Listed in order in which it was received (most recent being at the top
of the page).
 On the Road: The Official Movie Companion
MK2 Media – Author
ISBN 9780143123842 | 240 pages | 17 Oct 2012 | Penguin | 8.26 x 5.23in Paperback: Trade $30.00
Jack Kerouac's seminal novel On the Road is now a major motion picture starring Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams, and Viggo Mortensen.
Decades in the making, Jack Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing on the open road finally comes to the big screen for the very first time. Collecting a wealth of exclusive interviews and archival material, the On the Road Official Movie Companion explores the lasting influence Jack Kerouac and the Beats left on American culture, and offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the making of one of the most eagerly awaited films of 2012.
Assembled for the very first time in one book, the On the Road Official Movie Companion features:
- Exclusive photos from the set of On the Road.
- Screenplay excerpts with hand notes by the director, Walter Salles.
- Exclusive interviews with the cast of the film, including Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Viggo Mortensen, and Sam Riley.
- Concept art and sketches for the film.
- Unseen archives and exclusive manuscripts from Jack Kerouac
- Interviews with the last remaining Beats
- Maps, timelines, bibliographies, essays, and other reading tools
Features interviews with director Walter Salles, screenwriter José Rivera, stars Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Garret Hudlund, Sam Riley, Tom Sturridge, and Viggo Mortensen, producer Francis Ford Coppola, writer Barry Gifford, Al Hinkle, Carolyn Cassady, and more.
 On the Road (movie tie-in) by Jack Kerouac
Book: Movie Tie-In: Trade | 8.26 x 5.23in | 304 pages | ISBN 9780143120285 | 20 Nov 2012 | Penguin $16.00
Jack Kerouac's groundbreaking novel—soon to be a major motion picture with a star-studded cast
In what is sure to be one of the major cinematic events of 2012, Jack Kerouac's legendary Beat classic, On the Road, will finally hit the big screen. Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries; Paris, Je T'Aime) and with a cast of some of Hollywood's biggest stars, including Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams (Julie & Julia, The Fighter), Tom Sturridge, and Viggo Mortensen (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Road), the film will attract new fans who will be inspired by Kerouac's revolutionary masterwork.
 Kerouac Ascending: Memorabilia of the Decade of On the Road by Elbert Lenrow and edited by Katherine H. Burkman.
Kerouac Ascending is a memoir written by Elbert Lenrow about his relationship with Jack Kerouac, whom he taught at the New School in New York when Jack was emerging as a writer, and with Allen Ginsberg, both of whom Lenrow befriended and encouraged. Lenrow writes with sympathy and charm about both writers and their “beat” friends, revealing Kerouac’s seriously academic side by sharing papers he wrote in his course and giving insight about both writers through letters and poems they shared or wrote in Lenrow’s apartment. In her preface, Katherine Burkman, editor and cousin to Lenrow, gives a context for the memoir, expanding on Lenrow’s gifts as a teacher while Lenrow’s niece, Barbara Phillips, adds further insights. Howard Cunnell’s Introduction offers excellent material on the young Kerouac’s development, partly under Lenrow’s tutelage. An appendix of Ginsberg’s handwritten letters to Elbert, typewritten in the memoir, reveals the drama of his own handwriting and the enormous warmth in his relationship with Lenrow over a period of many years.
With an introduction by Howard Cunnell.
Katherine H. Burkman, Professor Emeritus from The Ohio State University, has published widely in the field of modern drama, especially on Harold Pinter: The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter: Its Basis in Ritual, Pinter at Sixty, The Grove press Guide to Harold Pinter and on Samuel Beckett: Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett, The Arrival of Godot: Ritual Patterns in Modern Drama. She has also been active as a playwright, actress, and director. Elbert Lenrow was my cousin and he gave me his manuscript shortly before he died. Jack Kerouac took his course at the New School in New York and often brought along Allen Ginsberg. The three became great friends and Elbert had a profound influence on Kerouac. Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (order page). Date of Publication: Nov 2010. ISBN: 978-1-4438-2416-3.
The Awakener:
A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties
by Helen Weaver
The Awakener is Helen Weaver's long awaited memoir of her adventures with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, and other wild characters from the New York City of the fifties and sixties. The sheltered but rebellious daughter of bookish Midwestern parents, Weaver survived a repressive upbringing in the wealthy suburbs of Scarsdale and an early divorce to land in Greenwich Village just in time for the birth of rock 'n' roll—and the counterculture movement known as the Beat Generation. Shortly after her arrival Kerouac, Ginsberg, and company—old friends of her roommate—arrive on their doorstep after a non-stop drive from Mexico. Weaver and Kerouac fall in love on sight, and Kerouac moves in.
Weaver recreates the excitement of a time when things were radically changing and shows us what it was like living with an eccentric genius at the turning point of his life. Eventually she asks Jack to leave but they remain friends, and over the years her respect for his writing grows even as Kerouac's reputation undergoes a gradual transition from enfant terrible to American icon. She comes to realize that by writing On the Road he woke America up—along with her—from the long dream of the fifties. And the Buddhist philosophy that once struck her as Jack's excuse for doing whatever he liked because "nothing is real, it's all a dream" eventually becomes her own.
| Publisher City Lights Publishers |
| ISBN-10 0872865053 |
| ISBN-13 9780872865051 |
| Publication Date October 2009 |
| List Price $16.95 |
Book Review by Dan Barth
In Jack Kerouac’s Desolation Angels the narrator tells about a young woman with whom he has a love affair after returning to New York from Mexico: “I was about to come across a belly of wheat myself which would make me forget about death for a few months—her name was Ruth Heaper.”
The “belly of wheat” is a Biblical reference, Song of Solomon 7:2. The fictional Ruth Heaper is based on Kerouac’s friend and lover, Helen Weaver. Now, more than fifty years later, Weaver has published her memoir of their affair. She writes with warmth and candor about Kerouac, the fifties and quite a bit more.
On her web page (www.helenweaver.com) Weaver explains her reasons for titling this book The Awakener:
“First, a silly one: because when Jack lived with me, I couldn’t get enough sleep. But on another level, his books–especially On the Road–woke up an entire generation, from the long dream of the fifties. And through books like The Dharma Bums, Jack played an important role in introducing Buddhism to America. That was a major wake-up call, for the very word Buddha is Sanskrit for “awakened one.” Finally, there’s an astrological reason which is way too technical to go into here, but it has to do with the prominence in the charts of the whole Beat generation of the planet Uranus, which rules revolution and art, and is known to astrologers as ‘the Awakener.’ So I guess you could say the title–and maybe the whole book–was written in the stars.”
Full disclosure time: I met Helen Weaver at a Beat literature conference at NYU in 1994. We recognized each other as fellow Kerowackos and shared a beer, laughs and conversation. So I can make no claim to objectivity with regard to this book. For me it resonates perfectly. Weaver expresses beautifully not just a love and appreciation for Kerouac but an approach to life that I happen to share—that it is beautiful and ugly, happy and sad all at the same time, and that much can be made right by patience, kindness, forgiveness, and a sense of humor properly applied.
Continued... Read Dan Barth's Full Review here.
For more information, visit www.helenweaver.com.
 And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
By William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
The legendary unpublished collaboration between William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, a hard-boiled crime novel about a shocking murder at the dawn of the Beat Generation
On August 14, 1944, Lucien Carr, a friend of William S. Burroughs from St. Louis, stabbed a man named David Kammerer with a Boy Scout knife and dropped the body into the Hudson River. Kammerer had long fawned over the younger Carr, making romantic advances that, for a time, it seemed Carr didn’t mind. But after six years as the older man’s protégé, either Carr had had enough or he was forced to defend himself. The next day, his clothes stained with blood, he went to his friends Bill Burroughs and Jack Kerouac for help. Doing so, he caught them up in the crime. The two were arrested for failing to inform the police, and a few months later, they were drawn to the crime in a different way.
Something about the murder, with its echoes of Verlaine and Rimbaud, captivated the Beats. Burroughs and Kerouac decided to collaborate on a fictionalization of the events of the summer of 1944, a crime novel in the style of Dashiell Hammett or James M. Cain. They alternated chapters, Burroughs writing as Will Dennison, a bartender steeped in the criminal underworld and Kerouac as Mike Ryko, a hard-drinking merchant marine in dirty chinos. For the title, they settled on a line from a news report they had heard one night while sitting in a bar near Columbus Circle. A circus in Hartford, Connecticut, had caught fire and the radio announcer ended his piece by stating “and the hippos were boiled in their tanks.”
At this point, the writers were far from famous. Burroughs had written next to nothing, and Kerouac, though he had churned out hundreds of thousands of words, had met with little success—it would be five years before his first novel was published. When they submitted the novel to publishers, it was rejected by all, and sat unpublished for decades.
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is an incomparable artifact from the early days of the Beats, a fascinating piece of American literary history, and a remarkable window into the personal lives of two hugely influential writers at the very beginning of their careers. It is also an engaging novel, a hypnotic descent into lust and obsession, drugs and alcohol, art and outsized dreams.
ISBN: 0-8021-1876-3
978-0-8021-1876-9
Price: US $24.00 * in Canada CAN $26.50
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 224 pp
Nov. 2008 (Hardcover)
|
Wake Up - A Life of the Buddha
by Jack Kerouac
Though raised Catholic, in the early 1950s Jack Kerouac became fascinated with Buddhism, an interest that would have a profound impact on his ideas of spirituality and their expression in his writing from Mexico City Blues to The Dharma Bums. Published for the first time in book form, Wake Up is Kerouac’s retelling of the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who as a young man abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong search for Enlightenment. As a compendium of the teachings of the Buddha, Wake Up is a profound meditation on the nature of life, desire, wisdom, and suffering. Distilled from a wide variety of canonical scriptures, Wake Up serves as both a concise primer on the concepts of Buddhism and as an insightful and deeply personal document of Kerouac’s evolving beliefs. It is the work of a devoted spiritual follower of the Buddha who also happened to be one of the twentieth century’s most influential novelists. Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha will be essential reading for the legions of Jack Kerouac fans and for anyone who is curious about the spiritual principles of one of the world’s great religions.
James R. Kuhlman - Library Journal There is surely no want for works treating the life of the Buddha; biographies and fictionalized accounts abound, including many better than this as literature (e.g., Herman Hesse's Siddhartha), as history (e.g., Karen Armstrong's Buddha), or as theology. Nevertheless, fans of the Beats and students of Kerouac in particular will welcome, long after his death in 1969, this apparent first publication, in book form, of his interpretation of "Gotama Buddha's life as represented in Asvhaghosha's 'Buddha-Charita' and in Narasu's 'Life of the Historic Buddha' with adornments and re-arrangements." Kerouac and his fellow Beats identified closely with those inhabiting society's margins. Buddhism's inherent sympathies doubtless influenced Kerouac in his explorations of the lives of the downtrodden in his On the Road and The Subterraneans, evidenced by a substantial literature including Ellis Amburn's Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac. Though not a particularly pleasant or straightforward read, as the Buddha occasionally sounds a bit like Yoda, this book is highly recommended to join Kerouac's oeuvre, including his other book on Buddhism, Some of the Dharma, in academic libraries and the literature collections of larger public libraries.
Book: Hardcover | 5.51 x 8.26in | 160 pages | ISBN 9780670019571 | 18 Sep 2008 | Viking Adult | 18 - AND UP Cloth, 0-8093-2883-6' $35.00
|
 What's Your Road, Man? Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac's On the Road
Edited by Hilary Holladay and Robert Holton
The ten essays in this groundbreaking compilation cover a broad range of topics, employing a variety of approaches, including theoretical interpretations and textual and comparative analysis, to investigate such issues as race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as the novel's historical and literary contexts. What's Your Road, Man? Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" illustrates the richness of the critical work currently being undertaken on this vital American narrative.
Combining essays from renowned Kerouac experts and emerging scholars, What's Your Road, Man? draws on an enormous amount of research into the literary, social, cultural, biographical, and historical contexts of Kerouac's canonical novel. Since its publication in 1957, On the Road has remained in print and has continued to be one of the most widely read twentieth-century American novels.
978-0-8093-2883-3
240 pages, 6 x 9.
Beat Studies / Literary Criticism
 The Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
A deluxe edition of Kerouac’s masterpiece on the 50th anniversary of its first publication
First published in 1958, a year after On the Road had put the Beat generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac’s most powerful, influential, and bestselling novels. The story focuses on two untrammeled young Americans—mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer—whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco’s Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras to Ray’s sixty-day vigil by himself atop Desolation Peak in Washington State. Primary to this evocative and soulful novel is an honest, exuberant search for an affirmative way of life in the midst of the atomic age. In many ways, The Dharma Bums also presaged the environmental, back-to-the-land, and American Buddhist movements of the 1960s and beyond.
Book: Hardcover | 5.98 x 9.01in | 224 pages | ISBN 9780670019939 | 18 Sep 2008
Konversations with Kerouac by Rod Burke - American literary sage Jack Kerouac awakened the wanderlust of a generation. Over 50 years later, the search for "beat" and "it" lives on. From Kazakhstan, Rod Burke found Kerouac's spirit alive and well. In the middle of nowhere, through stifling summers, subzero winters, bloodthirsty mosquitoes and complete chaos. everything he was looking for. was always there inside himself. That is beat.
Hardcover: 108 pages
Publisher: WingSpan Press (April 28, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1595942742
ISBN-13: 978-1595942746
Ecstasy
of the Beats - On the Road to Understanding
By David Creighton
Who were the beats? Not
the sandal-clad "beatniks" of popular lore but dedicated
writers, experimenters, skit improvisers, theorizers,
hedonists, close friends, bisexual free lovers, shapers
of the future. The beats hung out at Columbia university
and cheap Times Square cafeterias, devouring ideas.
David Creighton shows how the world has taken up their
message. In Ecstasy of the Beats he gives a
fresh portrait of Carolyn Cassady, "Queen of the Beats,"
and of the four major Beat writers.
Kerouac's
On the
Road gave a pattern of adventure to restless youth, Allen
Ginsberg donned a prophet's robe by writing
Howl,
William Burroughs warned against control mechanisms in
Naked Lunch,
and Neal Cassady's high-energy life made him an icon of
freedom. Traveling widely to see where they lived,
Creighton enriches the meaning of
On the
Road and
other Beat classics. He invites the reader on the Beats'
journey toward ever-deeper levels of understanding and
provides interesting insight into Kerouac’s
French-Canadian roots.
Price: $29.99, ISBN: 9781550027341,
Format: Paperback
Publication Date: October 31, 2007
Publisher:
Dundurn Press
|
Kerouac - Road Novels 1957–1960 by Jack
Kerouac
On the Road • The Dharma Bums • The
Subterraneans • Tristessa • Lonesome Traveler •
journal selections
"In the
beginning, there was Kerouac and he was good.
Shiningly, brilliantly, audaciously good—so good
that one runs out of adjectives that might do
him justice, so good that rereading him brings a
sense of relief that the sentences hold up on
their own.... [Kerouac's work] marked the
articulation of a new voice far more interesting
for what the author had to say and the way in
which he said it than for the technical
breakthroughs that it was heralded—and
scorned—for at the time."—San Francisco
Chronicle
The Library of America,
ISBN: 978-1-59853-012-4
864 pages
List price: $35.00
|
 Reflections
upon the 50th Anniversary of Jack
Kerouac’s On The Road
Edited by Ron Whitehead and
Robert M. Zoschke.
Published in Heaven Books.
Louisville, Kentucky, 2007 175 pp, Illustrated, $25
Reflections upon the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s
ON THE ROAD. Edited by Ron Whitehead and Robert M. Zoschke. Published in
Heaven Books. Louisville, Kentucky, 2007 175 pp, Illustrated, $25 The
book is available here (http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/
)
The Beat never stopped with the death of Kerouac. Jack left the American
road a little early, hit the dead-end waiting for us all, but left the
roadmap in book after book, poem after poem, word after word humming
down the centerline of every highway leading us on.
This book is by Ron Whitehead, Leader of the SOUTHERN BEAT BRANCH
(Kentucky) world-class performer-poet of substance, sass, sagacity; and
co-editor, Robert M. Zoschke, wise/true-talkin’ poet with hard and fast
lines on Chicago streets and Northern climes, is testament to Time’s
tick-tock Beat, Kerouac’s to be-continued connections…essays. photos,
artwork, stories and poems. 46 contributors, each with his/her own
roadmap to the journey within.
For openers, venerable Ferlinghetti (High Priest to a
life writ to move, follow your own directions) is on the front cover—a
picture-poem to Neal & Jack; the back cover, by veteran chronicler of
the Beat, Christopher Felver. filmmaker and photographer.
Inside, cover to cover…Dan Barth, Anne Waldman, t. kilgore splake, Jerry
Kamstra, Carolyn Cassidy, Michael Madsen, Davis Amram, Gerald Nicosia,
Frank Messina, Attila Gyenis…to name but a few of the Beat persuasion,
who know the words, the way, and the music…
Some
Jack Kerouac books
published or currently available at City Lights (as of 2008)
 By Jack Kerouac
Book of Dreams
Pomes All Sizes
The Scripture of
the Golden Eternity
Scattered Poems
Trip Trap with
Albert Saijo & Lew Welch
Heaven and Other
Poems
Good Blonde &
Others (includes cityCityCITY)
and more...
Also, check
out...
 You'll be Okay,
My Life with Jack Kerouac by Edie Kerouac-Parker
The FIrst Third
by Neal Cassady
City Lights
Bookstore
A Literary Meeting Place Since 1953,
City Lights is a San Francisco landmark, internationally known for
its expert selection of books and for its commitment to free
intellectual inquiry. Here you can check out the events calendar,
browse a selection of featured books, new releases and recommended
titles from the City Lights staff, sign up to receive City Lights
newsletters, and learn a bit of the history of City Lights.
For any immediate questions or
concerns, see their
contact page or give them a call at (415) 362-8193 or go
to the website at
http://www.citylights.com/bookstore/
 Beat
sound, Beat vision - The Beat
spirit and popular song
by Laurence Coupe
"In a series of articulate essays Coupe
stretches out his ideas and linkages, investigating who inspired who,
casting Alan Watts in a central role alongside the omnipotent William
Blake. Some of Coupe's theories are contentious but from this uniquely
English perspective they are absolutely thought provoking. "
Brian Dalton, Beat Scene Magazine
This book
reveals the ideas behind the Beat vision which influenced the Beat sound
of the songwriters who followed on from them.
Having explored the thinking of
Alan Watts, who coined the term ‘Beat Zen’, and who influenced the
counterculture which emerged out of the Beat movement, it celebrates
Jack Kerouac as a writer in pursuit of a ‘beatific’ vision. On this
basis, the book goes on to explain the relevance of Kerouac and his
friends Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder to songwriters who emerged in the
1960s.
Not only are new, detailed
readings of the lyrics of the Beatles and of Dylan given, but the range
and depth of the Beat legacy within popular song is indicated by way of
an overview of some important innovators – Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell,
Leonard Cohen, Donovan, the Incredible String Band, Van Morrison and
Nick Drake.
Contents
Introduction
1. 'This is IT': Alan Watts and the visionary tradition
2. 'Go moan for man': Jack Kerouac and the beatific vision
3. 'Vision music': Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg
4. 'Within you … without you': the Beatles and Allen Ginsberg
5. 'Eco-Zen', or 'a heaven in a wild flower': from Gary Snyder to
Nick Drake
Postscript
Index
Laurence Coupe is Senior Lecturer in English at Manchester
Metropolitan University
Publication date: June 30, 2007, 240pp
ISBN: 9780719071126 (£45.00)
|
On The Road -
50 Years Old (September 2007)
Several books are coming
out in celebration of this monumental event.
On the Road: The Original Scroll
The Original Scroll
Jack Kerouac - Author
Howard Cunnell - Editor/introduction
Joshua Kupetz - Introduction by
George Mouratidis - Introduction by
Penny Vlagopoulos - Introduction by
The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road,
published word for word (almost) as Kerouac originally composed it.
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was
to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not
until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West
Twentieth Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full
draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long,
single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing
paper that he later taped together to form a 120 foot
scroll, this document is among the most significant,
celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary
American literary history. It represents the first full
expression of Kerouac’s revolutionary aesthetic, the
identifiable point at which his thematic vision and
narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of
creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital
experimentation in the American literary, musical, and
visual arts in the post-World War II period.
It was not until more than six years later, and several new
drafts, that Viking published, in 1957, the novel known to
us today. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of
On the Road, Viking will publish the 1951 scroll in a
standard book format. The differences between the two
versions are principally ones of significant detail and
altered emphasis. The scroll is slightly longer and has a
heightened linguistic virtuosity and a more sexually
frenetic tone. It also uses the real names of Kerouac’s
friends instead of the fictional names he later invented for
them. The transcription of the scroll was done by Howard
Cunnell who, along with Joshua Kupetz, George Mouratidis,
and Penny Vlagopoulos, provides a critical introduction that
explains the fascinating compositional and publication
history of On the Road and anchors the text in its
historical, political, and social context.
Book: Hardcover | 5.98 x 9.01in | 416 pages | ISBN
9780670063550 | 16 Aug 2007 | Viking Adult | Adult
$25.95
 On
the Road: 50th Anniversary Edition
50th Anniversary Edition
Jack Kerouac - Author
A 50th anniversary hardcover edition of Kerouac’s classic
novel that defined a generation
Few novels have had as profound an impact on American
culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of
1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the
mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic
novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be
“beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians,
artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the
book as the event that “set them free.” Based on Kerouac’s
adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the
story of two friends whose four cross-country road trips are
a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a
mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon, and imbued
with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity,
and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the
quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book
that changed American literature and changed anyone who has
ever picked it up. This hardcover edition commemorates the
fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of the novel
in 1957 and will be a must-have for any literature lover.
Book: Hardcover | 5.98 x 9.01in | 320 pages | ISBN
9780670063260 | 16 Aug 2007 | Viking Adult | Adult $24.95
 Why
Kerouac Matters
The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think)
John Leland - Author
The author of Hip: The History reveals the lessons of
the original hipster bible, On the Road
Legions of youthful Americans have taken On the Road
as a manifesto for rebellion and an inspiration to hit the
road. But there is much more to the novel than that.
In Why Kerouac Matters, John Leland embarks on a wry,
insightful, and playful discussion of the novel, arguing
that it still matters because at its core it is a book that
is full of lessons about how to grow up. Leland’s focus is
on Sal Paradise, the Kerouac alter ego, who has always been
overshadowed by his fictional running buddy Dean Moriarty.
Leland examines the lessons that Paradise absorbs and
dispenses on his novelistic journey to manhood, and how
those lessons— about work and money, love and sex, art and
holiness—still reverberate today. He shows how On the
Road is a primer for male friendship and the cultivation
of traditional family values, and contends that the
stereotype of the two wild and crazy guys obscures the
novel’s core themes of the search for atonement, redemption,
and divine revelation. Why Kerouac Matters offers a
new take on Kerouac’s famous novel, overturning many
misconceptions about it and making clear the themes Kerouac
was trying to impart.
Book: Hardcover | 5.51 x 8.26in | 224
pages | ISBN 9780670063253 | 16 Aug 2007 | Viking Adult |
Adult $23.95
 The
Portable Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac - Author
Ann Charters - Editor
The definitive Kerouac collection—now in Penguin Classics
To coincide with the 50th anniversary celebration of On the
Road, Penguin Classics republishes this landmark collection.
The Portable Jack Kerouac made clear the ambition and
accomplishment of Kerouac’s “Legend of Duluoz”—the story of
his life told in his many “true story” novels. Featuring
selections from Kerouac’s autobiographical fiction, as well
as from his poetry, criticism, Buddhist writings, and
letters, The Portable Jack Kerouac offers a total immersion
in an American master.
Book: Paperback | 8.26 x 5.23in | 656
pages | ISBN 9780143105060 | 28 Aug 2007 | Penguin Classic |
Adult $18.00
|
 The
Beats: From Kerouac to Kesey, an Illustrated Journey through
the Beat Generation
This year marks the 50th
anniversary of the publication of On the Road, the
defining book of the Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac wrote his
masterpiece in one frenzied three-week period in 1951 on the
infamous 119-foot scroll, which has been “on the road” touring
the nation since 2004, slated to continue on through spring
2008. The scroll will also be published in its original,
unedited version in book form for the very first time in 2007.
Tying into the anniversary and the resurgence of the Beat
movement in our collective cultural consciousness is our
lavishly illustrated book The Beats, a spectacular record
of that most explosive period, when the conservative blandness
of ’50s America gave way to the artistic, social, and sexual
liberation of the ’60s. With over 200 illustrations, many rarely
seen before, the book tells the story of the Beat Generation
from its subterranean beginnings in New York and San Francisco
to world-wide acclaim. Set against the backdrop of seedy student
pads, smoky jazz cellars, and-most crucially-the open road, it’s
a story of a rebellion that challenged society’s attitudes
towards sex, drugs, and freedom of speech. Following the
turbulent saga of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs,
Neal Cassady, and the other Beats via reckless love affairs,
obscenity trials, murder cases, and press vilification, to media
celebrity and the “Beatnik” craze that followed, their story
represents the evolution of the counterculture from hipsters to
hippies. Featuring a wealth of first-hand quotes, archive
documentation, and exclusive interview material with Beat wife,
muse, and chronicler Carolyn Cassady, The Beats is a
timely celebration of a seminal-and often neglected-era in
modern popular culture.
 Beatific
Souls: Jack Kerouac's on the Road
Jack Kerouac on
the Road
by
Gewirtz, Isaac
ISBN: 1857594975
Hardback
Scala Publishers
Published November 2007
Beatific Soul draws on the
New York Public Library's vast collection of Kerouac's
manuscripts, notebooks, diaries, journals, photographs, and
artworks-- many never published before. The book discusses
Kerouac's formative years and early influences, his deep
interest in Buddhist philosophy, and his evolving theories about
the job of writing. At the core of the book are two
chapter that trace the genesis and development of On The Road.
The reader will see that although the famous 'scroll' my have
indeed been typed in three weeks (in 1951) it was the work of a
craftsman who worked on the book for more than four years. Isaac
Gerwitz, the author, observes, "Kerouac...at his best, dances on
the edge of a cliff. Those who have attempted to follow his
example have fallen -- it requires talent, nerve and
intelligence to dance furiously at the edge of the known."
Illustrated
throughout with more than 125 reproductions of diaries,
journals, typescripts, and paintings by Kerouac, as well as
family photographs and striking portraits of Kerouac and his
contemporaries, Beatific Soul is a fitting tribute to its
subject on the fiftieth anniversary of his pioneering and
best-known work.
 Illuminated
Poems
Second Edition
Allen
Ginsberg
Illustrated by Eric Drooker
ISBN-10:
1-56025-934-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-56025-934-3
$19.95 ($22.50 Cdn)
Thunder Mouth Press Trade Paper
Marking the fiftieth anniversary of "Howl," Illuminated Poems
celebrates the collaboration of two visionaries of different
generations: Allen Ginsberg, the quint
essential Beat and America’s
best-known poet, and Eric Drooker, the New Yorker cover artist whose
provocative, apocalyptic images add a new dimension and urgency to
Ginsberg’s poems.
Illuminated Poems contains two works only available in
this volume, an introduction by Ginsberg, and thirty-four poems from
1948 through the present day, including the poem “Howl” in its
entirety. Perhaps the single poem that captures the anguish and
aspirations of the Beat Generation, “Howl” was originally published
fifty years ago and i
s one of the most widely read poems of the
twentieth century.
 Beat
Angel -
release on DVD (2006)
The film is about “the spirit of Jack Kerouac.”
On the 30th anniversary of Kerouac's death, his
angelic spirit (played by Vincent Balestri) returns to
earth in the abandoned body of a street bum. “Jack” drops in at
a poetry slam held in honor of his “death day,” and backed by a
jazz trio, explains the meaning of “bop spontaneous prose” and
“speaking the truth.” He begins to transform the lives of three
people: Gerard Tripp (played by Frank Tabbita), a
secretive writer who locks his manuscripts away; Mary (Amy
Humphrey), a shy young writer; and Carol (Lisa Niemi),
a former painter turned bartender.
A popular
festival selection across the U.S., garnering two award
nominations at The Method Fest in Los Angeles, and
winning the Wine Country Film Festival’s
Special Prize of the Fest.
Available
on DVD. DVD features: 19 minute video of
Kerouac: The Essence of
Jack; Writers
Commentary with Balestri, Boyle, Tabbita and Allred; 12
chapters; deleted scenes; in English with French, Spanish,
Italian and English subtitles. Film running time 99
minutes, color NTSC, all Regions. Available October
21, 2006 through
www.BeatAngel.com,
www.FilmBaby.com, www.Amazon.com,
www.Kerouac.com and
other selected outlets. Also find Beat Angel at My
Space:
www.myspace.com/beatangelthemovie
Angelic Beginnings
By
Reda Tipton
It was Edie Kerouac, Jack's first wife, who urged actor Vincent
Balestri to portray Kerouac on stage. The resulting show,
"Kerouac: The Essence of Jack," ultimately inspired the film
"Beat Angel."
Vincent was introduced to Edie in 1979 while directing a play at
one of Jack's old hangouts, the Punch & Judy Theatre, in Grosse
Pointe, Michigan. Edie and Vincent hit it off immediately,
spending weeks together, with Edie telling stories about her
life with Jack at the heart of the New York bohemian scene. She
shared tapes of Jack reading, impossible to find at the time,
and urged Vincent to play Jack on stage.
"Kerouac: The Essence of Jack" began performances in the early
'80s and toured periodically for the next 17 years, playing
across the U.S. and Canada, including San Francisco, Chicago,
and Jack's hometown, Lowell, Massachusetts. Along the way,
Vincent had the opportunity to meet a number of Jack's old
friends and family, and the show evolved accordingly.
By 1993, just as Vincent was ready to retire "Essence," he was
contacted by Seattle actor Frank Tabbita. Frank was very
persuasive, and the show soon began the first of three
successful runs at the Velvet Elvis Theatre in Seattle.
By the time the show returned to Seattle for the third time in
1996, Frank knew he had a mission: how to translate the
'essence' of the piece to film. "Essence" was a beautiful and
cutting-edge piece of theatre, but it was still biography. The
events of Jack's life have been well told. Both Frank & Vincent
felt that a film should convey what the author's life stood for.
One day while attending the Seattle Film Festival, Frank found
himself sitting next to filmmaker Randy Allred. They began
talking script ideas, and soon the project was off and running.
The pair later recruited writer/producer Bruce Boyle and
together with Vincent they created the film "Beat Angel."
 Poetry
On Record: 98 Poets Read Their Work (1888-2006)
is an engrossing collection of poems read by the people who
wrote them, from the dawn of sound recording to the current day.
Over the course of four CDs and an info-packed book, it tells the
story of the past 120 years of poetry in English, from Romanticism
(Dylan Thomas) to Modernism (T.S. Eliot), from the Harlem
Renaissance (Langston Hughes) to Black Arts (Amiri Baraka), from
rhyme and meter (Alfred, Lord Tennyson) to free verse (Adrienne
Rich), and beyond. And of course, it includes Kerouac.
Equally important, it allows listeners to
understand exactly how the poets intended their poems to be read
aloud. Poetry On Record is the most comprehensive collection of its
kind and is a must-have for any fan of poetry, or for anyone who
wants an expertly chosen overview as a starting point. See the
complete track listing.
| Format: |
CD |
| Catalog No.: |
826663-10029 |
| List Price: |
$49.98 |
| Release Date: |
04/18/06 |
Book of Sketches
by Jack Kerouac
Introduction by George Condo
In 1952 and
1953 as he wandered around America, Jack Kerouac jotted down
spontaneous prose poems, or "sketches" as he called them, on
small notebooks that he kept in his shirt pockets. The poems
recount his travels—New York, North Carolina, Lowell
(Massachusetts, Kerouac’s birthplace), San Francisco,
Denver, Kansas, Mexico—observations, and meditations on art
and life. The poems are often strung together so that over
the course of several of them, a little story—or
travelogue—appears, complete in itself.
Published for
the first time, Book of Sketches offers a
luminous, intimate, and transcendental glimpse of one of the
most original voices of the twentieth century at a key time
in his literary and spiritual development.
Book: Paperback | 8.26 x 5.23in
| 304 pages | ISBN 9780142002155 | 04 Apr 2006 | Penguin
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780142002155,00.html#
|
 Walking
the London Scene -
Five Walks in the
footsteps of the Beat Generation including links to the Beatles by Sydney
R Davies.
The 'Beat Generation' were a well traveled crew. Best
known for crisscrossing the US in search of adventures, 'kicks', God and
each other, they also ventured out to far flung corners of the globe.
They visited London over a period stretching from
participation in World War II to readings and signings as late as 1998 -
Burroughs actually lived in the city for a number of years.
The most frequent visits took place in the late 50s and
60s, where they met the writers of bohemian Soho and participated in the
early days of the underground movement, including intriguing
collaborations with people like Paul McCartney and Barry Miles, publisher
of International Times (IT).
These five London walks concentrate on the main
protagonists - William S Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac,
Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Distances and approximate timings are
given, plus comprehensive directions and sketch maps. Each walk ends with
a recommended pub or two where weary legs can be rested and a toast raised
to the writers who inspired a generation.
144 pages, published March 28, 2006. Paperback, ISBN
1-84530-03-00. Order from your local bookstore.
Website:
http://thegrimsaypress.co.uk/biblio/1845300300.htm
 STASHOU
and YASHOU—a Photographic Art Portfolio (Stanley
Twardowicz and Jack Kerouac)
Time has revealed, that an impromptu and
spirited five-minute session of photographs would indeed become recognized
as a historic moment in the unconditional friendship that existed between
Stanley Twardowicz and Jack Kerouac.
On February 18th, 2006,
TheDeepArchives Inc. will officially release a Special Limited Edition
Portfolio conceived and produced by Paul Kowalchuk: STASHOU and
YASHOU—a Photographic Art Portfolio paying special tribute to an
unparalleled friendship between American Abstract Expressionist Painter
and Photographer, STANLEY TWARDOWICZ, and the “King of the Beats,”
JACK KEROUAC.
Recognized for its artistic merit,
STASHOU and YASHOU has been selected by Kate Kelly,
Director/Curator for the prestigious Art League of Long Island (ALLI),
and co-curator, Nancy Olivier, to be included in the exhibition “On
Paper/Of Paper,”, which
opens on Saturday, Februry18th with an opening reception on Sunday the
19th, 2-5pm at the Art League of Long Island—Jeanie Tengelsen Gallery,
107 East Deer Park Rd., in Dix Hills, New York.
The portfolio is imaginatively designed by
Lillian Dodson, whose contributions as a Potter, Sculptor, Painter,
and Fine Arts Craftsperson have earned her a reputation as a distinguished
and well-respected artist. The portfolio also contains a poignant essay
written expressly for this release by noted Kerouac expert, Gerald
Nicosia. STASHOU and YASHOU also features a
hand-selected original Moving Color painting by Mr.
Twardowicz—the artist Kerouac once said “paints with kissing
colors.” The portfolio is limited to a signed edition of 250 copies, five
(5) press proofs, and five (5) copies reserved for institutional
benefaction, and has been entirely handcrafted by Amanda Thackray,
a talented and gifted artist who specializes in the art of book making.
Paul Kowalchuk,
who conceived and produced STASHOU and YASHOU, states that
the portrait photographs taken by Twardowicz “contain a powerful
irony.” Said Kowalchuk, “the impromptu session was the first time [in
years of friendship] the photographer turned his lens on the Beat poet,
and on that same day, was the last time Stanley saw Jack alive.” The
portfolio also celebrates Twardowicz’s career as a fine art photographer
whose portraits, landscapes, and abstract photographs are found in many
private, and significant institutional collections—Edward Steichen
selected six of Twardowicz’s photos for the Museum of Modern Art’s (MOMA)
permanent collection.
Born in 1917, Twardowicz’s career as a
painter began some 65 years ago in Detroit, Michigan. Frequent solo
exhibits during the late1940’s and early 1950’s, and a teaching position
at Ohio State University, kept Twardowicz busy until relocating, in 1952,
to Plainfield, NJ. In early 1953, Twardowicz began frequenting the Cedar
Tavern in NYC. It is here where Twardowicz befriended fellow artists such
as Franz Kline, Jackson Pollack, Matsumi Kanemitsu, and where he became
first acquainted with Jack Kerouac. Twardowicz’s accomplishments as
painter gained national attention, when in 1956, the artist received a
Guggenheim Fellowship and made the cover for Art in America Magazine
in 1958. In short, Twardowicz’s work resides in the permanent collections
of the MOMA, The Hirshhorn Museum, Newark Museum, Butler Institute of
American Art, Los Angeles County Museum, Smithsonian Institute, Heckscher
Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, etc., and is found in many institutional,
corporate, and private collections. In 2001, Twardowicz was given his
second museum retrospective at the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona; the first
was at the Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY, 1974.
The
portfolio is sold exclusively through TheDeepArchives event webpage:
www.Twardowicz.com. Due to
pre-release demand, reservations for each portfolio are recommended and
can be secured by calling TheDeepArchives Gallery at 973.786.6360.
For more information about the Portfolio
please contact Paul Kowalchuk at
Twardowiczfolio@aol.com
Back To Top
 Beat
Generation by
Jack Kerouac, Introduction by A. M. Homes,
Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005.
Description: Written in 1957, the same year that On the
Road was first published, and set in 1953, Beat Generation
portrays an authentic and alternate 1950s America. Kerouac's
characters are working-class men and women—a step away from vagrants,
but not a big step. Their dialogue positively sings, suggesting jazz
riffs in their rhythm and content, and Kerouac, like a master
composer, arranges it to magical effect. Here is the heart and soul of
the beat mentality, the zeitgeist that blossomed over the decades and
eventually culminated in the counter-culture of 1960s America. [Robert
Frank's movie, Pull My Daisy is based on one of the acts.]
Beat Generation is a play about tension, about friendship,
and about karma—what it is and how you get it. It begins one fine
morning with a few friends, honest laborers some of them, some close
to being down-and-out, passing around a bottle of wine. It ends with a
kind of satori-like reaffirmation of the power of friendship, of doing
good through not doing, and the intrinsic worth of the throwaway
little exchanges that make up our lives.
[publication date Fall 2005], 112pp, $18.00 Trade
Cloth. Back To Top |
Jack's Book by Barry Gifford and
Lawrence Lee (re-issue), Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005. Back in print,
here is Jack Kerouac's story as recorded through the words of his friends
and associates. The book interviews prophets, musicians, poets,
socialites, and working people who knew Jack. Originally published in
1978. [publication date of this edition, October 17, 2005]
304 pages, $14.95
Back To Top
Empty
Phantoms: Interviews and encounters with Jack Kerouac edited by Paul Maher
Jr. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005.
A new collection of interviews gathered
from printed, recorded, and filmed sources. In many instances, the
interviews are transcribed from original tapes and are either unabridged,
like the famous "Paris Review" interview in which the journal was excised
for space constraints, or unexpurgated, such as in the infamous Northport
Library interview, which had been edited to avoid issues of libel and
charges of anti-Semitism. Editor Paul Maher, one of the leading young
lions of Kerouac scholarship, has scoured newspapers to glean interviews
unseen for decades.
Although many top-notch journalists, from Mike Wallace to William F.
Buckley, conducted the interviews, it is Kerouac who dominates the
proceedings, with his energy, wit, passion, anger, astute insights,
playfulness, literary integrity, and searching spirituality. Best of all,
the interviews are replete with Kerouacisms like "walking on water wasn't
built in a day, wisdom is heartless," and "pity dogs and forgive men,"
which have been a cherished aspect of Kerouac's literature.
[publication date November 7, 2005] 352 pages,
$15.95
Back To Top
 The
Beat Face of God: The Beat Generation as Spirit Guides by Stephen D.
Edington, with a foreword by David Amram
This book is an exploration of some of the
underlying spiritual and religious currents found in the writings and
lives of a loose constellation of writers and poets who came together in
America after World War II, and came to be known as the Beat Generation
writers. Among their more prominent figures were Jack Kerouac, Allen
Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, to
name just a few.
Writing from the perspective of a liberal
religious minister (Unitarian Universalist) and a Beat Generation scholar,
Rev. Stephen Edington expands upon, and delves into, Jack Kerouac's
contention that the Beat Generation was a religious generation. These
writers and poets, each in his or her own way, were articulating and
setting forth an "alternative spirituality" in the face of the prevailing
cultural ethos of the America of the 1950s.
This is not primarily, however, a literary
review of a group of writers from over a half-century ago. Their work is
as powerful today as it was in their day, especially for those pursuing a
spiritual path of their own. Edington weaves much of the spiritual
journeys of the Beats into the evolution of his own spirituality.
Also, the ways in which the Beats
challenged the culture and politics of America in the 1950s resonates
strongly in today's post-9/11 America as well, as this book's concluding
chapter demonstrates.
[published 2005, 146 pages; quality trade
paperback (softcover); catalogue #05-0269; ISBN 1-4120-5374-9; US$16.25]
Back To Top
 Conversations
with Jack Kerouac edited by Kevin J Hayes. University Press of
Mississippi, 2005.
Features interviews with Jack
Kerouac ranging from 1958 to 1969. Throughout the 1950s, Jack Kerouac was
the acknowledged King of The Beat Generation. And many consider San
Francisco to be the place where he founded that kingdom and reigned. Yet,
in
Conversations with Jack Kerouac (University Press of Mississippi), he
admits that he took that generation of poets and prose writers on the road
all across America. Wherever Kerouac settled, the jazzy improvisation, the
smoky creativity of the Beats flourished.
"San Francisco is the last great city in
America," Kerouac told the San Francisco Examiner in 1958. "After
that no more land. It was there where poets and bums could come and drink
wine in the streets."
But the Beat spirit was first defined in
the New York Times in an essay by John Clellon Holmes, after
being transported from St. Louis, Missouri, according to Kerouac. In a
1959 talk, he tells Al Aronowitz, "Allen [Ginsberg] and I got our start
forming a circle around [William S.] Burroughs and the guys from St.
Louis--the whole thing really begins in St. Louis."
After visiting the West Coast and middle
America, the King of the Beat Generation ruled over Northport, New York,
on Long Island in the house where Kerouac and his mother, Gabrielle,
lived. He complained to Aronowitz after an interview in Conversations
with Jack Kerouac, "I do not want mention of Northport. I STILL live
there. I do not want carloads of zen beatnik hipsters scouting my yard and
house."
"Prophets howling in the wilderness... That, in
fact, is what the whole beat generation is, if it's anything, prophets
howling against an empty civilization." Jack Kerouac.
[published 2005] 100 pages,
$20 softcover, $50 hardcover
Back To Top
 Kerouac
Rag - Special Neal & Carolyn Issue edited by Alan Griffey
[#3, Spring 2005 issue]
A great little rag of a mag coming out
of the UK. This 124 page issue has an interview with Carolyn Cassady,
articles and reviews of books and events. Back issues of the first two
issues are available for 3 pounds each (about $6), Subscription (2 issues)
USA $25, UK 10 pounds, mail to Alan Griffey, 43 Chatto Road, Torquay,
Devon, TQ1 4HT, England. Email
al@alangriffey.freeserve.co.uk
|
 Departed
Angels -
The Lost Paintings by Jack
Kerouac. Text by Ed Adler.
Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004.
Description: This first-ever collection of Jack Kerouac’s visual
art includes nearly every existing full-color painting collected and
preserved by the Kerouac estate in Lowell, Massachusetts. Also
included are dozens of black-and-white line drawings, sketches, and
facsimile reproductions of Kerouac’s notations from his unpublished
notebooks. In writing, Kerouac’s restless and relentless
experimentation—what he called “spontaneous bop prosody”—pushed
language to the boundaries of meaning. In painting and drawing he
found a complementary means of expression. A friend and admirer of
painters Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, Franz Kline, and Dody
Muller, Kerouac was an ardent and deliberate student who worked to
develop and refine his skills and his conception of the act of
painting—a conception related to the spontaneous composition he had
pioneered in his books. Ed Adler’s essay offers an unprecedented view
of Kerouac, the visual artist. Rich in anecdote and drawing on
extensive quotation from Kerouac’s letters, notebooks, and published
writings, Adler’s essay demonstrates the biographical and thematic
preoccupations common to Kerouac’s writing and painting, especially
Kerouac’s struggle to integrate the two spiritual traditions,
Catholicism and Buddhism, to which he was devoted. No consideration of
Kerouac will be complete without reference to this heretofor- unseen
aspect of his life and work.
Excerpt:
Jack Kerouac took himself seriously as a visual artist and on a number
of occasions told friends he would have been a painter if he wasn’ a
writer. His enthusiasm for art was omnivorous, he drewt, he painted, he
designed covers for his books and as he sketched with words, so he
sketched with images: organized and deliberate but spontaneous, and
supported by typically Kerouac methodically detailed theory.[with 50+
full-color paintings, 50 b&w line drawings and sketches].
[published Fall 2004] 224pages, $26.95 Trade Paper.
|
Windblown World: The Journals
of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 edited by Douglas
Brinkley. Viking Books, 2004.
 Jack
Kerouac is best known through the image he put forth in his
autobiographical novels. Yet it is only his prolific journals, in
which he set down the raw material of his life and thinking, that
reveal to us the real Kerouac--his true, honest, deep, private,
philosophical self.
In Windblown World, distinguished Americanist Douglas
Brinkley has gathered a selection of journal entries from the most
pivotal period of Kerouac's life, 1947-1954. Here is Kerouac as a
hungry young writer finishing his first novel, The Town and City,
while forging crucial friendships with Allen Ginsberg, William S.
Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. Truly a self-portrait of the artist as a
young man, these journals show a sensitive soul charting his own
progress as a writer and responding to his literary forebears. Finally
and perhaps most appealing to Kerouac's legion of fans, the journals
tell of the events that would eventually be immortalized in On the
Road, as Kerouac narrates two trips across the United States and
Mexico and slowly cultivates his idea for a jazz novel. This unique
and indispensable volume is sure to garner major critical attention
and become an integral element of the Beat oeuvre.
Back To Top
|
|
 Neal
Cassady: Collected Letters, 1944-1967, introduction by Carolyn Cassady,
edited by Dave Moore
This collection brings together more than two hundred letters to Kerouac,
Allen Ginsberg, John Clellon Holmes, and other Beat generation luminaries,
as well as correspondence between Neal and his wife, Carolyn. These
amazing letters cover Cassady’s life between the ages of 18 and 41 and
finish just months before his death in February 1968.
 Neal
Cassady is best remembered today as Jack Kerouac’s muse and the basis
for the character “Dean Moriarty” in Kerouac’s classic On The
Road, and as one of Ken Kesey’s merriest of Merry Pranksters,
the driver of the psychedelic bus “Further,” immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This collection brings
together more than two hundred letters to Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, John
Clellon Holmes, and other Beat generation luminaries, as well as
correspondence between Neal and his wife, Carolyn. These amazing letters
cover Cassady’s life between the ages of 18 and 41 and finish just
months before his death in February 1968. Brilliantly edited by Dave
Moore, this unique collection presents the “Soul of the Beat Generation”
in his own words—sometimes touching and tender, sometimes bawdy and
hilarious. Here is the real Neal Cassady—raw and uncut.
[published 2004 by Penguin Books, 476
pages]
Back To Top
 Jack
Kerouac’s Doctor Sax and the Great World Snake
2 Audio CDs with Unabridged Illustrated Screenplay
Jack Kerouac gives free reign to the powers of his soaring imagination
in this previously-unpublished screenplay adaptation of his mystical,
vision-novel Doctor Sax. Basing the haunting tale in true
reflections of his 1930s childhood growing up in the industrial milltown
of Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac spins out a dark cosmology as
“concentrations of evil” gather — vampires, gnomes, spiders, werewolves of
the soul, “leerers at the glad heart of others”— aspiring to destroy
mankind. Doctor Sax — alchemist of the night and friend of the children —
is the caped crusader who stands against the darkness.
Come along on an audio adventure, as young Jacky Duluoz leads you on an
apocalyptic journey to confront the Wizard and the Great World Snake.
“This wild and wonderful new interpretation of Dr. Sax combines
the best of old-fashioned radio storytelling with innovative modern music.
If your imagination is alive you can actually feel Kerouac’s dark
fictional shroud Dr. Sax haunting the banks of the Merrimac River and the
midnight streets of Lowell. A creative triumph, which would have made
Kerouac proud.” — Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Eisenhower
Center
SPECIAL MULTIMEDIA EDITION includes:
• 2 CD audio version of screenplay
• Unabridged original screenplay text
• 74 illustrations by Richard Sala
• Readers include Jim Carroll, Graham Parker, Ellis Paul,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kate Pierson, Bill Janovitz,
Robert Creeley and Robert Hunter.
• Music by Blue Note recording artist John
Medeski
Published by Gallery Six, Fall 2003.
Back To Top
 OFFBEAT:
Collaborating with Kerouac by
David Amram. Thunder's Mouth Press (320 pp.) $22.95
March 2002, ISBN 1-56025-362-2. [Also available
in softcover as of 2005]
The following is from Kirkus Reviews - From composer Amram (Vibrations, not reviewed) Offbeat is a pleasingly
exuberant memoir of wildly creative and encouraging times performing with
Jack Kerouac.
It's not so much an autobiography really as an unpretentious,
freewheeling festival of highly diverting tales: the nights Amram and his
beat buddy spent at the Five Spot and Bickford's and Circle-in-the-Square;
their early improvisations, such as Orizaba 210 Blues; making Pull My Daisy
with Alfred Leslie as their contribution to the New Cinema; the pleasures of
working with lyric artists; the downtown life in New York City, "checking
out old friends, rapping with strangers and hanging out in the style that
was still the major source of Saturday night entertainment." But beyond
telling some good stories, Amram wants to convey what his group of pals was
all about, to get past the Beatniks as a merchandising trend and reveal
their motivations. This never comes across as a lecture; Amram is too
passionate for that, and he has a way with the patter: "We were told we were
offbeat, but we felt we were on the case." Amram serves up Corso, Ginsberg,
Orlovsky, and others as decidedly quirky but generous souls welcoming to the
table everyone who had an open heart. They were looking for "the diamonds in
the sidewalk," always "trying to catch lightning in a bottle," free spirits
who took their creativity seriously, even if some realized too late that
creativity was a "natural gift" that didn't require diving to the bottom of
a bottle. Creative output would be their measure, not the limelight-- or as
Gary Goodrow said, "If you stick to your principals long enough, you can
successfully avoid being fashionable for the rest of your life." Amram
includes stories about shows that used Kerouac material after he had died.
A piece of pure entertainment that also reveals the individuality
of Amram's friends and gives the Beat stereotype its walking papers. (8 b.w.
photos, not seen)
Back To Top
Spirit - A Tribute to Jack Kerouac - Check this
2001 CD with some great music and spoken word, and help support the
Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! committee. With David Amram, Alan Crane,
Lawrence Carradini, Steve Edington, Jim Dunleavy, Meg Smith and other
friends. Available now by sending $15 to: Lowell Celebrates Kerouac!, PO Box 1111, Lowell, MA 01852
|
 Book
of Haikus by Jack Kerouac, edited by Regina Weinreich
A collection of more than 500 haikus that
reveals another side of Kerouac's literary legacy.
[published April 1,
2003, 240 pages, $13.00]
"Above all, a haiku should be very simple and
free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as
airy and graceful as a Vivaldi pastorella." —Jack Kerouac
A
collection highlighting a lesser-known aspect of one of America's
most influential authors, this new collection displays Jack
Kerouac's interest in and mastery of haiku. Experimenting with this
compact poetic genre throughout his career, Kerouac often included
haiku in novels, correspondence, notebooks, journals, sketchbooks,
and recordings. In this collection, Kerouac scholar Regina Weinreich
supplements an incomplete draft of a haiku manuscript found in
Kerouac's archives with a generous selection of Kerouac's other
haiku, from both published and unpublished sources. With more than
500 poems, this is a must-have volume for Kerouac enthusiasts
everywhere.
|
Beat Down to Your Soul - with an introduction and edited by
Ann Charters. Penguin Books, June 5, 2001. $17.00. Poems, essays, memoirs,
notes, protests, attacks, and apologies by the beats and about the beats.
Includes all the usual suspects.
Door Wide Open, a Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958 - by
Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson. Now available in paperback by Penguin Books.
(June 5, 2001, $13.00) Gathers the letters and postcards which Kerouac and
Glassman (now Johnson) exchanged.
The following beat related books are published by SIU Press, call
(800) 346-2681 to order or visit your local independent bookstore.
Kerouac, The Word and the Way, Prose Artist as Spiritual Quester by Ben Giamo. "The book offers insights into Kerouac's life and writing. It
is a detailed and comprehensive description of what Giamo calls the various
spiritual quests undertaken by Kerouac - as revealed by his novelistic
writings." Ann Charters. $34.95
Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend by James T. Jones. "Jones enlarges
the reader's understanding of Kerouac by placing his work in a European and
American literary context, and creating new critical categories by which to
explore the issues at large in Kerouac's oeuvre. By regrouping the Kerouac
texts, Jones offers new insights...another window into Kerouac's world."
Regina Weinreich. $34.95
Mad to be Saved , the Beats, the 50s, and Film by David Sterritt.
"David Sterritt has paid the Beats the double compliment of taking their
ideas seriously and then embedding them in a whole zeitgeist full of
cultural allies and enemies. The result is that the Beats take on an
intellectual three-dimensionality such as one has never seen them exhibit
before. This is a ground-breaking study, and a stimulating, energetically
written on." Phillip Lopate. $29.95
The View from On The Road, The Rhetorical Vision of Jack Kerouac by Omar Swartz. "The author's style is clear, concise, and interesting. The
author manages to cover ground that often encourages academic styles that
are abstruse and awkward (i.e. post-modernism) in a manner that is both
available to the general reader and to the professional critic." Ernest G.
Bormann. $34.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.
A Map of Mexico City Blues by James. T. Jones. "Jones has done a
rare thing: read Kerouac's poetry closely, and understood it as a seminal
poetic work of the latter half of the American century." Allen Ginsberg.
$26.95
A Clown in a Grave, Complexities and Tensions in the Works of Gregory
Corso by Michael Skau. "In deft prose, Skau traces the main themes of
Corso's work, exploring entirely new avenues in several chapters, and
provides the first thorough bibliography (70 pages in length) in thirty
years...Skau's book is a major achievement and ought to provide a point of
entry for a deeper reading of Corso's work." Literary Research. $34.95
"ORPHEUS EMERGED", the first
full-length work of fiction by Jack Kerouac to be published since the
author's death in 1969, was published exclusively in digital format by
LiveREADS on November 20, 2000 for $4.95. Completed in 1945 when Kerouac was
23 and signed his work "John", it exhibits a writer in the process of
finding the voice that would eventually express the spirit of a generation. Now available in hardcover at your local independent bookstore.
ATOP AN UNDERWOOD by Jack Kerouac. Edited by Paul Marion.
Viking, 1999, 249 pp., $24.95. Early stories and other writings by the King
of the Beats.
JACK KEROUAC: SELECTED LETTERS, 1957-1969. Edited by Ann
Charters. Viking, 1999, 514 pp., $34.95. The second volume of Kerouac's
correspondence with commentary by his first biographer. |
