=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 22:08:32 +0000

Reply-To:     randyr@southeast.net

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Comments:     Authenticated sender is <randyr@pop.jaxnet.com>

From:         randy royal <randyr@MAILHUB.JAXNET.COM>

Subject:      Re: re beat fad spiritual atheism

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

 

nice law. it is very true and evident in the every church in

almost every century but most evident when the catholic church

 started celebrated christmas during winter time to appease the

peasents.

> formed, because they are resistant to change, also, my own slant here,

> something conceived in an instant in time to become an ism is dated to

> that time, and is outdated thereafter because of change.  one of the

> reasons that the many major religions that remain alive today are doing

> so is because they've become flexible enough to adapt to change a morph

> as necessary.

>

>

=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 22:41:57 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: big surLiSizeD without LSD

 

Let's see if I can clarify what I believe:

 

I believe jack kerouac was an alcoholic, and that it's the nature of an

alcoholic not to be able to make the healthy choices required for changes.

This belief of mine is highly personal, but I didn't get words to understand

or describe it until I entered the world of 12-Step programs 12 years ago.

 

I believe that jack was highly gifted, and furthermore, that he existed on a

higher plane of consciousness than most people ever do.

 

I believe the characters in Big Sur were all based on real people, and that

jack describes them and their actions accurately, even though he was cracking

up.

 

I believe Big Sur is autobiographical. I've never heard any information to

the contrary, although I have heard jack quoted as saying it was

autobiographical.

 

I follow the book quite literally, and with every paragraph, every page I

turn, what he says makes more sense and rings more true.

 

Like everyone, my affinity for a certain book is founded on my own

experience, my own frame of reference. Because I've lived enough of the

events in Big Sur, I find them all very believable, and jack's telling of

them reasoned and illuminating.

 

To me, this book is a masterpiece. I just re-read it on Saturday before

posting my first comment to the list. I think I'll read it again, and of

course, I'll be thinking of all your comments while I do.

 

But I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that Big Sur should be seen as

literature, as opposed to a case study in a nervous breakdown, lived and

recounted by the one who experienced it.

 

Recently I read Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan, and in the main

subplot (since there are about five plots, I think of them all as subplots,

but then, I'm no scholar, and proud of that fact; just a reader) what I saw

was the beginning of the end of Brautigan's life, or as Judith said about Big

Sur in the first place, "It was like reading a suicide note." I believed

Brautigan was foreshadowing his own suicide, and the fact that he did

ultimately die violently at his own hand supports my belief, at least to me.

What he went through was very familiar to me on a personal level (as a member

in good standing of the Crack-up Club, along with David Rhaesa and some

others too shy to talk about it).

 

Same thing with jack and reading Big Sur. I don't see any reason why I should

look for metaphor and all those painfully intellectual literary analyses (ew,

I'm so smart) when the words he wrote are all right there in front of me, in

perfect order, exactly as he meant for them to be read.

 

I really believe (and I'm not suggesting anyone who's participated in this

discussion so far falls into this description) that people are often so

uncomfortable with "the lunatic ravings" of a holy man, because there is so

much truth in them, that they need to retreat into rationalization, seeking

explanations rather than taking what's there on face value.

 

That's where I'm coming from. I don't try to figure jack out. I just let his

words transport me there.

=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 23:05:53 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: big surLiSizeD without LSD

 

In a message dated 97-11-24 21:42:35 EST, DC wrote:

 

<<

 I have read Big Sur. Twice.  But given your interpretation, it does make

 me wonder if we're reading the same book.  I do believe that Jack's

 writing is true to what he saw happening in his own mind. The middle to

 end of the book is probably one of the best written records ever of

 delirium tremens.  But with all your knowledge about alcoholism you fail

 to see how someone writing in this state is suffering from acute delirium

 and paranoia.   >>

 

What can I tell you? My interpretation is mine, and yours is yours. I don't

know much about delirium tremens (although I'm going to do some research

now), but I don't think you just get them one night and then they go away.

The DTs, in my limited education on that subject, are present in the latest

stages of alcoholism, and it seems to me people don't experience them while

they are drunk, but when alcohol is withdrawn. Of course, in deference to

your comments, I will look for information on this subject so I can be better

informed.

 

And yes, I believe "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." Alcoholism is a

disease whose only cure is to quit drinking. But you're still an alcoholic

after you quit, if you get lucky enough, and get enough strength to quit.

 

But you failed to make your syllogism with your final "extrapolation" on this

subject. I do believe people can change most things in their lives and

overcome great trauma. There are things that are bigger and more powerful

than many people, and alcoholism is one of those things. It is, as I stated,

a disease, covered by most medical insurance plans. And it is fatal, as it

was in jack's case, as it was in Dylan Thomas's case, as Marie mentioned

earlier, as it is in so many cases.

 

I have a little brother who's now dying of alcoholism. He's three years

younger than me and he has two types of chronic hepatitis, an enlarged liver,

diabetes, is blind in one eye, and was recently diagnosed with cancer of the

tongue. He's had his license taken away a dozen times. He's had a dozen

accidents while driving, most of which were hit-and-runs. He's lost a dozen

jobs, a million friends, watched others die, ruined his life, been in

treatment repeatedly, but guess what? He just can't quit drinking.

 

I've known him since the day he was born, and I know this is not the life he

would have chosen for himself. I used to get angry with him because I

believed somehow that he was doing this on purpose. I cut him out of my life,

I reported him to the police, I confiscated a gun from his house. But the

fact that I had known him as a child, and had seen where he came from, and

finally admitting I didn't understand alcoholism and needed to, made me come

to believe that "if he could make any other choice, he would." If it were

simply a matter of choice, there would be no alcoholics in the world.

 

I stand by what I believe, and I apply it to jack, and to all the other

alcoholics in the world who lose the fight.

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 15:15:53 +1000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Duncan Gray <duncang@ENTO.CSIRO.AU>

Subject:      'Last time I comitted suicide' reaches Australia

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

The movie 'The last time I committed suicide' is available on video, in

Australia.  I don't think any Cinema's showed it in Australia.

------------------------------------------------------------------.o0

Duncan Gray

Stored Grain Research Laboratory

CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra ACT 2601

Ph. (06) 246 4178  Fax (06) 246 4202

----------------------------------------------------------------------

=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 22:16:48 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Patricia Elliott <pelliott@SUNFLOWER.COM>

Subject:      Re: big surLiSizeD without LSD

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

You_Be Fine wrote:

>

> I believe the characters in Big Sur were all based on real people, and that

> jack describes them and their actions accurately, even though he was cracking

> up.

 

 

the above comment makes no sense, i too, am not a scholar (but i am

neither proud or ashamed, i never heard that it was that bad a field)

but i am pretty sure that cracking up (been there done that) means that

what your seeing often isn't what is happening. I find big sur to be a

good read, with great value. But as I read it make me believe that it

isn't an accurate reflection of what was before him but what was an

accurate reflection of what he might of seen. Not that it isn't a dark

and evil world to look at, it is just a little darker to those depressed

by booze.

patricia

p

=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 22:26:40 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         RACE --- <race@MIDUSA.NET>

Subject:      Re: big surLiSizeD without LSD

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Patricia Elliott wrote:

>

> You_Be Fine wrote:

> >

> > I believe the characters in Big Sur were all based on real people, and that

> > jack describes them and their actions accurately, even though he was

 cracking

> > up.

>

> the above comment makes no sense, i too, am not a scholar (but i am

> neither proud or ashamed, i never heard that it was that bad a field)

> but i am pretty sure that cracking up (been there done that) means that

> what your seeing often isn't what is happening. I find big sur to be a

> good read, with great value. But as I read it make me believe that it

> isn't an accurate reflection of what was before him but what was an

> accurate reflection of what he might of seen. Not that it isn't a dark

> and evil world to look at, it is just a little darker to those depressed

> by booze.

> patricia

> p

 

this is a very complicated thread and certainly requires the open-minded

considerations of realities that i've found so wonderful about the

supportive people on the list.

 

it seems a question of perspective.  the reality of Jack's account and

the reality of alternative readings or potentially of other characters

can ALL be REAL.  i once believed that in order to get out of leather

straps in a hospital i combined understandings from Kafka and Leary

notions and became a horse and broke through the straps.  the experience

was REAL for me.  But it is just as real for me to believe the alternate

account that after having passed out from any number of exhausting

influences the straps were removed.  Both are REAL.  Which happened is

one of those trivial historical questions (oops letting my colours show

there a bit concerning history!).

 

The realm of experience and the mysteries behind Being are still so

complicated that we cannot begin to understand them.  We have to find

beliefs that work for us and be open-minded about other's beliefs as

well.  But we need, i feel, to also guard against letting our beliefs

(which i've done many times) move from the range of belief into dogmas

that destroy the entire sense of believing.

 

It seems that this thread demonstrates the difficulty and complexity of

the experiences many of us have been through and continue to go through

-- and all our journeys are different -- and also, i think, shows a bit

of the wonderful community that exists here in which these notions can

be found in literature and tossed around and examined and thought about

and interpreted sometimes changing our minds milliseconds after we

thought our minds were made up.  It is a lovely group.

 

And with that, i shift to digest and pack for Denver.

 

Happy Thanksgiving y'all.

 

david rhaesa

salina, Kansas

=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 20:40:14 -0800

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: big surLiSizeD without LSD

In-Reply-To:  <347A5130.177B@sunflower.com> from "Patricia Elliott" at Nov 24,

              97 10:16:48 pm

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Patricia Elliot wrote:

> but i am pretty sure that cracking up (been there done that) means that

> what your seeing often isn't what is happening. I find big sur to be a

> good read, with great value. But as I read it make me believe that it

> isn't an accurate reflection of what was before him but what was an

> accurate reflection of what he might of seen. Not that it isn't a dark

> and evil world to look at, it is just a little darker to those depressed

> by booze.

 

Well, in my opinion what Kerouac went through (in real life at Big

Sur) is not that unusual.  I think his greatness lay not in the

fact that he experienced this "breakdown" but rather that he

wrote about it.  It was his courage to tell the truth that made

him important, because the truths need to be told for society

to heal itself.  That's how I read his books: as attempts to

spiritually heal the world.  Inspired by Jesus and Buddha

(and Emerson and Melville and Dostoevsky etc) ...

 

All of which is just a segue for me to mention that my

new piece about William S. Burroughs, featuring some excellent

words posted to the BEAT-L by Patricia Elliott (this time I

spelled it right) about his after-death ceremonies.  It's

called Sliced Bardo and it's at:

 

http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/SlicedBardo/

 

Okay, back to the discussion.

 

-------------------------------------------------------

| Levi Asher = brooklyn@netcom.com                    |

|                                                     |

|     Literary Kicks: http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/ |

|      (the beat literature web site)                 |

|                                                     |

|          "Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web"       |

|            (a real book, like on paper)             |

|               also at http://coffeehousebook.com    |

|                                                     |

|                   *---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---* |

|                                                     |

|        "When I was crazy, I thought you were great" |

|                                       -- Ric Ocasek |

-------------------------------------------------------

=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 23:01:37 -0600

Reply-To:     cawilkie@comic.net

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Cathy Wilkie <cawilkie@COMIC.NET>

Subject:      Re: new to the list

Comments: To: VegasDaddy@AOL.COM

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

> Subject:

>         Re: is this still beat-l?

>   Date:

>         Sun, 23 Nov 1997 02:20:04 -0500

>   From:

>         Anthony Celentano <VegasDaddy@AOL.COM>

>

>

> I'm new to the list, and I'm reading all this stuff about Gap ads and atheism

> and semantics and potential topics etc etc, and I guess I expected more of a

> discussion about actual Beat literature.  I mean, I could discuss the

> pristine lyric of Corso's "Haarlem" or "Ode to Coit Tower" forever, but all

> this political business...I think that the wonderful thing about Jack Kerouac

> was his essential political apathy, and I think that he would have been

> amused at all this heated discussion about his image in the media.  I think

> it's wonderful when the Beat writers are being discussed at all, in any

> vein...but I was wondering if anyone agrees about starting more discussions

> about the beautiful prose and phenomenal poetry itself. Those cats captured

> something magical in their literature and I for one would like to delve into

> that magic.  I was also wondering if anyone would agree with me when I

> contend that Corso was the greatest poet among the Beats?  Thanks, and

> perhaps I am totally off the mark here and don't know what the hell I'm

> talking about,

>

> Anthony

 

 

 

Welcome, Anthony!

 

Hi there how you doing?  Not so very long ago, i too, was very new to

the list--I got in right as the last episode of the Great Kerouac Estate

Wars was going on.  I felt the same as you, but the longer i am here the

more i discover that if we don't get a feel for who the people behind

the posts are, the conversations are rather boring.  So i welcomed this

last foray into the religion issue.  That issue was in fact very

relative to the beat generation discussion.  Look at the varied

religions you have within the core group of writers--you had a nice

jewish boy and a nice catholic boy who both chose buddhism instead.

 

So to give you an idea who i am, beyond the above garbled paragraph:

 

I'm 28, live in marion iowa and i am a kerouac freak.  That's why i am

here.

 

I will also be looking forward to your posts on corso--i have only read

a few peices of his here and there, mostly the stuff in anthologies.

We're all here to learn, so teach, brother, teach.  Teach us about

corso.

 

cathy

=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 21:20:01 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         tristan saldana <hbeng175@EMAIL.CSUN.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Herbert Huncke

Comments: To: Jym Mooney <jymmoon@EXECPC.COM>

In-Reply-To:  <199711250020.SAA21569@core0.mx.execpc.com>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

You've also gotta love the last paragraph of its opening chapter:

 

        But I'll tell you straight . . . Well, I obviously won't tell you

        straight, because that would be a lie.  Except for this business

        of methadone, I'd have committed suicide years ago.  Right now I'm

        living from one day to the next, that's the way I feel.  I do love

        the world. It really is beautiful, so incredibly beautiful (11).

 

Those last two lines kill me.  I have already read through the book

quickly to get a feel for what he's doing.  I could hear it right away.

Huncke like all the other Beats show such love for life and human beings

even in the sordid refuse of society (in Huncke's case _as_ a member of

that so called refuse). But there's something even more special about

Huncke's tales and the way that he tells them: they are nothing but

'straight.' Actually he and Corso both share this majestic quality as

personalities, as narrators and poets. He was, as McClure would call Jack,

the sensorium.  Huncke was a genuine aesthete, Lazarus of New York and

Tiresias of its wastelands.  Beautiful Huncke has something to tell us.  I

can see why Allen, Jack, and Bill hung around the guy.  He had the rhythm

and the vision and crystaline humility.

 

Tristan

 

On Mon, 24 Nov 1997, Jym Mooney wrote:

 

> You just gotta love someone who titles his autobiography "Guilty Of

> Everything"!

>

> Jym

>

=========================================================================

Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 1997 23:43:44 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Mike Rice <mrice@CENTURYINTER.NET>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

At 10:40 PM 11/23/97 -0500, you wrote:

>>Why am I prolonging this?

>>I believe the original photo can be found in the booklet that comes

>>with the

>>audio set, "The Jack Kerouac Collection"

>>I'm almost positive that this is the one edited for the Khakis ad.

>

>     you mean the one with Edie in the background?  that's what i

>thought when i saw the ad too.

>

>

 

Has anyone actually bought a pair of GAP khakis.  It would be

interesting to discover whether this ad campaign actually did

any good.  After all, we're all Jack cognescenti, at a minimum,

so did any of us right down and get a pair of Jack GAP Khaks?

WAiting to hear from the 250 of anyone bit on the bait.

 

Mike Rice

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 01:48:37 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      BigSur misconceptions/miscommunications

Comments: To: letabor@cruzio.com

 

In a message dated 97-11-24 22:16:44 EST, Leon responded:

 

<<  If you see my questions as trivial, that is your evaluation. >>

Leon, I don't think your questions, or your responses, are trivial, and I

hope you don't have the impression that I do. I don't know how you came up

with this impression, since I didn't say it, nor did I think it.

 

  <<I just don't buy your perception that Jack was fair mindedly and in

charge of his mental faculties driven to madness by these mentally ill

others. >>

Nor did I invent or try to convey this "perception." First, I was struck by

how similar his crack-up was to a bad acid trip. That was where I began. I

mentioned Big Sur being a textbook for certain psych courses. I mentioned

that I'd also heard he was suffering from the DTs.

 

My personal opinion was that he was descending into madness and had a nervous

collapse at the cabin. I don't think he was in charge of his mental faculties

during that crack-up, and never said he was.

 

I think what might have confused you on this point was the fact that I was

amazed he could write about it accurately (indicating some sort of lucidity

on his part, perhaps) and the fact that he was being exposed to some aberrant

behaviour he found very offensive and frightening from the people he was

socializing with.

 

I still trust his accounting. I think the combination of ugly, intrusive

fame, his "brother" Tyke dying, his strained relationship with Neal and how

he was foisted off onto Billie, and his revulsion at the lifestyle of the San

Francisco beatnik, along with a good, long bender that included alcohol and

marijuana, pushed him over the edge. But somehow he was able to remember it

or allow some part of himself (through dissociation, perhaps) to witness it,

and write about it.

 

I sure as hell don't think it's fiction. If I found out it was, my esteem for

jack as a writer would be even higher than it already is, because Big Sur is

an amazing book.

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 07:06:24 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      Re: big surLiSizeD without LSD

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

diane, i find your arguement a compelling addition to leon's post. i

mc

 

Diane Carter wrote:

 

> I have read Big Sur. Twice.  But given your interpretation, it does make

> me wonder if we're reading the same book.  I do believe that Jack's

> writing is true to what he saw happening in his own mind. The middle to

> end of the book is probably one of the best written records ever of

> delirium tremens.  But with all your knowledge about alcoholism you fail

> to see how someone writing in this state is suffering from acute delirium

> and paranoia.  He writes (on page 191) "...I feel a great ghastly hatred

> of myself and everything, the empty feeling far from being the usual

> relief is now as tho I've been robbed of my spinal power right down the

> middle on purpose by a great witching force--I feel evil forces gathering

> down all around me, from her, the kid, the very walls of the cabin, the

> trees, even the sudden thought of Dave Wain and Romana is evil..." Given

> your literal interpretation, then not only is Billie and the kid and Dave

> and Romana out to get him, but so are the trees and the walls of the

> cabin.  You have to see, as Leon accurately has been pointed out as well,

> that anyone in this condition is not exactly in a sound state of mind.

> My assessment of Billie also is much more sympathetic than yours.  I

> think (and this is only from what Jack wrote in Big Sur) that she truly

> understood him and wanted to pull him from the brink of self-destruction,

> but even she eventually realizes that he cannot accept her love because

> he cannot love himself.  I also do not agree with your assessment of

> alcoholism, "if they could choose to be another way they would," because

> it borders on fringe of saying "once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,"

> and on an even greater scale, that people are powerless to change their

> own lives no matter what kind of emotional trauma they have experienced

> or path they are on.  The choice to be otherwise is always there.

> DC

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 07:12:27 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      Re: big surLiSizeD without LSD

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

not all of the information to assess alcoholism is true for all alcoholics. the

DTs are what i read when the paranoia and the the visions kick in. Big Sur is an

autobiographical novel, meant to be so by it's author. NOT meant or written or

read as  a clinical case study. if you believe that jack is writing the literal

truth, then why are you having such a difficult time recognizing the DTs? much

of what he goes through happens to many in the thros of DTs, this coming from

many years of working psych units, caring for end-stage alcoholic people.

mc

 

You_Be Fine wrote:

 

> Let's see if I can clarify what I believe:

>

> I believe jack kerouac was an alcoholic, and that it's the nature of an

> alcoholic not to be able to make the healthy choices required for changes.

> This belief of mine is highly personal, but I didn't get words to understand

> or describe it until I entered the world of 12-Step programs 12 years ago.

>

> I believe that jack was highly gifted, and furthermore, that he existed on a

> higher plane of consciousness than most people ever do.

>

> I believe the characters in Big Sur were all based on real people, and that

> jack describes them and their actions accurately, even though he was cracking

> up.

>

> I believe Big Sur is autobiographical. I've never heard any information to

> the contrary, although I have heard jack quoted as saying it was

> autobiographical.

>

> I follow the book quite literally, and with every paragraph, every page I

> turn, what he says makes more sense and rings more true.

>

> Like everyone, my affinity for a certain book is founded on my own

> experience, my own frame of reference. Because I've lived enough of the

> events in Big Sur, I find them all very believable, and jack's telling of

> them reasoned and illuminating.

>

> To me, this book is a masterpiece. I just re-read it on Saturday before

> posting my first comment to the list. I think I'll read it again, and of

> course, I'll be thinking of all your comments while I do.

>

> But I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that Big Sur should be seen as

> literature, as opposed to a case study in a nervous breakdown, lived and

> recounted by the one who experienced it.

>

> Recently I read Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan, and in the main

> subplot (since there are about five plots, I think of them all as subplots,

> but then, I'm no scholar, and proud of that fact; just a reader) what I saw

> was the beginning of the end of Brautigan's life, or as Judith said about Big

> Sur in the first place, "It was like reading a suicide note." I believed

> Brautigan was foreshadowing his own suicide, and the fact that he did

> ultimately die violently at his own hand supports my belief, at least to me.

> What he went through was very familiar to me on a personal level (as a member

> in good standing of the Crack-up Club, along with David Rhaesa and some

> others too shy to talk about it).

>

> Same thing with jack and reading Big Sur. I don't see any reason why I should

> look for metaphor and all those painfully intellectual literary analyses (ew,

> I'm so smart) when the words he wrote are all right there in front of me, in

> perfect order, exactly as he meant for them to be read.

>

> I really believe (and I'm not suggesting anyone who's participated in this

> discussion so far falls into this description) that people are often so

> uncomfortable with "the lunatic ravings" of a holy man, because there is so

> much truth in them, that they need to retreat into rationalization, seeking

> explanations rather than taking what's there on face value.

>

> That's where I'm coming from. I don't try to figure jack out. I just let his

> words transport me there.

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 07:27:38 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      levi's burroughs web site

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

to levi and all beats

it's beautifully written, laid out, and comprehensive. so good to see

patricia's gentle and loving accounts and descriptions.

levi where did you get that color that absolutely radiant color photo

that is on the page?

in trying to save the image before making a bookmark, i lost the

address. and your post as well, levi,

could you kindly repost the address of the page?

many thanks

marie c

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 07:31:41 -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:         Nancy B Brodsky <nbb203@IS8.NYU.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

In-Reply-To:  <1.5.4.16.19971125003813.08af0b8e@mail.wi.centuryinter.net>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

I have a pair of Wide Leg Khaki's from the GAP but then again, Ive always

shopped at the GAP and would still shop there even if Kerouac didnt wear

Khakis....

 

 

On Mon, 24 Nov 1997, Mike Rice wrote:

 

> At 10:40 PM 11/23/97 -0500, you wrote:

> >>Why am I prolonging this?

> >>I believe the original photo can be found in the booklet that comes

> >>with the

> >>audio set, "The Jack Kerouac Collection"

> >>I'm almost positive that this is the one edited for the Khakis ad.

> >

> >     you mean the one with Edie in the background?  that's what i

> >thought when i saw the ad too.

> >

> >

>

> Has anyone actually bought a pair of GAP khakis.  It would be

> interesting to discover whether this ad campaign actually did

> any good.  After all, we're all Jack cognescenti, at a minimum,

> so did any of us right down and get a pair of Jack GAP Khaks?

> WAiting to hear from the 250 of anyone bit on the bait.

>

> Mike Rice

>

 

The Absence of Sound, Clear and Pure, The Silence Now Heard In Heaven For

Sure-JK

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 07:31:08 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

> Has anyone actually bought a pair of GAP khakis.  It would be

> interesting to discover whether this ad campaign actually did

> any good.  After all, we're all Jack cognescenti, at a minimum,

> so did any of us right down and get a pair of Jack GAP Khaks?

> WAiting to hear from the 250 of anyone bit on the bait.

>

> Mike Rice

 

  not me

mc

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 08:42:37 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Patricia Elliott <pelliott@SUNFLOWER.COM>

Subject:      Re: levi's burroughs web site

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Marie Countryman wrote:

 

> could you kindly repost the address of the page?

> many thanks

>

 

thank you for your kind words on my contribution to Levi page, which is

at

http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/SlicedBardo/

 

I too was taken by Levi's work, It was a great compilation in an wow

setting.  I was very pleased to the inclusion of the carolyn cassady

note,  it seemed fitting.  It wouldn't really seem to reflect william if

someone hadn't added "I just don't like the guy".

The interview about tangiers struck me as absolutely right, as did the

orgone box in williams back yard.   Of all the places william lived

tangiers (in my conversations with william) made some of the strongest

impressions on william.  He would talk of the colors, the People (the

bowles were the most striking).  One of williams great cats was named

Jane after jane bowles.  she was a (the cat)a delicately built calico,

very curous, very sensitive, very clever.  I had to learn not to walk

around the house so solidly, she liked nice even entrances. I normally

bound.  Oh i digress.  The Levi site in total is a work of art and i

have found his explanation of what beat literature is to be excellant.

His use of links are a delight.

patricia

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 10:48:21 -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:         Alex Howard <kh14586@ACS.APPSTATE.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

In-Reply-To:  <1.5.4.16.19971125003813.08af0b8e@mail.wi.centuryinter.net>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

> Has anyone actually bought a pair of GAP khakis.  It would be

> interesting to discover whether this ad campaign actually did

> any good.  After all, we're all Jack cognescenti, at a minimum,

> so did any of us right down and get a pair of Jack GAP Khaks?

 

Actually, if we really wanted to follow the ad and wear khakis because

Jack and Allen did we'd go to the Goodwill and buy them just as they did.

Biggest reason they were worn was they were dirt cheap and pletiful.  Also

those were the days when jeans were dungarees and work clothes, not casual

wear.

 

------------------

Alex Howard  (704)264-8259                    Appalachian State University

kh14586@am.appstate.edu                       P.O. Box 12149

http://www1.appstate.edu/~kh14586             Boone, NC  28608

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 00:19:13 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Diane Carter <dcarter@TOGETHER.NET>

Subject:      Big Sur: paranoia

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Here is one passage where my interpretation is that Jack recognizes that

most of what is going on in his head is in fact paranoia and fantasy (and

it occurs early on before the big buildup that takes place in the cabin

where his mental state worsens further).

 

pg. 116-117

"...But my childhood revery also included the fact that everybody in the

world was making fun of me because they were all members of an eternal

secret society or Heaven society that knew the secret of the world and

were seriously fooling me so I'd wake up and see the light (i.e. become

enlightened, in fact)--So that I, 'Ti Jean,' was the LAST Ti Jean left in

the world, the last poor holy fool, those people at my neck were the

devils of the earth among whom God had cast me, an angel baby, as tho I

was the last Jesus in fact! and all these people were waiting for me to

realize it and wake up and catch them peeking and we'd all laugh in

Heaven suddenly--But animals werent doing that behind my back, my cats

were always adornments licking their paws sadly, and Jesus, he was a sad

witness to this, somewhat like the animals--He wasn't peeking down my

neck--There lies the root of my belief in Jesus--So actually the only

reality in the world was Jesus and the lambs (the animals) and my brother

Gerard who had instructed me--Meanwhile some of the peekers were kindly

and sad, like my father, but had to go along with everybody else in the

same boat--But my waking up would take place and then everything would

vanish except Heaven, which is God--And that was why later in life after

these rather strange you must admit childhood reveries, after I had that

fainting vision of the Golden Eternity and others before and after it

including Samadhis during Buddhist meditations in the woods, I conceived

of myself as a special solitary angel sent down as a messanger from

Heaven to tell everybody or show everybody by example that their peeking

society was actually the Satanic Society and they were all on the wrong

track.

  With all this in my background, now at the point of adulthood disaster

of the soul, through excessive drinking, all this was easily converted

into a fantasy that everybody in the world was witching me to madness:

and I must have believed it subconsciously because as I say as soon as

Ron Blake left I was well again and in fact content."

DC

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 06:01:13 -0800

Reply-To:     Leon Tabory <letabor@cruzio.com>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Leon Tabory <letabor@CRUZIO.COM>

Subject:      Re: BigSur misconceptions/miscommunications

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

-----Original Message-----

From: You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

To: BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Date: Monday, November 24, 1997 10:47 PM

Subject: BigSur misconceptions/miscommunications

 

>In a message dated 97-11-24 22:16:44 EST, Leon responded:

I SAID:

><<  If you see my questions as trivial, that is your evaluation. >>

 

YOU SAID:

>Leon, I don't think your questions, or your responses, are trivial, and I

>hope you don't have the impression that I do. I don't know how you came up

>with this impression, since I didn't say it, nor did I think it.

 

I SAY:

The impression that you felt my "theory" is trivial xame from this passage:

 

>Regarding this theory, I really don't see the value in it at all. It feels

>like, for some reason, you're splitting hairs. What are we supposed to

>believe and not believe in Big Sur, or On The Road, or any of jack's books?

 

Is there another way to interpret it?

 

If I felt this was some kind of a personal clash, I would have responded by

backchannell. I believe that we are dealing here with sincerely held views

about the book that we are all interested in.

 

I was questioning the notion that Jack was horrified into madness by the

behavior of his friends, that there was no reason at all to suspect that his

state of mind might have distorted motives and actions of his friends. I was

not questioning Jack's genius. I also have no question that he was writing

about his experience of life, not inventing fiction. He was writing about

how things seemed to him at the time and how he felt about himself.

 

YOU SAID:

>I think what might have confused you on this point was the fact that I was

>amazed he could write about it accurately (indicating some sort of lucidity

>on his part, perhaps) and the fact that he was being exposed to some

aberrant

>behaviour he found very offensive and frightening from the people he was

>socializing with.

 

I SAY:

 

Enough maybe? good enough for me.

 

Have a happy thanksgiving everyone

 

leon

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 08:38:14 +0000

Reply-To:     "Nancy J. Peters" <nancyp@wenet.net>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "Nancy J. Peters" <nancyp@WENET.NET>

Organization: CITY LIGHTS BOOKS

Subject:      unsubscibe

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

"unsubcribe" nancyp@wenet.net

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:39:09 -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:         Sara Feustle <sfeustl@UOFT02.UTOLEDO.EDU>

Subject:      Unsubscribe

MIME-version: 1.0

Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

"unsubscribe" sfeustl@uoft02.utoledo.edu

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 13:20:23 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Big Sur: paranoia

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=unknown-8bit

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

 

In a message dated 97-11-25 11:00:16 EST, DC wrote

 

<<=20

 Here is one passage where my interpretation is that Jack recognizes that

 most of what is going on in his head is in fact paranoia and fantasy (an=

d

 it occurs early on before the big buildup that takes place in the cabin

 where his mental state worsens further).

=20

  >>

This is an excellent example of why I don't post more often to Beat-L. I

already cited from this long passage in one of my very first posts, but

obviously, Diane Carter didn't read it.

 

Here are snips from my earliest posts:

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

I'm happy to stipulate that jack's collapse didn't have anything to do wi=

th

LSD, but was some kind of inner look in midlife where he couldn't deal wi=

th

what he saw.

 

I sure don't want to overthink this. There are some absolutely tactile im=

ages

in Big Sur, and sometimes I think we overlook the quality of his prose in=

 a

book that has so much autobiographical information. We get hung up on "th=

e

story behind the story," and fail to see the beauty.

 

I was thinking how incredible it was that he had the presence of mind to =

be

aware of what was happening to him, and to write it down so faithfully wh=

en

he was finished cracking up. To me, that is a measure of his inspired sou=

l as

a chosen one, a vessel through which such beauty flows as most ignorant f=

olks

can't really understand. He certainly believed he was inspired:

BUT MY WAKING UP would take place and then everything would vanish except

Heaven, which is God=97And that was why later in life after these rather

strange you must admit childhood reveries, after I had that fainting visi=

on

of the Golden Eternity and others before and after it=85 in the woods, I

conceived of myself as a special solitary angel sent down as a messenger =

from

Heaven to tell everybody or show everybody by example that their peeking

society was actually the Satanic Society and they were all on the wrong

track.

 

But he saw his weaknesses:

WITH ALL THIS IN MY BACKGROUND, now at the point of adulthood disaster of=

 the

soul, through excessive drinking, all this was easily converted into a

fantasy that everybody in the world was witching me to madness:

 

And maybe drugs were getting to him:

BUT THAT'S NOT the point, about pot paranoia, yet maybe it is at that=97I=

=92ve

long given it up because it bugs me anyway=97

 

Who knows? He was certainly disillusioned:

=85I USED TO STAND by the windows like this in my childhood and look out =

on

dusky...=20

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

I'm not saying it was drugs, the DTs or some 24-hour virus that got to ja=

ck.

I don't need to reach a conclusion about it. And I don't need to be right=

,

either. jack was about conflict, and he struggled all his life to keep tw=

o

conflicting thoughts in his head simultaneously (see Dharma Bums, Scriptu=

re

of the Golden Eternity, Selected Letters).

 

As I said, Who knows? I'm not going to put jack in a box and limit the

meaning of his stories with my small imagination. He's the one I'm trying=

 to

learn from; I'm not trying to reinvent or teach him.

 

I was hoping for some good old anti-intellectual, heartfelt sharing from =

list

members who've "been to Big Sur" in their own experiences, not in an

antiseptic dissection of jack kerouac (safe in heaven dead and laughing h=

is

ass off at all of us here) by people who need to reach conclusions.

 

Hey, has anyone seen that picture of jack in the GAP ads? What do you thi=

nk?

Did someone sell him out? Was that right or wrong? What would jack think?

 

(hoping you all have a sense of humour.....)

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 14:26:47 -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:         Tyson Ouellette <Tyson_Ouellette@UMIT.MAINE.EDU>

Organization: University of Maine

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

 

>Has anyone actually bought a pair of GAP khakis.  It would be

>interesting to discover whether this ad campaign actually did

>any good.  After all, we're all Jack cognescenti, at a minimum,

>so did any of us right down and get a pair of Jack GAP Khaks?

>WAiting to hear from the 250 of anyone bit on the bait.

 

       well the ad has a weakness, jack didn't wear GAP khakis, so if

anyone wanted to imitate kerouac they could just go out and buy a pair

of dockers, or whatever.. or, more appropriately, head down to the

nearest salv. army or thrift shop and get whatever you happen to find

there.

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 12:11:09 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "Timothy K. Gallaher" <gallaher@HSC.USC.EDU>

Subject:      New Yorker Question

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

Remember on the 40th anniversary of On the Road the New York Times web site

did a forum on Jack kerouac: Typist or Writer?

 

There was a post there from September that said:

 

__________

 

ermoore <erm@mail.utexas.edu> - 12:19pm Sep 16, 1997 EST (#31 of 58)

 

For anyone interested in a glimpse of Kerouac's never-before-available road

diaries, check out The

New Yorker in the coming weeks. Kerouac's literary executor, Douglas

Brinkley (author of The

Majic Bus and editor of Hunter S. Thompson's recently published early

correspondence The Proud

Highway, among other things), is going to edit and publish this epic journal

and will be offering a few

excerpts from the diaries in an upcoming issue of The New Yorker.

 

___________________

 

It's been more than two months this this post and I sure haven't seen

anything like this in the New Yorker.  Did I miss it or is it still to come

or is this the publishing equivalent of vaporware.

 

I'd like to see this.  Does anyone know anything about it?

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 15:38:32 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: New Yorker Question

 

In a message dated 97-11-25 15:16:17 EST, Tim wrote:

 

<<  It's been more than two months this this post and I sure haven't seen

 anything like this in the New Yorker.  Did I miss it or is it still to come

 or is this the publishing equivalent of vaporware.

 

 I'd like to see this.  Does anyone know anything about it?  >>

 

Paul Maher stays up-to-date on Estate-related things and posts them to his

website: http://www.freeyellow.com/members/upstartcrow/KerouacQuarterly.html,

although I don't know if there's anything specific there about this project.

 

I believe the excerpts are scheduled to appear in December. You might email

Paul and see if he has an update, or contact the New Yorker.

 

And let us know. I'm interested in this, too.

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 15:43:54 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      NICOSIA'S ARCHIVES

Comments: cc: GNicosia@earthlink.net

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

I've just today received this letter from Gerald Nicosia and believe

that anyone interested in the Beat Generation archives or the Jack

Kerouac archives will be riveted by what this letter has to say.  I

think it a shame that one great Kerouac scholar should have to be

persecuted like this (at the expense of ALL Kerouac scholras) for having

stood up for Jan Kerouac and for still standing up for her.  Greed is

not the sole quality which should guide whoever it is in the control of

the Kerouac estate.

I am writing to everyone who has supported or shown interest in my work

on Jack Kerouac and my critical biography of Kerouac, "Memory Babe".

The huge amount of research I did on Kerouac's life during the years

1977-1981, including 300 hundred taped interviews and many thousands of

pages of letters and other documents, is in grave danger of being lost

forever.  Let me explain.

In 1987, for the very modest fee of $7,500, 1 placed the entire "Memory

Babe" Archive on deposit at the University of Lowell (now called the

University of Massachusetts, Lowell).  Since Lowell is Jack Kerouac's

hometown, I assumed the archive would receive maximum exposure there to

scholars, writers, and others interested in studying Kerouac's life and

writings.  In fact, when I placed the Memorv Babe archive at the

university, it was done with the stipulation that it be made available

to the public for scholarly study.  I also stipulated that the

materials, especially the tapes, be properly cared for.

The unique and precious quality of this material cannot be

overemphasized.  Of the 300 people I taped who knew Kerouac, over 100

are now dead.  Many of the dead interviewees are major American writers,

such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert

Duncan, Bob Kaufman, Ted Berrigan, John Clellon Holmes, Paul Carroll,

Malcolm Cowley, Seymour Krim, Herbert Huncke, and Jan Kerouac.  Other

dead interviewees include Kerouac's first two wives, Edie Parker and

Joan Haverty, and close boyhood friends.  These interviews can never be

replaced.

The University of Lowell has never copied these tapes on to fresh

cassettes or made any other effort to preserve them, such as

digitalization, despite my complaints about their obvious deterioration

over time.  Then, in June, 1995, 1 received a post card from

scholar/professor James Jones that the entire archive was closed to the

public.  Mr. Jones wrote: "I just tried to look at the papers you

donated to the University of Lowell, and the librarian in the Mogan

Center told me your collection is closed to the public until the lawsuit

is resolved."

 

I called Martha Mayo, the librarian, to ask what was going on, and why

Jan Kerouac's lawsuit against the Sampas family, to recover her fathers

papers, should have anything to do with my archives.  Ms. Mayo informed

me that John Sampas, the literary executor for Stella Sampas Kerouac's

estate, had complained about people having access to mv collection

without his permission.  Mr. Sampas lives in Lowell and has a great deal

of influence there.  The library agreed to shut my collection, even

though Mr. Sampas has never demonstrated that he has the legal authority

to keep people from using any of the "Memory Babe" materials for study.

(Legally, he has the right only to keep people from publishing or

broadcasting some of Jack Kerouac's writings without his permission.)

I threatened to make a public issue of the illegal closing of my

archives and was then told--deceptively--by the librarian that the

collection was still open, that she had only restricted the xeroxing of

Jack Kerouac letters. (There are also 2,000 Jack Kerouac letters in

xerox in my collection, more Jack Kerouac letters than in any other spot

on earth.) Several months later, however, I began getting more letters

and calls from scholars who had been turned away from the entire

collection.  The university then admitted the collection was indeed

closed.

In effect, this enormous archive of study material on the life of Jack

Kerouac has been permanently buried--and consigned to imminent

destruction, since the life of many of the tapes is at most only a few

more years.

Other libraries, such as the Bancroft in Berkeley and the University of

Texas at Austin, have already expressed their interest in acquiring the

"Memory Babe" archives for the purpose of making it available for

study.  But the University of Massachusetts at Lowell will not divest

itself of the archives even if paid back in full the purchasing price.

The University of Massachusetts, Lowell, will not sell the "Memory Babe"

archives, will not properly care for it, and will not show it to

anyone.  This is a situation in which everyone is the loser, and most

especially the future generations of scholars and writers who seek

access to a wealth of primary source material on Jack Kerouac.

The University of Massachusefts, Lowell, has left me no choice but to

file a breach of contract suit against them, to recover the "Memory

Babe" archive so that it can be placed in another institution, where it

can be made freely available to the public.  An institution not under

the direct influence of Mr. John Sampas.  For two years I tried and

failed to put together a pro bono legal team to carry out this suit, but

was unable to do so.  I have, however, found a Boston attorney who will

take the case at a considerably reduced rate.  But I still need to come

up with a $20,000 retainer, which will also cover filing fees,

depositions, and so forth.

Action must be taken now, or the chance to act will be lost forever.  A

statute of limitation is running on fraud and breach of contract--three

years in Massachusetts.  That statute will be up in June of 1998.  If I

do not take action before then, I will lose forever the legal right to

recover the "Memory Babe" archives

I am asking people to donate as much as they possibly can.  I do not

intend to make any money from this legal action whatsoever.  My only

goal is to save this huge archive of study materials for posterity.

Every person who donates will receive a receipt for their donation and

an accounting every 6 months of how the money is being spent.

We hope that negative publicity will cause the University of

Massachusetts to settle quickly, to accept payment for the archive and

transfer it directly to me or to another university that offers to

purchase it.  If indeed we have to go the distance in trial court and

appellate court, there is still a good chance, if we win, of recouping

legal expenses from the university and/or from the resale of the archive

to another university.

Once this happens, once we win and resell the archive to another

university, all remaining funds, plus any earned, will be returned to

the donors with the aim of fullest possible reimbursement.  For example,

if a total of $20,000 was donated, and $20,000 is recovered, everyone

will get 1 00% of their donation back.  If only $1 0,000 is recovered

(if, for example, legal fees are not repaid, but we earn $1 0,000

reselling the archive), then every donor will receive back 50% of his

donation.

The "Memory Babe" archive is the largest archive of study materials

concerning Jack Kerouac's life and work anywhere in the world.  It can

be saved only with your help.  I appeal to you now, with the coming

generations of scholars and writers in mind.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for listening and for helping.

Gerald Nicosia

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 08:56:43 +0900

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Timothy Hoffman <timothy@GOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: New Yorker Question

In-Reply-To:  <199711252011.MAA11998@hsc.usc.edu>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

>For anyone interested in a glimpse of Kerouac's never-before-available road

>diaries, check out The

>New Yorker in the coming weeks. Kerouac's literary executor, Douglas

>Brinkley (author of The

>Majic Bus and editor of Hunter S. Thompson's recently published early

>correspondence The Proud

>Highway, among other things), is going to edit and publish this epic journal

>and will be offering a few

>excerpts from the diaries in an upcoming issue of The New Yorker.

>

>___________________

>

>It's been more than two months this this post and I sure haven't seen

>anything like this in the New Yorker.  Did I miss it or is it still to come

>or is this the publishing equivalent of vaporware.

 

 

        I'm also wondering about the publication of these excerpts. I live

outside of Nagoya a couple of hours, and have been sneaking away on Sunday

mornings on the train to the city where the English language

books/magazines are sold to see if it's come out yet. I feared I had missed

it. Can anyone provide the issue date of the magazine? Or has its

publication been postponed?

 

:::===:::===:::===:::===:::===:::===:::===:::

Timothy Hoffman

Komaki English Teaching Center (KETC)

Komaki Shiminkaikan, KETC

2-107 Komaki

Komaki, Aichi 485

work (0568) 76-0905

fax (0568) 77-8207

home (0568)72-3549

timothy@gol.com

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 11:04:39 +1000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         John Pullicino <jjpull@PAC.COM.AU>

Subject:      Re: allow me to...

In-Reply-To:  <347A5130.177B@sunflower.com>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain

 

g'day all,

 

as i've just joined, i thought i'd just briefly introduce myself.

i've been an avid reader of kerouac and other beat writers since 1965 when

as a schoolboy i came across a hardback edition of 'on the road' in one of

the secondhand bookstores i used to haunt - i think it was the 'girls!

jazz! booze!' on the cover (predating 'sex'n'drugs'nrock'nroll?) that got

my attention. later as a lawstudent at university, i was blessed to find

one wintry morning a whole assortment of city lights publications out on

sale at a ridiculously reduced rate- i picked up as many as i could afford,

including some now hard to find here like Scripture of the Golden Eternity

by K, and The First Third by Neal Cassady. ( I got Mexico City Blues too,

but that vanished long a go at one of /those/ parties)

 

in the last 30 years i have also amassed a lot of cuttings and articles - i

hope to start learning more here of course.............

--

bye for now,

#<|||||||||||||||||||||||># John Pullicino #<|||||||||||||||||||||||>#

(|||||||||||||||||||)  #jjpull@pac.com.au# (|||||||||||||||||||)

#<|||||||||||||># *Team AMIGA WorldWide* #<|||||||||||||||>#

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 20:13:45 -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:         Dennis Cardwell <DCardKJHS@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Aronowitz/Nicosia

 

Waiting for the other shoe to drop...

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 19:19:38 -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: Memory babe Archive - Al Aronowitz post correction

In-Reply-To:  <347B388A.1A5F@bigmagic.com>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

Friends:

 

Please make the following correction before you pass Al's post on to friends.

 

In the third from the last paragragraph:

 

***

Instead of contributors receiving an accounting EVERY SIX MONTHS they will

be informed of EXACTLY how the money is used.They will NOT receive an

accounting every six months simply becauase that could become expensive and

time consuming. There is an incredible amount of work to do and not much

time to do it in.

***

 

By Thanksgiving Day (maybe I'll have it up by 11-26-97) there will be a

notice at http://www.bookzen.com detailing the following fundraiser to help

Gerry Nicosia recover the Memory babe Archive from the University of

Massachusetts.

 

A broadside (picture of Jan Kerouac at her father's grave and a poem by Jan

titled "Natasha") along with an Incredible Librarian T-Shirt will be given

to anyone who makes a contribution. For the T-Shirt alone $25. For the

boardside alone $25.  For both $45. For any of the three please add $5 for

the cost of shipping the poster and t -shirt in a substantial tube.

 

As many Beats and friends of Jan know, Natasha was the stillborn daughter

Jan lost in Mexico when she was 16. On her way to Mexico Jan had stopped

and visited with her dad. He instructed her to use the name Kerouac and to

write. The photograph of Jan was taken by Chris Felver and printed by White

Fields Press. The photographer has signed the broadside. As Jan's literary

executor Gerry Nicosia has given permission to use Jan's picture and the

poem Jan wrote to the still-born child that would have been Jack's

granddaughter. I have asked Gerry if he would also sign the broadside if

anyone wanted him to do so. He said he would.

 

Contributions can be sent to:

Gerry Nicosia

SAVE THE MEMORY BABE ARCHIVE

PO Box 130

Corte Madera CA 94976-0130

(415) 924-2270 (phone/fax)

 

The t-shirts are cotton, sizes Medium, Large and X-Large. The art is four

color on the front and shows the Incredible Librarian flying.

 

Below her image is "Guardian de la Sabidoria  -  Keeper of Knowledge.

 

On the back is:

"In the defense of freedom and literacy libraries are the most powerful

weapon we have. Use them!"

 

These t-shirts were originally created, as was the character The Incredible

Librarian, because of the desperate need for more preservation labs and for

more trained preservation librarians.

 

These are very high quality t-shirts. I have one test shirt that I have

machine washed in hot water over 300 times. The art is clear,the shirt

strong. No tears, no threads arond the edges.

 

$2000.00 worth of these t-shirts are being donated by BookZen and Mica

Press to help recover the Memory Babe Archives from the University of

Massachusetts.

 

I will provide an address for the web site, with all of the art and

information, by tomorrow.

 

I would appeciate it if contributors allow me to post their names on the

web site that will track tis effort to recover and preseve the Memory Babe

Archive.

 

Thanks.

 j grant

 

 

 

                Small Press Publishers and Authors

                  Display Books Free At BookZen

                                592,901 Visitors  07-01-96 to 11-01-97

                         http://www.bookzen.com

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 21:54:42 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Before you reach into your pocket...

 

Regarding the fundraising campaign launched by Gerry Nicosia, et. al., before

you make a donation, don't you think it would be a good idea to ask the UMass

Lowell Library for a comment, as well as what their position would be toward

relinquishing these papers?

 

Another good question would be to ask them why they are reluctant, if in

fact, they are.

 

They are not required to sell it, by law or for any other reason. They bought

it, fair and square.

 

With all due respect toward Gerald Nicosia, I want to hear the other side of

the story.

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 21:54:51 -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: Before you reach into your pocket...

In-Reply-To:  <971125215441_-388719893@mrin51.mail.aol.com>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

 Tue, 25 Nov 1997 21:54:42  You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM> wrote:

 

>Regarding the fundraising campaign launched by Gerry Nicosia, et. al., before

>you make a donation, don't you think it would be a good idea to ask the UMass

>Lowell Library for a comment, as well as what their position would be toward

>relinquishing these papers?

>

>Another good question would be to ask them why they are reluctant, if in

>fact, they are.

>

>They are not required to sell it, by law or for any other reason. They bought

>it, fair and square.

>

>With all due respect toward Gerald Nicosia, I want to hear the other side of

>the story.

 

Interesting post You_Be Fine,

 

Do you really think anyone would go to the trouble of filing a law suit

against a major university  to rip people off for some donations? Do you

think a respected writer would engage in such a fraud for a few thousand

dollars? Do you think anyone would donate $2000.00 worth of T-Shirts to

assist in such a thing?

 

Were I a cautious person like yourself You-Be-Fine-AngelMindz, I would be

on the phone to the American Library Association asking them to

investigate.  The following will save you time:

 

American Library Association

50 E Huron St.

Chicago, IL

1-800-545-2433

1-312-944-6780

 

Do the same with the Massachusetts Library Association and the Library

Association in your state Contact the organizations made up of Preservation

Librarians within the ALA. Do a blanket canvas of the Preservation

Librarian groups in all the states. Before this is over every librarian in

North America is going to have insights into how the U MASS cares for

valuable collections. As will academics, writers, poets and others who have

archives that might, under ordinary circumstances, be given or sold to the

U MASS.

 

The Special Collections librarian at U MASS Lowell is going to find out

that the position of Special Collections librarian comes with the

obligation to care for the collections. Nothing is more important than

PRESERVATION. To not PRESERVE is a betrayal of the most serious kine.

Materials that have been entrusted to a university are deteriorating and

incredibly valuable information is being lost--NEVER TO BE RECOVERED.

 

As for asking them what their position is on reliquishing the Memory Babe

Archive, read the post. They refuse to do so. They refuse to accept what

they paid for it so the collection can be placed in a library that cares

for archived materials.

 

j grant

 

 

 

 

 

                    HELP RECOVER THE MEMORY BABE ARCHIVES

                     Details  on-line by 11-27-97

                                 http://www.bookzen.com

                      592,901 Visitors  07-01-96 to 11-01-97

 

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 03:56:41 UT

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Sherri <love_singing@CLASSIC.MSN.COM>

Subject:      Re: allow me to...

 

welcome John.  how bout telling us about thos articles you have?   ciao,

sherri

 

----------

From:   BEAT-L: Beat Generation List on behalf of John Pullicino

Sent:   Tuesday, November 25, 1997 5:04 PM

To:     BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

Subject:        Re: allow me to...

 

g'day all,

 

as i've just joined, i thought i'd just briefly introduce myself.

i've been an avid reader of kerouac and other beat writers since 1965 when

as a schoolboy i came across a hardback edition of 'on the road' in one of

the secondhand bookstores i used to haunt - i think it was the 'girls!

jazz! booze!' on the cover (predating 'sex'n'drugs'nrock'nroll?) that got

my attention. later as a lawstudent at university, i was blessed to find

one wintry morning a whole assortment of city lights publications out on

sale at a ridiculously reduced rate- i picked up as many as i could afford,

including some now hard to find here like Scripture of the Golden Eternity

by K, and The First Third by Neal Cassady. ( I got Mexico City Blues too,

but that vanished long a go at one of /those/ parties)

 

in the last 30 years i have also amassed a lot of cuttings and articles - i

hope to start learning more here of course.............

--

bye for now,

#<|||||||||||||||||||||||># John Pullicino #<|||||||||||||||||||||||>#

(|||||||||||||||||||)  #jjpull@pac.com.au# (|||||||||||||||||||)

#<|||||||||||||># *Team AMIGA WorldWide* #<|||||||||||||||>#

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 22:25:50 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Patricia Elliott <pelliott@SUNFLOWER.COM>

Subject:      Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

You_Be Fine wrote:

>

> Regarding the fundraising campaign launched by Gerry Nicosia, et. al., before

> you make a donation, don't you think it would be a good idea to ask the UMass

> Lowell Library for a comment, as well as what their position would be toward

> relinquishing these papers?

>

> Another good question would be to ask them why they are reluctant, if in

> fact, they are.

>

> They are not required to sell it, by law or for any other reason. They bought

> it, fair and square.

>

> With all due respect toward Gerald Nicosia, I want to hear the other side of

> the story.

 

with all due respect,  why don't you do this.  and lets us all tred very

carefully. as i don't want to hear the other shoe drop until after the

dreaded holidays are over. i need my beat-l  hey did you guys look at

what levi has done as a memorial to william.. he used my bardo peice

and  never did it work as well.  great exciting people we have on beat-l

http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/SlicedBardo/

 

patricia

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 23:27:17 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      On The Road to Big Sur

 

Seems like all of jack's books connect to his other books... so I picked up

my copy of "Trip Trap" (Grey Fox Press 1973), which isn't strictly a kerouac

book, since it's coauthored by Lew Welch (Dave Wain in Big Sur) and Albert

Saijo (George Baso 'the little Japanese Zen master hepcat'), and was

published after jack had died and Lew had disappeared, assumed dead...

 

Albert wrote the first piece, "A Recollection," about the road trip he, Lew

and Jack took from San Francisco to New York the Thanksgiving before Big Sur,

and his return with Lew to Hyphen-House, their collective house "on the

northwest corner of Post and Buchanan in San Francisco." He tells about the

kitchen table where he gathered with housemates Les Thompson, Tom Fields,

Philip Whalen, John Blaise, and Lew, and how jack arrived there in November

of 1959, "at the height of his fame... drinking heavy, but he appeared to be

on a binge and determined to party on. He never lacked company. His celebrity

drew company."

 

Housemates and company gathered around the kitchen table for "plain quiet

talk or boozing and howling," and Albert adds, "It was as Jack described it

in the beautifully sustained prose of his book of suffering, Big Sur." jack

said: "It's an old roominghouse of four stories on the edge of the Negro

district of San Francisco where... [they] all live in different rooms with

their clutter of rucksacks and floor mattresses and books and gear, each one

taking turns one day a week to go out and do all the shopping and come back

and cook up a big communal dinner in the kitchen."

 

Albert was very aware of jack's declining mental state that November,

foreshadowing the August crackup at Big Sur, observing how "The mornings

after were deathly quiet. Jack would get up with a look in his eyes verging

on the dead eye look of metabolic extremity and smile a ruined hungover

smile. You understood then that his drinking was some kind of penance he had

put on himself to do in a Mexican Indian Catholic way, and it brought to mind

the 51st Psalm that begins, 'Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy

lovingkindness...' Penance for what? God only knows, but why else did he do

it? Sacrifice himself to juice. When he drank it was like he tore open his

breast with his bare hands to show God his pure beating heart."

 

So I went back to Big Sur (the book, not the location) with the addition of

Albert's information, and read some passages over again, and saw the whole

crack-up a little more deeply, and certainly, more spiritually. "So easy in

the woods to daydream and pray to the local spirits and say, 'Allow me to

stay here, I only want peace' and those foggy peaks answer back mutely

Yes--And to say to yourself (if you're like me with theological

preoccupations) (at least at that time, before I went mad and still had such

preoccupations) 'God who is everything possesses the eye of the awakening,

like dreaming a long dream of an impossible task and you wake up in in a

flash, oops, No Task, it's done and gone'--"

 

Seemed like part of the tapestry of madness jack was being woven into

involved a serious questioning of his faith in a God of some sort. He

isolates this ambivalence as the beginning of his crack-up: "The sea seems to

yell to me GO TO YOUR DESIRE DONT HAND AROUND HERE-- For after all the sea

must be like God, God isnt asking us to mope and suffer and sit by the sea in

the cold at midnight for the sake of writing down useless sounds, he gave us

the tools of self reliance after all to make it straight thru bad life

mortality towards Paradise maybe I hope--But some miserables like me dont

even know it, when it comes to us we're amazed--Ah, life is a gate, a way, a

path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort

of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH...but I ran away

from that seashore and never came back again without that secret knowledge:

that it didnt want me there, that I was a fool to sit there in the first

place, the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period.

    That being the first indication of my later flip--"

 

Backing up, being aware of list-members' comments about the DTs and what jack

experienced at Big Sur, I was also newly aware of this passage he wrote

describing the skid road hotel room he checked into when he first arrived,

before he hooked up with Monsanto (Ferlinghetti): "But the rucksack sits

hopefully in a strewn mess of bottles all empty, empty poorboys of white

port, butts, junk, horror... 'One fast move or I'm gone,' I realize, gone the

way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness which is a physical and

metaphysical hopelessness you cant learn in school no matter how many books

on existentialism or pessimism you read, or how many jugs of vision-producing

Ayahuasca you drink, or Mescaline take, or Peyote goop up with--That feeling

when you wake up with the delirium tremens with the _fear_ of eerie death

dripping from your ears like those special heavy cobwebs spiders weave in the

hot countries..." I found myself wondering what kind of "junk" he was

referring to here, and certainly interested in all his references to

psychedelics.

 

Back in Trip Trap, Albert had mentioned, as part of his description of

goings-on at the kitchen table, "It was before acid, there was occasionally

peyote and some grass." That really caused me to wonder once again about the

nature of jack's very psychedelic (to me) crack-up.

 

Albert also observed, remembering the 1959 visit to jack's home in Northport,

that "When he was here at home, safe, relaxed, unharassed, the famous author

bullshit set aside, you could see the great beauty and sweetness of his

character." But away from the security of his home, it was entirely another

story.

 

Side note: In Northport, after the Thanksgiving 1959 road trip, jack showed

Lew and Albert something special: "He showed us a manuscript of his notes,

jottings, and text on Buddhism. The extent of his study was quite impressive.

I don't believe any part of this manuscript has ever been published."

 

That reminded me of his 'Tao on the Toilet,' which Adrien posted to the list

a few days ago with the subject line, "A little too much of the dharma..."

'A wellknown truth in every private heart

in this long night of life:

A big defecation leaves nothing to be wiped,

A small one, there's no wiping it.

 This is Jean-Louis' Tao on the Toilet' (p.220)

 

Hilariously enough, the origins of this anal thinking, as well as the

treatise on "dirty azzoles," are found in Trip Trap within the poem jack

wrote jointly with Lew Welch, titled "This Is What It's Called." And you may

learn a bit more than you want to know about Peter Orlovsky's bowel habits in

Albert's accounting, as well.

 

Trip Trap is a great book to read before or after or even DURING Big Sur. And

for all the discussion on the list about Big Sur in the last few days, I hope

those who haven't read it will now feel compelled to do so. It is an amazing

book.

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 23:53:15 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

 

In a message dated 97-11-25 23:43:17 EST, you write:

 

<<

 Do you really think anyone would go to the trouble of filing a law suit

 against a major university  to rip people off for some donations? Do you

 think a respected writer would engage in such a fraud for a few thousand

 dollars?  >>

 

Honestly, I can't see the logic of paying a $20,000 retainer for an item that

was sold for $7,500 in the first place. I also don't see that the seller has

a legal leg to stand on, or any chance of "winning" this suit, which sounds

frivolous to me.

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 00:05:55 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

 

In a message dated 97-11-25 23:45:38 EST, you write:

 

<<

 with all due respect,  why don't you do this.  and lets us all tred very

 carefully. as i don't want to hear the other shoe drop until after the

 dreaded holidays are over. i need my beat-l  >>

 

I'm not interested in the subject and don't want to spend the time. I want to

talk about jack. and yeah, I saw that site at Levi's and it's

GRRRRRRRRRR-EAT!

 

I'll make a holiday pact here with you and everyone else: I vow not to

participate in anything resembling a flame war regarding the controversial

issues we've all suffered through on this newsgroup for the last year until

AFTER the holidays.

 

Are you with me? Ho-ho-ho!!!!

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 05:11:57 UT

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Sherri <love_singing@CLASSIC.MSN.COM>

Subject:      Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

 

if the seller stipulated things, agreement upon which the sale was contingent,

and the purchaser defaults, then the purchaser is  in breach of contract.

 

aside from that, YBF, a library is a public place, funded publicly, for public

use.  it has a public responsibility to properly care for the items it has

procured with public funds.  it also cannot withhold any but extremely

valuable items from its users - and even those are made available to

professionals of good scholarly repute, for study.  if the library is not

doing the above, then it is failing in its public trust and should be divested

of anything which is being handled in a contrary manner.

 

ciao, sherri

 

----------

From:   BEAT-L: Beat Generation List on behalf of You_Be Fine

Sent:   Tuesday, November 25, 1997 8:53 PM

To:     BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

Subject:        Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

 

In a message dated 97-11-25 23:43:17 EST, you write:

 

<<

 Do you really think anyone would go to the trouble of filing a law suit

 against a major university  to rip people off for some donations? Do you

 think a respected writer would engage in such a fraud for a few thousand

 dollars?  >>

 

Honestly, I can't see the logic of paying a $20,000 retainer for an item that

was sold for $7,500 in the first place. I also don't see that the seller has

a legal leg to stand on, or any chance of "winning" this suit, which sounds

frivolous to me.

=========================================================================

Date:         Tue, 25 Nov 1997 23:14:16 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Patricia Elliott <pelliott@SUNFLOWER.COM>

Subject:      delete

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

delete

is it beat to delete

i can throw a book away if

it is missing a soul.

do books have souls. do they go to heavon.

 if i hit the numbers man

i would buy old tapes of william

crooning on to me of what it was to know

and kick around with jack and allen.

 how spare ass annie

leaning on a lampost

looked to allen.

on the corner of newyork.

the agony of watching

jack loose interest in talking,

over lunch, dead at 11:am

i would hike over brooklyn bridge

into a cool blue roofed room in tangiers.

If the number man would give me copies

of allen, squeezing his penis gently in

overflowing joy.

p

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 00:45:16 -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:         Judith Campbell <judith@BOONDOCK.COM>

Subject:      Estate Debate

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

Not since the OJ trial have I wished so much for a gag order.

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 02:37:38 -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:         Antoine Maloney <stratis@ODYSSEE.NET>

Subject:      Re: On The Road to Big Sur - Trip Trap

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

You do be fine "You-be-fine"...

 

        Thanks very much for the lengthy post about "Trip Trap". I've tended

almost uniformly to take a pass on the philosophical threads/posts that have

been going by. Something about yours grabbed me, perhaps because it was tied

to real people's reports of the events around their lives. I will look for

"Trip Trap."  Thanks again.

 

                Antoine

 Voice contact at  (514) 933-4956 in Montreal

 

    "Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never

cease to be amused."

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 02:10:06 -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:         jo grant <jgrant@BOOKZEN.COM>

Subject:      Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

In-Reply-To:  <971125235315_1672083065@mrin41.mail.aol.com>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

>In a message dated 97-11-25 23:43:17 EST, you write:

>

><<

> Do you really think anyone would go to the trouble of filing a law suit

> against a major university  to rip people off for some donations? Do you

> think a respected writer would engage in such a fraud for a few thousand

> dollars?  >>

>

>Honestly, I can't see the logic of paying a $20,000 retainer for an item that

>was sold for $7,500 in the first place. I also don't see that the seller has

>a legal leg to stand on, or any chance of "winning" this suit, which sounds

>frivolous to me.

 

There are hundreds of taped interviews that will be lost, forever, if

preservation measures are not taken to save the tapes. These are interviews

with people who knew Jack Keroauc intimately, Burroughs was interviewed,

many other writers, Kerouac's wives and lovers, very close women and men

friends. To many people this information is so important that considerable

time and money will be spent insuring that the collection is removed from U

Mass, Lowell to a library that has a presevation lab and preservation

librarians who work hard to preserve collections that have been placed in

their care--entrusted to them.

 

I don't want to get into a big thing over this, but I feel very strongly

about the conservation and preservation of historic documents--particularly

material that is stored in or on  unstable material. The life of magnetic

tape is short. Everyone knows this. We simply cannot allow the information

on those tapes to be lost.

 

Forget about the tapes in the Memory Babe Archive for a minute.and let me

mention another project so you don't think Memory Babe is the only

information I'm concerned about. Wisconsin has the second largest

population of Hmong in the U.S. These remarkable people arrived here

without any history other than their stories. Their history is passed down

generation to generation verbally--it is not written. Cultural shock is

taking a terrible toll of these people--particularly the seniors. The

seniors carry the history in their minds. Everytime one of them dies they

lose, WE LOSE, Hmong history. Can you imagine not having a history. Not

knowing the what, where, why, when and how of yourself, your parents, your

grandparents? No serious, concentrated effort is being made to record the

history of the Hmong. To most is seems unimportant. It demands an

expenditure of funds states do not feel they can spend. Taxpayers are

reluctant. Not a good situation. What should be done to preserve this

history?

 

Is it as important as the travels of Lewis and Clark? The Vietnam War. My

Lai. Two New Jersey teen agers commiting suicide to protest a war. Letters

your grandmother wrote. An old diary.

 

What should be done to preserve the scattered fragments of Bukowski,

Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and hundreds of others--some minor, some

major. Little things here and there. A note. A few words. What Ginsberg

said about Nicosia while we were talking one evening.  A few words while

autographing his high schol yearbook picture for me. Fragments. Safe.

Preserved.

 

The work to raise money to save this archive is simply that. To save

information that someone, someday, will use. A small bit of information

that helps form a link to another little piece of information and another

and another and another and we learn.

 

Just the tid-bits one picks up on this list are sometimes mind-blowing.

 

Example.

Today I added a picture of Meridel LeSueur to the page that has information

about the last book she wrote at age 93. The Dread Road. The picture was a

quick snapshop Charlie Plymell took of Meridel in an elevator at Westbeth,

an artist commune in NYC over ten years ago. Plymell learned of my interest

in Meridel on this list. Meridel was in NYC for the book publishing

gathering the Feminist Press was having for the anthology of Meridel's work

"RIPENING: The Writings of Meridel LeSueur.... "  She invited Plymell to

the gathering. An incredible book.. A picture from Plymell to BookZen to

the World Wide Web. From me to the Minnesota Historical Society, with a

copy going to Special Collection at the University if Iowa. Is this picture

important?  Are Plymell's notes on the meeting important? Is the

conversation he and Meridel had that day important? Are Meridel's notes

about the meeting with Plymell important. When compared fifty years from

now what will some researcher discover about these two remarkable

observers. Hundreds of her notebooks are slowly being transcribed.

Important? To some people yes. To students studying the Great Depression

Meridel's notes, fiction, poetry, recorded words are priceless. What did

Meridel pass on to one of her grandchildren who put together the first

Native American radio station on an Indian reservation?

 

Her notes will tell us...something. But they have to be preserved, cared

for, cherished.  Preservation Librarians and others, do that--preserve

information.

 

Please people, just let this thing happen. Please understand that what this

is about is saving information that, since you are into Beat History,

should be as important to you as it is to the person who gathered the

information, and the people who want to study the information.

 

Sorry for the length of this post. So scattered. Fragmented. Too tired to

dig in and edit. My much better half, a preservation librarian, would have

said it better while being appalled that it needed saying at all.

 

This is it. Nothing more from me.

 

j grant

 

 

 

 

                    HELP RECOVER THE MEMORY BABE ARCHIVES

                     Details  on-line by 11-27-97

                                 http://www.bookzen.com

                      592,901 Visitors  07-01-96 to 11-01-97

 

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 05:00:58 PST

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Lachlan Jobbins <hipster66@HOTMAIL.COM>

Subject:      Herbert Huncke

Content-Type: text/plain

 

    Has anyone picked up the new(ish) 'herbert huncke reader'?

    Having just received it from barnes and noble the other day I am

thoroughly enjoying what I have read so far. Huncke has several short

pieces in Charters' 'Portable Beat reader' but these I think fail to

represent the overall quality of his work. When I first tried to find

Huncke's Journal, The Evening Sun Turned Crimson and Guilty of

Everything I was disappointed to find them all out of print.

    This collection includes large sections from these books as well as

other uncollected material. Perhaps we could start a new

thread/discussion? Personally I'm very impressed with the combination of

existentialist thought and fiendish behaviour in what I've read so far.

     Huncke is easily as perceptive a reporter as John Clellon Holmes

(another whom I have a great respect for), and in many ways I think his

engagement with his subject equals that of Kerouac.

    Just a thought, 'cos I haven't seen him mentioned for a while.

    Love to hear your thoughts.

      Lachlan.

P.S.: Has anyone got a copy of Lawrence Lipton's 'The Holy Barbarians'

for sale? I read it last year in a library and would like to get my

hands on a copy for keeps. Thanks. L.

 

______________________________________________________

Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 08:35:06 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      Re: delete

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

beautiful and very pertinent for the time, patricia; i too don't want

the list to dive back into the debate. i think it is beat to delete, and

rather than stoke the fires, i will do so.

you shed light in the darkness and lay a balm on me(i would hope on all)

 

today as i write this i am listening to jack reciting, right now he is

asking buddhacharlieparker to 'lay a balm on us all.

have a good holiday,

patricia. the list needs your quiet soul and your tender love for

william, for all.

thankyou

mc

 

Patricia Elliott wrote:

 

> delete

> is it beat to delete

> i can throw a book away if

> it is missing a soul.

> do books have souls. do they go to heavon.

>  if i hit the numbers man

> i would buy old tapes of william

> crooning on to me of what it was to know

> and kick around with jack and allen.

>  how spare ass annie

> leaning on a lampost

> looked to allen.

> on the corner of newyork.

> the agony of watching

> jack loose interest in talking,

> over lunch, dead at 11:am

> i would hike over brooklyn bridge

> into a cool blue roofed room in tangiers.

> If the number man would give me copies

> of allen, squeezing his penis gently in

> overflowing joy.

> p

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 08:38:51 -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:         Nancy B Brodsky <nbb203@IS8.NYU.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

In-Reply-To:  <971125235315_1672083065@mrin41.mail.aol.com>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

I agree wholeheartedly. From what I hear, UMass is usually pretty good at

preserving its archives. For everyone's peace of mind, before donating

the money for a lousy tshirt, check out UMass on your own.

 

On Tue, 25 Nov 1997, You_Be Fine wrote:

 

> In a message dated 97-11-25 23:43:17 EST, you write:

>

> <<

>  Do you really think anyone would go to the trouble of filing a law suit

>  against a major university  to rip people off for some donations? Do you

>  think a respected writer would engage in such a fraud for a few thousand

>  dollars?  >>

>

> Honestly, I can't see the logic of paying a $20,000 retainer for an item that

> was sold for $7,500 in the first place. I also don't see that the seller has

> a legal leg to stand on, or any chance of "winning" this suit, which sounds

> frivolous to me.

>

 

The Absence of Sound, Clear and Pure, The Silence Now Heard In Heaven For

Sure-JK

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 08:43:53 -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: delete

In-Reply-To:  <347BB028.78F@sunflower.com>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

Exquisite Patricia.

j grant

 

>delete

>is it beat to delete

>i can throw a book away if

>it is missing a soul.

>do books have souls. do they go to heavon.

> if i hit the numbers man

>i would buy old tapes of william

>crooning on to me of what it was to know

>and kick around with jack and allen.

> how spare ass annie

>leaning on a lampost

>looked to allen.

>on the corner of newyork.

>the agony of watching

>jack loose interest in talking,

>over lunch, dead at 11:am

>i would hike over brooklyn bridge

>into a cool blue roofed room in tangiers.

>If the number man would give me copies

>of allen, squeezing his penis gently in

>overflowing joy.

>p

 

 

                    HELP RECOVER THE MEMORY BABE ARCHIVES

                     Details  on-line by 11-27-97

                                 http://www.bookzen.com

                      592,901 Visitors  07-01-96 to 11-01-97

 

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 07:43:05 -0800

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: Before you reach into your pocket...

In-Reply-To:  <971126000555_-255281152@mrin83.mail.aol.com> from "You_Be Fine"

              at Nov 26, 97 00:05:55 am

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

> I'll make a holiday pact here with you and everyone else: I vow not to

> participate in anything resembling a flame war regarding the controversial

> issues we've all suffered through on this newsgroup for the last year until

> AFTER the holidays.

 

I vote yes on this proposal!  But "can the center hold"?

 

> I'm not interested in the subject and don't want to spend the time. I want to

> talk about jack. and yeah, I saw that site at Levi's and it's

> GRRRRRRRRRR-EAT!

 

Thanks, and thanks to everybody who said they liked it.  Well,

BEAT-L is a great place to find material (thanks again Patricia),

and I just hope it stays that way.

 

Also by the way for anybody who's around New York City next Tuesday,

I'm going to be debuting a few minutes from the secret project I've

been working on for over a year, a digital movie version of

Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" updated to take place in

modern-day Manhattan.  It's strange as hell, and that's all I

can say.  Anyway this'll be part of a web writer's reading

at 7pm December 2nd at 678 Broadway (near 4th Street), and

is being arranged by my friend Xander Mellish (more info at

http://www.xmel.com/webwriters.html).

 

Okay, enough plugging ... thanks again for all the nice words

about "Sliced Bardo" ... happy thanksgiving everybody.

 

-------------------------------------------------------

| Levi Asher = brooklyn@netcom.com                    |

|                                                     |

|     Literary Kicks: http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/ |

|      (the beat literature web site)                 |

|                                                     |

|          "Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web"       |

|            (a real book, like on paper)             |

|               also at http://coffeehousebook.com    |

|                                                     |

|                   *---*---*---*---*---*---*---*---* |

|                                                     |

|        "When I was crazy, I thought you were great" |

|                                       -- Ric Ocasek |

-------------------------------------------------------

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 12:21:26 EST

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "THE SNARK IS A BOOJUM...." <breithau@KENYON.EDU>

Subject:      Burroughs archives

 

For those of you who were interested in the Burroughs archives at Ohio State

University, I may have some information for you soon.James Grauerholz called me

up and asked if I wanted to do some photo reasearch for a new biography on

Burroughs.Of course I said yes, so I hope to begin soon.The book will be pub-

 lished by the Bloomsbury Press, same as did the Kerouac book; ANGLEHEADED

 HIPSTER. As soon as I know more, I will pass it on to everyone.

  Don't forget to read WSB's Thanksgiving Prayer before dinner tomorrow.

 

---Dave B.

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 09:54:00 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         James Stauffer <stauffer@PACBELL.NET>

Subject:      Re: Bill Gargan and Beat-L

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

Sent using MailStart.com ( http://MailStart.Com/welcome.html ) - The FREE way to

 access your mailbox via any web browser, anywhere!

 

 

Bill Gargan and Beat-L,

 

If any of my regular correspondents have been wondering where I have gone--I

 have suffered a computer crash.  Am now trying to catch up at my fathers--all

 459 messages!  I'll be back, ready or not.

 

Bill--I don't have the "unsubscribe" address.  Could you unsub me until I can

 start dealing with this mail flow?

 

Meanwhile.  If anyone truly  wants to reach me it will require a

 call--650-365-6312.

 

Happy Thanksgiving.

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 09:55:57 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "Timothy K. Gallaher" <gallaher@HSC.USC.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

At 11:53 PM 11/25/97 -0500, you wrote:

>In a message dated 97-11-25 23:43:17 EST, you write:

>

><<

> Do you really think anyone would go to the trouble of filing a law suit

> against a major university  to rip people off for some donations? Do you

> think a respected writer would engage in such a fraud for a few thousand

> dollars?  >>

>

>Honestly, I can't see the logic of paying a $20,000 retainer for an item that

>was sold for $7,500 in the first place. I also don't see that the seller has

>a legal leg to stand on, or any chance of "winning" this suit, which sounds

>frivolous to me.

>

>

 

The 20K retainer is for legal fess.  Sad isn't it that lawyer fees are worth

more than historical documents and interviews.

 

But on the other hand it is not sad.  It doesn't matter how much they can

fetch (eg $7500) what matters is their interest.  I believe in preservation

of things.  That ostensibly is what libraries should do.  In terms of the

Lowell Library's side of it I am waiting for you to talk to them and let us

know.

 

One comment I have is what about the publisher of Memory Babe. I would hope

they might take an interest in these documents and hopefully would be

interested in provided funding.

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 10:02:36 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "Timothy K. Gallaher" <gallaher@HSC.USC.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Before you reach into your pocket...

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

At 07:43 AM 11/26/97 -0800, you wrote:

>> I'll make a holiday pact here with you and everyone else: I vow not to

>> participate in anything resembling a flame war regarding the controversial

>> issues we've all suffered through on this newsgroup for the last year until

>> AFTER the holidays.

>

>I vote yes on this proposal!  But "can the center hold"?

 

 

I vote yes!!!!!!!!!!

 

I love the archive debates.

 

(And I am not a participant in them--I have no vested interest at all).

 

I would say that this plea by You_be_Fine would carry a little more weight

if he wasn't the one who cast the first stone (and answered the first return

volley as well).

 

He starts a flame war and then starts saying "let's not have a flame war."

 

You_Be_Fine, your posts on Kerouac's writings are really good and full of

info and familiarity and knowledge.  I enjoy them.

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 13:15:35 -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:         "L.W. Deal" <RoadSide6@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

 

In a message dated 97-11-25 08:48:57 EST, you write:

 

<<

 > Has anyone actually bought a pair of GAP khakis.  It would be

 > interesting to discover whether this ad campaign actually did

 > any good.  After all, we're all Jack cognescenti, at a minimum,

 > so did any of us right down and get a pair of Jack GAP Khaks?

 > WAiting to hear from the 250 of anyone bit on the bait.

 >

 > Mike Rice

  >>

 

"Not I," said the fly...

 

-LD

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 10:47:58 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "Timothy K. Gallaher" <gallaher@HSC.USC.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

At 01:15 PM 11/26/97 -0500, you wrote:

>In a message dated 97-11-25 08:48:57 EST, you write:

>

><<

> > Has anyone actually bought a pair of GAP khakis.  It would be

> > interesting to discover whether this ad campaign actually did

> > any good.  After all, we're all Jack cognescenti, at a minimum,

> > so did any of us right down and get a pair of Jack GAP Khaks?

> > WAiting to hear from the 250 of anyone bit on the bait.

> >

> > Mike Rice

 

Yes as soon as i saw this ad i immediately walked to my car and drove to the

mall.

 

It was 6 am in the morning and i was not yet dressed but i was compelled  I

waited for 4 hours outside the little gratelike protective door until an

employee came and unlocked the bottom of it and pulled the grate up

chukkachukkahcukka

 

i then walked in to the store as i removed my wallet and removed all my

credit cards from the wallet and held them in the palm of my mind with my

arm oustretch palm up and approached the worker there.

 

Khakis i said

 

khakis

 

use my credit cards i have thousands dollar limit please use all

 

khakis

 

to make a long story short:

 

 

GAP Khakis 8 bucks apiece 5 for 35 20 for 125

 

email me shipping paid at my end

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 14:13:03 EST

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: Bill Gargan and Beat-L

In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 26 Nov 1997 09:54:00 -0800 from

              <stauffer@PACBELL.NET>

 

Happy Thanksgiving, James.  Sorry to hear about your computer problem.  I've de

leted you from the list.  You can resubscribe or email me when you're ready and

 I'll put you back on.

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 13:39:15 -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: Before you reach into your pocket...

In-Reply-To:  <199711261802.KAA13431@hsc.usc.edu>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

>At 07:43 AM 11/26/97 -0800, you wrote:

>>> I'll make a holiday pact here with you and everyone else: I vow not to

>>> participate in anything resembling a flame war regarding the controversial

>>> issues we've all suffered through on this newsgroup for the last year until

>>> AFTER the holidays.

>>

>>I vote yes on this proposal!  But "can the center hold"?

>

>

>I vote yes!!!!!!!!!!

>

>I love the archive debates.

>

>(And I am not a participant in them--I have no vested interest at all).

>

>I would say that this plea by You_be_Fine would carry a little more weight

>if he wasn't the one who cast the first stone (and answered the first return

>volley as well).

>

>He starts a flame war and then starts saying "let's not have a flame war."

>

>You_Be_Fine, your posts on Kerouac's writings are really good and full of

>info and familiarity and knowledge.  I enjoy them.

 

I must have missed something. I cannot remember seeing anything resembling

a flame from a pro-preservation post. If there has been I'd appreciate

having them forwarded to me because that is a waste of time and energy.

 

j grant

 

                    HELP RECOVER THE MEMORY BABE ARCHIVES

                     Details  on-line by 11-27-97

                                 http://www.bookzen.com

                      592,901 Visitors  07-01-96 to 11-01-97

 

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 13:45:39 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "Lawlor, William" <wlawlor@UWSP.EDU>

Subject:      montgomery, john

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain

 

Ah, friends, is it true that John Montgomery died in 1993?

 

And that new book on Beat women from Serpent's Tail!  In what city does

that press exist? and is the book a 1997 publication?

 

Best,

 

Bill of the North Woods

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 11:59:39 PST

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Leon Tabory <letabor@HOTMAIL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Bill Gargan and Beat-L

Content-Type: text/plain

 

>Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 09:54:00 -0800

>Reply-To:stauffer@PACBELL.NET

>From: James Stauffer <>

>Subject:    Birthday Bash

 

>Sent using MailStart.com ( http://MailStart.Com/welcome.html ) - The

FREE way to

> access your mailbox via any web browser, anywhere!

>

 

If I don't get an answer from you I will call you this evening. I

thought I would give it a try since MailStart works like Hot Mail which

I am using from a computer at work right now.

 

On Saturday December 6 at 9 p.m. ther will be a surprise birthday party

for Ramah Downtown San Jose at the Germania. I hope you can make it. It

should be fun.

 

I guess a computer crash is a minor disaster these days. Hopefully you

are on your way to recovery.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

 

leon

 

 

 

______________________________________________________

Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 15:29:30 -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:         Antoine Maloney <stratis@ODYSSEE.NET>

Subject:      Serpent's Tail ...and montgomery, john

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

Hi all,

 

        I'll let someone else speak to the John Montgomery question.

 

        Regarding the Serpent's Tail book - a gift from my first born on my

birthday a few weeks ago - it is excellent. I've been meaning to post about

it and must have missed any earlier posts about it.  My copy was bought here

in Montreal, editor Richard Peabody, High Risk / Serpent'ss Tail books,

published in 1997, London and New York, web site www.serpentstail.com.

 

        A wonderful range of memoir extracts, poetry, and reportage with

nice punchy little bios of the players at the back. Really expanded my

knowledge and appreciateion of these writers, particularly Hettie Jones, Jan

Kerouac, Carolyn Cassady, Joan Haverty Kerouac, Mimi Albert, Diane Di

Prima....all of them and I haven't even dealt with the poetry yet!

 

        Recommended. I really raced through the prose parts.

 

        Antoine

 

 

 Voice contact at  (514) 933-4956 in Montreal

 

    "Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never

cease to be amused."

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 15:32:53 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      a terrible beatuty is born(was estate shit)

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Timothy K. Gallaher wrote:

 

> At 07:43 AM 11/26/97 -0800, you wrote:

> >> I'll make a holiday pact here with you and everyone else: I vow not to

> >> participate in anything resembling a flame war regarding the controversial

> >> issues we've all suffered through on this newsgroup for the last year until

> >> AFTER the holidays.

> >

> >I vote yes on this proposal!  But "can the center hold"?

>

> I vote yes!!!!!!!!!!

> _________

 

easter 1916i have met them at close of day

coming with vivid faces

from counter or desk among grey

eighteenth-century houses.

i have passed with a nod of the head

or polite meaningless words,

or have lingered a while and said

polite meaningless words,

and thought before i had done

of a mocking tale or a gibe

to please a companion

around the fire at the club,

being certain that they and i

but lived where motley is worn:

all changed, changed utterly:

a terrible beauty is born.

 

that woman's days were spent

in ignorant good-will,

her nights in argument

until her voice grew shrill.

what voice more sweet than hers

when, young and beautiful,

she rode to harriers?

this man had kept a school

and rode our winged horse;

this other his helper and friend

was coming into his force;

he might have won fame in the end,

so sensitive his nature seemed,

so daring and sweet his thought.

 

this other man i had dreamed

a drunken, vainglorious lout.

he had done most bitter wrong

to someone near my heart,'

yet i number him in the song;

he , too, has resigned his part

in the casual comedy;

he, too, has been changed in his turn,

transformed utterly:

a terrible beauty is born.

 

hearts with one purpose alone

through summer and winter seem

enchanted to a stone

to trouble the living stream.

the horse that comes from the road,

the rider, the birds that range

from cloud to tumbling cloud,

minute by minute they change;

a shadow of cloud on the stream

changes minute by minute;

a horse-hoof slides on the brim,

and a horse plashes within it;

the long-legged moor-hens dive,

the long-legged moor-cocks call;

miute by minute they live:

the stone's in the midst of it all.

 

too long a sacrifice

can make a stone of the heart.

o when may it suffice?

that is heaven's part, our part

to murmur name upon name,

as a mother names her child

when sleep at last has come

on limbs that had run wild.

what is it but nightffall?

no, no, not night but death;

was it needless death after all?

 

for england may keep faith

for all that is done and said.

we know their dream; enough

to know they dream and are dead:

and what if excess of love

bewildered them till they died?

i write it out in a verse-

MacDonagh and MacBride

and Connolly and Pearse

now and in time to be

wherever green is worn,

all changed, changed utterly:

a terrible beauty is born.

 

an easter poem for thanksgiving, and a belief the center will hold, at least

here, in beat-l

have a great day all

mc

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 16:27:38 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

 

In a message dated 97-11-26 14:19:04 EST, you write:

 

<<

 i then walked in to the store as i removed my wallet and removed all my

 credit cards from the wallet and held them in the palm of my mind with my

 arm oustretch palm up and approached the worker there.

 

 Khakis i said

 

 khakis

 

 use my credit cards i have thousands dollar limit please use all

 

 khakis

 

  >>

absolutely fucken hilarious, tim! do you take mastercard?

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 22:50:17 +0100

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:      Re: allow me to...

In-Reply-To:  <yam7269.1953.2825864@pac.com.au>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

John Pullicino <jjpull@PAC.COM.AU> says:

>g'day all,

>

[snip]

>i've been an avid reader of kerouac and other beat writers since 1965 when

>as a schoolboy i came across a hardback edition of 'on the road' in one of

>the secondhand bookstores i used to haunt - i think it was the 'girls!

>jazz! booze!' on the cover (predating 'sex'n'drugs'nrock'nroll?) that got

>my attention. learning more here of course.............

[snip]

 

        john, the same feeling for me, thinking about "on the road".

        i think back over the past, and remember the on the road as

        a story of a salesman (death of a salesman). the american way

        of life, religious of course, but keen competition and no

        pity for the loser. (Sur...

 

        saluti, rinaldo.

 

p.s. techno pun nostalgia, the Amiga 1000 was my first serious

        puter. i brought it on autumn 1986. now it's gone but a tear

        was/is on my eyes...

(to everyone, please excuse me for the digression),

r.

 

>--

>bye for now,

>#<|||||||||||||||||||||||># John Pullicino #<|||||||||||||||||||||||>#

>(|||||||||||||||||||)  #jjpull@pac.com.au# (|||||||||||||||||||)

>#<|||||||||||||># *Team AMIGA WorldWide* #<|||||||||||||||>#

>

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 23:15:47 +0100

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:      Stuck Inside of Mobile

In-Reply-To:  <yam7269.1953.2825864@pac.com.au>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

http://bob.nbr.no/dok/bdx/stuck.html

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 14:50:06 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         sherri <love_singing@EMAIL.MSN.COM>

Subject:      Re: a terrible beatuty is born(was estate shit)

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

              boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000B_01BCFA7A.965C0B60"

 

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

 

------=_NextPart_000_000B_01BCFA7A.965C0B60

Content-Type: text/plain;

        charset="iso-8859-1"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

 

utterly beautiful marie.  thanks for posting this.  i vote yes as well.  =

this is a time of year when all should be gentle and easy and enjoy.  i =

believe the center will hold.

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!!

 

ciao,  sherri

-----Original Message-----

From: Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

To: BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Date: Wednesday, November 26, 1997 12:49 PM

Subject: a terrible beatuty is born(was estate shit)

 

 

>Timothy K. Gallaher wrote:

>

>> At 07:43 AM 11/26/97 -0800, you wrote:

>> >> I'll make a holiday pact here with you and everyone else: I vow =

not to

>> >> participate in anything resembling a flame war regarding the =

controversial

>> >> issues we've all suffered through on this newsgroup for the last =

year until

>> >> AFTER the holidays.

>> >

>> >I vote yes on this proposal!  But "can the center hold"?

>>

>> I vote yes!!!!!!!!!!

>> _________

>

>easter 1916i have met them at close of day

>coming with vivid faces

>from counter or desk among grey

>eighteenth-century houses.

>i have passed with a nod of the head

>or polite meaningless words,

>or have lingered a while and said

>polite meaningless words,

>and thought before i had done

>of a mocking tale or a gibe

>to please a companion

>around the fire at the club,

>being certain that they and i

>but lived where motley is worn:

>all changed, changed utterly:

>a terrible beauty is born.

>

>that woman's days were spent

>in ignorant good-will,

>her nights in argument

>until her voice grew shrill.

>what voice more sweet than hers

>when, young and beautiful,

>she rode to harriers?

>this man had kept a school

>and rode our winged horse;

>this other his helper and friend

>was coming into his force;

>he might have won fame in the end,

>so sensitive his nature seemed,

>so daring and sweet his thought.

>

>this other man i had dreamed

>a drunken, vainglorious lout.

>he had done most bitter wrong

>to someone near my heart,'

>yet i number him in the song;

>he , too, has resigned his part

>in the casual comedy;

>he, too, has been changed in his turn,

>transformed utterly:

>a terrible beauty is born.

>

>hearts with one purpose alone

>through summer and winter seem

>enchanted to a stone

>to trouble the living stream.

>the horse that comes from the road,

>the rider, the birds that range

>from cloud to tumbling cloud,

>minute by minute they change;

>a shadow of cloud on the stream

>changes minute by minute;

>a horse-hoof slides on the brim,

>and a horse plashes within it;

>the long-legged moor-hens dive,

>the long-legged moor-cocks call;

>miute by minute they live:

>the stone's in the midst of it all.

>

>too long a sacrifice

>can make a stone of the heart.

>o when may it suffice?

>that is heaven's part, our part

>to murmur name upon name,

>as a mother names her child

>when sleep at last has come

>on limbs that had run wild.

>what is it but nightffall?

>no, no, not night but death;

>was it needless death after all?

>

>for england may keep faith

>for all that is done and said.

>we know their dream; enough

>to know they dream and are dead:

>and what if excess of love

>bewildered them till they died?

>i write it out in a verse-

>MacDonagh and MacBride

>and Connolly and Pearse

>now and in time to be

>wherever green is worn,

>all changed, changed utterly:

>a terrible beauty is born.

>

>an easter poem for thanksgiving, and a belief the center will hold, at =

least

>here, in beat-l

>have a great day all

>mc

>

 

------=_NextPart_000_000B_01BCFA7A.965C0B60

Content-Type: text/html;

        charset="iso-8859-1"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">

<HTML>

<HEAD>

 

<META content=3Dtext/html;charset=3Diso-8859-1 =

http-equiv=3DContent-Type>

<META content=3D'"MSHTML 4.71.1712.3"' name=3DGENERATOR>

</HEAD>

<BODY>

<DIV><FONT color=3D#800080 face=3DLoosieScript size=3D5>utterly =

beautiful marie.&nbsp;=20

thanks for posting this.&nbsp; i vote yes as well.&nbsp; this is a time =

of year=20

when all should be gentle and easy and enjoy.&nbsp; i believe the center =

will=20

hold.</FONT></DIV>

<DIV><FONT color=3D#800080 face=3DLoosieScript =

size=3D5></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>

<DIV><FONT color=3D#800080 face=3DLoosieScript size=3D5>Happy =

Thanksgiving to all of=20

you!!</FONT></DIV>

<DIV><FONT color=3D#800080 face=3DLoosieScript =

size=3D5></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV>

<DIV><FONT color=3D#800080 face=3DLoosieScript size=3D5>ciao,&nbsp;=20

sherri</FONT></DIV>

<DIV><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2>-----Original Message-----<BR>From: =

Marie=20

Countryman &lt;<A=20

href=3D"mailto:country@SOVER.NET">country@SOVER.NET</A>&gt;<BR>To: <A=20

href=3D"mailto:BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU">BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU</A> &lt;<A =

 

href=3D"mailto:BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU">BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU</A>&gt;<BR>=

Date:=20

Wednesday, November 26, 1997 12:49 PM<BR>Subject: a terrible beatuty is =

born(was=20

estate shit)<BR><BR></DIV></FONT>&gt;Timothy K. Gallaher=20

wrote:<BR>&gt;<BR>&gt;&gt; At 07:43 AM 11/26/97 -0800, you =

wrote:<BR>&gt;&gt;=20

&gt;&gt; I'll make a holiday pact here with you and everyone else: I vow =

not=20

to<BR>&gt;&gt; &gt;&gt; participate in anything resembling a flame war =

regarding=20

the controversial<BR>&gt;&gt; &gt;&gt; issues we've all suffered through =

on this=20

newsgroup for the last year until<BR>&gt;&gt; &gt;&gt; AFTER the=20

holidays.<BR>&gt;&gt; &gt;<BR>&gt;&gt; &gt;I vote yes on this =

proposal!&nbsp;=20

But &quot;can the center hold&quot;?<BR>&gt;&gt;<BR>&gt;&gt; I vote=20

yes!!!!!!!!!!<BR>&gt;&gt; _________<BR>&gt;<BR>&gt;easter 1916i have met =

them at=20

close of day<BR>&gt;coming with vivid faces<BR>&gt;from counter or desk =

among=20

grey<BR>&gt;eighteenth-century houses.<BR>&gt;i have passed with a nod =

of the=20

head<BR>&gt;or polite meaningless words,<BR>&gt;or have lingered a while =

and=20

said<BR>&gt;polite meaningless words,<BR>&gt;and thought before i had=20

done<BR>&gt;of a mocking tale or a gibe<BR>&gt;to please a=20

companion<BR>&gt;around the fire at the club,<BR>&gt;being certain that =

they and=20

i<BR>&gt;but lived where motley is worn:<BR>&gt;all changed, changed=20

utterly:<BR>&gt;a terrible beauty is born.<BR>&gt;<BR>&gt;that woman's =

days were=20

spent<BR>&gt;in ignorant good-will,<BR>&gt;her nights in =

argument<BR>&gt;until=20

her voice grew shrill.<BR>&gt;what voice more sweet than =

hers<BR>&gt;when, young=20

and beautiful,<BR>&gt;she rode to harriers?<BR>&gt;this man had kept a=20

school<BR>&gt;and rode our winged horse;<BR>&gt;this other his helper =

and=20

friend<BR>&gt;was coming into his force;<BR>&gt;he might have won fame =

in the=20

end,<BR>&gt;so sensitive his nature seemed,<BR>&gt;so daring and sweet =

his=20

thought.<BR>&gt;<BR>&gt;this other man i had dreamed<BR>&gt;a drunken,=20

vainglorious lout.<BR>&gt;he had done most bitter wrong<BR>&gt;to =

someone near=20

my heart,'<BR>&gt;yet i number him in the song;<BR>&gt;he , too, has =

resigned=20

his part<BR>&gt;in the casual comedy;<BR>&gt;he, too, has been changed =

in his=20

turn,<BR>&gt;transformed utterly:<BR>&gt;a terrible beauty is=20

born.<BR>&gt;<BR>&gt;hearts with one purpose alone<BR>&gt;through summer =

and=20

winter seem<BR>&gt;enchanted to a stone<BR>&gt;to trouble the living=20

stream.<BR>&gt;the horse that comes from the road,<BR>&gt;the rider, the =

birds=20

that range<BR>&gt;from cloud to tumbling cloud,<BR>&gt;minute by minute =

they=20

change;<BR>&gt;a shadow of cloud on the stream<BR>&gt;changes minute by=20

minute;<BR>&gt;a horse-hoof slides on the brim,<BR>&gt;and a horse =

plashes=20

within it;<BR>&gt;the long-legged moor-hens dive,<BR>&gt;the long-legged =

 

moor-cocks call;<BR>&gt;miute by minute they live:<BR>&gt;the stone's in =

the=20

midst of it all.<BR>&gt;<BR>&gt;too long a sacrifice<BR>&gt;can make a =

stone of=20

the heart.<BR>&gt;o when may it suffice?<BR>&gt;that is heaven's part, =

our=20

part<BR>&gt;to murmur name upon name,<BR>&gt;as a mother names her=20

child<BR>&gt;when sleep at last has come<BR>&gt;on limbs that had run=20

wild.<BR>&gt;what is it but nightffall?<BR>&gt;no, no, not night but=20

death;<BR>&gt;was it needless death after all?<BR>&gt;<BR>&gt;for =

england may=20

keep faith<BR>&gt;for all that is done and said.<BR>&gt;we know their =

dream;=20

enough<BR>&gt;to know they dream and are dead:<BR>&gt;and what if excess =

of=20

love<BR>&gt;bewildered them till they died?<BR>&gt;i write it out in a=20

verse-<BR>&gt;MacDonagh and MacBride<BR>&gt;and Connolly and =

Pearse<BR>&gt;now=20

and in time to be<BR>&gt;wherever green is worn,<BR>&gt;all changed, =

changed=20

utterly:<BR>&gt;a terrible beauty is born.<BR>&gt;<BR>&gt;an easter poem =

for=20

thanksgiving, and a belief the center will hold, at least<BR>&gt;here, =

in=20

beat-l<BR>&gt;have a great day all<BR>&gt;mc<BR>&gt;</BODY></HTML>

 

------=_NextPart_000_000B_01BCFA7A.965C0B60--

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 15:03:32 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "Timothy K. Gallaher" <gallaher@HSC.USC.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac Gap Ad

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

>In a message dated 97-11-26 14:19:04 EST, you write:

>

><<

> i then walked in to the store as i removed my wallet and removed all my

> credit cards from the wallet and held them in the palm of my mind with my

> arm oustretch palm up and approached the worker there.

>

> Khakis i said

>

> khakis

>

> use my credit cards i have thousands dollar limit please use all

>

> khakis

>

>  >>

>absolutely fucken hilarious, tim! do you take mastercard?

 

you got it !!1

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 17:48:40 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Jym Mooney <jymmoon@EXECPC.COM>

Subject:      Re: montgomery, john

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

William Lawlor wrote:

 

> Ah, friends, is it true that John Montgomery died in 1993?

 

Yes, sad but true.  But of course his writing and books shine on...

 

Jym

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 16:53:40 +1000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         John Pullicino <jjpull@PAC.COM.AU>

Subject:      Re: allow me to...

In-Reply-To:  <UPMAIL14.199711260357070867@classic.msn.com>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain

 

Hi there Sherri, on 26-Nov-97 you wrote...

 

>welcome John.  how bout telling us about thos articles you have?   ciao,

ahh, i will i will.

in the meantime, i suspect there isn't a suffocating rigidity in here, but

can i ask about certain protocols that people or the listmangagers may have

devised to allow some semblance of courtesy and consideration to masquerade

benignly as spontaneous bop prosody and freewheeeling chaos

 

do people get annoyed if the posting you're replying to is quoted entirely,

with a "Yeah! me too" appended to the end - other lists i am on train you

out of it pretty quickly and gently. ( Sherri, /you/ did this, but if you

think this is directed at you, you're a bad bad woman :-) )

 

what about replying to the list when it may have been smarter to reply

direct to sender

and what about not changing the subject title to reflect that youre not

really replying but starting a new thread, but lazily 'borrowed' the

address?

 

im not a fascist, just trying to get along heeheeheee ! finding this list,

i feel like a desert hyena who's tumbled into an oasis, and i want to swim

here along time - i've read so much here already that's brought back that

heady feeling i used to have as i read the beat writings- god it is so

tempting to contact some old friends and remind them of their putdowns (not

to mention Time mag, who relentlessy wrote off or patronised each novel

that got published.

 

ps thanks to those who sent a welcome

 

--

bye for now,

#<|||||||||||||||||||||||># John Pullicino #<|||||||||||||||||||||||>#

(|||||||||||||||||||)  #jjpull@pac.com.au# (|||||||||||||||||||)

#<|||||||||||||># *Team AMIGA WorldWide* #<|||||||||||||||>#

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 20:05:45 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Patricia Elliott <pelliott@SUNFLOWER.COM>

Subject:      Re: allow me to...

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

John Pullicino wrote:

>

> Hi there Sherri, on 26-Nov-97 you wrote...

>

> >welcome John.  how bout telling us about thos articles you have?   ciao,

> ahh, i will i will.

> in the meantime, i suspect there isn't a suffocating rigidity in here, but

> can i ask about certain protocols that people or the listmangagers may have

> devised to allow some semblance of courtesy and consideration to masquerade

> benignly as spontaneous bop prosody and freewheeeling chaos

>

hey man, free wheeling chaos man, like it. cool, dig it,  me too. I got

a back channel once that told me to be more careful of my spelling. I

dug it man.  now the only thing i would like to add is i think everyone

should  only post interesting  things, nothing boring.

P

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 21:03:29 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      JOKE:INSTALLMENT #1

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

There was a strict trappist monastrry.  The monks would take turns

saying only one thing at beakfast once a year.  It was something like

the ideal Beat-L would be.

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Wed, 26 Nov 1997 22:12:43 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      JOKE: INSTALLMENT #2

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

When it comes time for one of the monks to take a turn saying something,

he says: "The rolls are nice and fresh this morning."

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 07:49:08 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      more yeats (and yeah, i know it's off topic

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

the second coming

 

turning and turning in the widening gyre

the falcon cannot hear the falconer:

things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

the ceremony of innocence is drowned;

the best lack all conviction, while the worst

are full of passionate intensity.

 

surely some revelation is at hand;

surely the second coming is  at hand;

the second coming! hardly are those words out

when a vast image out of spiritus mundi

troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert

a shape with lion body and the head of a man

a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

reel the shadows of the indignant desert birds

the darkness drops again; but now i know

the twenty centuries of stonly sleep

were vest to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

and what rough beast its hour com round at last,

slouches toward bethlehem to be born? 1921

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 07:58:08 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      Re: a terrible beatuty is born(was estate shit)

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

thanks sherri. i think we all need a little dip into yeats to keep us

honest. i just posted the widening gyre poem as well.

and it's two weeks until i get on that train!!! yahoooo!!!!!!!!!

i'm already packing !

marie

 

sherri wrote:

 

>  utterly beautiful marie.  thanks for posting this.  i vote yes as

> well.  this is a time of year when all should be gentle and easy and

> enjoy.  i believe the center will hold. Happy Thanksgiving to all of

> you!! ciao,  sherri-----Original Message-----

> From: Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

> To: BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

> Date: Wednesday, November 26, 1997 12:49 PM

> Subject: a terrible beatuty is born(was estate shit)>Timothy K.

> Gallaher wrote:

> >

> >> At 07:43 AM 11/26/97 -0800, you wrote:

> >> >> I'll make a holiday pact here with you and everyone else: I vow

> not to

> >> >> participate in anything resembling a flame war regarding the

> controversial

> >> >> issues we've all suffered through on this newsgroup for the last

> year until

> >> >> AFTER the holidays.

> >> >

> >> >I vote yes on this proposal!  But "can the center hold"?

> >>

> >> I vote yes!!!!!!!!!!

> >> _________

> >

> >easter 1916i have met them at close of day

> >coming with vivid faces

> >from counter or desk among grey

> >eighteenth-century houses.

> >i have passed with a nod of the head

> >or polite meaningless words,

> >or have lingered a while and said

> >polite meaningless words,

> >and thought before i had done

> >of a mocking tale or a gibe

> >to please a companion

> >around the fire at the club,

> >being certain that they and i

> >but lived where motley is worn:

> >all changed, changed utterly:

> >a terrible beauty is born.

> >

> >that woman's days were spent

> >in ignorant good-will,

> >her nights in argument

> >until her voice grew shrill.

> >what voice more sweet than hers

> >when, young and beautiful,

> >she rode to harriers?

> >this man had kept a school

> >and rode our winged horse;

> >this other his helper and friend

> >was coming into his force;

> >he might have won fame in the end,

> >so sensitive his nature seemed,

> >so daring and sweet his thought.

> >

> >this other man i had dreamed

> >a drunken, vainglorious lout.

> >he had done most bitter wrong

> >to someone near my heart,'

> >yet i number him in the song;

> >he , too, has resigned his part

> >in the casual comedy;

> >he, too, has been changed in his turn,

> >transformed utterly:

> >a terrible beauty is born.

> >

> >hearts with one purpose alone

> >through summer and winter seem

> >enchanted to a stone

> >to trouble the living stream.

> >the horse that comes from the road,

> >the rider, the birds that range

> >from cloud to tumbling cloud,

> >minute by minute they change;

> >a shadow of cloud on the stream

> >changes minute by minute;

> >a horse-hoof slides on the brim,

> >and a horse plashes within it;

> >the long-legged moor-hens dive,

> >the long-legged moor-cocks call;

> >miute by minute they live:

> >the stone's in the midst of it all.

> >

> >too long a sacrifice

> >can make a stone of the heart.

> >o when may it suffice?

> >that is heaven's part, our part

> >to murmur name upon name,

> >as a mother names her child

> >when sleep at last has come

> >on limbs that had run wild.

> >what is it but nightffall?

> >no, no, not night but death;

> >was it needless death after all?

> >

> >for england may keep faith

> >for all that is done and said.

> >we know their dream; enough

> >to know they dream and are dead:

> >and what if excess of love

> >bewildered them till they died?

> >i write it out in a verse-

> >MacDonagh and MacBride

> >and Connolly and Pearse

> >now and in time to be

> >wherever green is worn,

> >all changed, changed utterly:

> >a terrible beauty is born.

> >

> >an easter poem for thanksgiving, and a belief the center will hold,

> at least

> >here, in beat-l

> >have a great day all

> >mc

> >

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 08:30:04 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      JOKE: INSTALLNEBT #3

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

The next year it was the second monk's turn to speak.  He said, "Pass

the butter, please."

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 19:13:26 +0100

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:      L'angelo caduto.

In-Reply-To:  <yam7269.1953.2825864@pac.com.au>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

carissimi,

 

the book "Angelheaded Hipster. A Life of Jack Kerouac"

by Steve Turner, in italian it's called

"Jack Kerouac. L'angelo caduto" translated by Alessandra Osti.

I think it's a worth purcase.

 

strangely (?) in the Feltrinelli's bookstore chain both J. Kerouac and

W. S. Burroughs are arranged in the italian literature shelf.

 

A. Ginsberg's books on the contrary are arranged precisely.

 

saluti,

Rinaldo.

* Tristessa, maybe Keroauc's sly homage to Bonjour Tristesse

(which had made Francoise Sagan a star overnight in 1955)

--Aram Saroyan, foreword to Big Sur

*

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 13:56:53 -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:         Gene Lee <GTL1951@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: a terrible beatuty is born(was estate shit)

 

Marie- that was a so beautiful poem- especially hit me after read Michael

Collins book no too long ago and then saw movie. great work!   GT

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 15:47:30 -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:         Nancy B Brodsky <nbb203@IS8.NYU.EDU>

Subject:      Re: L'angelo caduto.

In-Reply-To:  <3.0.1.32.19971127191326.006884f8@pop.gpnet.it>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

AngelHeaded Hipser has the best pictures. Its a costly purchase but well

worth it.

~Nancy

 

 

On Thu, 27 Nov 1997, Rinaldo Rasa wrote:

 

> carissimi,

>

> the book "Angelheaded Hipster. A Life of Jack Kerouac"

> by Steve Turner, in italian it's called

> "Jack Kerouac. L'angelo caduto" translated by Alessandra Osti.

> I think it's a worth purcase.

>

> strangely (?) in the Feltrinelli's bookstore chain both J. Kerouac and

> W. S. Burroughs are arranged in the italian literature shelf.

>

> A. Ginsberg's books on the contrary are arranged precisely.

>

> saluti,

> Rinaldo.

> * Tristessa, maybe Keroauc's sly homage to Bonjour Tristesse

> (which had made Francoise Sagan a star overnight in 1955)

> --Aram Saroyan, foreword to Big Sur

> *

>

 

The Absence of Sound, Clear and Pure, The Silence Now Heard In Heaven For

Sure-JK

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 20:58:32 -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:         "Paul A. Maher Jr." <mapaul@PIPELINE.COM>

Subject:      The Kerouac Quarterly page updated!

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

Happy Thanksgiving all! We have updated the page with more news. Bob Kealing

of Orlando, Florida writes us about his happening atJack and Memere's

cottage of 1957-8.

 

  Go to

     http://www.freeyellow.com/members/upstartcrow/KerouacQuarterly.html

 

 

      Thanks! Paul....

"We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway to our virtues."

                                           Henry David Thoreau

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 21:15:34 EST

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: allow me to...

In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 26 Nov 1997 16:53:40 +1000 from

              <jjpull@PAC.COM.AU>

 

Yes, to all points.  Whenever possible it's better to summarize rather

than repeat the text you're replying to.  And please, whenever the post

isn't meant for everyone on the list, reply to the individual rather

than the list.  This is a very active list and most of us want to make

the best use of of time when reading our mail.  Having said all this, I

must admit that listmembers sometimes fail to observe this netiquette.

Although there are complaints from time to time, people on the list are

generally pretty "laid back" and will often let these matters go.  I

suppose it's my fault, as listowner, because I don't always remind

people enough of these things.  Your note gave me the opportunity to do

so once again.

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 14:43:54 +1000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         John Pullicino <jjpull@PAC.COM.AU>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac clippings

In-Reply-To:  <347BB028.78F@sunflower.com>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain

 

Hi there Patricia, on 26-Nov-97 you wrote...

(at least i think it was you, if not apologies)

asking to know what i had collected about beat writers.

Here is what i found in my files on Kerouac, i'll do the others (Burroughs

Ginsberg Corso etc later, unless someone objects - i can always send

privately)

 

His Death -

Melbourne newspapers

Newsday oct 23 1969 "First Hippie dies alone"

Herald oct 23 1969  "No limelight at his death"

Playboy feb 73 - "Gone in October" John Clellon Holmes

 

Book Reiews -

Dr Sax         Time May 18 1959

Maggie Cassidy   Time July 20 1959

Big Sur         Time Sept 14 1962

Pic            Rolling Stone May 9 1972

 

Other -

"Belief and Techniques for Modern Prose" Jack Kerouac (Evergreen Review?)

Letter on K's "The Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" by Leroi Jones (ER)

"Conclusion of the Railroad Earth" JK (ER vol4 no11)

"Kerouac's Sound" Warren Tallman (ER vol4 no11)

"Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady - first night of the tapes" (Transatlantic

Review)

"The Art of Fiction - XLI jack Kerouac" (Paris Review)

 

sorry about where dates are missing - these files have been on the road

too!

 

3 questions -

has anyone seen the movies "Pull my daisy" and "Chappaqua" ?

is it true that there is a street in SanFran now named after him ?

does anyone know the names of the cemetaries where Ginsberg, Burroughs and

Cassady are buried?

 

--

bye for now,

#<|||||||||||||||||||||||># John Pullicino #<|||||||||||||||||||||||>#

(|||||||||||||||||||)  #jjpull@pac.com.au# (|||||||||||||||||||)

#<|||||||||||||># *Team AMIGA WorldWide* #<|||||||||||||||>#

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 23:46:40 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac clippings

 

In a message dated 97-11-27 23:42:07 EST, John Pullicini wrote (from way Down

Under, I think, where it's a day or so later or earlier than here):

 

<< Newsday oct 23 1969 "First Hippie dies alone"

 Herald oct 23 1969  "No limelight at his death"

  >>

John, if these are strictly Australian accounts, not syndicated by some

worldwide news bureau and not seen in the U.S., I'd love to read them. Can

you transcribe and post them to the list?

=========================================================================

Date:         Thu, 27 Nov 1997 22:41:08 -0800

Reply-To:     vic.begrand@sk.sympatico.ca

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Adrien Begrand <vic.begrand@SK.SYMPATICO.CA>

Subject:      alan granville

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Does anyone on beat-l know anything about the New York poet Alan

Granville?

 

I hear he has a similar reputation as Buk did.

 

Adrien

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 00:24:24 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         "Donald G. Jr. Lee" <donlee@COMP.UARK.EDU>

Subject:      who is Rollo Whitehead?

Comments: To: Adrien Begrand <vic.begrand@sk.sympatico.ca>

In-Reply-To:  <347E6784.4615@sk.sympatico.ca>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

I have run across a couple references to this guy and was wondering if

anyone knew anything about him...

 

Don Lee

 

The Angel departs and where there was no fire no smoke, there is

really a little too much gravity for your species optimum performance.

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 02:26:43 -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:         Jerry Cimino <Bigsurs4me@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac clippings

 

John Pullicino asked a few Q's.  Here's the answer to some of them:

 

Regarding Kerouac Street in SF.  Yes, there is a Kerouac Alley in SF, right

next to City Lights Bookstore.  SF has quite a few streets named for writers

and I seem to recall Ferlinghetti was instrumental in getting the city

fathers & mothers to change the name of the Alley outside of City Lights from

whatever it was called (Aborn or something) to Kerouac.  If you sit outside

of City Lights any Saturday for more than 20 minutes you're sure to see at

least a few tourists snap their photo's of each other standing under the

sign.  In fact, this area is such a mecca for the faithful it is often the

specific reason people come to SF.

 

Regarding Pull My Daisy, it is a great film.  I remember first seeing it at a

showing in a college dorm in 1973 about a year or two before I ever heard of

the Beats.  I thought it was pretty artsy at the time, but didn't undertand

the mesage or know who any of the players were.  It was just released on

video about a year ago - we sell it thru our web page kerouac.com or call

1-800-KER-OUAC.  The thing I like about Pull My Daisy is Jack's narative.  If

you didn't know he was doing a spontaneous scat upon his first viewing (some

say second viewing or two takes, but so what) you might think it disjointed

what with the "hews & haws" and interruptions and change of thought, but when

knowing the story behind the story it's a wonderment to behold.  A few months

ago after having viewed it with my wife and some old friends we clicked the

VCR off and the TV was still on tuned to some unknown channel with the sound

off and we saw the images of a Hulk Hoganish wrestling match going on and

started to do a spontaneous scat of what was going on with the pictures...

the guys wrestling and the referee and the managers and the girls all decked

out and our goofing with their thoughts and voices was the funniet thing we'd

done in years...we couldn't stop laughing... course we had been sharing a

variety of uninhibitors all evening...

 

Regarding burials I was under the impression Cassady had been cremated and

his ashes remain with the family.  Don't know about Ginsy or Bill, but I'm

sure someone can tell us something.

 

Speaking of Ginsy and Bill, there's something I've been meaning to tell

everyone for months but never got to it.  A couple of days after Allen died

my wife and I were organizing around the house and we're putting things here

and putting things there, re-arranging & stuff and there is this one area in

our house that is at the top of some starirs, kind of a mantle between floors

and we're always putting stuff there but there is no real name for a place

like this.  And as we were griping with each other saying, "Where did you say

you put it?" "You know, that place by the stairs" I finally got fed up and

said "Why don't we start calling this thing something?" "What do you mean?

Like what, the 'mantle' or something?" "No, that's no good..." and as Allen

had just died and newspaper clippings were strewn about and we were listening

to Holy Soul Jelly Roll I said, "Why don't we call it the Allen?"  And my

wife was flabbergasted..."The Allen?" she asked, looking at me like I had two

heads..."Why not, at least we'll both know what we're talking about".  So,

anyway, it didn't take right away, but after a while of goofing with it...

"Hey, darlin', if you're making coffee, will you make me a cup?"  "Where's

your mug?" "It's on the Allen"... and after awhle we started to get used to

it and now it we don't even hardly laugh when we say it anymore... And now

we're looking around for something to call "Bill"...

 

Jerry Cimino

Fog City

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 20:16:35 +1000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         John Pullicino <jjpull@PAC.COM.AU>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac- reports of death

In-Reply-To:  <971127234640_30960863@mrin43.mail.aol.com>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain

 

G'day You_Be_Fine, on 28-Nov-97 you wrote...

(by the way its 7:36pm friday here as i write and 2:36am friday us central)

 

>John, if these are strictly Australian accounts, not syndicated by some

>worldwide news bureau and not seen in the U.S., I'd love to read them. Can

>you transcribe and post them to the list?

here you go - i suspect you wont find much new in them though.

 

=================================================

FIRST HIPPIE DIES ALONE (Newsday oct23 1969)

byline- Newsday Reporter

 

New York Tuesday. Jack Kerouac, the high priest of the Beat Generation,

died

at St Petersburgh Florida today, a victim of his own philosophy.

The 47 year old writer and poet died in hospital from a massive gastric

haemorrhage after a savage drinking bout lasting several days.

Kerouac, whose 'drop-out' philosophy called for 'a frank enjoyment of the

pleasures of life' was a heavy drinker and marijuana smoker.

"I smoked more grass than anyone you ever knew in your life" he said in a

recent interview.

All his life, Kerouac rejected the materialism of the U.S. His novels were

freewheeling accounts of wandering, hard drinking and pot smoking.

He described his ideal life as 'beatific', and the word was shortened to

'beat' and [..some five words have faded here..] became 'beatnik culture'

of the late 1960's.

Kerouac, who was born in Lowell Massachusetts, was almost constantly in the

limelight during the lte 1950's during the publication of his largely

autobiographical books.

his first book, The Town and the City, was not successful, but his second,

On the Road, transformed kerouac and the beat philosophy into household

names virtually overnight.

None of his later books hit the same peak of success, although The Dharma

Bums and The Subterraneans made the bestseller lists.

But Kerouac, described as the bridge between the lost generation and

Hippiedom was rejected by the hippies, who found the beat philosophy too

aggressive.

Kerouac's second wife, Stella, said the writer had died a lonely man.

"Nobody came to see him when he was alive. Why would you come now when he

can't talk to you?"

 

==================================================

NO LIMELIGHT AT HIS DEATH

byline- Australian Associated Press

 

New York Tuesday. Jack Kerouac, 47, the novelist of the Beat Generation,

was a lonely man before his death today in St Petersburgh Florida, his

wife, Stella, said.

She told a reporter: "He had been drinking heavily for the past few days.

He was a very lonely man.

"Nobody came to see him when he was alive. Why would you come now when he

can't talk to you?"

but Kerouac was in the limelight during the late 1950s and early 1960s,

when he published his largely autobiographical accounts of his wanderings

across the country during the early 1950s. His novels included 'On the

Road' 'The Dharma Bums' and 'The Subterraneans'.

His books rejected what he considered the materialism of America, and

advocated a freewheeling style of life that included hard drinking and

marijuana.

Kerouac was often called 'the father of the beat generation' who bridged

the gulf between the 'lost generation' and the 'beats'.

 

==============================================

mmmm - all that typing brought back the afternoon on which i first read the

clippings, which went straight into my wallet, where they remained during

most of the ensuing 28 years - hence the missing words - the rest of the

afternoon i spent in jimmy watson's winebar crossing the same bridge from

lost to beatific..........

--

bye for now,

#<|||||||||||||||||||||||># John Pullicino #<|||||||||||||||||||||||>#

(|||||||||||||||||||)  #jjpull@pac.com.au# (|||||||||||||||||||)

#<|||||||||||||># *Team AMIGA WorldWide* #<|||||||||||||||>#

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 06:29:28 +0000

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Marie Countryman <country@SOVER.NET>

Subject:      Re: a terrible beatuty is born(was estate shit)

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854";

              x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

yeats has always been a great fave poet of mine, esp. when he moved from

lyric poetry to address the uprising ..

mc

 

Gene Lee wrote:

 

> Marie- that was a so beautiful poem- especially hit me after read Michael

> Collins book no too long ago and then saw movie. great work!   GT

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 07:22:27 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      JOKE: INSTALLMENT #4

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

The next year, it was another monk's turn to speak.  He said, "Nice day,

isn't it?"

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 07:56:32 -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:         Dennis Cardwell <DCardKJHS@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac clippings

 

In a message dated 97-11-27 23:42:07 EST, you write:

 

<< 3 questions -

 has anyone seen the movies "Pull my daisy" and "Chappaqua" ?

 is it true that there is a street in SanFran now named after him ?

 does anyone know the names of the cemetaries where Ginsberg, Burroughs and

 Cassady are buried?

  >>

Pull My Daisy plays colleges and art houses infrequently, but I have seen it.

 I have an old copy of the screenplay published by Grove Press, but now out

of print, I think.  The film is interesting...but perhaps only as a memento

of the times and the characters involved in the project.  Kerouac Alley is a

recently re-named, one block long alley full of dumpsters.  It connects to

Columbus Ave. in North Beach and runs between City Lights Books and Vesuvio,

one of the best bars on this particular planet.  The street sign for Kerouac

Alley is usually missing due to theft although a tourist shop at Pier 39 near

Fisherman's Wharf sells knockoffs.

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 09:37:25 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac- reports of death

 

In a message dated 97-11-28 04:32:52 EST, John PullicinO, not PullicinI

wrote:

 

<< all that typing brought back the afternoon on which i first read the

 clippings, which went straight into my wallet, where they remained during

 most of the ensuing 28 years - hence the missing words - the rest of the

 afternoon i spent in jimmy watson's winebar crossing the same bridge from

 lost to beatific........ >>

 

Thank you so much for sharing these. They really took me back, too. Imagining

these clips living in your wallet, kept close by for 28 years as some kind of

sweet sentimental enshrinement, was also a tender statement of the loss of

jack. Very nice.

 

And it's good to know that the bridge from beatific to lost also goes the

other way, back to beatific, and that you were able to find your way there.

 

I hope you'll be encouraged to share more of your points of view from the

other side of the world.

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 09:58:44 -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:         You_Be Fine <AngelMindz@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac clippings

 

In a message dated 97-11-28 02:27:08 EST, Jerry Cimino wrote:

 

<< "Hey, darlin', if you're making coffee, will you make me a cup?"  "Where's

 your mug?" "It's on the Allen"... and after awhle we started to get used to

 it and now it we don't even hardly laugh when we say it anymore... And now

 we're looking around for something to call "Bill"...

 

 Jerry Cimino

 Fog City

  >>

 

I thoroughly loved this story, and your creative naming of unknown

architectural details. What a great idea, and of course, completely goofy, as

well.

 

In fact, I enjoyed your whole letter, including the images of you all trying

to scat to a wrestling match! I would give a week's pay to see that.

 

Good to hear from you, telling personal tales, and making me thankful in the

afterglow of Thanksgiving. Keep up the good work!

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 11:07:25 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      WHERE IS UBFINE?

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Been trying to carry on a conversation with UBFine, who lists himself as

AngelMindz@AOL.COM but suddenly my posts to him are being returned as

UNKNOWN.

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 11:49:11 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      UBFINE

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

AngelMindz (aka You_Be Fine---but why is he hiding his real name and

dodging any kind of discussion?) is refusing to accept my Email.  First

he wrote: "This suit [Nicosia's] sounds frivolous to me."  Then I wrote

him: "UBFINE: Are you the misguided individual who accused Gerry

Nicosia, one of our greatest Kerouac Scholars, of launching a

"frivolous" lawsuit against UMass at Lowell?" He answered: "No, I am

not. That is not what I said, and I didn't make any accu/sations

against anyone, I suggest that YOU read my letter more carefully

before labeling me "misguided."

 

"I have already been to your website, many times, and have read

and printed much information from there for my reading enjoyment. That

does not, however, mean that I agree with your opinions or believe that

what you are saying is accurate.

 

Thanks for caring."

 

To which I replied: "ANGEL:  A million pardons, but you will note I

didn't "accuse" you of anything, but merely asked if you were the one.

The BEAT-L posts come in a million a minute and I didn't remember who it

was but whoever it was he was definitely misguided.  Otherwise I thank

you for visiting my website but as for your differing in opinion,

everyone is entitled to think or believe what he wants, but I am

comforted by the knowledge that I was there, an eyewitness, and you

weren't.  It's my duty as a journalist to inform the world with truth,

not bullshit."  To which Angel/UBFine responded: "Good example of why I

read your stuff (and everyone's) with a grain of salt. The use of the

verb "accuse" came only from you. I did not use the word. Only

you did. You asked me if I "accused Nicosia, etc.

 

"Now you quote it back to me, as if I'd said it, and with heavy

sarcasm to boot.

 

I haven't done anything except express my opinion fairly and

calmly. Yet from you and from Jo Grant I get attitude.

 

Well you know what? Fuck you both."

 

So I wrote back under the subject heading, DON'T GET ME WRONG: "UB:  I'm

not looking for a fight.  I just think it's wrong to

pour shit on one of our greatest Kerouac scholars. I really appreciate

the comparatively few readers who visit my website.  I do not spend

much time or money (of which I have none) to promote my website.

Only recently has Yahoo started listing me.  But if you take

exception to some of what I have written I wouldn't mind an open

discussion about your exceptions on the BEAT-L list.  And I think anyone

who attacks Gerry Nicosia as frivolous is definitely misguided, just as

those who are trying to persecute him for his defense of Jan Kerouac are

definitely misguided.  Jan Kerouac's only dream was to vindicate

herself as a writer, however inferior to her father.  I believe she has

so vindicated herself.  --Al"  Then I got Angel/UB's "fuck you" note and

I wrote back: "UB: Is that swhat you call expressing yourself fairly and

calmly and without attitude?  I respect Jo Grant and Gerry Nicosia as

accomplished writers and I believe my respect for them reflects their

respect for me.  I merely asked you if your were the one who "accused"

Gerry of being frivolous.  If you say you weren't, that's good enough

for me. When you say you disagree with what I have written, I naturally

would like to know more specifics.  What are  you getting so angry

about? --Al"

And my last two messages to him were returned to me as undeliverable

because he embargoed any messages from me.

Now I'm prompted to ask: If the BEAT-L list has that kind of closed

minds subscribing to it, what good is the BEAT-L list?  How can it have

any credibility?

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 11:51:29 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Mike Rice <mrice@CENTURYINTER.NET>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac- reports of death

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

At 09:37 AM 11/28/97 -0500, you wrote:

>In a message dated 97-11-28 04:32:52 EST, John PullicinO, not PullicinI

>wrote:

>

><< all that typing brought back the afternoon on which i first read the

> clippings, which went straight into my wallet, where they remained during

> most of the ensuing 28 years - hence the missing words - the rest of the

> afternoon i spent in jimmy watson's winebar crossing the same bridge from

> lost to beatific........ >>

>

>Thank you so much for sharing these. They really took me back, too. Imagining

>these clips living in your wallet, kept close by for 28 years as some kind of

>sweet sentimental enshrinement, was also a tender statement of the loss of

>jack. Very nice.

>

>And it's good to know that the bridge from beatific to lost also goes the

>other way, back to beatific, and that you were able to find your way there.

>

>I hope you'll be encouraged to share more of your points of view from the

>other side of the world.

>

>

I was in basic training at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky the day Jack died.  I

never read a wire story as good as either of those withered ones in your

wallet.  I was just a kid then, and I'm 52 now, where did those 28 years

go, and why don't you empty your wallet more often.

 

Mike Rice

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 12:08:23 -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: Pro-Preservation

Comments: cc: Charley Plymell <CVEditions@AOL.COM>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

Hey, UB AngelMindz,

I need more information. Particularly about how you define "attitude."  You

write:

 

> I haven't done anything except express my opinion fairly and calmly. Yet from

> you and from Jo Grant I get attitude.

>

> Well you know what? Fuck you both.

 

Is this in response to my post of a few days ago?  A post that contains

nothing derrogatory about you.

 

You wrote:

>Honestly, I can't see the logic of paying a $20,000 retainer for an item that

>was sold for $7,500 in the first place. I also don't see that the seller has

>a legal leg to stand on, or any chance of "winning" this suit, which sounds

>frivolous to me.

 

And I responded with:

 

There are hundreds of taped interviews that will be lost, forever, if

preservation measures are not taken to save the tapes. These are interviews

with people who knew Jack Keroauc intimately, Burroughs was interviewed,

many other writers, Kerouac's wives and lovers, very close women and men

friends. To many people this information is so important that considerable

time and money will be spent insuring that the collection is removed from U

Mass, Lowell to a library that has a presevation lab and preservation

librarians who work hard to preserve collections that have been placed in

their care--entrusted to them.

 

I don't want to get into a big thing over this, but I feel very strongly

about the conservation and preservation of historic documents--particularly

material that is stored in or on unstable material. The life of magnetic

tape is short. Everyone knows this. We simply cannot allow the information

on those tapes to be lost.

 

Forget about the tapes in the Memory Babe Archive for a minute.and let me

mention another project so you don't think Memory Babe is the only

information I'm concerned about. Wisconsin has the second largest

population of Hmong in the U.S. These remarkable people arrived here

without any history other than their stories. Their history is passed down

generation to generation verbally--it is not written. Cultural shock is

taking a terrible toll of these people--particularly the seniors. The

seniors carry the history in their minds. Everytime one of them dies they

lose, WE LOSE, Hmong history. Can you imagine not having a history. Not

knowing the what, where, why, when and how of yourself, your parents, your

grandparents? No serious, concentrated effort is being made to record the

history of the Hmong. To most is seems unimportant. It demands an

expenditure of funds states do not feel they can spend. Taxpayers are

reluctant. Not a good situation. What should be done to preserve this

history?

 

Is it as important as the travels of Lewis and Clark? The Vietnam War. My

Lai. Two New Jersey teen agers commiting suicide to protest a war. Letters

your grandmother wrote. An old diary.

 

What should be done to preserve the scattered fragments of Bukowski,

Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and hundreds of others--some minor, some

major. Little things here and there. A note. A few words. What Ginsberg

said about Nicosia while we were talking one evening.  A few words while

autographing his high schol yearbook picture for me. Fragments. Safe.

Preserved.

 

The work to raise money to save this archive is simply that. To save

information that someone, someday, will use. A small bit of information

that helps form a link to another little piece of information and another

and another and another and we learn.

 

Just the tid-bits one picks up on this list are sometimes mind-blowing.

 

Example.

Today I added a picture of Meridel LeSueur to the page that has information

about the last book she wrote at age 93. The Dread Road. The picture was a

quick snapshop Charlie Plymell took of Meridel in an elevator at Westbeth,

an artist commune in NYC over ten years ago. Plymell learned of my interest

in Meridel on this list. Meridel was in NYC for the book publishing

gathering the Feminist Press was having for the anthology of Meridel's work

"RIPENING: The Writings of Meridel LeSueur.... "  She invited Plymell to

the gathering. An incredible book.. A picture from Plymell to BookZen to

the World Wide Web. From me to the Minnesota Historical Society, with a

copy going to Special Collection at the University if Iowa. Is this picture

important?  Are Plymell's notes on the meeting important? Is the

conversation he and Meridel had that day important? Are Meridel's notes

about the meeting with Plymell important. When compared fifty years from

now what will some researcher discover about these two remarkable

observers. Hundreds of her notebooks are slowly being transcribed.

Important? To some people yes. To students studying the Great Depression

Meridel's notes, fiction, poetry, recorded words are priceless. What did

Meridel pass on to one of her grandchildren who put together the first

Native American radio station on an Indian reservation?

 

Her notes will tell us...something. But they have to be preserved, cared

for, cherished.  Preservation Librarians and others, do that--preserve

information.

 

Please people, just let this thing happen. Please understand that what this

is about is saving information that, since you are into Beat History,

should be as important to you as it is to the person who gathered the

information, and the people who want to study the information.

 

Sorry for the length of this post. So scattered. Fragmented. Too tired to

dig in and edit. My much better half, a preservation librarian, would have

said it better while being appalled that it needed saying at all.

***

 

 

Seriously UB, nothing was said in this post against you personally. And

nothing has been said against you, or anyone who thinks that saving the

hundreds of tapes recordings that are part of the Memory Babe Archive is

"frivolous," that could be considered a "flame."

 

On the other hand, your "fuck you both" comment appears to be a serious

attempt to start a firery exchange--flames and more flames.

 

Well it will not happen with me.

And I hope others who understand how critically important it is to save

these tapes will not get pulled into personal attacks and invectives.

 

j grant

 

 

 

                    HELP RECOVER THE MEMORY BABE ARCHIVES

                     Details  on-line late today

                                 http://www.bookzen.com

                      592,901 Visitors  07-01-96 to 11-01-97

 

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 12:08:48 -0600

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Patricia Elliott <pelliott@SUNFLOWER.COM>

Subject:      Re: UBFINE

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Patricia Elliott wrote:

>

> The center is breaking and thanksgiving is over.  I am glad this went

> backchannel originally,  and i am also glad that differing oppinions are

> heard. i was alarmed at the idea that one idea couldn't be presented

> unless a dissenting view was also presented. I found ub fine thinking

> fuzzy but that is a left sided argument.  One thing that has been

> praying on my mind is I desperately wish we could discuss the need for

> the memory babe material to be adequately preserved (as it is voices

> that i love that will be disolved), without fearing if we say anything

> on the subjuect both side will come out swing or responding with the

> vile tone arguments that have visited here in the past.   This is a

> place that should care that preservation and access to these archives be

> achieved. I don't know how, beyond the hard cruel tongue of a lawyer.

> but would love to hear POSITIVE ideas on the subject. I would also

> prefer not to hear negative remarks, except as back channel.. In case

> someone wants to back channel, i am patricia elliott, at

> pelliott@sunflower.com

> hi ho to the beat daddio.

> p

> Al Aronowitz wrote:

> >

> > AngelMindz (aka You_Be Fine---but why is he hiding his real name and

> > dodging any kind of discussion?) is refusing to accept my Email.  First

> > he wrote: "This suit [Nicosia's] sounds frivolous to me."  Then I wrote

> > him: "UBFINE: Are you the misguided individual who accused Gerry

> > Nicosia, one of our greatest Kerouac Scholars, of launching a

> > "frivolous" lawsuit against UMass at Lowell?" He answered: "No, I am

> > not. That is not what I said, and I didn't make any accu/sations

> > against anyone, I suggest that YOU read my letter more carefully

> > before labeling me "misguided."

> >

> > "I have already been to your website, many times, and have read

> > and printed much information from there for my reading enjoyment. That

> > does not, however, mean that I agree with your opinions or believe that

> > what you are saying is accurate.

> >

> > Thanks for caring."

> >

> > To which I replied: "ANGEL:  A million pardons, but you will note I

> > didn't "accuse" you of anything, but merely asked if you were the one.

> > The BEAT-L posts come in a million a minute and I didn't remember who it

> > was but whoever it was he was definitely misguided.  Otherwise I thank

> > you for visiting my website but as for your differing in opinion,

> > everyone is entitled to think or believe what he wants, but I am

> > comforted by the knowledge that I was there, an eyewitness, and you

> > weren't.  It's my duty as a journalist to inform the world with truth,

> > not bullshit."  To which Angel/UBFine responded: "Good example of why I

> > read your stuff (and everyone's) with a grain of salt. The use of the

> > verb "accuse" came only from you. I did not use the word. Only

> > you did. You asked me if I "accused Nicosia, etc.

> >

> > "Now you quote it back to me, as if I'd said it, and with heavy

> > sarcasm to boot.

> >

> > I haven't done anything except express my opinion fairly and

> > calmly. Yet from you and from Jo Grant I get attitude.

> >

> > Well you know what? Fuck you both."

> >

> > So I wrote back under the subject heading, DON'T GET ME WRONG: "UB:  I'm

> > not looking for a fight.  I just think it's wrong to

> > pour shit on one of our greatest Kerouac scholars. I really appreciate

> > the comparatively few readers who visit my website.  I do not spend

> > much time or money (of which I have none) to promote my website.

> > Only recently has Yahoo started listing me.  But if you take

> > exception to some of what I have written I wouldn't mind an open

> > discussion about your exceptions on the BEAT-L list.  And I think anyone

> > who attacks Gerry Nicosia as frivolous is definitely misguided, just as

> > those who are trying to persecute him for his defense of Jan Kerouac are

> > definitely misguided.  Jan Kerouac's only dream was to vindicate

> > herself as a writer, however inferior to her father.  I believe she has

> > so vindicated herself.  --Al"  Then I got Angel/UB's "fuck you" note and

> > I wrote back: "UB: Is that swhat you call expressing yourself fairly and

> > calmly and without attitude?  I respect Jo Grant and Gerry Nicosia as

> > accomplished writers and I believe my respect for them reflects their

> > respect for me.  I merely asked you if your were the one who "accused"

> > Gerry of being frivolous.  If you say you weren't, that's good enough

> > for me. When you say you disagree with what I have written, I naturally

> > would like to know more specifics.  What are  you getting so angry

> > about? --Al"

> > And my last two messages to him were returned to me as undeliverable

> > because he embargoed any messages from me.

> > Now I'm prompted to ask: If the BEAT-L list has that kind of closed

> > minds subscribing to it, what good is the BEAT-L list?  How can it have

> > any credibility?

> > --

> > ***************************************

> > Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

> > http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 13:16:23 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      UBFINE AGAIN

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

So I just received this post from Angel Minds aka UBFine:

 

Subject:

        no thanks

  Date:

        Fri, 28 Nov 1997 12:54:59 -0500 (EST)

  From:

        AngelMindz@aol.com

    To:

        blackj@bigmagic.com

 

 

I'm not interested in having a conversation with you. I have

blocked you from

my email.

 

Take your conspiracy theories and self-pity and cc:s to Jo Grant

and Gerald

Nicosia and leave me and the Beat-L list out of it.

 

Get it? Get lost.

 

Sounds like UB is already lost. --Al aronowitz

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 20:10:58 +0100

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:      one more a day Charles Bukowski poem

In-Reply-To:  <yam7269.1953.2825864@pac.com.au>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

One More Day    by Charles Bukowski

 

the slippery summer sun of my youth is

gone

and the mad girls are in others' hands

as I drive my car to the wash

and watch the boys dry it to a hearty

glisten

I stand there

having learned some tricks

out of minor courage and lucky

durability

I still realize my vast vincibility.

it took time to realize

something quite not

realized.

too much time.

time shot apart: bang.

 

I walk to my car,

tip the gentleman a dollar,

get in,

the slippery sun of my youth

gone,

I drive off,

turn left,

turn right.

I am going somewhere.

hands on the wheel.

checking the rear view mirror.

 

I am old game for the oldest

hunter.

 

I stop at the red light.

 

it's a fair day among the

living.

the earth has been here for

such a very long

time.

 

I get the green and go

on.

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 17:55:42 -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:         Gene Lee <GTL1951@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac clippings

 

in perhaps an unrelated issue- i remember when Jack died- i was going to

college in gainesville, fl and was coming down from a nite of mushrooms and

red wine- needless to say i was not all together when a friend dropped by

with the day's paper which carried the story- i didnt think i could feel any

lower- until i read the article and everything dropped out of my young life-

i always used to love Oct- you know- cool breezes- football- coeds in tight

sweaters- now it just reminds that a great one passed on- which is ok-

everyone has too- just a lot of light disappeared that Fall.

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 18:50:44 -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:         Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Big break down on Big Sur

 

To the Mad ones:

 

I have been reading some of the comments regarding Big Sur and wish to

comment on it but must make the following confession first --  I have never

been an alcoholic yet (I may be working on it now as we speak), I have never

OD'ed, nor did I ever suffer a mental collapse (at least not one that has

been recorded by the medical community).

 

The important thing to remember is that the Big Sur was written after he came

out of that whole process. I saw the book as a kind of validation (maybe even

a celebration) that people can survive times of self doubt (and a whole host

of other crappy emotional situations) and come out of it and have their life

go on. Not that I think that Kerouac thought that life is one big happy smile

party, but I don't think that he thought that life was one big deep cesspool

dump either.

 

The book starts out by alluding to this immense event (the breakdown) that

will be occurring, listing events that may or may not be a precursor to the

breakdown (or whatever it was). It seemed obvious to others that Jack was

heading down a long a dark road.

 

When he writes about this afterwards, he had the assistance of hindsight to

gauge what and how he was feeling, though I would like to see his letters

that were written during this time period to better understand his frame of

mind.

 

But in the end, he ends up devoting very few pages to the actual breakdown

(compared to the length of the book). I think this is important. Don't ask me

why. Sometimes you define the donut by the hole, and you define life's better

moments by its worst moments.

 

I read this book as a more whimsical (buddhist?) accounting of the event,

 and I found a lot of humor and irony in the book. I think that Jack

understood that there was humor in the fact that being at a place of immense

beauty like Big Sur, where he had these expectations of enlightened

introspection, he instead suffered with his closest brush of falling off the

brink into the great void below. This understanding can only come after a

person feels that they are back on terra firma.

 

So in conclusion, for me the book is not about the breakdown at Big Sur. And

all this discussion about DTs, acid trips, and mental breakdowns is a side

issue that is fun (and important) to talk about  --- but the book is more a

look back at what happened afterwards and the sense of relief one gets after

the storm has passed.

 

so it goes, Attila

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 18:50:46 -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:         Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Name that Quote

 

I have a button that has a quote attributed to Kerouac but I don't recall

reading it anywhere. Does anybody know? thanks, Attila

 

The quote is:

 

I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't really matter.

                                                 Jack Kerouac

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 18:50:47 -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:         Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Kerouac's books: Truth or Fiction

 

Can we talk?

 

I never felt that any of Jack's books are autobiographical in the strictest

sense, cause otherwise he would have called it an autobiography. There is

much evidence that most of his books, while based on many actual events, were

stories written for the enjoyment of writing it, and sharing it with whoever

would read it.

 

Many of the "facts" have been twisted, deleted, added, enhanced, and

otherwise modified to fit into the story. Yet I think that the purpose was to

better convey the emotions and feelings related to the event. Jack tried not

only to tell you what happened, but also to help you feel the rush that he

felt, or whatever emotion he was feeling at the time. If he was down, he

tried to make you feel down or to understand his down. If he was up, he tried

to bring you along on that trip as well.

 

I think that Jack's talent is in his story telling, using a voice and words

that was unique to him, one that he wasn't afraid of using.

 

I think alot of people have the mistaken belief that any Kerouac book can be

taken as gospel as to what happened, why it happened, and how it happened. I

think his books provide an insight to what was happening, but not

neccessarily the truth as to what happened.

 

For me, Jack has always been a story teller who told stories of his own life

and observations. The reasons why he felt he had to tell them are always open

for discussion. I have my own theories on the Duluoz Legend.

 

And I think its when you hear Kerouac reading his own work that you really

start to appreciate his story telling ability.

 

so it goes, Attila

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 19:24:44 EST

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:      Netiquette

 

I just want to remind everyone, after reading a couple of Al Aronowitz's

posts, that it's generally frowned upon as a breach of netiquette to

post private correspondence to the list without the other

correspondent's permission.  Being fairly new to our list, I'm sure that

Al didn't know that we had complaints about such postings in the past.

Welcome to the Beat-l, Al.  Glad to have you on board. Look forward to

hearing more about the Ginsberg memorial.

=========================================================================

Date:         Fri, 28 Nov 1997 21:16:21 -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: Pro-Preservation details

In-Reply-To:  <1.5.4.32.19971128015832.006b20a8@pop.pipeline.com>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

For anyone interested in the developing suit to recover the Memory Babe

Archive from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell a link to more

information is blinking at http://www.bookzen.com

 

Also, if anyone has comments they would like to share about the

PRESERVATION OF HISTORIC LITERARY MATERIAL BookZen welcomes comments.

 

j grant

 

                    HELP RECOVER THE MEMORY BABE ARCHIVES

                             Details  on-line at

                                 http://www.bookzen.com

                      625,506 Visitors  07-01-96 to 11-28-97

 

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 07:34:03 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      JOKE:ANOTHER INSTALLMENT

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

The next year, it wa anothe Monk's turn to talk: He said, "Pass the

salt, please."

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 17:45:03 +0100

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         paul caspers <caspers@WORLDONLINE.NL>

Subject:      tapes

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

Hi all,

 

if anyone has recordings of bukowski, kerouac or wsb, and i he/she wants to

trade tape copies of them for copies of irvine welsh reading 'the acid

house' (180m), please mail me privately. i'm off the list, so don't send it

there.

and, if anyone can take the time and trouble to tell me where exactly the

texts from the wsb cd 'dead city radio' come from (most of my booklet is

missing), i'd appreciate it greatly.

 

see y'all

paul

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 13:09:04 -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:         Nancy B Brodsky <nbb203@IS8.NYU.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac's books: Truth or Fiction

In-Reply-To:  <971128185046_78371155@mrin47>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

I always refer to JK's books as autobiographical fiction...with the

emphasis on the autobiographical part.

 

 

 

 

On Fri, 28 Nov 1997, Attila Gyenis wrote:

 

> Can we talk?

>

> I never felt that any of Jack's books are autobiographical in the strictest

> sense, cause otherwise he would have called it an autobiography. There is

> much evidence that most of his books, while based on many actual events, were

> stories written for the enjoyment of writing it, and sharing it with whoever

> would read it.

>

> Many of the "facts" have been twisted, deleted, added, enhanced, and

> otherwise modified to fit into the story. Yet I think that the purpose was to

> better convey the emotions and feelings related to the event. Jack tried not

> only to tell you what happened, but also to help you feel the rush that he

> felt, or whatever emotion he was feeling at the time. If he was down, he

> tried to make you feel down or to understand his down. If he was up, he tried

> to bring you along on that trip as well.

>

> I think that Jack's talent is in his story telling, using a voice and words

> that was unique to him, one that he wasn't afraid of using.

>

> I think alot of people have the mistaken belief that any Kerouac book can be

> taken as gospel as to what happened, why it happened, and how it happened. I

> think his books provide an insight to what was happening, but not

> neccessarily the truth as to what happened.

>

> For me, Jack has always been a story teller who told stories of his own life

> and observations. The reasons why he felt he had to tell them are always open

> for discussion. I have my own theories on the Duluoz Legend.

>

> And I think its when you hear Kerouac reading his own work that you really

> start to appreciate his story telling ability.

>

> so it goes, Attila

>

 

The Absence of Sound, Clear and Pure, The Silence Now Heard In Heaven For

Sure-JK

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 10:34:38 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Ryan White <whitery@UCS.ORST.EDU>

Subject:      Reading material?

In-Reply-To:  <Pine.OSF.3.95.971129130826.13180A-100000@is8.nyu.edu>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

Hi, I'm fairly new to the whole beat thing, even newer to this list.  I

stumbled across "On the Road" after reading "Naked Lunch" and Burroughs

Obituary.  I found myself perpetually caught up in the whole adventure of

spontaneous cross country travel thing.  Anyway, I'm a graduate student in

engineering and all this has been an attempt to broaden my horizons.  I'm

more of a numbers guy, but have really enjoyed what I've seen.  I'm very

interested in this devotion a number of you have for the "beat

generations" and especially Jack K.  My personal favorite is Neal Cassady.

The whole point to this is to ask for a bit of guidance.  Where should I

start as far as what to read?  I've only read Naked Lunch, On the Road,

and The First Third.  Any responses would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks

again.

 

Buh-Bye!

--Ryan

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 13:51:36 -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:         Mark Schoeck <Ireneaus13@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Reading material?

 

just a few ideas...

 The Wild Boys-WSB

 Desolation Angels- JK

 two of my faves.

                                      mark.

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 13:58:06 -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:         KEROUACZIN@AOL.COM

Subject:      Fwd: Search

 

---------------------

Forwarded message:

From:   csmythe@sab.org (Chris Smythe)

To:     kerouaczin@AOL.COM ('kerouaczin@aol.com')

Date: 97-11-25 18:58:13 EST

 

I am trying to find a poem by Jack Kerouac.  I was watching a documentary on

Kerouac that contained, obviously, several recordings of him reading various

works.  There was one particular bit I didn't recognize and have been

subsequently struggling to find.  Is there any one I can contact to help me

find the source based on a few key words?  Please let me know if you can help

me with my search.  I would be most grateful.

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 14:16:34 -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:         Gene Lee <GTL1951@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Reading material?

 

Hey Mark- I think that the first part of Desolation Angels contains some of

Jk's best writing- hmm- dont know about Wild Boys- but not big on Bourroughs

Lit- cept for Junkie and The Exterminator

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 14:19:42 -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:         Gene Lee <GTL1951@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Reading material?

 

If you are interested in Cassady- then read Visions of Cody by JK- also the

Demon Box by Kesey

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 15:02:24 -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:         Alex Howard <kh14586@ACS.APPSTATE.EDU>

Subject:      Re: Kerouac's books: Truth or Fiction

In-Reply-To:  <971128185046_78371155@mrin47>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

Well, Kerouac himself said "All my books are true, cause I believed in

what I saw."  They are autobiographical in a sense in that they're based

on more or less actual events.  He took a lot of liscence with them to

make them congruous stories.  OTR is _heavily_ edited and cut down and

rearranged.  After all, its 7 years worth of travelling and adventures.

However, you take stuff like DB or DA and the people who show up as

characters say they're fairly accurate accounts of what happened.  Its the

fact that its a story of events and happenings of Kerouac's life seen from

inside Kerouac's head that make it so amazing.  They are autobiographical

in the sense that its what Kerouac remembered living and thinking, but

they're still fiction.  They're not autobiographical journalistic accounts

the way Holmes' Go or HST's work is, but they're not as fictional as

Fitzgerald's work either.  The fact that his work fuzzed the lines so is

one of the reasons it's so important in the history of literature.

 

------------------

Alex Howard  (704)264-8259                    Appalachian State University

kh14586@am.appstate.edu                       P.O. Box 12149

http://www1.appstate.edu/~kh14586             Boone, NC  28608

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 15:21:21 -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:         "R. Bentz Kirby" <bocelts@SCSN.NET>

Subject:      Question

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Jack Kerouac and Thomas Wolfe have been criticized for being story

tellers, or just writing down what happened.  It seems to me that there

is a large element of fiction involved, more than most would like to

see, but it all is based on reality.

 

My question is this, my life and the lifes of most people I know have

some exciting moments, but generally are full of daily routine.  If

Jack's work is mostly autobiographical, that is actually just telling

what happened, wouldn't that take a writer of greater statute to be able

to make everyday life so full, so true and such an inspiration.  I think

it would, because he would have to actually see, and not imagine.  What

do you think?

 

--

 

Peace,

 

Bentz

bocelts@scsn.net

http://www.scsn.net/users/sclaw

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 20:40:26 +0000

Reply-To:     caridade@mail.telepac.pt

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         caridade <caridade@MAIL.TELEPAC.PT>

Subject:      Ferlinghetti's A Note After Reading The Diaries Of Paul Klee

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

A Note After Reading The Diaries Of Paul Klee

 

Paul Klee (that painter who never could draw very well)

put on the holes in his socks

on those dim mornings when he woke alone

On other days it was it was a different tale

as after that time they made love

in the larch grove

by the Tegernsee

 

What perfection we reach with love!

he opined

It even knits up socks

and makes me feel I'm God in humankind

(Blow, blow, thou winter wind!

Crumble, ye mountains of the mind!)

----

 

have a good night you all,

daniel caridade

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 05:30:17 -0800

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Diane Carter <dcarter@TOGETHER.NET>

Subject:      Re: Question

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

> R. Bentz Kirby wrote:

>

> My question is this, my life and the lifes of most people I know have

> some exciting moments, but generally are full of daily routine.  If

> Jack's work is mostly autobiographical, that is actually just telling

> what happened, wouldn't that take a writer of greater statute to be

> able

> to make everyday life so full, so true and such an inspiration.  I

> think

> it would, because he would have to actually see, and not imagine.  What

> do you think?

 

I think it takes a great writer to make the ordinary seem extraordinary

or to see greatness in small things.  However, when you are talking about

routines, the nature of Jack's life was such that he didn't get bogged

down by a daily grind of routine.  For example, he never let

himself experience what it is like to be burdened by the daily family

routines of having a wife and children to support, having to find time to

write between an 8-12 hour a day job, and spending time with wife and

kids.  His lack of family routine, a mortgage, or having to support more

than himself, gave him the freedom to travel as he wanted to and

experience a different kind of lifestyle, and in a way, have more to

write about. But again speaking of writers of great stature, a lot of it

has to do with the mind of the writer.  In Ulysses, James Joyce really

only wrote about one day, minute by minute, hour by hour in the lives of

three people, but it ramifications in terms of the psychological and

philosophical realms of what it means to be human were extraordinary.

DC

DC

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 18:14:28 -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:         "R. Bentz Kirby" <bocelts@SCSN.NET>

Subject:      Ginsberg interview

Comments: To: Charles and Pam Plymell <CVEditions@AOL.COM>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

I don't recall seeing this posted to the Beat-L before, but I thought

this was a cool discussion of Dylan's impact on Allen by Allen.  Notice

that darned ole Charles Plymell was right in the middle of this thing.

I got this off an old post to the Dylan list.

 

 

>  Q:  Can you tell us how you met Bob Dylan and

>   what your earliest impressions of him were?

>

>   AG:  My earliest impressions of Dylan were, uh,

>   on returning from India...  My earliest

>   impressions of Dylan were, on returning from

>   India via San Francisco, a young poet, Charlie

>   Plimel[?], took me aside at a party in Belinas[?]

>   and played me some records from a new young

>   singer, folk singer, and it was the "Masters of

>   War," I think, and "I'll Stand," uh, "I'll Know

>   My Song Well Before I Start Singing," and "I'll

>   Stand on the Sea Where All Can Reflect or

>   Mountain Where All Can Reflect It."  And I was

>   really amazed.  It seemed to me that the torch

>   had been passed, sort of, from, uh, Kerouac or

>   from the, uh, beat, uh, genius on to another

>   generation completely, who had taken it, uh, and

>   he'd taken it and made something completely

>   original out of it, and that life was in good

>   hands.  I remember bursting into tears.  Because

>   the, uh, proclamation of confidence was so

>   certain and, uh, the, uh, humility was apparent,

>   and at the same time the confidence in, uh, his

>   own voice or his own inspiration, which is, I

>   think, some of the secret of genius which is, uh,

>   like in Whitman:  "I celebrate myself and sing

>   myself.  What I shall assume, you shall assume."

>   That confidence of self-acceptance, or

>   self-empowerment, the empowerment.  Uh, so I

>   heard just that first record, and I was pretty

>   amazed by it.  Then, uh, cause, you know, we had

>   learned from earlier people.  I had learned from

>   William Carlos Williams and  William Burroughs,

>   who was much older, and, uh, every generation

>   produces its own spontaneous genius, sort of.  So

>   it seemed to me that somebody had emerged with

>   their own, out of cocoon, with their own life,

>   with their own scepter, so to speak.  Then, uh, I

>   got to New York with Peter Orlovsky, and we were

>   staying at the, it's, uh, above, upstairs from

>   the Eighth Street Bookstore, which was at that

>   time a big, interesting, intelligent bookstore, Uh, really

>   admirable -for, for, for journalism it was a

>   really well-researched and even piece at a time

>   when, uh, the notion, the journalistic idea was

>   beatniks, it was cockroaches, and, uh, dirty

>   houses and uh, some idiot, uh, media idea

>   ignoring the literature and ignoring the actual

>   brilliance of the people like Kerouac or

>   Burroughs or Gary Snyder or others.  So in '59,

>   Aronowitz had written a very good series.  And

>   he'd actually gone to the West Coast, interviewed

>   Michael McClure, Neal Cassidy, uh, the poet Gary

>   Snyder I think, or friends of Snyder, Snyder was

>   in Japan.  Maybe Philip Whalen he saw and uh,

>   McClure turned him on to some grass which

>   enriched his account of, uh, serialized account

>   of the poets.  So Aronowitz I had known for four

>   or five years and Aronowitz brought Dylan to a

>   welcome party.  Peter and I had been around the

>   world actually and spent a year and a half in

>   India.  And I'd spent some time in Japan in a Zen

>   setting with Gary Snyder and then come back to a

>   big poetry conference in Vancouver and then spent

>   time in San Francisco, heard Dylan on the radio,

>   on the phonograph and then got to New York, got a

>   welcome home party and that was the night that

>   Dylan had come from the Emergency Civil Liberties

>   Committee banquet and had renounced any role as

>   sort of a political prophet for them, and that is

>   a left wing, uh, what, folk, uh, fighter for

>   causes.  I don't think he wanted to be limited to

>   that view and that perspective.  And so I

>   remember coming up the stairs and meeting him and

>   I was really interested, because I'd seen, heard

>   his language.  And he was kind of mysterious, but

>   one of the first things he said is he had

>   explained, uh, uh, he had not obeyed what their

>   idea was and they were shocked and horrified.

>   But he felt that he had to make his own statement

>   and have his own independence rather than being a

>   replica of, uh, folk song hero, conforming to

>   their expectations as somebody in, responding to

>   every civil liberties case, every case of

>   discrimination, every strike, the traditional

>   sing outs, folk music, left wing party line.  And

>   I thought it was pretty smart of him, though, he

>   may have not had the skillful means to do it in

>   which a way that encouraged them to do what they

>   wanted to do

>

 

 

--

 

Peace,

 

Bentz

bocelts@scsn.net

http://www.scsn.net/users/sclaw

=========================================================================

Date:         Sat, 29 Nov 1997 19:45:54 -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:         "M. Cakebread" <cake@IONLINE.NET>

Subject:      Re: Ginsberg interview

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

At 06:14 PM 11/29/97 -0500, Bentz wrote:

 

>I don't recall seeing this posted to the Beat-L before,

>but I thought this was a cool discussion of Dylan's

>impact on Allen by Allen.

 

Just listening to the Dylan show from 4/05/97 in

Moncton, NB, Canada, and after Dylan played "Desolation

Row" he sez this:

 

"A friend of mine passed away, I guess, this morning,

that was one of his favorite songs, the poet Allen Ginsberg.

Allen that was for you."

 

Mike

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 06:49:06 +0100

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:      Driving a cardboard automobile by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

In-Reply-To:  <yam7269.1953.2825864@pac.com.au>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

 

# 2                     by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 

 

 

Driving a cardboard automobile without a license

                    at the turn of the century

        my father ran into my mother

                                on a fun-ride at Coney Island

             having spied each other eating

                          in a French boardinghouse nearby

And having decided right there and then

                     that she was right for him entirely

      he followed her into

                         the playland of that evening

      where the headlong meeting

                             of their ephemeral flesh on wheels

      hurtled them forever together

 

And I now in the back seat

                         of their eternity

                                      reaching out to embrace them

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 01:33:21 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      JUST FOR THE RECORD

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

When I interviewed Kerouacin '59 or '60 (see:

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column22.html )he told me all his

novel were autobiographical and he derided the publishers and lawyers

who make him change the names and fuzzy up anything the suits though

libelous.  He liked to stick to the truth and laughed at TOWN AND THE

CITY, in which he gave his family things they didn't hae.  I don't

remember his exact words and I aint gonna bother looking it up now but

it's all in the interview.  He showed me the nickel pocket notebooks in

which he had written everything down.  Each novel was contained in

several nickel notebooks which he kept handy in his back pocket until he

packaged each novel as a collection of nickel notebooks by putting a

rubber band around them.  It's all described in

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column22,html .  U hope those

bundles of notebooks are still intact and haven't been sold off piece

meal as Gerry Nicosia fears.  In his interview, Kerouac mentions that

biographies will be written about him.  He made it pretty clear to me

that he wanted his papers kept intact and available for scholars.  I

hope that is being done and that Nicosia's fears are incorrect.  I just

don't see embargoing any of Nicolsia's materials which he deposited in a

library to make available for scholars.  And embargoed for extremely

petty reasons at that.  Allen Ginsberg used to complain like mad to me

that Stella wouldn't allow access to Jack's papers for her own very dumb

reasons.  In later years, he stopped complaining.  --Al Aronowitz

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 01:41:22 -0500

Reply-To:     blackj@bigmagic.com

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Al Aronowitz <blackj@BIGMAGIC.COM>

Subject:      JUST FOR THE RECORD--CORRECTION

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

In my original post, I tried to identify the URL of my Kerouac interview

twice but the second time it came out wrong.  The correct URL is

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj/column22.html .

--

***************************************

Al Aronowitz THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST

http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 13:50:32 -0800

Reply-To:     balkose@egenet.com.tr

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Murat Balkose <balkose@EGENET.COM.TR>

Subject:      Jim Morrison

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Hello,

 

 Here are a couple of questions we wonder:

 

 1.) At the end of OTR a man named Sean Monahan appears , is he friend

of Synder poet  Lew Welch?

 

 2.) At  1970, Jim Morrison  meets beat poet Michael McClure. McClure

tries to persuade Jim to print his poem book -Gods - New Creatures-.Does

any one know more about this story.. Also what is relation between Jim

and the beats..

 

 Yr information will be glad .

 

 Yrs,

 

 Murat.

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 13:40:47 +0000

Reply-To:     caridade@mail.telepac.pt

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         caridade <caridade@MAIL.TELEPAC.PT>

Subject:      Ferlinghetti's Making Love In Poetry

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Making Love In Poetry

(After Breton)

 

In a war where every second counts

Time drops to the ground

like a shadow from a tree

under which we lie

in a wood boat built from it

by an unknown carpenter beyond the sea

upon which peach pits float

fired by a gunner who has run out of ammunition

for a cannon whose muzzle bites heartshaped holes

out of the horizon of our flesh

stunned in the sun and baffled into silence

between the act of sex

and the act of poetry

blissed-out in the darkening air

at the moment of loving and coming

there is no glimpsing of

the misery of the world

 

Hope you all keep having a nice weekend, everybody...

daniel caridade

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 17:48:07 +0100

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:      Dove Sta Amore...

In-Reply-To:  <yam7269.1953.2825864@pac.com.au>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 

                COMPOSIZIONE SCRITTA IN QUATTRO PARTI

 

#1 part

-------

          Dove Sta Amore...             by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 

           Dove sta amore

            Where lies love

           Dove sta amore

            Here lies love

           The ring dove love

            In lyrical delight

           Hear love's hillsong

           Love's true willsong

           Love's low plainsong

           Too sweet painsong

           In passages of night

             Dove sta amore

              Here lies love

           The ring dove love

             Dove sta amore

              Here lies love

 

---

 

#2 part

-------

year 1997, a kid:

 

        "I'm disgusted by the life styles

        of the baby boomers. They have

        sparked a new era of social values

        that have changed the world

        in which I live,

        creating a mass of problems

        whose ramifications

        they will not live to endure.

 

        Their sexual revolution has resulted

        in a society rife with sexually

        transmitted diseases;

        the institution of the family

        has deteriorated to the point

        of disfunctionality.

 

        The baby boomers' use of narcotics

        has destroyed many of my peers

        in a circle of unbridled drug use and addiction."

 

---

#3 part

-------

year 1959, Jack Kerouac:

 

"...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones

who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of

everything, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman

candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the

middle you see the blue centrelight pop and everybody goes

'Awww!'..."

 

---

#4 part

-------

year 1920, Edna St. Vincent Millay:

 

"My candle burns at both ends;

it will not last the night;

but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-

it gives a lovely light!"

 

---

un saluto a tutti da

Rinaldo.

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 12:09:56 EST

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:      Bill Morgan's Walking Tour

 

For those who still haven't read Bill Morgan's "The Beat Generation in

New York", there's a preview in today's New York Times, City Section, p.

10.  A "selective tour" with map is included.

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 18:21:40 +0100

Reply-To:     "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Sender:       "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From:         Jens Koch <jenskoch@POST1.TELE.DK>

Subject:      Harry Smith article

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

 

For those of you interested in Harry Smith there is an article in the =

English Folk Roots which I have scanned and posted on =

http://home1.inet.tele.dk/jenskoch/harry1.htm

Jens

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 15:42:07 -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:         George Russell <CodyPomera@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Jim Morrison

Comments: To: balkose@egenet.com.tr

 

The Lords and the New Creatures was published in 1969, as far as I know.  I

don't have a clue as to who published it, he may have done it privately, or

any other printing information.  As far as Jim Morrison being influenced by

the Beats, Ray Manzarek said that if On The Road had not been published,

there would have been no Doors.

 

-George

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 16:05:29 -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:         Gene Lee <GTL1951@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: Jim Morrison

 

so true- and none of that damn fine music- jack spawned a lot of good things-

Bob Dylan for one

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 17:14:44 -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:         Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>

Subject:      NYC Some of the Dharma Reading

 

If you are are in the area, check it out, Attila

 

 

Jack Kerouac's   Some of the Dharma

 

readings & performances by Karen Allen, David Amram, Doug Brinkley, Todd

Colby, Willem Dafoe, Ann Douglas, Maggie Estep, Hitchhiker, Lee Ranaldo, Ed

Sanders, David Stanford, Anne Waldman, & Special Guests

 

Wednesday December 3rd 8:00PM

 

$12.00 ($7.00 for members & students)

The Poetry Project St.Mark's Church

131 East 10th St. (at 2nd Ave.) Manhattan

Info: 212/674-0910

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 17:32:02 -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:         Gene Lee <GTL1951@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Re: NYC Some of the Dharma Reading

 

wow- is all I have to say- o to live in NYC- for things like that- I am

currently reading the Dharma book- fits in nicely with my re-entry into Zen-

Jk was so damn sharp- too sad

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 20:55:06 -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:         Howard Park <Hpark4@AOL.COM>

Subject:      Beat Book Garage Sale - Reader copies

 

It's time to clear out some room on my shelves again.  Within the next week

or so I will be e-mailing a list of Beat related and some non-beat related

books I have for sale.  In general these will be relitively inexpensive

"reader" copies, with a handful of "collectable" stuff.  If you would like to

receive my list, please send a private e-mail to Hpark4@aol.com NOT to the

listserve -- there is no reason to waste bandwidth to all 200 plus people on

the list for this purpose.

 

I'll have some some books at affordable prices.

 

Howard Park

=========================================================================

Date:         Sun, 30 Nov 1997 22:42:57 -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:         "Neil M. Hennessy" <nhenness@UWATERLOO.CA>

Subject:      Re: Beat Book Garage Sale - Reader copies

In-Reply-To:  <971130205505_2095637616@mrin43.mail.aol.com>

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 

Hi Howard,

 

If there's any Burroughs on your shelves, send along the list.

 

Thanks,

Neil

 



back