Tag Archives: Jack Kerouac

Paradox and Buffoonery

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Lee

“You gotta fight for peace.” And some in the audience must have agreed. If bad people will do bad things you’ve got to do something to stop them. But others just saw the paradox and laughed. One of those who … Continue reading →

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Beats and Hippos

Posted on July 7, 2021 by Lee

And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks is an early work of the Beat Generation, written in the winter of 1944-45 by William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac together, or separately in that they take it in turns throughout the … Continue reading →

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To Own an Inch of Earth

Posted on May 13, 2019 by Lee

Neal Cassady wrote to Jack Kerouac that when writing “one should forget all rules, literary style, and other such pretensions.” And what he wrote next was really beautiful: “… Rather, I think, one should write, as nearly as possible, as … Continue reading →

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Love and Understanding (Notes on Jack Kerouac’s The Town and the City)

Posted on May 10, 2019 by Lee

To children and writers, a landscape presents mysteries to be contemplated rather than solved. Jack Kerouac opens his The Town and the City with a description of the course of the Merrimac River, its “broad and placid” flow “broken at … Continue reading →

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Beat Attitude

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Lee

In Go, John Clellon Holmes sketches some of the leading figures of the Beat Generation. We get a picture of their different attitudes, in every sense of the word: the way they talk, the way they carry themselves, the way … Continue reading →

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