The Beat Generation

John Leland at the NYT‘s Weekend Book Review has this to say of Harvey Pekar’s new graphic novel The Beats: A Graphic History:

Some of the history is off. Jan Kerouac was not shown by a blood test to be Jack’s daughter (the test was inconclusive), and Pekar scrambles the chronology of some of Kerouac’s books and stylistic breakthroughs. Nancy J. Peters, a part owner of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, was unwisely tapped to help write the chapter on the store, which includes lines like “City Lights is not only a bookstore and publisher, it’s a historic public space and an international cultural center,” and “Today, City Lights has come to symbolize the American spirit of free intellectual inquiry.” Here, nonobjective history gives way to plain self-promotion, and not even cool self-promotion.

Leland is a Kerouac scholar, and while I understand Pekar’s intention with the book, it’s sort of disappointing that I agree with him. Leland’s holding Pekar accountable, as people are wont to do when something they hold very near becomes a little tainted. Leland doesn’t want people to get the wrong idea of what the Beats were all about just because they got some bogus information from a book they only bought because they saw American Splendor after they had already seen Sideways.

I wanted a perspective to compare to Leland’s, so I consulted Twitter. My rationale was such that I was sure at least one or two of our more than 300 followers (Thanks, everyone, by the way.) would have read it, and also that they would want to tell me what they thought about it. User tijean47 had this to say:

I bought it, read it and gave it away. As an ardent Kerouac advocate, I was not impressed. Great idea-bad execution.

That’s two strikes, and both from Kerouac aficionados. I’m still recommending that people pick this up (Amazon), if only for the fact that Pekar’s generally astute and can be revelatory in his observations; and even if he can’t draw he’s still one hell of a great writer when he isn’t taking his cues from a part owner with a vested interest in bolstering her own bookstore.

The Mad Ones [The New York Times]

On this day in 1994 Kurt Cobain’s body was found. Two years earlier, Cobain and William S. Burroughs had produced the “Priest” they called him, an audio collaboration with words by Burroughs and guitar by Cobain.

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, and now it’s time to show you RealityStudio’s “Dossier”, a page of unofficially collected excerpts of information relative to Burroughs and Cobain, and culled from various sources like books, documentaries and various interviews.

When the tour hit Rotterdam on the first of September [1991], it was almost with a nostalgic wistfulness that Kurt approached the last show. He was wearing the same T-shirt he’d had on two weeks earlier — it was a bootlegged Sonic Youth t-shirt — which had gone unwashed, as had his jeans, the only pair of pants he owned. His luggage consisted of a tiny bag containing only a copy of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, which he had found in a London bookstall.

– Charles R. Cross, Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

So, as we light our candles in memory, and as we give the “Priest” they called him another listen tonight, let our thoughts bend only toward the good that Kurt and Bill brought into our worlds and remember them, truly, as icons of American art.

Pete Verral says,

Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 90 on March 24. Send him [a] birthday card. lfbirthday@citylights.com (:o)

City Lights Bookstore, an integral part of Beat culture and 60s SF culture, recently launched their own podcast that provides content from various authors who have had their work published under the City Lights imprint as well as recommendations and brilliant ideas from the regular staff.

Congratulations to City Lights, and welcome:

For our first episode, we thought it might be fitting to hear from our founder. Lawrence Ferlinghetti read a series of his thoughts from Poetry As Insurgent Art on October 24, 2007. Enjoy!

City Lights Podcast – Episode 1 (stream, or right-click to download)

iTunes subscription is here.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights [Live from City Lights: The City Lights Podcast]

(Photo by Kanaka’s Paradise Life.)

Postcards from Gravelly Beach is a blog (a podcast, really) whose author reads famous works of literature as well as work of his own in strange, sometimes remote places with the help of “an eclectic assortment of music.”

Hitch a Thousand Miles to See a Friend – Postcard #56:

From Halfmoon Bay on Clayoquot Sound, Vancouver Island, Dave gives it up for zen poet hero Gary Snyder and recounts beat history from The Old Ways and logging culture from Myths and Texts plus poems about hitchhiking, girls, baths, clear-cuts and the Buddha – then finishes with original freeverse poetry about the transient experience called  “Railyards Passing By.”

MP3 Link here. And here is their iTunes subscription.

(Thanks, uncleweed!)

Photo by the_dharma_bum.