Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 305

March 3, 2017Simon Pettet

ag-kaddish

Hot news from Real Gone Music – reissues of two essential Beat albums (limited editions in vinyl) – Allen’s classic 1966 recording of Kaddish and the Jack Kerouac-Steve Allen‘s recording Poetry For The Beat Generation, (Jack’s debut as a recording artist).

Both are officially due out April 7, but pre-ordering will be available and details will be announced soon.

For further information on both these records – see this comprehensive article –  here 

jack-k-album

& Just out from the Cambridge University Press, and available in paperback – The Cambridge Companion to The Beats – edited by Steve Belletto… Read More

The Unknown Kerouac

October 2, 2016admin
Just out from Library of America – The Unknown Kerouac – edited by Todd Tietchen (with several texts newly translated from the French by Jean-Christophe Cloutier) 

The publishers write:    “Edited and published with unprecedented access to the  (Jack) Kerouac archives, The Unknown Kerouac presents two lost novels, The Night Is My Woman and Old Bull in the Bowery, which Kerouac wrote in French during the esoecially fruitful years of 1951 and 1952. Discovered among his papers in the mid-nineties, they have been translated into English for the first time  by Jean-Christophe Cloutier, who incorporates Kerouac’s own partial

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 170

March 28, 2014admin

William Burroughs Centennial – We’ll begin with the above, a short biographical documentary put together by the Los Angeles Review of Books, featuring Burroughs’ biographer, Barry Miles – “William S. Burroughs – 100 Years“. [William Burroughs, NYC, 1984  – Photograph c. Kate Simon]

James Parker, in The Atlantic, on Burroughs (and Miles’ Burroughs biography) is well worth reading (as is Davis Schneiderman & Philip Walsh‘s 2004 Retaking the Universe – William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization, now presented with a new preface and  new introduction, and available, in its entirety, on … Read More

Friday Weekly Round-Up – 168

March 14, 2014admin

[Allen Ginsberg in drag – from Pickup’s Tricks,  Gregory Pickup’s 1973 documentary about the legendary exploits of the San Francisco drag-performance group, The Cockettes (this footage is also included in Bill Weber & David Weismann’s 2002 feature-length movie)]

March madness. Ginsberg silliness. It’s not April Fools Day yet, but will be soon.  First off, Exploitation Corner – more bizarre, inappropriate items, starting with.. 

Surely what the world needs! – an  “Allen Ginsberg  Luggage Tag” ! The same company offers an “I heart howls [sic] Reusable Shopping Bag”  I heart howls Reusable Shopping Bag (presumably for those moments of “hungry fatigue” when you find yourself … Read More

Fidel Castro’s Birthday

August 13, 2011admin

Fidel Castro was born August 13, 1926. That makes him 85 years old today [August 13, 2011]
The Beat Generation’s particular involvement in Cuba, and in the Cuban Revolution, has been comprehensively explored by Todd Tietchen in his 2010 book, The Cubalogues – Beat Writers in Revolutionary Havana. From the publisher’s description:
“Immediately after the Cuban Revolution, Havana fostered an important transnational, intellectual and cultural scene. Later, Castro would strictly impose his vision of Cuban culture on the populace, and the United States would bar its citizens from traveling to the island, but for these few fleeting years, the … Read More