furious dog chase
barking
under olives
branches
like
thunder,
the ferrari runs as quick as a
lightnin'
grandama calls rinaldo, look at the
sirs!,
the top of the Volcano, qualche pietra
raccolta,
Salvatore corre come un pazzo
lungo il side of the
Volcano,
look at in the down there's the snow!,
great! IT'S summer,
noi stiamo diventando cose,
we're turnin' into things,
like grandam doilies
like xeroexes, like photos,
like sound tracks of
Jimmi Hendrix, like
everything,
keep me head
in my hands
fuzzy bats & owles,
near my house,
look at the teardrops,
smell the ancient room,
where black dressed woman
talked ancient
stories
tonight my grandma
had planted me
as potato in the yard.
yr
rinaldo
*the
dumb*
*the
beet*
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 17:09:54 -0400
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From: Michael Stutz <stutz@DSL.ORG>
Subject: Re: the mysterious Corso
In-Reply-To:
<199705131845.LAA28915@italy.it.earthlink.net>
On Tue,
13 May 1997, Gerald Nicosia wrote:
> There was a woman running around a
couple of years ago doing
>
interviews for a biography of Corso, but I never heard any more from her (I
>
can't even remember her name!) and I never heard any more about her book
either.
Yeah,
what happened to her? Anyone know if the book ever came out? I had her
address
around here somewhere, but now I can't find it, and i don't remember
the
name.
m
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Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 17:30:27 -0400
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From: "Robert H. Sapp"
<rhs4@CRYSTAL.PALACE.NET>
Subject: Re: The horror of ken going furthur
In-Reply-To:
<v03007800af9ddac8b3e5@[206.190.9.125]>
greeting
fellow travelers,
I'd
like to say first to Zach that your post is very inneresting and
enjoyale
reading.
i just
want to address a few points that disturbed me, even if its a bit
off
topic on my part. forgive me.
On Tue,
13 May 1997, Zach Hoon wrote:
>
flatness of salt...yeah long acid roadtrips may have been groundbreaking 30
>
years ago, but i've got friends who do them every year now, for the whole
>
summer, and no they're not following phish or the undead dead. we know what
>
DID happen but it's irrelevant to us because we concentrate on what CAN
>
happen. sick of cultural recycling...Try flying from Chicago to Prague and
>
Prague to Chicago on ecstasy there's something new...(well, kinda)
Following
phish is no more un-genuine than SPECIFICALLY not following
phish.
the
past is not IRRELEVANT if you want to improve the present or future.
Zach,
you wrote something about -- there's too much going on now to be
dwelling
on stuff rooted in the past -- (excuse the possible
misinterpretation,
but i fucked up this email editing job.)
Anything
one does IS what's happening NOW. This particular Prankster
voyage
is new because it is (or at the time it just occured) was the
present.
To say that an event is somehow not "new" or "current"
enough is
meaningless,
assumes there is a definite predictable notion of what MUST
go on
at any given moment in the "current" era.
If
they, the pranksters, want to drive around make appearences like they
did
before, why the hell not? You dont have to avoid something just
because
something similar has occured. And if other people are amused by
it, why
should it bother you?
from,
Eric
P.S.
some of the most genuine and sincere funloving friends of mine say
the've
had a great experience at Furthur Fests. it might be an attempt to
reHash
old times but at the same time creates NEW times whether you did
or did
not live at the time o' the ol' Times. heehee!
>
There is too much new going on to be stuck in the old. like it or not,
>
future is where we're headed. the ideas and concepts laid down by KK and
>
crew, AG, Jk, even my dear WSB need to be taken and listened to and
>
reapplied. very few things are timeless. ideas that affect society hardly
>
are, seeing that society is a fast changing monster. most ppl living
>
creative, outrageous, disruptive with them, interrupting a flow and putting
>
you, maybe just briefly, into a wild possible future. that's what charms
>
me: it's a possible future, not definite.
when you're doing something
>
past-based, there is only one possible course of action, one that follows
>
the path of those events already taken. altho i admit ther'll probably be
>
much spontinaeity involved with KK and the MPs, but it will be based on a
>
same philosophy. For those who were around back then, it'll be a wonderful
>
one, but based on sentimentality, not new ideas, not any groundbreaking.
>
and to say well it _was_ groundbreaking
back in the day; yeah, so was
>
hooking up a horse to a buggy.
> I
admit to a shortage of things as of late. Raves used to be an outing of
>
choice: 100s or 1000s of ppl in some huge secret location, dancing to
>
future.music, taking care of each other, having surreal, induced
>
conversations. It's a younger crowd now, concerned mainly with the drugs
>
and the clothes, and being 'underground'. there are huge similarities in
>
fundamental philosophies of rave and hippie culture, but the approach is
>
very different. but now, all of it seems corrupted.
>
for those of you wanting to see/feel something new, with similar outlook,
>
feeling to it: 'A Little Furthur' memorial day weekend, and 'Even Furthur'
>
july 18-21, electric campout festivals, location usually an undisclosed
>
campgrounds somewhere in Wisconsin.
this event has been going on for 3 yrs
>
now, and gets better every year. and they even use a picture of the
>
Pranksters bus on the flyer. i get an indescribeable kick going to these
>
things, like the universe just all clicks together for a few days, and
>
everyone can be far from beat for a little while.
>
Pranksters? I'll stay home and read a book.
>
Obviously, i've been meandering here. Apologies, and no offense...
>
>
-zach
>
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Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 18:16:25 -0400
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From: Jerry Cimino
<Bigsurs4me@AOL.COM>
Subject: Chaput is Kaput!
Phil,
I knew
I'd get your attention with my clever little rhyme. :^)
Phil,
Nicosia has demolished your credibility regarding the Great Estate
Debate
just like he said he would. Any further
protest by you will only be
seen as
whining and namecalling by the vast majority of the people on this
list. I'd suggest you spare yourself that
embarrassment.
Now I'd
like to suggest we turn our attention to doing something positive
with
the situation. You mentioned before
that you want to help with the
archives. If you are sincere about that offer, I have
some suggestions to
make
that I'll list at the end of this note.
Everyone agrees it would be a
good
thing to maintain the archives. I'd
like to enlist your support in
finding
a way to do that.
You
know, Phil, I believe loyalty among friends is usually a good thing.
Sometimes, though, loyalty can be misplaced
and one friend can wind up
playing
the other friend to his detriment. I've
got to wonder if that is
what
John Sampas has done to you here. You've taken a lot of slings and
arrows
for John and received nothing but humiliation and embarrassment for
your
efforts.
You say
you're your "own man", Phil.
Then examine this situation with a
critical
eye without the filter of friendship.
Can you honestly say John
Sampas
has served you well here? You tried
defending an extreme position
with a
very weak argument out of loyalty to a friend.
Now it is time for you
to drop
that role and take some action.
There's
an old saying and our mother's pounded it into all of us... "Actions
Speak
Louder Than Words". John Sampas
has been telling everyone, including
you, he
wants to protect the Kerouac Archives.
But what have his actions
said to
everyone?
If a
person wants to protect something they do not sell it off piecemeal to
the
highest bidder! That only insures the
collection gets scattered all over
the
world and the new owners get to make their own individual choices as to
what
will happen to those items. Not much of
a strategy for preservation, do
you
think?
You can
take an active part in solving this situation by telling John Sampas
he
needs to negotiate a deal with some University or organization that will
do the
work required to protect the Kerouac Archive forever! If you're
really
a fan of Kerouac, and I believe you are, you should use every
opportunity
you have to help direct John Sampas to do the right thing.
I have
other ideas too.
1). Use your association with Sampas to
determine what it is going to take
for him
to actually sell the archives to one organization. It appears the $1
million
that has been offered for the entire archive is not enough for John
Sampas. He's been sitting on a gold mine valued at
$10+M and was not about
to let
it go for a cool mil no matter how much noise Gerry Nicosia or Jan
Kerouac
made.
2). Call me crazy but I bet there's a way to get
the money John Sampas is
looking
for to buy this collection. There have
got to be many millionares
around
the world who might be willing to contribute in some fashion to get
John
Sampas his asking price. Kerouac
influenced a lot of people, some of
whom
influenced a lot of other people. Bob
Dylan, Van Morrison, Paul Simon,
The
Beatles, The Doors, Johnny Depp and probably may other Hollywood types.
What is that line about "six degrees of
separation"? I bet some of the
people
just mentioned are known personally by some of the people on this
list,
or maybe are a friend of a friend.
Think
about it! A hundred rich people cobble
together $10 million bucks,
there's
some big ceremony held at NYPL or someplace, CNN and C-SPAN cover it
live
and all these people get their name put on a plaque somewhere and John
Sampas
gets a big fat check! Part of the deal
is Paul Blake gets taken care
of in
the royalties or some other way, everybody's legal fees gets paid up in
some
fashion and everybody is happy! No more
litigation, Kerouac's archives
are
protected forever and the Sampas family is wealthy for the rest of their
lives. I've seen stranger things happen!
The
point is, Phil, you and maybe some others are in a unique position to
jumpstart
some sort of negoiated settlement. From what I can see Gerry
Nicosia
is not going to go away and if he wins in Florida Sampas could wind
up with
a big mess.
How
about we all move forward and make something happen instead of calling
each
other names?!?
Whaddya
say?
Jerry
Cimino
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Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 18:30:20 EDT
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From: Bill Gargan
<WXGBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject: Re: the mysterious Corso
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 13 May 1997 13:00:51 +0300
from <ik56385@UTA.FI>
I think
he means nuns. It's a joke--little
surreal short shot. In
traditional
English literature the penguin is sometimes a symbol for
Christ
but I doubt Corso has this in mind.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:07:19 -0400
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From: PAM <mapaul@PIPELINE.COM>
Subject: Re: Chaput is Kaput!
What
troubles me about these posts is this...why is everyone concerned about
the
archives when no one (by the indication of the NYPL) is utilizing what
is in
there already?
Kerouac's personal effects (books, letters
etc.) as priceless as they
are
still belong to the inheritor. The fact is that Stella was married to
Jack.
Though he may have said he wanted to divorce her he never did. That is
out of
our hands. From what I can see every effort is being made to put out
there
what is publishable. Even if John Sampas had no say about editing
letters,
Ann Charters would still have to make them "selected" letters.As
long as
the recepients and subjects are still living, that is the law.
The other thing that troubles me, though
I have no qualms with Mr.
Nicosia,
is his constant need to bolster his image by revealing his
credentials
as a scholar. Why would he expect to be invited to LCK
activites?
Dennis McNally was never invited to LCK and he holds a Doctorate!
Neither
was Tom Clark! Though neither of their biographies are as "thick" a
book as
Nicosia's, they are every bit as informative. They just didn't put
in as
much sophmoric textual analysis of Jack's works. To be a scholar is to
be
modest. One does not see Harold Bloom asserting his authority nor does
Perry
Miller. Not even Ann Charters! To be specific...well forget it...I am
already
setting myself up for a line of attack but if Gerry is a true
scholar
he will know that I am right. I respect Memory babe for its research
and for
Gerry's hard work in putting it together but it by no means is
definitive.
It is a "critical" biography but it does not mean that the
criticisms
are correct. They are the work of scholarship. Criticisms are
left up
to debate. That is the nature of scholarship. That is why there are
about a
dozen "definitive" biographies of Hemingway. No one has the last
word on
a subject, especially when newer works are constantly being published.
About John Sampas. I don't know what
mental image some of you have of
Mr.
Sampas. By appearance he does not look wealthy. He's not residing in a
mansion.
He lives in a small, unassuming house. His clothes aren't Giorgio
Armani.
He has always been nothing but pleasant to anyone I seen talking
with
him. This is just to say that everything isn't always the way it
appears.
This is not to say that Gerry isn't
right by his actions but there
is only
one voice be spoken out here on this list. We can't speak for Mr.
Sampas.
And I assure you that Phil Chaput isn't either. Regards to all and
please,
if anyone has written anything of shcolarly importance...please
consider
sending it to the Kerouac Quarterly! That's what it is here for.
Again
regards, Paul of The Kerouac Quarterly.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 15:55:25 -0700
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From: Gerald Nicosia
<gnicosia@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: How to Help
To all
Friends of the Kerouac Preservation Movement in America (to
paraphrase
Joan Baez):
I've been getting some private queries
about how to help. Some
people
have suggested writing letters. That's
a great idea. If you want
John
Sampas to preserve the Kerouac Archive now, let him know your feelings.
He can
be reached care of his agent:
John Sampas
c/o Sterling
Lord/Literistic
65 Bleecker St.
New York, NY 10012
Fax: 212-780-6095
I'd be especially glad if you sent me
a copy of whatever you send
Mr.
Sampas, as a nice fat sheaf of letters could be useful the next time I'm
in
court--to show the breadth of public sentiment for saving the Kerouac
archive. If you've got an academic credential, by all
means use it in your
signature.
Another good suggestion was that
people call their local newspapers
or
radio shows.
Someone asked about sending me money
for help with my legal costs.
PLEASE DON'T SEND ME ANY MONEY!!! The last thing I need is Anstee
and
Chaput claiming I've cooked up this whole affair as a scam to get rich.
If it gets to the point where my legal
case bogs down for lack of
money,
we'll do a real fundraiser, and have Kesey and the boys come down
again
from Oregon, as they did to help Jan Kerouac.
ONE LAST IMPORTANT SUGGESTION:
I've also received queries about how
to help PAUL BLAKE, JR.
In Paul's case, a little cash right now would go a long way toward
getting
him and his family back on their feet.
The situation he's in now is
kind of
hopeless, since he has to spend his time doing maintenance and
custodial
duties on the land where his trailer is parked, and it doesn't
give
him much time to look for carpentry work and earn the kind of money he
will
need to get his family back into another house.
Paul lives in the country, because
that's where his work is. In
California,
even in the country, housing costs are high, and you need first
and
last month's rent, plus security deposit, to move into a rental property.
LET'S GET PAUL BLAKE, JR. AND FAMILY
INTO A HOME AGAIN!
If everyone on the Beat-List sends him
a check for $10, it will be
enough
to do the trick. Is all the joy and
reading pleasure Jack Kerouac
gave
you worth ten bucks for his beloved nephew, "Lil Luke" in THE DHARMA
BUMS
and DESOLATION ANGELS? It is for me.
I'm sending him my check today.
You can write to him at:
Paul E. Blake, Jr.
PO Box 33
Rio Linda, CA 95673
Okay for now. I look forward to hearing from some of you.
Best always, Gerry Nicosia
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:00:14 -0400
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From: Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: No Jumping
In a
message dated 97-05-12 19:31:56 EDT, you write:
<<
I read Kerouac's BIG SUR.
<sniperooni>
>I'm now reading Brautigan's CONFEDERATE
GENERAL
>FROM BIG SUR.
Since there seems to be a Big Sur theme, try
Henry Miller's
_Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch_
>>
Anyother
books on the reading list relating to Big Sur?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:00:40 -0400
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From: Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: ESTATE DETAILS/direct flame sick of
phil
In a
message dated 97-05-13 01:56:58 EDT, you write:
<< i simply lean forward and one of my giant
boobs pop out and smothers the
poor guy, >>
Really?
(interest, interest)
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:01:35 -0400
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From: Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>
Subject: Prostate Wars (also know as the Growl
from Lowell) (rhymes a
little, no?)
Welcome
to the chaaaaampiiiiion fight of the Prostate Wars.
And in
this corner
in the
red trunks -- PHILLY THE DILLY
"To
be fair. Don't write to me for a while I won't be able to answer you. I'm
going
to Greece for a few weeks with John Sampas to spend some of Stella's
hard
earned money. Philly the Dilly (ha ha)"
and in
this corner in the blue trunks -- GERRY
"
I'm through arguing with you about Kerouac scholarship. It's a
waste
of my time. I want to speak with
someone who's MY EQUAL.
I.e., please tell Mr. Sampas to send
in the first-string team now.
Best, Gerry Nicosia
Today's
fight is sponsored by the New York Public Library Toilet Tissue
Corp.,
whose motto is "If you need a roll, we've got the scroll."
Winner
will get Kerouac's $50,000 raincoat, and we'll throw in a pair of
dirty
socks.
Jack
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Jan Kerouac, Joan Haverty, John
Clellon
Holmes, Edith Parker, Mary Carney, Stella Sampas, and Gerard are all
watching
from the cheap seats drinking from bottles of cheap tokay that they
snuck
in under their coats. (They are not all sitting together, sorry-- these
things
happen in heaven as well).
Remember,
no eye gorging like this [gorge], no hitting below the belt like
this
[hit], but as much pissing as you want. I'm your referee, Attila the
Gorilla
from Manila.
Judges,
get out your #2 pencils, and people-- place your bets for round 1.
Gentlemen,
come out swinging....
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 16:04:48 -0700
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From: Gerald Nicosia
<gnicosia@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: How to Help, Part Two
Hi,
folks! Realized some of you might not
know how to send me copies of
your
letters to John Sampas concerning preservation of the Kerouac Archive.
You can email me at
GNicosia@earthlink.net
fax me at 415-924-2270
or mail hard copy to me at 11 Palm
Ave., Corte Madera, CA 94925
If any
of you get stories printed anywhere, I'd like to see copies of those too.
Thanks!
Best, Gerry Nicosia
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:08:20 EDT
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From: Bill Gargan
<WXGBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject: Re: subscribe me
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 13 May 1997 12:51:36 -0400
from
<rfiedma@GROVE.UFL.EDU>
To
subscribe, send mail to listserv@cunyvm.cuny.edu. Leave the subject
line
blank. In the body of your mail
type subscribe beat-l first name
last
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Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:46:43 EDT
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From: Bill Gargan
<WXGBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Chaput is Kaput!
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 13 May 1997 19:07:19 -0400
from
<mapaul@PIPELINE.COM>
Just
for the record, I've used some of the Kerouac material at NYPL, although t
hat was
several years ago.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 20:11:58 -0400
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From: PAM <mapaul@PIPELINE.COM>
Subject: Re: Chaput is Kaput!
At
07:46 PM 5/13/97 EDT, you wrote:
>Just
for the record, I've used some of the Kerouac material at NYPL, although t
>hat
was several years ago.
>I
apologize..I cannot speak for everybody but for what I was told by the
archivists
at NYPL. The only evidence I can see is that I haven't read
anything
of significance in any scholarly journal apart from mine in the
Commonwealth
Undergraduate Review (Volume 1 1995-96)and I only used
published
books for my research. I have checked for reasons of my own
several
journals available at Harvard and Kerouac rarely appears. There were
none to
date that were relatively recent. I will feature two in the next
issue
of TKQ.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 20:00:36 EDT
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From: Bill Gargan
<WXGBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject: Research in special collections
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 13 May 1997 20:11:58 -0400
from
<mapaul@PIPELINE.COM>
I think
Ann Charters also wrote something several years ago in the Bulletin of
Research
in the Humanities (a/k/a New York Public Library Bulletin). I think t
hat if
more Kerouac material could be located at NYPL, the materials would get
more
use. I suspect the Columbia collections
got a lot more use from scholars-
-as
least I used them more personallly--because there were several related coll
ections
all in one place. I agree with Gerry
that it is more convenient for sc
holars
to have most of the materials relating to a writer in a single collectio
n. Unfortunately, that's seldom the case. Perhaps with use of computer techn
ology
like the world wide web, long distance research will become more feasible
. Gerry is right again when he says there's no
substitute for an original manu
script
if you're doing certain kinds of specialized textual research. Most of
the
time, however, a facsimile or photo copy or downloaded text will do just fi
ne.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 20:53:06 -0500
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From: jo grant <jgrant@BOOKZEN.COM>
Subject: Re: Chaput is Kaput!
In-Reply-To:
<1.5.4.32.19970513230719.00689d30@pop.pipeline.com>
On
13MAY97 mapaul wrote:
>What
troubles me about these posts is this...why is everyone concerned about
>the
archives when no one (by the indication of the NYPL) is utilizing what
>is
in there already?
>
>
>
> About John Sampas. I don't know what
mental image some of you have of
>Mr.
Sampas. By appearance he does not look wealthy. He's not residing in a
>mansion.
He lives in a small, unassuming house. His clothes aren't Giorgio
>Armani.
He has always been nothing but pleasant to anyone I seen talking
>with
him. This is just to say that everything isn't always the way it
>appears.
This is not to say that Gerry isn't
right by his actions but there
>is
only one voice be spoken out here on this list. We can't speak for Mr.
>Sampas.
And I assure you that Phil Chaput isn't either. Regards to all and
>please,
if anyone has written anything of shcolarly importance...please
>consider
sending it to the Kerouac Quarterly! That's what it is here for.
>Again
regards, Paul of The Kerouac Quarterly.
Wouldn't
it be wonderful if Mr. Sampas would speak for himself. Why he
hasn't
is anyone's guess.
Your
comment about Nicosia's "constant need to bolster his image by
revealing
his
credentials
as a scholar" is unfair in my opinion.
I see it not as
bragging,
but simply informing people that there is a foundation for what
he is
saying. He is a Keroauc scholar. Acknowledged as such. As soon as his
book,
"HOME TO WAR: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement" is
published
he will add the subject of the VVAW to his area of expertise.
Every
Vietnam Vet I know, and I know a bunch, are eagerly waiting
publication.
As with
his "MEMORY BABE: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac," I'm
looking
forward to what I anticipate will be an incredible learning
experience.
Let's
get off Nicosia and concentrate on the Kerouac Literary Archives--a
collection
that is a world treasure that must be preserved. An informed
public
will help turn the tide. Soon the American Library Association will
be
involved.
It's
not going to stop until the collection is safe and secure.
j grant
BE ON THE WATCH
for
items stolen from the Keroauc Collection
O'Leary Library, U Mass, Lowell
http://www.bookzen.com/kerouac.theft.html
Academic
& Small Press Authors & publishers
display books free at
<http://www.bookzen.com>
302,443
visitors since July 1, 1996
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 22:29:39 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: PAM <mapaul@PIPELINE.COM>
Subject: Re: Chaput is Kaput!
i
agree!!! Don't think I don't. If that is his intentions then it certainly
doesn't
come across that way. Anyone who takes the time to subscribe to this
list
certainly is informed enough to know Mr. Nicosia and his credentials.
This is
my point. He wants someone to speak that is on the same level as
"HE".
Why wouldn't that be Phil Chaput? Is he any less a "scholar" than
anyone
else because he hasn't published a book? His passion about this whole
thing
is just as legitimate as anybody else's. He knows enough about Kerouac
to
write his own book. The point of someone claiming that they are the
world's
best anything would rankle anyone's nerves. I won't take up any more
of my
time or the recepients of this list. I know my point is valid.The only
way to
take issue with anybody who claims they are the best is to dispute
that
claim. In this case it is through scholarship. Every one of the Kerouac
biographies
has errors in them through no fault of their own. Some things
simply
were not available like they are now. That's not Gerry's fault,
McNally's
fault, Clark's fault, or Charter's fault. It is on this viability
that
makes the claim of being the authority on anything ludicrous. Ellis
Amburn's
new biography is supposedly definitive but he in no way claims to
be an
authority on the subject. He, like all the rest, is only as informed
as his
sources let him. This is not an estate issue. It is a scholar issue.
I said
it before and I'll say it again. I RESPECT Gerry Nicosia and his work
immensely
but I do not foster the image of him being an authority on the
subject
of Kerouac. Though he indeed knows a lot about the subject, he
doesn't
know everything. Nor does John Sampas, Stella Kerouac when she was
alive,
nor did Gabrielle Kerouac. Only Jack was an authority of himself. The
best we
can do is try to understand him and his work without nurturing this
proclaimed
interest with egoism. Regards to Kerouac readers tonight, Paul...
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 23:01:02 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: PAM <mapaul@PIPELINE.COM>
Subject: Re: Chaput is Kaput!
As a
final note, I thought it would be fair to Gerry to say that there are a
variety
of things he has written about Kerouac that are informed and
insightful.
His foreword to the Grove edition of The Subterraneans is one of
them.
His inclusion in the booklet to The Jack Kerouac Collection is
another.
His references throughout his bio with literature and American
culture
has been helpful to me in the last three years since I read Memory
Babe. I
do not mean to create any animosity or enemies with my postings. It
is just
a going concern with anybody in the academic community when there is
an
apparent image being fostered as an expert. The great Beethoven
biographer,
Alexander Wheelock Thayer said towards the end of his life when
he
didn't complete his bio (after some 2000 pages) that he still didn't know
enough.
History has found that he knew plenty and yet more bios continue to
come
out on Beethoven.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 20:18:09 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Levi Asher
<brooklyn@NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: No Jumping
In-Reply-To:
<970513185952_121312510@emout20.mail.aol.com>
Attila
--
Another
great Big Sur moment to catch is a movie called
"Celebration
at Big Sur", a Woodstock-era concert with
Joan
Baez, Crosby Stills Nash (can't remember if Young
was
there), lots of good tribal dancing and ocean cliff
views. Also a fascinating bit of *cinema verite*
when
the
camera catches Stephen Stills flipping out and almost
getting
into a fist fight with a fan who's "bugging out"
and
acting like an asshole. Then
Stills realizes he's starting
to act
like an asshole himself, and decides to stop fighting.
Good
movie, definitely something people on this list should
catch.
------------------------------------------------------
Levi Asher = brooklyn@netcom.com
Literary Kicks:
http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/
(the beat literature web site)
Queensboro Ballads: http://www.levity.com/brooklyn/
(my fantasy folk-rock album)
###################################
"Tie yourself to a tree with
roots"
-- Bob Dylan
-----------------------------------------------------
On Tue,
13 May 1997, Attila Gyenis wrote:
> In
a message dated 97-05-12 19:31:56 EDT, you write:
>
>
<< I read Kerouac's BIG SUR.
>
<sniperooni>
> >I'm now reading Brautigan's CONFEDERATE
GENERAL
> >FROM BIG SUR.
> Since there seems to be a Big Sur theme, try
Henry Miller's
> _Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus
Bosch_ >>
>
>
Anyother books on the reading list relating to Big Sur?
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 23:56:20 -0400
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Jerry Cimino
<Bigsurs4me@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Prostate Wars (also know as the Growl
from Lowell) (rhymes a
little, no?)
Enjoyed
the Parody, Atilla.
"If
you need a roll, we've got the scroll".
Clever!
Jerry
Cimino
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 21:52:21 -0700
Reply-To: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List"
<BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation
List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
From: Gerald Nicosia
<gnicosia@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Re: Chaput is Kaput!
.... It
>is
just a going concern with anybody in the academic community when there is
>an
apparent image being fostered as an expert....
>
Dear
Paul, May 13, 1997
You missed the whole point. My point about credentials is this:
people
on this list are being asked to accept Phil Chaput's opinions on the
needs
of textual scholars as if he were some sort of expert. To the best of
my
knowledge, Phil has no training in this area whatsoever. I was trained
in it
throughout graduate school, and have practiced it for 20 years,
writing
not only about the works of Kerouac, but also those of William
Wordsworth,
Henry David Thoreau, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman, William S.
Burroughs,
Jack Micheline, Nelson Algren, and many others. Moreover, I have
worked
in dozens of library special collections around the country.
Anyone with a bit of training knows
the rule that you don't use
xeroxes
when actual manuscript copy is available.
Mr. Chaput posing as an
expert
on text analysis with his new theory of xeroxes is absurd.
You told me you have gone back to
school yourself. Then surely you
respect
the fact that in certain areas expertise and experience count over
someone
who is just mouthing off about something he knows nothing about.
Chaput
comes on like a freshman humanities student claiming he knows more
about
the world than Plato--but he hasn't even read Plato yet, let alone
understood
him.
When I said let me speak to my equal,
I mean someone who has trained
in this
area for as many years as I have. I'd
like to hear Ann Charters
come on
here and try to tell me that "xeroxes are just as good as
originals." She'd make a laughingstock of herself before
the academic