The Beat Generation in the New York Times Book Review to start us off. Wait a minute, is that Kerouac reading Carolyn Cassady?
It’s the anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s passing next week, next Wednesday, (October 23). The Studio@620 in St. Petersburg, Florida, is hosting Día de los Vagabundos, an online event, in the Mexican tradition of Día de los Muertos, marking Jack’s departure, with an ofrenda to our literary ancestors and featuring performances recorded at The Studio@620 and at the Flamingo Sports Bar (Jack’s favorite St. Petersburg bar)
A.G. – Two little pieces of remembrance – “For me, puberty was rock ’n’ roll and Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and the Lower East Side was the logical place to find that culture.” Don’t miss Luc Sante in the New York Times on Allen’s old “nabe”
& David Breithaupt in the LA Review of Books, remembering Allen Ginsberg, “for whom I .. worked during the 1980s in New York, helping to catalog tapes and videos of his various readings”: “Before arriving, I would call his staff to make sure it wasn’t an exceptionally busy day, when I might be in the way. If I got the green light, I would head down to begin sifting and rummaging through the latest box of materials. Allen’s door buzzer on East 12th Street never worked, so I would call from the corner and someone would throw a key out the window, wrapped in a sock. Often (he) would have just gone to sleep, having spent the night answering mail and writing. Frequently, though, our schedules overlapped, and through the years we had wonderful conversations. Recalling those days and imagining such a reunion was quite a different experience than I had expected. A realization of how much time has passed and how many friends were now gone rekindled a surge of emotions…”
“We thought the film was plenty relevant when we were making it last winter. We didn’t need it to get more relevant, but it has, in shocking and chilling ways. If you watch any of the clashes between protesters and police, whether it’s in Minneapolis or Madison or Kenosha or Louisville or Washington, the footage looks exactly like the footage from 1968. We are once again in an extremely polarized country, where dissent has been demonized as un-American. We went through this traumatic transition getting from the 1950s to the 1970s … somehow we’re back to where we were before.” (Aaron Sorkin on his film “The Trail of the Chicago 7” which arrives on Netflix today.
Bob Kaufman, the great Bob Kaufman. Shortly after the publication last year by City Lights of the Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, poet S.A. Griffin discovered one last poem that managed to escape inclusion in the volume, “Tin Pan Alley” (which was originally published in the July 1961 issue of Swank magazine). It now appears in a gorgeous limited edition letterpress broadside, published by Impart Ink and available through Unrequited Records . All proceeds go to Kaufman’s son, Parker. For full details see here
and Unrequited Records is also releasing Rappin Elite, a new collection of Bob Kaufman recordings, in a limited edition of 200 vinyl LPs, sourced from the Bob Kaufman archives at Boston University, recorded by Eileen Kaufman. “Available in three different colors of virgin vinyl, No digital version!”
Maverick legend Gerd Stern turned 92 this past week. See our postings on Gerd on The Allen Ginsberg Project here, here and here – Happy Birthday, Gerd!
Celebrating today the birthday of Oscar Wilde