Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Two unusual takes on Jack Kerouac's death and legacy. Plus: Viagra raves, zines that shouldn't exist and real-life Halloween scares.
Oct 29, 1999 | Oct. 21 marked the 30th anniversary of Jack Kerouac's death. In honor of the occasion, writers nationwide spilled ink and a few tears as they told us who he was, who the Beats were, how very influential "On the Road" was and is and why "Dharma Bums" doesn't compare. Many a well-worn, poignant anecdote was wheeled out for the occasion: Kerouac reading the New York Times review of "On the Road"; his friendships with Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al; the drinking that eventually killed him; living with his mother. And, of course, numerous anthologies and tributes have arrived in bookstores just in time to benefit from the outpouring of nostalgia.
The deluge of words accompanying this grim anniversary seems like a lot of fuss over what was, essentially, a one-hit wonder. Near the end of Kerouac's life, his anger against hippies and embrace of middle-class existence, save for the drinking, revealed him to be more icon than iconoclast. Yet his most famous work continues to inspire and influence our culture, so mention must be made. Here are two of the more unusual takes I've read on the fellow's life, work, death and legacy.
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Weekly Planet (Tampa Bay, Fla.), Oct. 21-27
"Beat in St. Pete" by Lee Irby
Following the success of "On the Road," Kerouac moved to St. Petersburg and proceeded to drink himself to death. In what is one of the strangest hypotheses for a story I've read in awhile, Lee Irby juxtaposes Kerouac's rejection of the youth culture that celebrated him with St. Petersburg's concurrent plans to lure young people to town. "Kerouac hated hippies; St. Petersburg hated old people," Irby writes. This odd premise leads to some very strange juxtapositions, such as this one: "At about the time Kerouac was getting his ass whipped, the city finished removing and discarding the last of the green benches, which had been a fixture since the early 1900s, joining the Pier casino on the dung pile of history." While that's an amusing little sentence, the connection is unclear. Irby never quite manages to connect his account of Kerouac's last days with his town's urban planning issues, so we are left with two unrelated stories lumped uncomfortably together.
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New York Press, Oct. 27-Nov. 2
"Beat & the Brats" by John Strausbaugh
In this strongly worded and well-argued essay, John Strausbaugh expresses his deep displeasure with excessive "beatnik nostalgia" -- from the seemingly endless publication of Beat anthologies to the overestimation of said poets' talents. He writes: "Beat poetry always was one part poetry to nine parts posturing anyway. For every decent Beat writer there have been 10,000 posers who think its hip to say they dig the writing, and another 10,000 bad, bad doggerel writers who think that looking and acting like a poet makes you one. There were a few great writers among the Beats, but taken as a whole the beatnik crowd remains easily despised as the first in a long line of postwar scenes that seemed less interested in making poetry than in making poetry cool ..." Now that's a sentiment I can snap my fingers to.
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