In honor of Allen Ginsberg’s birthday (June 3, 1926), we’ve gathered a few videos together. We’ve got some poetry for you, a chant, and an interview or two.
What are your favorite Ginsberg recordings? Please leave a comment below! …{read more}
Allen
Beat Generation Authors, Poets & Artists
Here you'll find everything relating to the Beat Generation - biographies of the writers, poets, artists, and other players; interviews, book reviews, photo galleries, and more.
Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac . . . reissued.
By
In 2005, Thunder’s Mouth Press published my collection of interviews with Jack Kerouac. It was titled Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac. Not long afterwards, the famed publishing house was bought out by DaCapo Press and the …{read more}
Addendum to “Lost Letter Found”
By
Here is an addendum to a previous article written for Empty Mirror. Herewith I will describe the contents of the “lost” letter in both the U.K. and U.S. trade editions of The Sea is My Brother so that you may …{read more}
How Kerouac’s haiku changed my life
By
When I was twenty-two, I was lucky enough to be the only South African on an American college campus, studying Creative Writing and trying to figure out what to do with my life (along with every other college student, it …{read more}
Paintings: Kristen Stewart as Marylou Moriarty in On the Road
By
T.E. Priemon – Encaustic Artist
Artist’s Statment
I am an artist who paints using a 2000-year-old painting medium used in the way the Fayum Egyptian artist used their encaustic paints for portraits, which have survived in much the same way …{read more}
A “Lost” Letter Found . . . and “lost” again.
By
In the U.K. edition of Jack Kerouac’s 1945 novel, The Sea Is My Brother (Penguin 2011), there is an addendum of material meant to represent Jack Kerouac’s formative writing experience during the early to mid-1940s. The thrust of this formative …{read more}
The Great Consciousness of Life
By
Reaching in, pulling out. The great divide is conquered; and there lies an ever-evolving mission to extract meaning from chaos. This, then, is where it resides, the theater of the soul and the heart.
In rewriting my biography of Jack …{read more}
4 terrific Gregory Corso videos
By
In honor of Gregory Corso’s birthday (he was born March 26, 1930), we’ve collected some videos of him. Check ‘em out.
1. & 2. Gregory Corso Walks and Talks in Roma, 1989
“Two weeks with Gregory during one of his …{read more}
In honor of Jack’s birthday: 4 Kerouac Videos
By
In honor of Jack Kerouac’s birthday (March 12), here are some videos to enjoy.
1. Kerouac & friends in New York
“Silent footage of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and others in New York, Summer 1959. The location is …{read more}
Review – Anywhere Road: Retracing Jack Kerouac, by Joerg Haeske
By
“What’s your road, man?—holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody anyhow.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road
For the last several years, on his website www.RetracingJackKerouac.com, Joerg Haeske has documented his …{read more}
Review – Free Beer: Kicks & Truth with Jack Kerouac by Cliff Anderson
By
Free Beer: Kicks & Truth with Jack Kerouac, and other strong drinks” is a collection of twelve stories by Cliff Anderson. Also included is Kerouac scholar Rod Anstee’s 1990 interview with Anderson, titled “Dare to be Kind.”
In the tale …{read more}
Review – Alleycats and Beatsters: The Hip, the Gone, and the Way Gone
By
Alleycats and Beatsters, a collection of essays by British writer Kenton Crowther, explores what it means to be Beat, the nature of hipness, and the poets, writers and hipsters who orbited the Beats, either closely or from a distance. …{read more}
Kerouac & An American Marriage
By
(an excerpt from a work-in-progress)
In January 1945, Jack Kerouac set out to write his Great American Novel. His newly-drafted notes embraced the activities of the last four years and scaffolded the events up to, during and …{read more}
Are There Any Good Unpublished Kerouac Books Left?
By
With the glut of books that thankfully made our way in the past 20 years or so, we now have (probably) just as many posthumous titles as those Kerouac published in his lifetime. These have added exponentially to our understanding …{read more}
Jack Kerouac – “Big Sur” Movie Trailer Released!
By
The film, Big Sur, based upon Jack Kerouac’s novel of the same name, is due to be released this year. The trailer has just been released.
Directed by Michael Polish, who also wrote the screenplay, it stars Jean-Marc Barr as …{read more}
Earwitness Testimony: Sound and Sense, Word and Void in Jack Kerouac’s Old Angel Midnight
By
“the ineluctable modality of the audible”
– James Joyce Ulysses
So much of Jack Kerouac’s writing seems impelled by an impatience with all verbal restraints and by an urgent purpose that strains to push and pivot, dodge and drive – …{read more}
Who was Neal Cassady?
By
Neal Cassady: a brief biographical sketch
Born on February 8, 1926, Neal Cassady grew up in Denver, Colorado. He was the son of a barber who moved the family from cheap hotel to cheap hotel. As a young man, Neal …{read more}
Get “On the Road” movie gear!
By
The long-anticipated film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”, directed by Walter Salles and produced by Francis Ford Coppola will soon be released in the United States. Here are some books, CDs and accessories associated with “On the Road.” …{read more}
29 Russell St.
By
It’s been about ten years now since I saw Beat legends Neal and Carolyn Cassady’s house. It was such a thrill for me; I can remember it perfectly. My old friends Kirstin and Colin, from Alaska had just moved down …{read more}
The Official Kerouac “On the Road” Movie Trailer is Here!
By
“On the Road,” the movie based on Jack Kerouac’s novel of the same name, will be released in the United States on December 21, 2012. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope, it’s directed by Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries) and …{read more}
October in the Railroad Earth – Jack Kerouac
By
Every October, I think of Jack Kerouac’s short story, “October in the Railroad Earth.” Jack recorded it for his album with Steve Allen, Poetry For The Beat Generation; take a listen below.
Want to download the mp3 track? It’s available …{read more}
Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek – The Piano Poems: Live From San Francisco
By
NEW RELEASE!
Listen to tracks / buy at Amazon:
Piano Poems: Live in San Francisco
A collaboration between Ray Manzarek and Michael McClure, this live performance, recorded at an old San Francisco church, features both new and older poems, with …{read more}
“The Old Maestro”: an interview with Kerouac friend Henri Cru by Dave Moore
By
Henri Cru was one of the friends that Jack Kerouac met at Horace Mann School, New York, in 1939. Their friendship sustained for many years, and Cru featured as a character in several of Kerouac’s books. He was the model …{read more}
For collectors: where and how to buy Beat Generation books (and others)
By
We’ve gathered together booksellers, publishers, and other services for book book collectors of all stripes. Please get in touch if you’d like to suggest a resource for this list.
Booksellers – Beat, small press & poetry
Beat nooksellers …{read more}
The Beat
La Picaudiere – and Hundertwasser’s Honey
By
Asked in an interview what he would remember most about his life as an artist, Man Ray replied “the women.” I was a bee whisperer, like Edmund Hillary who climbed Mount Everest and who was a beekeeper in New Zealand, …{read more}
“My really best friend…” an interview with Seymour Wyse by Dave Moore
By
Seymour Michael Wyse was one of Jack Kerouac’s closest friends. An Englishman, educated at Charterhouse School, Wyse met Kerouac when they both attended Horace Mann School, New York, in 1939. They remained in close contact until Wyse returned to England …{read more}
The Language of Bebop: Syncopated Sounds and Rhythms in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’
By
America, mid-twentieth century. Wearied by civilization, excesses and ornamentation, complications and. All precursors to extinction: The drone of war, the machinery of death, the atomic bomb, crew cuts, grey flannel, and hydrogen jukeboxes. The Beats were the unholy and battered, ...{read more}
The Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac
By
The Sea is My Brother was Jack Kerouac’s first attempt at a novel. Technically it fits the criteria of a Novella, the original manuscript weighing in at 158 pages. Published for the first time in its entirety by Penguin Classics …{read more}
Heeding the Call of the Open Road
By
Beat culture and hippie culture were both long gone as a central movement by the time I was growing up, but hop on the bandwagon I did. As a teenager, there was nothing I wanted more than to get the …{read more}
Beat Generation Photos by Rob Lee
By
Lawrence FerlinghettiMarch 11, 1987
Taken in his office above City Lights Bookstore (shaped like an arrowhead bisecting Columbus Avenue and Jack Kerouac Alley), Ferlinghetti spends more time in his painting studio at this point in his life. A quiet, …{read more}
Kerouac and the Outsider – A Puzzle
By
It was Horst who started it. Horst Spandler had been translating the 1971 Kerouac anthology Scattered Poems into German. Along the way he’d been asking others their advice on the meaning of parts of Jack’s poems. One such query I …{read more}
The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder
By
When someone comes up with a fresh and startling way of looking at our world, you can bet that it is drawn from a combination of sources, fields, and disciplines. Gary Snyder has done just this with The Practice of …{read more}
For Beat’s Sake: An Interview with Carolyn Cassady
By
We all live inside history, and Carolyn Cassady has seen her share. Ms. Cassady was gracious and open when she sat for an interview at her home in Monte Sereno, not far from Los Gatos.
Carolyn Cassady, best known for …{read more}
The Rebirth of the Author in
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
By
“Time stops. He’s filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling …{read more}
