Jack Kerouac’s Birthday

March 12, 2018Simon Pettet

Jack Kerouac’s birthday today. Strange to think he would be 96! From our good friend, Kerouac literary executor, Jim Sampas:

Excerpt from Letter Jack Kerouac to Neal Cassady, Dec. 28,  1950

“All my life I was fascinated by the first thaws of New England March; not until I was told I was actually born in the midst of one did I vaguely remember the day of my birth, or is this too far-fetched? Not in the least (my darkface protests across the continent to thee.) I remember it, I remember the day of my birth. I remember the … Read More

Doctor Sax and the Great World Snake

March 10, 2018Simon Pettet

Doctor Sax and The Great World Snake – In honor of Jack Kerouac’s 96th birthday (coming up on Monday) – we present Jim Sampas‘ version of his uncle’s original screenplay, featuring the voices of Robert Creeley, Jim Carroll, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and a host of talented others.

The double-disc CD of a reading of this initially-lost text (with a newly-commissioned score by John Medeski, and an accompanying book with illustrations by Richard Sala) was released back in 2003

Here‘s the announcement in Rolling Stone

Here‘s a transcript of  NPR’s Bob Edwards, talking to Jim Sampas

A … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 355

March 2, 2018Simon Pettet

Publication date next week (March 8), we’re very happy to announce and very much looking forward to it  – Simon Warner‘s new book  Kerouac on Record – A Literary Soundtrack 

Olivier Julien, (Lecturer in the History and Musicology of Popular Music, at the Sorbonne in Paris) writes:

“Following Text and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture  (2013), Simon Warner partners with Literary Executor of the Estate of Jack Kerouac, Jim Sampas, to go deeper into his exploration of the connections between the great figures of the Beat generation and the music of the so-called ‘rock … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 147

October 11, 2013admin

From Jean-Jacques Lebel and Xavier Villetard’s Beat Generation, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs.  Allen: (“Candor ends paranoia”)   “And that is an old tradition that goes back to Whitman, who said that poets of the future should feature candor, frankness ( or “candor” is the word by Whitman) in public to bring that private candor into the public arena, to erase the schizophrenia between the way we really live and the way it’s conducted in public”. Rick Synchev’s extraordinary collection of Beat books and Beat miscellanea was auctioned off yesterday by the PBA Galleries in San Francisco, an On … Read More