Another Kerouac-centric Friday Round-Up – (Well, it is Kerouac Centennial year so we’ll be focusing on Jack quite a bit this year – in fact, as no doubt you’ve noticed, we’ve already started – (Remembering Jack Kerouac – we’ve already drawn your attention in the past two weeks to the first two segments, the final segment from the 1982 Naropa Kerouac conference can be found here)
Starting off this week with Waylon Bacon‘s Beatdom cover design. The special issue of Beatdom – Beatdom #22 – will be out next month. A listing of the table of contents and information regarding pre-ordering can be found here.
Beat Scene has also a special Kerouac issue scheduled for next month, Kerouac’s birthday month. Jack Kerouac at 100 -Beat Scene #103
More Kerouac from England – Simon Warner and Holly George-Warren, forthcoming Kerouac biographer, for The Spectator on “how On The Road came to be written, how it stands up now, and what made “the Beats” beat”
Kerouac in France – Isaline Rémy presents a brief notice of French anticipation – here
New Kerouac-in-French titles – Seghers just put out (yesterday!) a new edition of Poèmes dispersés (Scattered Poems) translated by Philippe Mikriammos. Gallimard also have Kerouac titles – a revised and bilingual edition of Satori in Paris (translated by Jean Autret, revised by Yann Yvenic) due out March 17, L’ocean est mon frère, (a translation of Kerouac’s first novel, The Sea is My Brother), March 24, and a new edition of Mexico City Blues coupled with Scripture of the Golden Eternity (L‘écrit de l‘éternité d’or) in a translation by Pierre Joris, with a preface by Yves Buin, due out April 7
Here‘s a glimpse of some of the other books by Kerouac available en français
and here’s Jack in Italian – (Mondadori)
more Kerouac – the Centennial noted in Spanish Vogue
and Kerouac in Lowell – Michael Millner, UMass professor, and member of the Kerouac@100 planning committee, this week, with a confession and a pre-emptive strike:
“I think a lot of (the) stuff is jarring…(Kerouac is) dismissive of women, idealizes, romanticizes, exoticizes people of color. Those are obviously problems..(but).. What young people are still drawn to is the sense of freedom they see in his work, and it’s really exciting, this idea of being free from constraints – family, institutions..”
“The Last of the Beats” – well, who might that be?.. Well, Gary Snyder notwithstanding, a reasonable case might be made for Charles Plymell who, as Jed Birmingham, in an important overview back in 2008 (“Charles Plymell Now“), noted, “is something of a forgotten figure..” “Currently he is best known as a gadfly commenting on the Beat Generation and the poetry scene generally taking on the role of the departed Gregory Corso…”
True then – it remains, regrettably, still true. Plymell has been over-looked and under-appreciated, despite the enthusiasms of the cognoscenti, has not sufficiently been given his due.
Benito Vila‘s 2020 interview with Plymell (and the redoubtable Pam Plymell his wife) for Please Kill Me is well worth reading
Lisa Marie Jarlborn’s LoveLove magazine just reprinted Byron Coley’s 2019 interview
Rolf Potts – “An outsider’s inside history of the Beat Generation ..” podcast from 2018 is another essential place
Michael Limnios interviewed him back in 2012
For further extensive notes – see here – and here also
A true hero, A.J.Muste passed away on this day, February 11, 1967. If you don’t know about A.J.Muste you should.
