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The Beatific Soul: A film featuring Kerouac biographer John J. Dorfner

John J. Dorfner

The Beatific Soul: A film about John J Dorfner

This short film by Franki Grigoni features John J. Dorfner, author of Kerouac: Visions of Rocky Mount and Kerouac: Visions of Lowell. It includes clips of Jack Kerouac and the road interspersed with John's thoughts about Kerouac, the process of writing the books, his role in Kerouac's induction into the Rocky Mount Hall of Fame, and more. … [Read more...]

Before and After Desolation: Two Sojourns by Jack Kerouac at the Hotel Stevens

Gregory Stephenson

Before and After Desolation: Two Sojourns by Jack Kerouac at Seattle's Hotel Stevens

During the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac stayed on two occasions at the Hotel Stevens in downtown Seattle. His first stay at the venerable old “skid row” hotel was in the latter part of June of that year, his second stay there some eighty days later in early September. Between these two brief stopovers, pivotal psychological and spiritual events took place in Kerouac’s life, so … [Read more...]

Memory Babes: The Legends of Proust and Kerouac

Mersiha Bruncevic

Memory Babes: The Legends of Proust and Kerouac Mersiha Bruncevic

It was recently announced that Peter Greenaway’s upcoming art installation would be a fully functioning racetrack with real cars inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The iconic British artist and filmmaker is known for avant-garde works that revisit classical art by resituating it in a contemporary setting. Greenaway’s art is one informed by the excellent skill and craft, … [Read more...]

Why Kerouac?

Rick Dale

Why Kerouac? Rick Dale

People say I’m obsessed with Jack Kerouac. They point to my blog, to my checked flannel shirts, to my over 140 Kerouac or Kerouac-related books (that I read, not that I wrote), to the one book I have written (about guess who?), to the friendships I’ve developed because of Kerouac, to my constant bringing up connections to Kerouac in daily conversation, and so on. I’m not sure … [Read more...]

Translating the Counterculture: The Reception of the Beats in Turkey by Erik Mortenson, reviewed by Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted

Translating the Counterculture: The Reception of the Beats in Turkey by Erik Mortenson

TRANSLATING THE COUNTERCULTURE The Reception of the Beats in Turkey by Erik Mortenson / Southern Illinois University Press / 978-0809336548 / 2018 The premise is a fascinating one. Erik Mortenson actually was IN Turkey during its attempted coup in 2016 and had to leave with his family. He taught at the Koç University in Istanbul, so this is no thesis conducted from afar. … [Read more...]

a toast to ti-jean in a liverpool gloom saloon

Marlie Centawer

Marlie Centawer - a toast to ti-jean in a liverpool gloom saloon

12 March 2018 It is said that a woman haunts, she sees everything. An observer, a writer, a siren of dreams. In my heart and mind, I am always searching for slivers of paradise while being silently pulled towards some sort of freedom I can’t quite describe, but desire all the time. Again and again I find myself in Liverpool, where everything is nothing and exactly as it … [Read more...]

Jack Kerouac: Avatar of American Buddhism

Michael Amundsen

Kerouac: Avatar for American Buddhism by Michael Amundsen

"I have nothing to offer but my own confusion." -- JK It is intriguing that secular, educated Americans often have difficulty with the rituals and story of Christianity, seeing it as irrational, but eagerly read their horoscope or find new age morality or belief systems relevant to their lives. As traditional organized religion has lessened in influence, spiritual needs and … [Read more...]

The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation

Sean Negus

The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation

The 1950s in America was not a period known for its religious diversity. The spiritual consumerism that we know today had yet to be established and the post-War era was defined by adherence to familial and traditional values, including a religious conformity of traditional Catholic-Protestant beliefs (Ellwood 172). The Beat writers were among the minority of spiritual seekers … [Read more...]

Book release — I Am the Revolutionary: Young Jack Kerouac by Paul Maher Jr.

Empty Mirror News

I Am the Revolutionary: Young Jack Kerouac

Paul Maher Jr.'s new Kerouac biography, I Am the Revolutionary: Young Jack Kerouac, takes the reader from Kerouac's childhood years in Lowell, Massachusetts through his World War II years in New York City and across America, where the hapless writer searches for his voice as a writer and an artist. Using archival material such as journals, notebooks, diaries and letters as … [Read more...]

Visions of Cody, a book of martyrdom

Yannis Livadas

"Time is the purest and cheapest form of doom." -- Jack Kerouac Apropos Kerouac, I think that there is nothing more important, more significant today, than reading his books and evaluate them without associating them with the “beat phenomenon." Kerouac is an author too diverse and expansive, by far the best and the most influential of his generation, to merely continue to … [Read more...]

Five poems on the Beat Generation

Alan Catlin

southbound / credit: em

Jan Kerouac Baby Driver "Looking for adventure in whatever comes my way I was a true nature's child Born to be wild-----" Steppenwolf Dreams of Hawaiian island paradise home ends up in a hopped up car chase, shotgun seat riding with a mad husband in wife's stolen late model car, listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon"---- and all that you give and all … [Read more...]

Jack Kerouac’s Creative Birth

Paul Maher Jr.

The Creative Birth of Jack Kerouac

Excerpted from manuscript titled I Live In Two Worlds: The Literary Cosmos of Jack Kerouac to be published by Rowman & Littlefield in late 2017   We first read a hand-written time-wheel created by Kerouac documenting the spiritual/psychological growth of a character named Peter Martin. The pie-graph starts from 1937 circumnavigating through 1945. In it, Kerouac … [Read more...]

Prelude to Big Sur: Kerouac in Spring & Summer 1960

Paul Maher Jr.

Big Sur - Kerouac

It is sunny, no humidity in the late spring of 1960. A brisk breeze blows in Northport, Long Island where Jack Kerouac has made his home with his mother for two years now. He sits in his yard reading his copy of Suranguma Sutra: What suffers rebirth is not the individual, but the pain of individuality… He is sober, for now, having taken upon himself a concerted effort … [Read more...]

This is IT: Van Gogh and Kerouac

Paul Maher Jr.

Kerouac and Van Gogh -- Paul Maher Jr.

"Dat is Het." In Vincent van Gogh’s Dutch tongue, he extolled this triumphant realization, “Dat is Het!” It lay the foundation for a rich flood of work. He was twenty-four years old. The years leading to this triumph had not been kind. Stymied by bouts of depression and considered a family outcast, Van Gogh sought divine meaning from a cruelly dealt hand, merging the … [Read more...]

The sardonic pilgrimage of Jack Kerouac

Yannis Livadas

Kerouac books - French

The works of Jack Kerouac constitute a rich branch of the American literary tradition, which -- through the craftiness of such important writers, like Kerouac himself -- managed to escape the swamp of intellectual, expressional, pompousness. Ergo, the books of Jack Kerouac do not compose a shadowy and somehow pointless incident, merely supporting the matured American … [Read more...]

A Few Far-Flung Fragments of Forgotten Kerouaciana

Gregory Stephenson

Far-Flung Fragments of Forgotten Kerouaciana

There are still a few odd jottings and stray scribbles from the pen of Jack Kerouac – elusive bits and bobs published during the author’s lifetime – that remain unrecorded in bibliographies and/or uncollected in compilations of his writings. Admittedly, these fugitive fragments of Kerouac’s writing are not necessarily all lost literary gems, but I would argue that they merit … [Read more...]

Neal and Carolyn Cassady’s house at 29 Russell St., San Francisco

Josh Medsker

29 Russell St., 1999, by Joshua Medsker

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 to San Francisco the year before in 1998, and had told me about it. “Yeah,” Kirstin told me, “it’s just up the street from our apartment.” Jack Kerouac lived with them … [Read more...]

For Beat’s Sake: An Interview with Carolyn Cassady

Jon Alan Carroll

an interview with Carolyn Cassady

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 her relationships with husband Neal Cassady and novelist Jack Kerouac, is an attractive woman with an easy laugh. The fifth child of a Nashville biochemistry … [Read more...]

October Ghost

Ashley Shelby

JK - Jack Kerouac typewriter

The smudged days of October—when my mood is hand in hand with the weather—remind me of Jack Kerouac. He died in October, on the 21st, and the anniversary of that day always comes and goes like a local subway suddenly gone express. I watch it pass, thinking I should do something, somehow commemorate the event, but I never do anything at all. I am aware that it is no longer … [Read more...]

Some Kind of Dharma: Photographs

Steve Paul

Some Kind of Dharma 1 (detail) - Steve Paul

“to just start at the beginning and let the truth seep out” Grant Street, San Francisco, 2009 You can quite intentionally make a Beat pilgrimage in San Francisco, soaking in the aura, the coffee, the Bohemian spirit in North Beach nooks, bars and alleys. I did not do that. I chanced upon this sidewalk marker on Grant Street, Chinatown’s main drag, and it held me for a … [Read more...]

Book Review – Kenton Crowther’s Kerouac on the Binge

Denise Enck

Kerouac: On the Binge by Kenton Crowther

Kenton Crowther's latest short e-book, a 3200-word essay titled Kerouac on the Binge (perhaps rather indelicately), is not an in-depth study of the author and his work, but rather the thoughtful musings of one who has read Kerouac's works in depth, and has something to say about them. You might see the word "binge" and think it refers to drinking. And, that's certainly … [Read more...]

The Road Toward Visions of Cody

Paul Maher Jr.

The Road to Visions of Cody

In March 2015, Jack Kerouac's masterpiece, Visions of Cody, will be reprinted by Library of America (along with Visions of Gerard and Big Sur). Edited by Todd Tietchen, the novel has been extensively annotated with notes and a number of editorial idiosyncrasies restored.  * * * In the months following Jack Kerouac's April 1951 typing of On the Road, an act born out of a need … [Read more...]

Jack Kerouac’s “Strange Cemetery in Jamaica”

Paul Maher Jr.

--- from a work-in-progress, I, Duluoz!: An Appreciation of Jack Kerouac If I had to pick my favorite poem of Jack Kerouacʼs, it would be “Strange Cemetery in Jamaica” published in Some of the Dharma (1997). Strangely, or even tragically, it was omitted from the Library of America volume of Kerouacʼs Collected Poems, as it signifies Kerouacʼs creative breakthrough of … [Read more...]

An interview on Jack Kerouac and Library of America

Paul Maher Jr.

Jack Kerouac - Library of America

March 2015 will mark the occasion of the publication of the third volume of Jack Kerouac works published by Library of America. I took this occasion to catch up with editor, Todd Tietchen, assistant professor of English at University of Massachusetts Lowell. The book is a chronological publishing continuum of the first volume and contains the groundbreaking novel Visions of … [Read more...]

The Great Consciousness of Life

Paul Maher Jr.

grass

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 Kerouac, I found that the only way to revisit that book once again was to take all of Jack Kerouac's epic letters to Neal Cassady, all of … [Read more...]

Wordsworth and the Beats: The Longevity of Influence

William R. Soldan

Wordworth & Kerouac

Although William Wordsworth once stated that he was “not a critic” and, in fact, “set little value upon the art” (Leitch 556), in his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” he nevertheless proposed and discussed several controversial ideas that would become key components to his literary philosophy, securing the “Preface” as a significant and influential addition to the cannon of … [Read more...]

Two poems by Nick D’Annunzio Jones

Nick D’Annunzio Jones

Halley's Comet

Good Morning, God At breakfast, I launch a small pink quasar into a black hole. Minutes later, receptors blocked, serotonin-flooded, my cosmos collapses; heaven-humming, orbiting hypomania, bang – a star is born! I also hear a comet talking: Side-effects include universal love, space dreams, moonwalking; if the urge to produce a paean about astro-pharmacology … [Read more...]

October in the Railroad Earth – Jack Kerouac

Empty Mirror

Railroad Earth - Photo is Road to Nowhere by Blue Betty via http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bluebetty, photoshopped by Empty Mirror

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 track? It's available here. … [Read more...]

At the Carnival of Drunken Poets

Alfred K. LaMotte

pieces of the story / credit: de

I ran into Kerouac at the carnival where those just dead meet those about to be reborn. He and I have wandered through the zodiac again and again, like prodigal suns. Both of us enter this carnival under the 13th sign, which is the sign of Drunkenness, in the house of Lilith, with Coyote rising, the Moon single and pregnant again. When the carnival master sees us, … [Read more...]

Paul Maher Jr. considers Kerouac’s Haunted Life

Paul Maher Jr.

The Haunted Life and Other Writings by Jack Kerouac

The Haunted Life and Other Writings / Da Capo Press / March 11, 2014 / 208 pp. Seventy years ago, in May 1944, Jack Kerouac toiled over a novella-length work set in Lowell, Massachusetts. It was written at the prompting of his two newest friends, the mischievous nihilist Lucien Carr and the budding poet, Allen Ginsberg. He titled it The Haunted Life and it was never … [Read more...]

Kerouac Before the Jazz: a review of “The Haunted Life”

Jim Cherry

The Haunted Life and Other Writings by Jack Kerouac

There are some great lost manuscripts in American literature and some are truly lost. Ernest Hemingway famously lost the only draft of the first short stories he ever wrote on a French train. Most writers have "lost" manuscripts, conspicuously placed in quotes because those stories for whatever reason the writer has are socked away until after their deaths (interestingly, … [Read more...]

Sleeping by Big Sur

James K. Moran

Big Sur / credit: James Donovan

I slept with a copy of Big Sur by my pillow a read of a man charting alcoholic decline I have drunk too much to remember my face I have drunk too much to remember the facts I have drunk too much and forgotten the race here-there-get up-go-get-it-done but woke beside the book feeling good and like doing nothing at all all day until night fell again … [Read more...]

Movie Review – Kill Your Darlings

David Meadows

KILL YOUR DARLINGS

Long before Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs would be celebrated as the poetical and political figureheads of a 'beat generation,' there was a murder. In the new film, Kill Your Darlings, the crime scene sets itself at Columbia University, 1944, when a young Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe) is introduced to the anarchic, pornographic mind of fellow student, … [Read more...]

Jack Kerouac Eats an Eggroll by Andrea Bates

Andrea Bates

San Francisco Chinatown courtesy Roger 4336 http://www.flickr.com/photos/24736216@N07/4061824394/

JACK KEROUAC EATS AN EGGROLL San Francisco, March, 1952 Hey hunger, typewriter scroll of walled up mysteries. Here’s to you, binge three weeks’ wide, dragon hitched to your sleeve. The love letter in a menu’s calligraphy. Hey stained teacup. Waitress’s face a crazed plate. Blame nicotine, benzedrine, beg a dime (hey buddy). Doodle on a napkin. Pray to the wharf … [Read more...]

Interview – Paul Maher Jr., author of Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

Paul Maher Jr.

Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's On the Road

Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's On the Road is an accurate, up-to-date, meticulously researched account of how Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel, On the Road came to be written. Kerouac scholars Paul Maher Jr. (author of Kerouac: His Life and Work; editor Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac) and Stephanie Nikolopoulos bring to … [Read more...]

David Handley interviews Paul Rogers about his work & the On the Road illustrations

David Handley

On the Road illustartion copyright Paul Rogers

Chances are that if I said the names Sal Paradise, Dean Moriarty or Carlo Marx that you would already know a couple of things about them. You’d know that I was talking about the generation defining novel On the Road and also that I was talking about Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and in this case, most importantly Jack Kerouac. On the Road is synonymous with the 1950s and the … [Read more...]

Jim Morrison and Jack Kerouac

Jim Cherry

Jack Kerouac and Jim Morrison

“If he (Jack Kerouac) hadn’t written On The Road, The Doors never would have existed.” — Ray Manzarek Manzarek might have added that if Jack Kerouac hadn’t written On The Road, none of the late 60’s might have happened the way they did, with kids hitting the road in search of themselves and the transcendental experiences that Kerouac had described in his novels. … [Read more...]

Excerpt from Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

Paul Maher Jr.

Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's On the Road

Editor's note: Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's On the Road is an accurate, up-to-date account of the development of Jack Kerouac's groundbreaking 1957 novel, On the Road. Using archival resources as the foundation of this book, Kerouac scholars Paul Maher Jr. (author of Kerouac: His Life and Work; editor Empty Phantoms: Interviews and … [Read more...]

BIG SUR Film Preview in Selected Theatres – week of October 14, 2013!

Empty Mirror News

Big Sur Movie Poster

Gathr Films has announced a series of one-day-only showings of Big Sur in indie theatres in selected cities across the USA the week of October 14, 2013. These screenings are in advance of the film's nationwide release on November 1, 2013. Here's your chance to see it before anyone else! Check out the schedule below & get the details... Gathr Films Serves Up National … [Read more...]

Review – The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt

Denise Enck

The Beats: A Short Introduction by David Sterritt

The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt / Oxford University Press / 978-0-19-979677-9 / 126 pages David Sterritt's work might be familiar to Beat or film aficionados through his previous books, which include Mad to be Saved: The Beats, the '50s, and Film, and Screening the Beats: Media Culture and the Beat Sensibility among others. In The Beats: A Very … [Read more...]

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Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine which publishes new work each Friday.

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