Put Up Your Dukes and Write

Kerouac's letter to Brando, asking him to make a movie of On the Road, and play Dean to Kerouac's Sal. I guess the most interesting part of this is that Kerouac chose Brando, a sex symbol at the time, to play real-life sex symbol Neal Cassady. The letter was found among Brando's files after his death. Click on it to get a larger version.

What's for (Naked) Lunch?

If you didn't read the Independent's article about And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks, the "new" crime novel based on a true story and jointly authored by Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, you might not know that the murder victim was an old friend of Burroughs' -- and the murderer a respected editor at UPI who wished fervently for the book to be suppressed in his lifetime, and it was, although the story was well known to beat aficionados.

The real-life events behind the book occurred in the early hours of Monday morning, 16 August 1944. Carr and Kammerer were walking beside the Hudson in Riverside Park on New York's Upper West Side. Lucien Carr was 19, slight, blond and good-looking. [David] Kammerer was 33, 6ft tall, athletic, muscular. They'd met in St Louis in 1936, when Carr was 11, and later at George Washington University, when Carr joined nature hikes conducted by Kammerer, the PE instructor. Kammerer was gay and had for years been sexually obsessed with Carr.

Both men were drunk. They quarrelled and rolled on the grass. Kammerer made what the papers called "an indecent proposal," presumably backing it up with action. Carr responded with fury. He stabbed Kammerer twice in the chest with a little Boy Scout knife. Then he put some rocks in the bleeding man's pockets and rolled him into the Hudson.

For his action, Carr received a maximum 10-year sentence, of which he served two years. Kerouac narrowly missed being charged as an accessory.

More at the Guardian.

I saw this book at the local bookstore the other day. As the Guardian points out, it has an understated cover for such a lurid story.

The Clinton-Kerouac Connection

This is really too good to pass up.

Senator Clinton is related to Jack Kerouac. Also to Madonna, Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, and...Angelina Jolie.

Barack Obama is related to Dick Cheney, George Bush, Gerald R. Ford, Winston Churchill and...Brad Pitt.

Via the NY Times. From Notablekin.org.

Kerouac's Agent and Jimmy Breslin

At Publisher's Weekly.

Our response to Kerouac’s work was singular almost to a man, in that there was genuine admiration for his vigorous prose, his capacity to create a living sense of America, of life in this country, and the force and originality of his conception. But there were serious objections to the people and situations he writes about, whether they would be of compelling interest to many readers....

Thanks to Nathan Bransford for that link.

On the Road, the Covers

The various editions, in English, French, Italian, German, Dutch. I like the Italian cover which is a portrait. Jack cut quite la bella figura. I also like the fifties-ish cover of the young, presumably fast, woman with the come-hither look. As a cultural artifact. I have the 1993 Quality edition, good for readability and paper quality. Also it has The Dharma Bums and The Subterraneans as a bonus.

(Click here for The Dharma Bums, a local Woodstock band with some fine musicians, including my neighbor.)

Jack's own suggestion for the cover, at the NY Times.
And in his own words, some sound clips.
Thanks to Maud Newton.