Can't put my finger on how or why it happened like it did, but in recent weeks I have become obsessed with the Beats all over again -- Ginsberg, Burroughs, Cassady, Kerouac et al. I picked up a Jack Kerouac bio last week from the library and can't put it down. The faith he had in his own work when publishers were rejecting his early stuff left & right speaks volumes about his integrity, in my opinion. He wouldn't change or edit his stuff when he had no leg to stand on, no money, no leverage -- only a vision. His personal life was a mess while he wrote his groundbreaking books. Alcoholic, drugged out on pot benzedrine morphine, simultaneously homophobic & homoerotic, making it with both guys & gals, freeloading on friends & family, hitching back & forth across the country chasing kicks, charasmatic & confused & religious & hopeless & joyful, free spirit & mama's boy, but always writing typing scribbling jotting it all down ... letters poems novels confessions -- all there in one fascinating package. Mad to live indeed. Above all, cool, when that word had meaning, before mass marketing to the youth market.
1 comment:
...please where can I buy a unicorn?
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