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”
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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
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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}
A “Lost” Letter Found . . . and “lost” again.
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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
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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}
In honor of Jack’s birthday: 4 Kerouac Videos
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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
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“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
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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}
Kerouac & An American Marriage
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(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?
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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!
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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
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“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}
Get “On the Road” movie gear!
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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.
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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!
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“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
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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}
“The Old Maestro”: an interview with Kerouac friend Henri Cru by Dave Moore
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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}
“My really best friend…” an interview with Seymour Wyse by Dave Moore
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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 Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac
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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}
Kerouac and the Outsider – A Puzzle
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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 Rebirth of the Author in
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
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“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}
Baby Driver, by Jan Kerouac
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While I was being gifted a tiny grocery store carrot cake for my fifteenth birthday in a park in Connecticut, still on the road myself, Jan Kerouac passed away. It was June 5, 1996. I had no idea who Jan …{read more}
Jack Kerouac’s Books
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This is a listing of Jack Kerouac’s books, arranged by their date of publication. We’ve also noted the date(s) when the book was written. If the book covers a particular period of time, we’ve noted the approximate dates. …{read more}
Book
Published
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Manuscript Scroll
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Jack Kerouac wrote his novel On the Road
in a unique fashion – he typed it on a continuous roll of paper, without paragraph breaks, in a marathon writing session in 1951. It is somewhat different than the version which …{read more}
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
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“I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and …{read more}
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
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I encountered The Dharma Bums for the first time in college, on a classmate’s shelf. She gushed about the book, but I was more interested in her roommate and didn’t pay enough attention.
Many years later, I finally read it …{read more}
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
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Big Sur is often ignored by critics and Kerouac fans alike. We all want the freedom of On the Road, the craziness of The Dharma Bums — the celebration of the Beat lifestyle. We want young Jack living his …{read more}
Tristessa by Jack Kerouac
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Jack Kerouac is primarily lauded for his keen understanding of male friendship. The female characters of On the Road or The Dharma Bums never really achieve the reader’s interest the way the males do. But Kerouac is also a writer …{read more}
Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac
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Like a weird, mutated ogre muttering to himself by the roadside, Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Cody stands apart. As the author states in his short introduction, “I wanted a vertical metaphysical study of Cody’s character and its relationship to the …{read more}
Vanity of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac
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When Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-46 was written in 1967, an overweight and severely alcoholic Jack Kerouac had only two years to live. Chronicling the years just before his adventures with Neal Cassady, his last complete volume takes …{read more}
Dr. Sax by Jack Kerouac
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Dr. Sax is one of Jack Kerouac’s most troubling books for readers, peering behind the curtain of his childhood rather than exploring those later years of Beats and bodhisattvas. Nevertheless, it remains a startling achievement, unique not only among Kerouac’s …{read more}