March 12 – It’s Jack Kerouac’s birthday today. 93 years since his birth in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. We celebrate with some Kerouac news, and some further reading,
Editor Todd Tietchen is interviewed on the Empty Mirror site here on his new Library of America edition of three Kerouac novels (Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, and Big Sur) and declares: “I am editing another Kerouac volume for them, O Rich and Unbelievable Life!: UnCollected Prose Writings of Jack Kerouac, scheduled for publication in September, 2016. Some highlights of that volume (will) include I Wish I Were You, Memory Babe, the August-November 1951 VA hospital journal, and English translations of La Nuit est Ma Femme and Sur Le Chemin (translated by Jean-Christophe Cloutier of UPenn, who also discovered the manuscript of the lost Claude McKay novel).”
Interviewer, Paul Maher Jr.‘s – The Archive – Sketches on Kerouac – Assorted Ramblings Derived from the Papers of Jack Kerouac is a wonderful trove of (like he says) Kerouac-related matters.
His bibliographic note on the Kerouac Collected Poems is here
His article on the neglected “Strange Cemetery in Jamaica”, and on Visions of Cody, along with other articles, are available here.
Kerouac links – here are the links from Jack Kerouac.com at the Jack and Stella Kerouac Center For The Public Humanities
& How could we forget the Kerouac flame at The Beat Museum
not forgetting too the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics…
& The Kerouac Project of Orlando, Florida. Here’s another image of Kerouac in Orlando. Happy Birthday, in memoriam, Jack!
Maurice Kerouac (Keroack)is a relative and lover of your life and works, Jack. Now 82, he works hard to instill your work, your travels . He has made it an important part of his life and continued education . After compiling and continuing your work he has retired in the warmer climate of Florida.
Did my decade read of On The Road and now reading Darhma Bums. He was one of the best writers of the 20th century. Happy birthday Jack, where ever you are.