oh – and Al Aronowitz too – “the man who introduced Allen Ginsberg to Bob Dylan, the man who introduced Bob Dylan to the Beatles
and speaking of Dylan – “How Many Roads – Bob Dylan and His Changing Times 1961-1964”, the Bob Dylan Center’s first travelling show, will be hosted by New York University at the Gallatin Galleries (1 Washington Place) later this month (starting August 25th through to October 15th)
“The exhibit centers on Dylan’s music as a lens through which to view some of the most defining events of the 20th century”, declares Mark Davidson, its curator (and the senior director of archives and exhibitions at American Song Archives, operater of both the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie Centers) “The early ’60s were a time of rapid change for America, and Dylan paced alongside, documenting – this exhibit shows you how.”
It’s anchored, notably, by a number of documentary films that have been produced by the Center, telling the story of the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s, including previously-uncirculated interviews with such influential Dylan-related figures as Suze Rotolo, Dave Van Ronk, John Cohen, Izzy Young, Bruce Langhorne, Mark Spoelstra – and Allen!
Steve Higgins, managing director of American Song Archives: ““Greenwich Village is where Bob Dylan became Bob Dylan..There could not be a more perfect venue for the first Bob Dylan Center installation outside of Tulsa.”
Ginsberg-Dylan – Oliver Hall on Dangerous Minds spotlights the Ginsberg-Dylan collab “Jimmy Berman”
Ginsberg-Burroughs – check out Jesse Walker at Reason re-visiting the classic Ginsberg-Burroughs Yage Letters – here
Ferlinghetti for San Francisco – the Lawrence Ferlinghetti show we noted here continues (through March 22nd). Peter Fish visits it alongside Ferlinghetti’s long-time colleague and friend Paul Yamazaki and posts his account of the experience – here
& David S Wills at Beatdom delivers another invaluable analysis this week on his Beatdom Substack – “Whither Goest Thou, America?“ – an examination of “one of the most famous lines in Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road“, (noting that that line in the novel is spoken by “Carlo Marx”, the character based on Allen)
and seeing its echo in the opening line of Allen’s early poem (from Empty Mirror, “After Dead Souls” – “Where O America are you/going in your glorious/automobile careening/down the highway…”
With his ever-tenacious detective work Wills manages to track down the shared source and mutual inspiration to a passage in Gogol, Nikolai Gogol, the Russian novelist, and his 1842 work of that title
“I seldom think of Gogol in connection with the Beat Generation, and yet the connections are numerous. In fact, he is mentioned in the very first letter Ginsberg ever wrote to Kerouac! That was all the way back in the middle of 1944, just after the death of David Kammerer…Dead Souls was one of Ginsberg’s favourite books and something Kerouac read at a pivotal moment in his life. It was also read by (Lucien) Carr, was apparently on Burroughs’ bookshelf when Ginsberg first visited him,and I found a letter from Neal Cassady in 1947 that showed it was important to him as well.There is even a 1950 letter from Kerouac to Cassady, highlighting pages of particular interest.”
With a methodology reminiscent of Oliver Harris’ One Shot Mystery, Wills, after further detours and investigations, comes to his conclusion:
“Ginsberg had given the expression to Kerouac, who had played with it over several years, before giving it back to Ginsberg, who re-used it in different words, and eventually it ended up back in Kerouac’s book. No wonder Ginsberg had written, “I hardly know whose is which and who’s used what.”
On The Road is back in the zeitgeist and at the movies (if indeed it ever departed) Starting today Ebs Burnough’s Kerouac’s Road – The Beat of A Nation has it’s roll-out in five US cities – LA, NYC, Atlanta, Detroit and Chicago – More to come
