Scraps & Gleanings – A Sunday Miscellany

It’s the Year of the Ginz! – didn’t you know it? – According to France’s LiberationAprès l’année Kerouac, en 2012, c’est au tour d’Allen Ginsberg d’être honoré comme symbole d’une jeunesse en rébellion contre les mœurs de l’american dream puritain“. (Following the Year of Kerouac in 2012, it is the turn of Allen Ginsberg to be honored as the symbol of youth in revolt against the manners of the puritanical “American Dream””)
Liberation notes the extension of Jean Jacques Lebel’s multi-media Ginsberg extravaganza at the Pompidou Center in Metz, through to the beginning of next year.

Beat movies – those ubiquitous Beat movies! From an interview in The Boston Globe, Daniel Radcliffe: “I knew nothing about Ginsberg’s life,” said Radcliffe. “I only knew about his poetry and sort of what he and (William) Burroughs and (Jack) Kerouac and (Neal) Cassady stood for in the pantheon of American literature. I didn’t understand the poetry. I still don’t understand all of the poetry”

and Dane DeHaan (from a Reuters news item) – “..DeHaan said he researched Carr (Lucien Carr)’s quirks and character in Ginsberg’s books, correspondence between Ginsberg and Kerouac, and in a book written by Kerouac’s first wife, Edie Parker [that would be “You’ll Be Okay – My Life With Jack Kerouac” from City Lights] (more salt, then, on Brian Hassett’s belief that the movie treats her unbelievably shabbily) – “One such anecdote that he (DeHaan) found (that) typified Carr’s intensity was an incident where Carr stood on a deck of a ship that (David) Kammerer then sank, just so that Carr could experience the feeling of being on a sinking ship”

“Is Jack Kerouac Unfilmable? – (The new) “Big Sur” (film) is the Latest to Raise the Question” – Gabrielle Lipton has a provocative piece this week, for Indiewire – “Beat writing uses highly specific details to create an allegorical framework on which to hang all the spiritual, interpersonal and personal experiences that the writing is actually about in its quest for human truth. The visible world is the backbone for all that is unseen, which doesn’t make it especially film-able.”

“Seven of the Best and Worst Renditions of Allen Ginsberg” in The Advocate. We used one of them on Friday. Catch the other six (actors attempting to portray Allen Ginsberg) here

A little sweet “dish” – Gowri Ramnarayan (recounting an encounter with Allen where she thought it best to keep mum) – “And how do you keep a straight face when poet Allen Ginsberg belts out what he swears is a Kabir bhajan, at a gathering of avant-garde artistes in New York? You can’t recognise a single word or note but he begs you sotto vocenot to let him down before friends who believe he is an “Indian” expert”.
– Ah, but he was an “Indian expert”! – (ok, well, an Indian aficionado, at least!)

Julio Martinez’s “Che and Allen”, a speculative radio docudrama, mentioned in these pages a few weeks back, is now available to listen to any time, on Streaming Audio, from the Pacifica Radio Archive.  Click here

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