From Jean-Jacques Lebel and Xavier Villetard’s Beat Generation, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs.
Allen: (“Candor ends paranoia”) “And that is an old tradition that goes back to Whitman who said that poets of the future should feature candor, frankness ( or “candor” is the word by Whitman) in public to bring that private candor into the public arena, to erase the schizophrenia between the way we really live and the way it’s conducted in public”.
Rick Synchev’s extraordinary collection of Beat books and Beat miscellanea was auctioned off yesterday by the PBA Galleries in San Francisco, an On The Road signed by Neal Cassady, an empty methadone bottle prescribed to William Burroughs (filled with rocks and dirt from the author’s grave!), innumerable Beat-related signed first-editions (among the contributions by Allen – a bilingual edition of Kaddish in English and Catalan, his own personal copy of the Italian Fall of America and a Japanese Allen Verbatim
<
Sadly/Interestingly, a goodly proportion of the items went for well below their estimate sales price ($250 for the Kaddish, $700 for the Japanese edition – the Italian Fall of America didn’t even find a bidder!). The Burroughs dirt (original estimate $600-$900) did sell in excess of its estimated price, finding some buyer willing to part with $1100.
More Allen-in-translation – Footage of Joep Bremmers reading “What The Sea Throws Up At Vlissingen” in Dutch (see last week) is available here
Lowell Celebrates Kerouac It’s the annual Jack Kerouac festival in Lowell this weekend. Lowell native, Jim Sampas gives the Parker Lecture tomorrow – “Celebrating Kerouac in Film and Word”. David Amram, and guest-poet Steve Dalachinsky, amongst others, will be on hand. For more details of the festivities, see here
The festival this year marks and notices the 50th anniversary of the 1963 publication of Visions of Gerard
Gerard, his sweet lost brother. Gerard, le petit saint. Jack and his mother liked the James Spanfeller drawings that illustrated the first edition of the book so much that they framed one – Gerard feeding the birds – and hung it on their living-room wall.
Read Kristin McLaughlin’s sympathetic reading of the book – here
Better still, go out and buy the book!
Kill Your Darlings opens October 16th, this coming Wednesday
Here’s a couple of early-out-of-the-gate raves -James Thompson, in Filmoria
“A sheer joy for so many reasons, Kill Your Darlings is one of those films that is extremely difficult not to like… Krokidas has created a hugely memorable film outing that will certainly have the audience searching up the main protagonists upon exiting the movie.” – (that’s what we like to hear! – 2018 update – this review no longer available) – and John Sharp, in The Hollywood News – “Kill Your Darlings is an exceptional film. Lashings of pathos, a sprinkling of smut, with romance and tragedy around every corner and it’s all linked by some staggering beautiful poetry and a treasure-trove of linguistic delights”…”The characters are so strong and the pace so tight that what feels like a breezy biopic is actually addressing some primal human conditions – love, desire, obsession, responsibility, creativity, rebellion, fear, and blowjobs in a library!” – Of Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg and his “fantastic central performance“ – “While James Franco was superb as Ginsberg in Howl, he seemed to be playing an idea of the poet, while dear Daniel inhabits the character and examines what makes young Allen the man he is” – And one more Lisa Derrick in LAFiga (Firedoglake)– “(It) Kill Your Darlings…seduces and inspires with language, camera, production design, and the force of the actors’ talent”. You’re going to be surprised.”